itch.io

Thank you to everyone that took part in the jam. This has been the biggest and most successful Horrorjam with over 200 people joining and 62 entries.

There are so many great games submitted, so make sure you kick back on Halloween night and enjoy some of the awesome horror games that people have created.

If you're enjoying a game don't forget to leave a comment and spread the love (and the horror...)

This is the first Horrorjam from 2022, you should post this in Horrorjam 2026 instead! 🙂

Absolutely. Lots of people submit their games to multiple jams. As long as it's made in October and meets the other rules it's fine.

If you're a musician, artist etc. and don't manage to find a team in time, please consider just submitting an asset pack so you can still showcase your work. 🙂

If you don't manage to find a project but still want to create something, you should be able to submit an asset pack that could have some music in it.

That sounds fine then. If it has an Itch page it can be properly linked into the jam and counts as a proper submission and such.

You've got all October to work on your game, so there's no rush to submit, unless you're feeling super productive and want to make two submissions or something. 😅

If you don't find a project but still want to submit something, an asset pack of your music would be great.

Its your call whether it's in the spirit of the jam. I mean turning a rough prototype into something playable is a very different proposition to spending a month putting the finishing touches onto something that was already 95% there.

Can you still post the project to Itch if it's made in Roblox?

You're welcome. Thanks. :)

Thanks for checking the game out. A straightforward mini-map would indeed would indeed defeat the purpose, but I could maybe work something out using the trails the player leaves at least to give you an idea where you've explored in the space. :)

Haha I like the idea of it being a 'thinking persons shmup'. So glad you enjoyed my little game. :)

I came to this via the Pico-8 version. So happy to play this expanded version, it's great!

I loved this. Great, original game. Feels very much like a classic 80s arcade game. Had a blast with arcade mode, next up, Time Mode! :)

I learned that trick from looking at some of Gruber's compositions. He's the Pico-8 music master, after all :)

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it :) I've put all my previous Pico-8 up on Bandcamp, but haven't made music just for the sake of it before in Pico-8, previously it was always game soundtracks. This was a lot of fun though and not a big time commitment, so it's like I'll do some more! Extar on Bandcamp

Fun little game! It's really satisfying lining up a perfect jump once the screen starts to fill up with enemies. Very addictive :)

Any games I finish get uploaded to the BBS, but this one is still a total mess.

Really cool game. Simple and addictive gameplay. The overall presentation is really good, nice music and graphics. Here's my modest high score:

 Glad you enjoyed it! If you like the soundtrack, it's on Bandcamp: :) https://extar.bandcamp.com/album/toybox-troopers

Yes. Why wouldn't it be?

Thanks to everyone who joined for making the jam such a success! I'll be streaming some submissions as well, head on over to https://www.twitch.tv/extarscube and post your game in chat :)

Fun little endless runner. I loved the black and white pixelart graphics and the music was so great. My high score was 415 when I got taken out by a witch :)

Just wondering why my game was disqualified? :/

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it :)

Absolutely. Look forward to seeing it! 😊

Really nice graphics, the worm was especially creepy, I love it. It was cool how the hands swapped when you moved the mouse side to side, I haven't seen that in a game before. Also, you've clearly got a bright career ahead of you making the background graphics for Street Fighter character select screens.

I liked the music, it fit the gameplay well. Nice particle effects on the win screen! :) The game is pretty simple but fun. It's a little bit on the slow side, maybe having a way of speeding up the robot but using more battery power or something would help. The big sprite animation when you start a game had me laughing for some reason, like something off Monty Python. The cleaning up gameplay is really satisfying, as is getting the robot to turn neatly. Nice job :)

This game is clearly unfinished and crashes all the time. Really sloppy work. Can't believe you would submit something like this. The music was really annoying and unnecessary. I just kept getting kliled by the stupid robots, really poor gameplay, didn't get what was going on at all. You should add an upgrade system or crafting or something, because at the moment it's kinda simple. The robots look okay I guess. It's a good first try.

Okay so the game is clearly unfinished, I'll just pick out some random things I liked and areas for improvement :) I liked the design of the robot and the title screen--nice logo. The UI on the combat screen was nice and clear, I never had a hard time understanding what was going on. Some animations or pauses between actions would make everything feel a lot better and also slow the player down so the game would feel more tactical and less 'spam the three best attacks' :) The icons for each attack and attack attribute worked really well. The game desperately needs some sound effects! :D

So yeah, hope that feedback is helpful, and I hope you can get the game finished post-jam, I'd love to give it another go. :)

I liked this a lot--really fun. The stealth mechanics were nice and simple, too often these style of stealth games are too fiddly and hard. The level design might need some tweaking, hiding in the doors never felt all that useful. I liked the climbing and the shooting and the design of the different characters--the sprite work in general was really nice. The walking sound effect was super annoying, the game would benefit from a few more different sound effects. Those negatives aside, the gameplay was really fun, it would be nice to see this expanded with more levels and enemies. Nice work! :)

