itch.io

Thanks for checking out our game!

And yes! I’ve been on an adventure over the past two years to really lean into dev and level up my skills. I love pouring hours into my games, and I usually try to build on top of my previous games. 

This game took the targeting mechanic from Light It Up (Alchemy Jam 7), the upgrade and shop mechanic from Isfet (NES Jam 2026)/Snooze Control (made for a past jam that I never finished/released), and the enemy mechanics from a mix of my other games.

Since I didn’t have to figure these things out again, it meant I could get them into the game pretty quickly and then spend more of my time on art and polish!

Short and sweet. Great visuals and use of the limitation here!

Short, sweet, and in need of vastly more content so I can repeat! There are so many ways you can expand on this idea with longer levels, new mechanics, etc. Overall, great visuals, audio, and polished feel. Thanks for making and sharing it!

Strong entry! I loved the jingle at the start and I had a lot fun escorting guests around the hotel. Y'all did a nice job introducing new concepts along the way to evolve the game loop and keep things interesting, but by the time I got to the fourth day it felt like I was getting asked for room combinations that weren't possible? It sounds like I might have missed a mechanic here (based on some of the other feedback) that allowed for re-rolling the guest's room choice? If so, that could have been hinted at or made clearer I think. The art and animations are really beautiful here!

I found the cat? I found the cat! Cool models and I think you've got a nice concept here, but I would love to be able to see/play through the actual maze, too. 

I thought the art style was great. I liked how you put each of the characters onto different islands and had your camera swooping in-between them; I think you could push this concept even further and have each of these little vignettes built into a single scene and rely on these fun camera movements to guide the player around it to the different characters/scenarios. +1 for getting an ending in here, too!

Ultimate party: unlocked!

This was a lot of fun. Great little puzzles to solve, and good art + writing. As Maxsito called out, it's worth spending a few iterations on the controls here. I also ended up switching modes by accident more often than I'd have liked, and that extra prompt I had to dismiss before I could try using an item negatively affected the pacing for me. One other thing to watch out for is those mixels! It was pretty easy to spot items I could interact with (thinking about the tape specifically) because of the difference in pixel sizes; this could discourage more exploration of the space unless you wanted to intentionally make an item stand out like this. 

You made it—GG!

Great idea for a cozy, educational experience. In a former life I knew all of these by their leaves (and more), so it was fun for me to come back and revisit tree identification in a setting like this. The gnome was a nice touch as well. Strong autumn vibes and nice visual aesthetic here as well. Thanks for making and sharing your game!

Cute art/aesthetic paired up with a solid gameplay loop. Couldn't ask for much more!

The aesthetic you made here is really something—it's genuinely breathtaking considering the amount of time we had for this jam. I loved the environment and audio design, but, unfortunately, I really struggled with your player controller. I'd be curious to play this again after a few iterations to see where you'd land with that for similar reasons as outlined by others here. In it's current state, the controls feel clunky/unresponsive with a keyboard and mouse. I'm also curious to know if you considered or experimented with adding mouse/free look? Really cool concept. Thanks for making and sharing it!

From your play time and body count it looks like you were so close!

You can pan the camera left and right using the arrow keys or WASD—it’s essential for finding and dealing with those pesky mages that keep trying to roast your pumpkin!

Always great to see others from the PNW participating in jams—greetings from Seattle, WA!

This is a stunner. Beautiful art, masterful audio, and a really nice experience all around. One thing y'all may want to consider is only cutting to the train when new information is ready to be revealed by characters riding with you. I would always check in with my passengers when on my way in-between spots, and it didn't seem like anything would change after my first interaction with them so I eventually starting bypassing that segment, wishing my travel would take me directly to that location without the extra transition/click on the locomotive needed to proceed to my destination.

The artwork is fantastic. That said, I think I missed what to do here as part of the introduction which left me lost for the first couple of tries. I think clearer onboarding guidance or a tutorial would be really useful here. I kept being distracted by my O2 meter getting low too as I was trying to figure out my first steps, too, which I can see as an essential part of the gameplay, but it might be a mechanic worth introducing a bit later in the game after teaching the player the core mechanics.

The artwork/concepts for the different fish really stand out here. I thought your idea was original and I liked the general gameplay loop. One potential improvement: I noticed that the fish don't seem to reset every time after a failed attempt. On multiple occasions, there were already obstacles visible in the play field and in a few of those attempts I'd already been robbed of at least one try because of it. I think with a few more iterations and polish this could really stand out. Thanks for making and sharing it!

