itch.io

Yeah, it is really hard to plan that sort of thing in advance, I have a back-burner game idea myself that requires that kind of deep discovery mechanic and I have no idea how to get into it myself...

I might need to spend some time researching specifically into other games that have done that well, if I can find them...

This is delightful, but at the moment it only grabs me for about an hour...  what it needs is some deeper consequences to what I lay out...  things to discover, interesting/surprising things which happen when I put components together in certain combinations, maybe new objects I can unlock by doing that...

Can sometimes see lilypads through the ground...

It took me quite a while to work out what was going on, and I still may not have grasped it completely...

...the colours vs. ghosts I did not get until I read the text (and obviously I didn't read the text at first).  I like the idea but I think it needs signalling more, maybe have vulnerable ghosts flashing, or greyed, or something?)  Also the "teeth" ghost is a bit mixed in its colouration and that confused me at times.

The teleporting around I still haven't completely worked out, is it just a way of respawning, or do some things that just teleport you?  For a long time I thought the wheels were teleporters, but how I am thinking they are just monsters?  This illusion (if correct) may be contributed to by I think there is a bug where occasionally I can be the right colour and still die (or at least teleport) when I hit a ghost.

Not sure what the flames are, are they ghosts in the process of respawning?

One feature of the original is that you cannot stop, I wondered whether you should also have that, but I think maybe with the arbitrarily complex mazes we need this additional option.

One feature I noticed about the mazes is that any area with limited exits is scary to enter when there are multiple ghosts around, so it would be an idea if you could guarantee that the level had a mix of scary and less scary areas (e.g. the sort of thing a human designer would intuitively do).  You might be able to do that by making the maze generator start with larger rectangles (with a difficulty assigned to them) and recurse to filling in the final detail...

I wonder if a sequence of levels, where the difficulty and size vary as you progress would add a lot to the experience, e.g. give a clear sense of progressing and mix-up the experience with a bit of variety...

a-ha!  this is a game changer, I will play again later...

Fun!  And a clever idea, could maybe have done with a tiny bit more time to see each obstacle and work out which character was needed...  If you could work out some more mechanics hanging off the same characters, say places where jumping would take you one way but not jumping another, then the level design on this could get quite rich...

I couldn't work out what to do...

Fun but not enough "mass smash" capability, making the longer level get a bit arduous...  Having the crate you were holding block your view made aiming difficult too...

A fun game!  Clever use of a simple idea...

I sort of got through the first two doors and I turned the bridge on all right, but when I got to the bit with the columns I had didn't know what to do...

A nice idea but the controls are much too sensitive.  Level 2, for example, it is almost impossible because there is no way to move sideways by a small amount to get through the bottom section...  Handling gravitational acceleration (where the increasing speed needs constant nudges to stop it getting out of hand) is also not really possible with the current setup.

A clever idea.  I needed a little more feedback about what was happening though, when I hit the bad guy we seemed to switch back to good?  I thought I was causing that at first, but it was just timing.  Then I worked out the guy had a health meter and I was able to keep on and beat him.  I think the switching modes was maybe a little too often, but then again you would need perhaps a bit more to do in each mode to fill the time...  

A really nice idea, unfortunately I was getting stuck in walls and on switch pillars a little too often and I couldn't always get away :-(  But just add a few more level objects (like lifts or multipart switched) and upgrade the look at bit and you would have a whole game here...

A nice relaxing game but as others have said it needs better view control, I kept dying, not because I was doing it wrong, but because I couldn't tell precisely where I was...  the ability to move the camera would help, as would a shadow on the ground (assuming we could always see the ground...)  Very nice idea though!

Really good.  Clever use of simple mechanics and an adorable character.
Add art to make the levels more lush, throw in a couple more mechanics, and write some more levels and this would be a complete game...  

Yeah, I tried again and got it this time, great game!

