itch.io

As others have said, the art style here really stands out! The gameplay required experiment and discovery to figure out, which made me question if I had run into a game-breaking bug a couple of times. More feedback to the player would have helped a lot. I would have liked to remap controls or use my RMB to perform some of the other actions, too.

Welcome and congrats on your first submission to GWJ!

Thanks for the hints! I thought I had tried that on the second playthrough, but I must have turned the lights back on in the elevator before returning to the maze(?). Maybe I assumed they were separate lighting controls, and went through the maze looking for hints in dark corners. 

This was fun! I enjoyed the different ways of obtaining puzzle pieces to get to the next part. The movement was smooth and the animations were pretty snappy, too. Decent interpretation of the theme, as I found myself looking for signs to the next floor number, but could have been stronger. I never saw the room in the last screenshot, so I played a second time to see if I missed something, but still got the same ending. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the floor numbers changed, though!

Nice work!

I liked the interpretation of the theme. Though I also found it pretty hard to read and the UI scaling issues were pretty distracting. I saw a few suspicious messages, but a lot of repeats, and ultimately wasn't sure whether I was even making progress. I eventually ran out of time on a math question and felt that one attempt was enough for me. Still, nice work incorporating the theme into the mechanics, and neat idea for incorporating mini-games.

Played this way too long, but I got to wave 26. No more for me. Thanks for the game!

Beautiful art and 3D models! Nice animations on the characters, too. I had an issue with the web version where the mouse didn't rotate the camera unless I was holding a mouse button. I tried the Linux build and it worked as expected. Camera rotation was smooth, however, the camera jitter during movement ended up being too much for me. I was glad to see the theme play a role in the mechanics though, and great accessibility options provided, too.

Very impressive submission! I look forward to seeing more of your work.

I struggled with this submission more than most, so I really appreciate you saying that :-)
I ended up cutting a chunk of content from the first level when I ran into a blocker and didn't have a strong enough grasp of the math to fix it. I might take another stab at it after having some time away.
Thanks again for the encouraging words!

Very fun gameplay! I think the theme could have played a stronger role, but I'm glad to see a mechanic around it. The art was really solid as well as the music. I got to wave 21 before deciding to change my strategy a bit and got suddenly overrun.  Pressing space to convert the first couple of people was a little annoying, so I went for the auto-convert as quickly as I could, once I figured out I could buy upgrades. I should read game descriptions before playing.

Congrats to the team on your first submission to GWJ! This turned out great!

The art and music are fantastic! Gameplay was pretty fun, too. I did find the ghosts annoying and the knockback unrewarding/ineffective, so I ended up kiting the ghosts to get them away from the dig spots I wanted. I liked the combination of visual and audio feedback for finding a dig spot and the right-click shortcut to get it into my inventory. I ended up playing up to level 3 before a ghost caught me, and I was bummed I couldn't restart the level.

Overall, really impressed with the level of polish, and the art and music were definitely a standout in this jam. Congrats on the submission!

I also think the art was the standout. Really quite cute! I didn't understand why things didn't get built when I pressed E, so I thought there was a bug (besides the ones flying around). Then I would later see the items when I walked away and came back. Eventually I realized they were dropping in from above. I played until I built the full tower, too, but I didn't get to the top of it. Nice gameplay loop, though! Could see this having a lot more.

Nice submission! I like that the theme played a role in the mechanics, though more would be better. I may have missed the part in the tutorial that said the light would reveal secret passage ways. Since that was such a critical part of the game, I would have liked to have had a clear example ahead of time. I also found the control scheme unintuitive, and felt like I was fighting it to do what I wanted. The level design was good, had a nice progression, while also allowing for different strategies to dominate in each one.

Good work to the team!

This is one of my favorites from the jam! 5/5 on theme, but I'm perhaps a little biased :-P

One note would be that for the 3rd to last puzzle in normal mode, the amplitude was so low that I could not see that it was a triangle wave. I instead assumed there was some offset issue with getting the sine wave to align. Got it on the second attempt, though. Also tried hard mode, and was genuinely impressed with how well balanced the puzzles were. Even with just two overlapping signals, it could have easily become frustrating, but I felt like each puzzle led into the next. Too bad about the alignment bug, but it happens.

Excellent work and a great first submission to GWJ! Welcome and congrats!

Thanks for playing and reporting the issue! Another player reported a similar case. I suspect it's a result of logic meant to address other bugs I was seeing during development (which resets the drawing if `delta` is too high), but I'm not sure yet. Changing tabs can causes the issue, too. I'm sad you didn't get to see the final drawing, but I've included the spoiler below:

https://editor.p5js.org/jcponce/full/x-Jt7k2fc

I forgot that comments on jam submission pages don't get collapsed, so for those that haven't played yet, don't click the link.

This really took me back to playing games in an arcade. Great voice acting! The music, sfx, and art were also good and fit the style of game really well.  I appreciated the range of accessibility options and that some were specific to the game/performance, too. I don't feel like it fits the theme at all, though. I barely used the flashlight, either, as missing the frogs was more costly than not opening a chest.

Overall, very fun and nostalgic. Congrats on making such a polished submission!

Thanks for the feedback! I just pushed an update that added a chain between the winch and the gate to make the connection clearer.

I really liked the art and the writing was good, too! I ran into a similar bug as others with being able to trigger the dialogue boxes multiple times, and then having to mash LMB to close them all. The use of the theme felt more narrative than mechanical, even in the maze challenges, but it was at least used more than once. The mini-games were a nice setup of routine and establishing the history of the player's character.

Overall a great submission, congrats!

Impressive technical work! I enjoyed the ship building, and seeing the different enemy ship designs. Without obstacles or different options, though, flying to the signal felt extraneous. Using the mouse to fly and aim not immediately intuitive to me either. I could see myself getting sucked into this for much longer with some balancing and extra options, though. Great submission!

