itch.io

this brings me back to emily is away is some way ... and being someone with good friends online that never met in person, I can identify with this

clever mechanics that make a lot of sense as an interactive metaphor .... but also creates cool scenarios like this very normal face

loved this, so simple and creative!

real cute the latte making mechanics ... wish it had some music to go along with it, I see myself listening to a softly sad lofi with this .. 

sorry could not resist doing this

Certainly, I am eager to see this project explored in greater depth, as it presents a captivating blend of music, animation, and characters. The creature climbing at the beginning and the face in the mirror are truly striking elements, making a lasting impression and leaving me eager to delve further into this story, embracing its unique atmosphere and vibe.

This is indeed a remarkable work of art, offering numerous beautiful and contemplative moments that transcend simply focusing on Gus's depressive state. This was my favorite.

This mechanic of wandering through the city, meeting interesting characters, delivering letters, all with a kind of wholesome, cozy vibe, really reminded me of Tiny Echoes—a game I'm quite fond of, especially because of its relaxing atmosphere and focus on the unique characters.

Wow, what a beautiful and powerful way to tell a story. There were so many moments where I really saw myself in it. It reminded me a bit of episodes from What Remains of Edith Finch too. The choice of art is particularly intriguing, with its colors and central metaphor of the garden and freedom. The most striking scene for me is that practice of not looking directly into the eyes. Truly, truly quite impactful. The one thing I wished I could do was go fullscreen, which I couldn't get to work when playing on the web version here on Itch. For some reason, the option to play in fullscreen wasn't showing up in the corner, which was a bit of a nuisance when I had to use the mouse to look around.

What you've done here is quite fascinating. The mechanics and the metaphor of the river really drive home the message you're trying to convey. I found the art style along with the voice there quite powerful as well, making the whole work, the entire piece, really interesting.

feels like Hypnospace outlaw but with some more mistery added to it, interesting vibe

heey I want to rate your game for ldjam, it looks cool, whats the ldjam link?

heey your game looks so cute, but I cant find it on ldjam, can you place the jam link so I can rate you guys there please?

  very cute game, can you add your ldjam link so I can review your game there?

yeah it seems we are doing a really bad job with the intro then ... noted, will see ways to make that more clear right from the get go, perhaps a few gifs in the intro will make that more clear

thanks for the thoughtful analysis, we really appreciate it.

great tips on the tutorial windows, we really suck with UI/UX

actually there is a pan if you middle click and drag .... tbh dont know if that is a good idea, I personally dont like middle click stuff, but didnt know what to do since we already use the click for selection and are kinda planing a multi selection thing with click and drag on the empy areas of the screen.

money has several bugs, but since its kind of a limitation we chose to move its fixing to later .... but will fix eventually

if you click on the pieces before adding in the menu, you will have a description of them ... but yeah, I guess that is really bad UX lol ... lots of people did not notice it lol

there is something I noticed just recently that happens with the camera in battling that the zoom kinda bugs when the screen is below certain size ... its kinda annoying because its also kinda hard for us to see it happening, I have seen once .... but recently been testing in a smaller notebook to find these kinds of bugs more easily

things that we have been working on:

- live battles on twitch - we already started that, should be going back live in the next few days https://www.twitch.tv/m4arena

- tournaments - probably still this month

things planned:

- open public backlog

- more battle scenarios with different features

- battle modes (currently planning run mode and survival mode)

.... besides all the bug fixing, of course =)

yeah you are right, we are learning about performance improvement as we work on this so yeah I cannot promise a super performance for the moment .... BUT, to your next point, we are about to finish a mode that allows matches to be broadcast and we have just created a twitch account to show live showdowns (https://www.twitch.tv/m4arena) .... we started experimenting with this yesterday =) .... a lot of people enjoyed more watching than building .... but one step at a time, next we will look into the performance side of things ..... as of mobile support, well, that would be a massive rework and as I have never seen someone (streamer or non streamer) play building games on a mobile, not sure it is worth to remake this for mobile. 
Thanks for the honest comments, we really appreciate the sincerity =)

Thanks a lot for trying =) ... yeah we understand that may be confusing, if you dont mind, it would help us a lot:
- have you played auto games such as super pets auto battle?

- have you played sandbox games like instruments of destruction?