The presentation of this is great, all the the sprites were lovely, the HUD was great, nice minimap, nice dialogue boxes (I appreciated the fact you could skip the text scroll--nice attention to detail.) The robot theme felt a little bit superficial, apart from a couple of sprites it just felt like a regular villager/crafting kind of game. There was lots of actions the player could take, the inventory system worked well, all of the information for the player was really well presented and easy to understand. The missions the player gets felt a little bit linear, maybe I didn't play for long enough but I was surprised not to get into a resource gathering/crafting loop. I can't believe you started off working with Pico-8 by joining the 1k jam--you absolute nutcase :D Great entry, nice work! :)

It's admirable that you submitted an unfinished project--I think in the same situation I would have just quietly withdrew my project so as not to get mean comments! The 1-bit graphics are really cool, and the movement and item easing on the menus looks really swish. I'm really looking forward to seeing this finished. Creating loadouts for the robots to then battle with looks like it would be a load of fun. :)

I played both versions of the game. The buggy version that let you go straight to the end level was way more fun, I loved the end boss! I got hopelessly stuck on the third level of the BBS version just from running out of moves. I think a grading system to reward completing a level in as few moves as possible but not punishing inefficient gameplay would be more fun and more friendly to new players.

The graphics were top notch, I loved the molecular animated background and all the particle effects--so nice to look at. The text outline make the text a little hard to read. I loved the sound and the music as well. Nice work. :)

I loved the old school arcade platformer gameplay. Great stuff. The character designs were all really cute and nicely animated. The title screen really nailed the style of those old games, with the attract mode that explained the object of the game etc. nice touch. It'd be nice to have some score pop-ups, a lot of games of that era had that feature and it would make collecting the b-bots feel more rewarding.

Excellent work for a first project, there was only really one bug I encountered where on level 2 I was able to move into the wall off the side of the screen--didn't get in the way of my enjoyment though.

To answer your feedback questions from the Itch page: Yes, the game is lots of fun. Level 1 could maybe be simpler, maybe miss out the conveyer belts or the jump pads and save them for the level 2 so there isn't as much for a new player to take in at the start. Difficulty wise, the old games are usually pretty hard so I was expecting to die quite a lot, the first level could maybe be a bit easier, maybe fewer enemies to ease the player in.

Overall, I really liked the game and it's a great first Pico-8 game, especially considering you were making it to a deadline. Great work :)

The core gameplay is really fun. Once I realised it was about joining the arrows my puzzle brain took over and I was having a great time. I didn't really get what the icons were on the tiles, and it wasn't clear how the scoring worked, some score pop-ups during gameplay would make it a lot easier to work out how well you're doing. I liked the music and the sound effects. The graphics were really nice, I appreciate the high contrast mode--nice to see a jam entry think about accessibility. Nice transition wipe effect.

I didn't really see how this fit into the robots theme, maybe if the tiles looked like robot parts or something you could pretend you were designing a machine. There desperately needs to be a high score screen! :)

Great entry, lots of fun. I love action puzzle games like this.

I really like the title screen, the way the game logo blew away like sand, well let's just say it *blew me away*. I love the setting/lore of the game, very original idea. The idea of programming the robots for when they are in the caves is in intriguing. I imagine that an awesome amount of work went into the UI, there were so many different screens and menus, it must have been a nightmare to code. I found the game absolutely impenetrable, fortunately I had someone in chat to hold my hand through the tutorial and the first couple of caves. The amount of information to take in as a new player is completely overwhelming. The early levels really weren't all that difficult, but it was a real challenge to create programs because of the awkwardness of the UI. I really hope this doesn't come across as negative because the overall presentation is really good. I loved all the graphical details like the paper items blowing in the wind and the little tyre trails that the rovers left. It looks from your Itch page like this is your first Pico-8 game. Absolute awesome achievement for a first project! Kudos! Big respect for pulling this off, it just a went a little bit over my head! :)

Congratulations on making your first game in Pico-8. It's not easy making your first game, and even harder trying to make it for a jam. So kudos to you! The shooting gameplay felt a little bit clunky, the collision code probably needs tightening up, it would be nice to have some more sound effects too, like confirm/cancel sound effects on the downgrade menus. That's the (minor) negatives out of the way.

I loved the idea of making the robot more fuel-efficient whilst lowering performance, really cool way of linking progression with increasing difficulty--something a lot of RPGs struggle with. I loved the lore of the game, the idea of being some old, forgotten robot stomping around the wasteland after the war is over is just great.

The graphics were really nice, I liked the little enemies running around and the different animations/poses of the player character. The design of the player character was really cool.

Awesome first game, and awesome jam entry. Respect!

I liked how this was basically two games in one. I think the laser level was my favourite. I really liked the graphics and character animation and some of the enemy designs were really fun. Great platformer gameplay. Nice work :)