itch.io

Great interpretation on the bullet hell genre by reframing it as a stage-based set of bosses. It looks like you've made a bunch of 2D games and a shooter before, and the visual and technical progress in what you're doing seems really obvious which is great. The boss behaviours are varied and animated nicely and create an excellent challenge whilst still being slow-paced and signalled enough to feel fair. I think for constructive feedback finding a way to integrate the blast in the gameplay other than [when fired = < 1 enemy health] could be an interesting idea. Maybe a small burst costing one charge to attack smaller enemies, and having to save up to a charged burst could add a little more dynamism into the gameplay. Great work and very fun to play! 

Thanks for submitting your game to DITHERJAM! 

This is a very quirky precision platformer. I like the idea of the shooter mechanics interacting with the platforming to create an approach where you launch yourself into the air, and the levels you've created play around with some interesting variations on how that momentum should be controlled. Easily an idea that can be expanded upon here. Those are some very distinctive Obra Dinn style shaders too! 

Thanks for submitting your game to DITHERJAM! 

Dithering as a technique is the only limitation, so colors are fine! 

That's right! Interpret it however you like :) 

Thanks! Yes, there's a design quirk or two. The building system is signaled in the help system as being done from the parser: you type 'BUILD [name]' to build the object! 

Thanks mate, this is excellent and thorough feedback! This is the real value of the jam for me.

I suspect you are correct with the mining delay; given the challenge of the game is not time-based but turn based, the mining delay kills the flow. I think it was leaning a little on resource collection games that try to add a little bit of tactility and realism to mining, and a quasi-incremental thing, but to do that well here you'd need automation or real-time play. There was also an intent to research 'picks' to make mining faster as the game progresses as a pacing thing. That is definitely the risk with trying to stuff several different genres and playstyles into one. 

Nailed the observation with the visual noise in the terminal! One of those tiny QOL things I just didnt get to. 

As you say, both are easy to patch down to a quicker pace and more visually appealing approach in an 0.3. Feedback like this is a great motivator to continue with a postjam release. 

I think this is one of the most innovative games coming out of the jam. The concept is excellent and uses the grid-based presentation to create something a little more strategic.  Finding ways to cut enemies off creates interesting configurations with your own aura, making you think about the space of the maze itself to align properly. Strangely enough, this feels like it could work well with less procedural generation - thinking about puzzles that use more complex twists and turns in the map could create a sort of reverse Sokoban situation. There's a lot of potential here. Nice to see someone code in the Love2D framework too! 

I think you met the brief perfectly: a glorious exercise in minimalistic design that's probably the truest to the pitch to create something characteristically Rogue! There's plenty of character here too, with the funny sound effects, unorthodox stats, random item drops and hunger-based survival mechanic. Not overly complex nor overengineered, just some very smooth movement and combat, a few laughs and a straightforward, accessible roguelike design. Feedback wise, no point recommending more stuff when this does exactly what it sets out to do and plays like a charm. Great stuff. 

Yeah, it  does my head in how much devs must tweak semi-generative approaches to find something that feels genuinely different but structured in a way familiar to the player. Much harder to do than in the lazy approach I took, where I just used a few tricks with cellular smoothing to create "caves" with no care which direction they went in! 

Yeah! I tried making a hexagonal game recently and that was my plan of attack with the controls (i.e. North is W, Northeast is W+D). A mouse or gesture based approach is probably better though. That said, if you're going down a turn-based strategy approach, keeping the current direction is probably a good idea! 

This is a really solid foundation for a dungeon-crawler, and I hope you're able to continue to work on the game. The game's visual presentation and sprite work is fantastic and the effort you put into the player character's model is self-evident. Having an underwater theme helps make the game stand out immensely too. Lots of great little touches, including the slowly-revealing minimap in the UI , and a terminal output to show events. The hexagonal grid works well, although it took a moment to adjust to turning then moving - I wonder if pairing directional arrows, or mouse direction, might make things flow a little smoother and faster? Awesome potential here to expand on this but had fun crushing crabs with an anchor and exploring the depths nonetheless. Great work! 

Ever since the Flash era, I've kinda loved OS parody games. This one sends up the XP design with its classic green field and has some creative animations that imagine an aggressive iteration of the Excel suite. As a bullet hell with some light progression elements,  I really liked the idea of the game's upgrades being tied to its wallpapers, each of which evoke the Microsoft Paint suite aesthetic very well. It's actually pretty tough, and even with the welcome addition of a dash, the number and reach of those bar charts packs a mighty punch! 

Just noticed this was your first game and jam too. This is really impressive for the systems you were able to create! 

Really hope you keep refining, you've got a good concept here! 