Very enjoyable, just needs the driving to feel a little solider and not swerve quite so much :-)

the one with the box on the ramp that needs to fall on the switch...  I found whatever I did the ball hit the door before the box was in position...  About 5 or 6 I think...

Nice idea, but it's awkward to judge the trajectory from a fixed camera angle...  which isn't the most interesting challenge.

Really good, loved it!  Although I did get to a level I just couldn't do quite quickly, not sure if that was just me or if something drifted in your final build?

Cool, will definitely join you at that time!

Multiplayer modes either competitive: there's one non-bomb car and everyone wants it -- or cooperative: there's a non-bomb car each and you need to get them and keep them for your team, might make a really cool party game...

I love it!  It is far too hard, but I love it!

This is so hard, I couldn't get past the first level...

Fun!

An interesting idea but I think it needs something else that the character is doing besides just staying in the central area.  Maybe if movement and grappling were slower and there was something else, like mining or shooting, to do between your grapples...?

A really clever idea!  Such unpredictable fun to play, even when I had worked out roughly how the force worked it was impossible to know exactly where I would land...

A fun idea!  I found the controls a little too "twitchy".  I think it would be fun if the the environment were more complex, and if you could trigger chain reactions with skillful play, say if you could make stacks of stuff fall on the robots if you hit them right... and had gravity the right way at the time...

A clever idea that could be really fun if developed a bit further.  I had some trouble with the camera swinging vary slowly to orientate on the car, I think it would be much more controllable if the camera were just locked to the car...

I should have said it's a really nice use of the theme, though!

It's sort of fun but there is some difficulty in knowing which character is which, so it is hard to know whether you're making progress listening to the bugs or not...

I was able to defeat them first time, however, just by picking the thing I had heard of from each list.

Bugs, it is all about computer bugs...

It needs more in the way of a control mechanism than just clicking on the bugs to squash them.
I like your character!

It's a good idea but having to click all the time on bees as the only way of getting money gets dull very fast...  I loved the music, however.

Unfortunately when I paused it it crashed!

Please have a look at ours:

https://itch.io/jam/comp-3-jam-butty-01/rate/829508

This is really promising, it unfortunately gets too easy and I was able to leave a defense unattended and it finished the game.  As a next step you would need to look at ramping up the bug strength and then having upgrades to the defenses too so that people can improve those to match...

...also consider the shape/area of attack of the defenses.  e.g. at the moment both the spray and the glue are area-of-effect, which means that they work just as well whether 1 or 20 bugs are coming.  More of a tradeoff between damage and rate of fire and number of targets would give the player more strategic choice.

Please look at our entry :-)

https://itch.io/jam/comp-3-jam-butty-01/rate/829508

Needs much more in the way of instructions, after a bit I worked out how to get to the minigames, but in every case the patient died while I was still looking for what to do...

Nice idea, but not quite balanced as it stands, once I had got the idea of not doing anything during the first wave, then I beat the second wave by keeping the fire-rate high and a few upgrades and after that I hardly ever saw an enemy again, I got too far ahead of them...

I also wasn't sure that the purpose of the "Carpe Diem" button was, I mean it obvious gave me more happy pictures but was it changing the game?  I wasn't sure...  I thought when I got all four pictures that might be a win, but it seemed not.

Nice idea though!

I love the idea and what is there works reasonably well...
Minions need to stick with a job more when set on it, and also it kept freezing, seemingly more-so as the game progressed but a nice idea just needing a bit more polish...
To be a full game this would have to be a tutorial level and further levels would need to present increasing obstacles, but that would be beyond the scope of a 1wk jam.

Too much delay at the start and when I get to the game I have no idea what I am supposed to do?  Collect something?  Jump on something?

Love the idea and the level of polish you've reached in only a week is great!  Can imagine all sorts of ways to expand this idea into a longer exerience...

One of my rings was frozen (and I don't really know what that means, although you've given me a clue here) but I couldn't shift-d any of them, and instead of s message about not being able to get the gem out, it just silently dropped the whole ring...