I wanted to love this (it's an interesting concept and the art is really cool), but the controls really held it back for me. Even with an upgraded tool, I couldn't stomach taking on any more leaves after my first yard. I'd also be curious if there could be alternate approaches to implementing your yard clean-up mechanic that were simpler or required less tedium (vs a reworking of the broom/rake controls). I'd love to revisit this again in the future if you work through the core mechanic, as it seems like you have an interesting narrative brewing, Thanks for making and sharing your game!

Getting fired has never been so fun! I really liked how you built the limitation into your game. The art is fantastic, and the way you ensured that colors and shapes matched up for all of the different art pieces made it easy to reset the museum without requiring any overbearing UI. This was great to see. That said, I'd be curious to see how your game would play differently if you'd adjusted the pacing; I think it could have been even more fun to discover the museum's the core mechanic on the second night after a "normal" first night that introduced the player to their expected chores rather than disclose it upfront and on the itch page. 

The art and audio are fantastic here. I felt a little overwhelmed starting things off, which culminated in leafy finding a food paradise in their dreams shortly afterwards. I'd be curious how your game would play differently if the core tasks were introduced over time rather than introduced all up front on day 1, giving me time to learn one thing, apply it, and then continue to expand on my responsibilities along the way. 

Great take on the limitation. Your puzzles were fun, your controls were easy to understand, and the visuals and audio worked really well together. This had to be so much fun to work on, and I can see a million ways in which you could keep expanding on this concept with more puzzle mechanics that would fit right in. I'd love to see even more animations and juice here!

Absolute chaos! The mix of FNAF and farming mini-games feels great, and the art and audio y'all brought feels great as well. I found having to balance winning the games with managing my ghostly friends to be really challenging; I couldn't make it past the second night after three tries. I'd be curious to see how it'd play differently if you leaned into the cozier side of gameplay by adding more telegraphing ahead of the ghost interactions or otherwise adjusted the difficulty ramp. This was cool to play—thanks for making and sharing it!

Great art, audio, and gameplay loop with your cooking game; having to chase away fairies was a nice addition to the loop. The ground pumpkin sprite was another nice touch. So funny! One potential for improvement I noticed was that if I started brewing a coffee (maybe other tasks too?) and I left the current screen, when I later returned to that screen I'd have to restart my brew as the cup would show as empty. Luckily, I didn't lose any of my ingredients, but it did slow me down a few times on my quest to fill orders. Thanks for making and sharing your game!

Nice pixel art; I thought the tavern scene was really fun! The audio was great too. I think you've got a lot of interesting systems here, but I'd be curious how your game would play differently if there were fewer of them but each done with more depth and polish. I'd focus on iterating your player controller, too, as the lack of diagonal movement and overly eager camera movement (camera seemed to peek ahead of the player and then settle down after releasing input) held back your controls.

Good writing! I had fun right up until I softlocked when trying to gather eggs; it seems likely I hit the dialogue bug you'd called out on the page. The art had a nice aesthetic to it, and I may come back to try finishing it up after checking out more games.

This was so good. Art and animation on point. Good audio. Good juice. Tight gameplay loop. And upgrades that were really, really satisfying. Unlocking that last upgrade and standing in the middle of a maxed-out field? *chefs kiss*

Nearly perfect! The art is beautiful with strong writing and audio to match. I do wish there was more variation or an evolution of the core gameplay loop as I went from scene to scene, but overall this was really nice! 

Also, this specific Patantan would do well if you ever decide to develop a horror-themed spin-off of the original game XD

This was a fun dungeon corn maze crawler! I easily picked up the Diablo vibes you were going for here, and I thought you did a good job given how many systems you delivered within the time limits. The art turned out nice and so did the lighting effects here. That said given the pixel-perfect nature of your art, I would have liked to see nearest filtering enabled on the flashlight to keep those pixels nice and sharp, too. I'd also be curious how your game would play differently if the maze had more landmarks to help me anchor and navigate a little better. The changing nature of the maze (it did change out from underneath me when I wasn't looking... right? XD) meant that I'd often find myself going down corridors and unsure if I'd been there before or not. I suspect adding more landmarks, or unique and unchanging features to the maze, would have helped make me more certain that I had been down a certain path/reached a certain point without ruining the maze-like quality of the dungeon corn maze you built. Nice work!

You can already adjust the camera speed in the options, but I should have highlighted that in-game or on the itch page. Thanks for playing and sharing your feedback!

Honestly? Perfect on every level. Thanks for making and sharing y'alls game; I wasn't expecting to be so deeply moved by this and yet here we are.

Thanks! This two week format for jams is so nice; I was able to focus much more deeply on the art than I'd normally do for a jam game. Zomboi is definitely my favorite of the pack!