Thanks for explaining - it totally makes sense and I like the strategy it teaches that you have to make sure you've left the start spotless so you don't come across the adventurer at the beginning again! Yeah, playtesting can be a missing step in the development cycle. 

The art is the highlight here and is absolutely gorgeous. You have a great talent for illustration and it's all put together on the screen in a way that feels very cleanly executed and visually appealing. The ecologically-minded concept around guiding a herd of penguins is adorable yet actually fairly challenging! The stages are short, but there's a lot of technique in corralling the penguins so that all of them make it to the end. The upgrades system helps replayability a lot. I found the variance in upgrades worked well, and appreciated the light progression system by locking in upgrades, so that successive playthroughs of the game were made a little easier each time. Movement speed and herd instinct seemed to work the best for me. 

Not sure I have a lot of constructive feedback. As a simple browser action game with light upgrades that looks very pretty, this game executes what it set out to do. very well. Maybe a little more of a variety of dealing with birds could help: standing next to a bird to wait for a progress bar to accrue feels a little abstract rather than a mechanic where you directly fend them off. 

Great work! 

Congrats on your first game and first jam! That's a big achievement in itself! This plays a little more like a hack-and-slash than a roguelike, but I like your idea to have environmental effects to add challenge to gameplay and add a little variation from room to room. Coming up with cool ideas that are add something little different to gameplay is exactly how to think about how to do something new that will help people get interested in your game. Keep at it! 

The keyword entry is a really fun idea to add variation to the conventional item-collection mechanic and I like the potential for the player to optimise their run by being able to guess the word if they're ambitious enough. I think because the letters can be provided out of sequence, there's plenty of challenge here to try and guess within the energy available. Might just need a bit of tweaking to make the player have only just enough energy to get all five, encouraging them to need to use potions or take risks guessing the word to stay alive. I think that extra little bit of challenge element could help the game's replayability a lot. Otherwise, not too much else to say here - this is a nice, simple and cleanly designed roguelike using the classic visual design. Good work! 

I hope you're able to keep at this! Adding fog of war to a roguelike formula could have a lot of potential as a game mechanic. As you work at it, make sure to consider how limited sight might factor into gameplay the player can and cannot control - for instance, if a player can't see enemies, it's hard for them to feel random encounters or dead ends feel fair. I wonder how you can find that middle ground?  

The game design hints at lots of ideas to add depth - I hope you're able to flesh out spells, gold and inventory items to shake up the roguelike formula! The boxy grid reminds me a little of Sokoban and I wonder if there's a way to make the gameplay make use of the tight labyrinths by figuring out which paths can rout an enemy before they can make their way to the player. Good work! 

For constructive feedback, well, it's still early days, but keep in mind that the procedural generation should help the gameplay, not harm it - at the moment many of the random dungeons spawn enemies nowhere near the pathway to the exit. Also, a humble suggestion could be to allow the player to move multiple cells by holding directional arrows to make things a little quicker. 

You found some cool sprites for this one! I found it fun that I could kind of cheese the levels and make a beeline for the stairs on every level, especially when there were so many enemies that it made it impractical to try and best them all. Balancing is a tricky thing when designing a game like this - it's important to think about making the player weigh the challenges and opportunities. Maybe a few upgrades or consumable items to discover could make the player consider taking more risks? 

I think it's a stroke of genius to take the established mechanics and presentation of the roguelike genre and harness them into something new. That feels like the whole point of this jam. And this does that very well - a completely different and unexpected direction; a tongue-in cheek stealth game!  The mechanics are all here but completely rebranded in service to the concept: barriers are busy coworkers getting in the way, upgrades are there to help ease off the stress of being at work, and the enemy is the boss, always on the lookout. The line of sight and map design makes for good twists and turns to try and avoid the gaze of the boss, and their layout is imaginatively suggestive of an actual office. Plenty of humor here - such as getting stressed by the colleague spewing corporate jargon. 

Not too much constructive feedback here. I think it all clicks pretty well, and there's enough randomness to add a bit of strategy and depth. I think you could definitely expand the game idea by adding more varied layouts, but the execution is great. Enjoyed this a bunch and a great example of how playing with expectations and mechanics, even so slightly, can go a long way with making a game memorable. 

Interesting and ambitious to transpose the design of the 2D roguelike into a 3D world. I like the tricks you've used to keep the spirit of the roguelike by having blind corners to trigger random encounters, and limited ammo requiring careful management of resources. A contemporary theme with - as the title says, guns and zombies - feels a little more fresh and interesting than the millionth dungeon crawl with swords and generic monsters.

For constructive feedback, there's a few janks to iron out that might make things a little smoother to play. Controls are precise, but as the other commenter has mentioned, a pivot/swing to allow the player sprite to turn towards the mouse aim would help. Bullet control is paramount, but if you run out, there's not a lot you can do but twiddle your thumbs until you die. Maybe a weaker melee could add a bit of a last-ditch option? 