Yeah, Crumbling Castle was >95% complete, while SWAN SONG is in the 30-40% range. The original scope wasn't too big, but I hit unexpected hurdles with Fourier transforms, and my ambition far exceeded my ability.

Thanks for giving it a try and the detailed feedback! I'm glad the ending was worth it.

Sure! To clarify, I stopped at the puzzle with the door lock. Maybe I did decode the first signal, but the result felt more like a punishment than a reward, and didn't leave me with an incentive/hook to continue. That combined with the clunky feel of interactions and my lack of patience halted my progress. I'd probably watch a video of a streamer playing it, though.

Pushed a fix! Thanks again for reporting that.

Nice tower defense game! The art was nice. Cool water shader as well. Happy to see the theme play a role in the mechanics, though the lore/reasoning felt forced. I would have liked the ability to restart a level, instead of having to reload the whole game from the beginning. Towers would sometimes shoot at already dead enemies, wasting ammo, which was frustrating for a game where the munitions are the limiting factor. More variety, upgrades, and/or combinations of signals would have been nice, too.

Well done!

Really nice work on the audio and the atmosphere. I wanted to get into the decoding, but just felt like too much was getting in the way. The default controls felt rough and the mouse sensitivity range was pretty wild. Having to switch between keyboard and mouse to interact vs. leave didn't feel right, and the transition animations and movement felt slow. I think there could be some rewarding gameplay here if the game didn't ask so much of the player at the very beginning. As it was, I lost patience before solving anything.

Still, impressive work for a jam for the parts that I did see. The music and rainfall sound effects are definitely capturing a vibe.

The 2D and UI looks very clean! It's a cool color palette and the design feels very intentional. There is some neat technical achievements, too, with player/enemy visibility and enemy pathfinding. As far as gameplay, I had a rough time and never beat the first level despite trying ~10 times. Some feedback feels missing, especially the take-down mechanic. Whether I hold the LMB or press it a couple of times, I get the  "Restrained" message, but after a moment the first enemy turns around and kills me. I've gotten it to work by mashing LMB over and over, but it didn't feel rewarding, and I didn't want to bother with it on the mobile enemies.

I'm sad I won't see more of the game, because it seems like there are some cool mechanics in here that also remind me of Hitman. I may come back to give it another try, too.

Oh no, that slider is totally broken after the first stage. Thanks for letting me know.

Real nice polish on this! The graphics and audio were especially strong here. I appreciated all the accessibility options provided, too. I'm glad to see the theme tie into a mechanic, even a little. Though a stronger use could have made for more original gameplay, too.

Great work to the whole team!

Cute game! I think the graphics and music were probably the strongest elements overall. I liked the art of the towers from the level select screen, too. The controls took some trial-and-error to figure out, as it wasn't immediately clear to me that I could control the frog in the air, so I initially waited for the wind to go the direction I wanted. I would have liked to have seen the theme play some role in the mechanics, as well.

Good work to the team! I hope to see more.

Great work on the jam game! I couldn't figure out what to do, but the art and music are really nice. 

I appreciated the review of the template, too. I've made a lot of changes recently to address the feedback, and I hope to know if it helped or not. Thanks!

This is so cute <3 Congratulations!

It's missing proper instructions in the game jam edition. It allows the player to control the speed of platforms when standing on one. Hold up/down and interact inputs together.

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for the feedback! I updated the description.

Thanks for checking. All licenses apply. `LICENSE.txt` has the MIT license covering the software in the project (the code). `read_me_ui.txt` has the license for the art assets from Cup Nooble. 

Legal use in a commercial product requires purchasing the asset pack from the creator.

/__site/cupnooble.itch.io/sprout-lands-ui-pack

Thanks for playing and leaving a comment!

Thanks for the reply. I couldn't find anything regarding the `broth.itch.ovh` being deprecated before I asked, and all the current docs I found still listed it.

This is in the installation guide for butler.

/docs/butler/installing.html

The domain broth.itch.ovh doesn't appear to be responding. 

This prevents people from downloading `butler` and breaks some CI/CD pipelines that rely on it. Is there an estimate when it will be available again? Is there a reliable mirror for CI/CD that can be used in meantime?

I did find that there is an alternative source for individual downloads at /__site/itchio.itch.io/butler , though I'm not sure if that should be used for CI/CD.

Thanks for reporting the bug! I pushed an update today to fix it and updated the UI. 

I really liked the artwork, the music, and the ambient sfx. They worked together to immerse me in the little world. I  found the instructions initially confusing, because I didn't understand that a new behemoth would spawn after the first died. Then it was a matter of understanding the different effects depending on where it decayed. I liked exploring, finding the eggs, and hatching the birds. All in all, a very serene experience. Like others have said, I wish there was more!

Yeah, I managed to record that in the last hour before submission :-P

Thanks for giving it a try!

It is a very niche type of game, so I'm delighted to hear that people who can enjoy it are finding and connecting with it. I really didn't expect anyone to go through to the very end (I only just beat it yesterday), but I'm glad neither of the two earlier goal posts were enough to dissuade you from achieving maximum science! Well done!

That was a fun little puzzle game! I liked trying to plan ahead and figure out the best strategy. There seemed to be an issue with the resolution on the web build, so I'm not sure if I should have started with a wider area at the beginning? The icon made it look bigger to me. I would have liked to have more options to choose from, or the ability to rotate some pieces. Also, getting blocked from building too high in the early game felt limiting. Even so, I made it to 20 days before the sinking rate ate up everything.

Great work for you first GWJ submission! I hope to see more :-)

I agree. If I continue working on it, redoing the UI to fit the controls along the top and bottom is at the top of my list.

Thanks for giving it a try!