The player controller y'all built here is really unique and fun. The art is beautiful, audio is solid, and I liked how the limitation showed up halfway through my run. If y'all were to keep developing this further, it'd be great to see you push the environment even further to better take advantage of the climbing abilities and lean on vertical spaces in order to meet the win con. Really cool entry and fun to play!

Really nice artwork and great levels of polish here; this really came together beautifully for y'all! I did feel like the combination of a) me being really slow in investigating folks and b) night coming on really quickly each day (further affecting my ability to investigate folks) made the days go faster than I'd have liked, and I'd be curious if y'all considered having the clock stop for each interview and basing the length of a day on the number of interviews rather than wall time?

I thought this was a great use of the limitation, and the flashlight mechanic was really cool to see implemented like this! Art and audio for y'alls game was solid, though I do think there was a missed opportunity to give the monster more character; I'd have tried to either bring in more art/animation for it or leaned in even harder to the box/obfuscated aesthetic (maybe they're literally under a box but you only see little glowing eyes peek out when you stop them with your flashlight, or it's censored/blurred out so you never get to actually see it). I got stuck on the puzzle with multiple lanterns, but I gave it several tries before throwing in the towel and had fun along the way. 
 

BTW the game seems to crash the tab on Safari/macOS—there weren't any logs output to the dev console or I'd have shared those. Not sure why. It did work for me when I played it in Firefox.

Thanks for playing! I implemented the limitation in two ways: 1) the levels will only change when you look away/return to the shop and 2) the enemies will always spawn on the play field, but they'll only ever start to spawn off camera.

Amazing job here. I had fun making my way around town, interacting with the rest of the villagers, investigating the bottom of the lake, and punching in some doll faces on my way to Plinko. I think you did a great job combining your  narrative with simple game progression elements (combat, keys, etc) for a solid, bug-free experience. I'd have liked to see more combat scenarios to get me ready for the combat skills needed in the ending boss fight, but his patterns were easy enough to get down after a few tries. Thanks for making and sharing your game!

Fantastic art style with a fun, cozy little loop. I played for about 15 days before taking a break to rate/leave my feedback. During my time with the game so far, I found my stress melting away as I hunted for new fossils with each new day. The loop was easy to understand and I liked the progression system, but I wanted more tension or for the loop to evolve or somehow change as I continued to collect more and more fossils. Overall it's really nice, and I LOVE the behind-the-scenes footage y'all shared on the game page as well.  

Some thoughts on potential improvements:

• I feel like your hit boxes for player interactions were a little too generous at times—on several occasions I accidentally found myself triggering my home base/unexpectedly ending my day, once right after starting a new day even. This applied to digging up spots on the beach, too, where it felt like I should have been a little closer to the digging spot before I'd be able to check for a fossil.
• The audio is pleasing, but the background music loop is a little repetitive after several days in a row. You've got great ambient SFX already going  in the background, and I'd be curious to see how your game would be experienced differently if you relied less on having a constant BGM loop and instead only played the music at key transitions. Alternatively more variation in tracks would help, too!

Almost perfect! I found your game to be dripping with style (I love the aesthetic) and the gameplay loop implements the limitation really well here. I ran into one bug (requiring a restart) where the camera got caught behind the scarecrow's head, obstructing the view, but otherwise it played pretty well. I did find myself wishing for a little more telegraphing or warning before the crows made off with my precious pumpkins, but it didn't stop me going back for another run. Thanks for making and sharing!

Thanks! FWIW I made the camera speed adjustable (check the Options menu) as some players felt similarly during early play testing, but then others felt like it was too fast when I increased it. In addition to the level changes, the enemy spawns are also triggered when you look away. The level changes are tied to the number of kills on the field, so a smart strategy is to buy up pumpkins and build up as much $ as you can on earlier levels before the difficulty ramps. Getting that fire upgrade early lets you breeze through those later levels due to its AOE damage XD

Thanks! I played a lot with the spawn rate to try and find something that was a good pace—they're definitely fast to jump back into the action in the current build, but it makes for some really close calls and forces players to stay on top of the field. Did you try adjusting the camera speed instead (check the Options menu) to see if that helped you stay on top of the incoming forces?

Lots of really cool concepts and systems in place (great idea for the limitation!), but I was consistently hitting the wrong controls at the wrong time, displacing my carefully placed crafting stations and getting mixed up on when to click with the mouse vs use E to interact. The amount of depth you were able to bake into your crafting system here is really impressive for the time we had, and the visuals are really solid—I bet this would be amazing if you had another two weeks to polish up your systems and controls.