Nice isometric designs and I think this is the only isometric game for this jam, so it's cool to see. Reminds me of old-school games, Habbo Hotel fixed perspective isometric stuff. I've been designing a game with isometric movement and come across an issue you've probably encountered: directions work diagonally which can be tricky for a player to initially adjust to. Otherwise, there's basic functionality here but hopefully a little more work to integrate gameplay elements: be they puzzles or enemies, to complete the idea. I hope you're able to continue refining this as this is a very endearing visual design! 

One thing I really respect about the design of this game its its accessibility. Everything plays fast for its concept. Die rolls happen quickly and cleanly, instead of being a dragged-out affair. The dice roll concept is integrated well with it influencing failure and success of hits but more importantly the quantum of attack to make it a little more varied. It also makes it really easy to have progression and upgrades make a tangible impact. 

For constructive feedback, there could be some adjustments to the visual presentation to make it consistent; some sprites have a much more detailed design than others, and the backgrounds are simple, which don't clearly identify edges into new areas. I think the cleaner pixel art has a nicer effect than the ones going for a realistic effect. Still nice! 

I adore the design and visual presentation here. It's a significant departure from the stock-standard fantasy dungeon which makes an immediate impression. You have a great command of designing the UI and it wouldn't be out of place on any top-tier game of the DOS era. After a little bit of tinkering with the systems on offer, everything makes sense where it is and remains very informative and accessible. The spritework is excellent and reminds me a little bit of Space Station 13 for some reason; maybe it's the sci-fi theme. I also appreciate there's a little bit of environmental design, with signs pointing the way to special settings in the mine. 

The gameplay is good too! I enjoyed exploring the Martian mines and exploring the depths to collect resources. Adding dialogue logs invests the player in a little personality and guidance. The sheer amount of systems here is impressive and all thoughtfully executed: there's a survival-style oxygen management, combat with adjustable weapons, resource management to collect equippable upgrades...yeah, this all clicks together excellently. I'd say to myself, I wish there was a map, press M and lo and behold, the map zooms out. The forethought and design behind this one is really obvious. 

I don't have any constructive feedback for this one - it's very accomplished and I enjoyed exploring the world, which is an inordinately difficult thing to do for a roguelike style game. 

Great idea to frame the gameplay through a narrative introduction doubling as a concise tutorial. It's cool to see dialog in a game like this. I thought that gave it a little more depth and guidance to the player to softly land into the dungeon. It's obvious you relished in writing out a nice backstory for the game to get into the mood of their adventure. It also helps frame an objective which isn't always the case: a Zelda-esque item hunt throughout the dungeon. 

The radial approach to actions and movement is interesting and unusual for the genre, making it a little more unique too. It opens the potential for the use of abilities and diagonal targeting instead of simply just bumping into enemies and calling that a combat system. You've put a bit of thought into designing additional layers of combat to make things engaging, like weapons based abilities, and created a very responsive and detailed menu system to keep the player in control of all the features on offer. This is a game brimming with ideas to show.

As a point of constructive feedback, the trade-off is that more options and features can take a little more time and delay to pick up and play. Picking up items, or crossing a door, require the player to change key for a moment. I think this is fine and just reflects this is also a bit of a turn-based strategy game sitting over a roguelike. It's also, even with the abilities, pretty damn punishing! But the path of initiation of the Paladins was never meant to be easy! 

The visual presentation is very true to the era and I like the kind of tiles you've used to add a bit of texture and detail. If this tileset was created by you, it feels like you've put a lot of great work into capturing the aesthetic. Also, it wasn't too much of a surprise to see you've made a bunch of games with a similar style - I'm very into it! Obviously there's not too much here yet in terms of the gameplay, but hope you're able to keep at the prototype and build at it! 

Congrats on completing your first itch game and game jam! I like the smooth animation; the game still conforms to a turn-based grid but feels more fluid and natural. The graphics are similarly appealing, with that nice parallax thing going on that adds imposing shadows onto the corners, allowing enemies able to pounce instantly from the corners. All the essentials are implemented well here: there's an inventory and item upgrade churn, a nice little output terminal and a multi-level design that gets challenging very quickly. I appreciated the compass to guide the player too: there's a lot of dead ends in the maze!  

For constructive feedback, the item system is good, but it was tricky to tell what upgrades were materially useful or better than what I had; this makes it difficult to adapt to the onslaught of enemies and feel there's a sense of progression. I think a few little tweaks, like visible item stats, could go a long way to helping the player feel they're in control! There's lots of items hinted by the design, like yet to be implemented scrolls, that could help a lot as well! 

This is a deliciously subversive take on the Rogue concept by imagining the post-massacre cleanup. Kinda like Viscera Cleanup Detail. The roomba is such a funny and smart idea to tie in the rigid, gridlike structure of the play space. The cartoon gore also reinforces the light-hearted tone. Gameplay-wise, there isn't a whole lot of pathfinding with the enemy hero, which follows the player in a linear path and always gets stuck. Why's he so hell-bent on wrecking us - we're just trying to help clean up after all! I also like that the roomba looks like it has a smiley face on the top and clearly enjoys undertaking its gory job. Gory and cute! 

I hope you were able to learn a few things through making this prototype! From the look of it, you've clearly learned how to use a grid-based framework to generate random interiors, and set random cells in the grid to emit enemies with basic line of sight, collision with each other, and pathing.  That's heaps of progress! You know, there's something satisfying about having a horde of little monsters follow you like this. You could have a game where you need to get them to follow you to the end of a course but keep as many as possible alive! Very Pikmin. Hope your first experience with procedural generation is something you can keep on with in future games! 

Ingenious idea! Reminded me a little of 2048 in the sense that the playspace is static and the sum of the player's choices becomes obvious as the game progresses and blocks and monsters begin to litter the grid. I think the internal rules of the game are communicated pretty well, enemy movement is predictable and has a visually clear cooldown, and the upgrades make sense pretty quickly after they're first played. Fun and playful visual presentation too - if you made these assets, they're very cute! For feedback, the display warping effect feels a little radical for a vertically oriented game, and so things like the hands in the game over state feel a little squished in there. This was easy to play over and over again until the RNG allowed me to use the much coveted Nuke Kill, which felt very satisfying! 

Scaling and balancing is so hard and kind of a universal issue. Like, in my game, success or failure of the gameplay loop involves doing the math on the damage potential of the player and enemy, the ability to acquire resources in the turns available, and whether the scaling of the upgrades is proportionate to the scaling of enemy waves. Trust me when I say balancing does anyone's head in! 

Congrats on creating the framework in Godot! I liked how you detailed your design approach in the jam page and it honestly sounds like you learned a lot from doing it. Creating a co-ordinate based array to represent a defined grid, and maintain randomness that is still navigable is a feat. You've integrated all the classic features: random seeds, the turn-based play, terminal output, the whole shebang. I can see the Dwarf Fortress thing going on as well. 

For feedback - the next step is how to find ways to play around with the procgen and create paths or rooms that are varied and suggest architecture to explore. It looks like the early developers of Rogue style games faced a similar challenge as they probably used a similar technique, and got around this by creating long, snakey single-cell corridors between larger rooms to ensure the connectivity and procedural generation didn't mess around with one another.  That said, your approach has one advantage - it feels more maze-like and maybe that's something you can use to the advantage of the design. Cool stuff!

I think you've set up a bunch of mechanics here that operate together really well!  The UI and menu system is nice and clean and clearly something you devoted attention to so that players had visibility of the inner workings of the game's stat-based mechanics.  All the stats flow nicely, there's immediate visual feedback from the UI, attacking and defending, and the experience system's effects when levelling. It's an enormous achievement to have a class and stat based RPG lurking within the guise of a traditional roguelike, and I was surprised at the inclusion of merchants and item-based rewards that provide a little something more than the conventional roguelike concept.  Feels like you could easily branch this out with more time given there's no end of things to customise. 

For constructive feedback - hmm -  if you're going for a Diablo style dungeon-crawler the sense of incremental progression and a gameplay loop could be worked on a bit. There's a tension between the pretty generous recovery system and having a bed to rest in the central hub.  Same with the coin rewards and cheap as chips vendors. As you know, a lot of Diablo's addictiveness is its exquisitely-balanced rewards and upgrades system that is scaled perfectly to the ever-increasing difficulty of its dungeons. It can take years to design a game using randomness that offers unpredictability but also feels fair and constantly progressive. I think you're on the right step to conjuring a little bit of that magic through your design. 

Great work. Oh, and I'll have to check out DiabloRL! 

Well I'll help it by checking out your game shortly! 

Cheers! The idea was to keep the ASCII style but try and layer in elements to make it look a bit Dune-like.

Thanks, that's high praise and I really appreciate it. Everyone's in a different space in their own jam experience and comparison thwarts self-accomplishment: I only got fairly far on this idea as I had a jobless week and an odd all-nighter!

Hey I used the word 'cool' too same same haha

It's a very fun idea to peer behind the curtain and give the player the controls to all the variables in the game. I thought this was a creative way of interpreting the theme and added a twist on top of the "overpowered means extra powers" tenor of many of the submissions. Playing around with them was fun, although once the player has the reins, things get - quite easy! But that's offset by the thrill of being able to command everything in the game and being nigh invulnerable. Great work!