- have you played games that play by themselves? Like incremental games where you see numbers go up like cookie clicker

Thanks a lot for playing and for the feedback! We know this is a very niche type of game perhaps, so if you never played autobattlers it might be daunting ... explaining that there is a type of game that you kinda do not play directly ....  adding hand guided tutorials is not a simple task and we are always discussing whether doing it is worth the work, for maybe the ones that like this type of game wont need it, idk, still figuring it out. what do you think, do you think its absolutely necessary to add such tutorials?

Yes we did not limit the money for now, so you can go into infinite debt lol.

About the battles being repetitive due to very similar builds, we have some thoughts:
- Until now most builds were made by people that took part in the jam, so its expected that most of them did not spend enough time to do some more creative builds (except for a few players that seemed to genuinely enjoy this type of experience and spent hours to get to the top of the ranks) so most builds are kinda boring for now I see, but I hope once there are more people playing that is going to be solved (hopefully lol).

- We are having some trouble with the match selection algorithm for the moment, so you always end up facing the same builds (that will be fixed soon I hope)

- We plan on having more maps with different terrain and maybe things like rain, meteors and stuff to make battle less predictable

the thing about the art, yeah, I am the one to blame for that lmao ... the artists told that all time but we had no time to fix ... tbh I do not if we will be able to be always consistent in the asset resolution due to it being a simulation and things being enlarged automatically ... that begs a last question, if you dont mind .... do you think we maybe should try to ... not use pixelart? because it would be very hard to guarantee resolution consistency in midst a battle

Just played the new version, very nice addition to the weapons this drone tool, although it kinda makes less sense to show the circle around its influence since it can travel all around the map.

Also noticed (which might be there before but I did not notice before) a kinda sudden peak in difficulty in between waves, like when huge insects start to come after very normal waves in a 3 level difficulty contract (I had beaten them before so maybe I had not pick this one)

Another thing that got me confused, when you click to move a soldier, my understanding is that they cannot cross the road (maybe because its lava or something they cannot walk over idk) it would be nice to show that they cannot go across the road.

I am following for more updates =)

Ok we are testing that tomorrow then 

your comments are on point, and make a lot of sense.

as we have no UI specialist among us, do you have any suggestions? In the current UI we tried to hide elements as hard as possible not to clutter it

Or maybe the first level is always the same so you can make it scripted, its like a kinda of a tutorial. After seeing that, the other ones can be random. That or you can record some tutorial explanations and have it in the bottom in a very discrete "see tutorials" button

I think that would be a nice idea, although I really like the first track tbh

and dont get me wrong I was really digging the soundscape there for real. I think someone with a weaker speaker or with them in low volume might not even notice there is a soundscape at all, and they definitely should cause its real good

I like the battle system, makes me feel like playing Into the Breach.

there are kinda confusing explanation and a very complex UI

like this, that took me a whiiiile to understand and I am not sure I did ... ribcage brittle rating  ... wat? lmao

going diagonals runs twice as fast, perhaps it is summing the force vectors ... 

perhaps more things to get in the see at different depths would make diving a strategic decision.

dont know if showing fps like that is a good idea.

I like the menus, real rpgmaker vibes ... but perhaps a custom one would add more personality

Although there are multiple levels they all kinds use the same features and have very similar puzzles.

the gameplay is ok, but it needs more variety of mechanics or level layouts

not gonna lie, I caught some balloons after quite a while and have no idea what I did that got the balloon because before that the black square had been flying through the ballons several times ... very impressive that you did this in a mobile btw

oh wow what a clever little tetris like experience ... 

not gonna lie, I did not read the description and went directly to the game ... felt confused for 5mins, when I figured it out I genuinely felt I had solved a puzzle (seeing a screen full of numbers does feel like a puzzle already) and was hooked then .... I do not know if you implemented an idea that already exists but it was new and clever for me very much so .... 

so regarding the question about making it more understandable .... if you make the first few blocks fall as if it was a cutscene, then match the numbers in the floor, I am sure 95% of players will already understand there is something to do with colors, and some math happening with the numbers, the ones that would like this type of game will already feel hooked for sure.

ok the visuals and effects are impressive and the atmosphere thrilling

I feel though the speed of movement is kinda not matching the intensity of the music

so for the question on dynamic, well, I think you either change the music and vibe to something more ... suspense or stealth oriented perhaps ... or change the player movement to be more on match with the beat  

this kinda of a serious game hmmm .... I confess that the concept could be kinda introduced slowly ... I had to use chat gpt to explain it to me to understand the connection, not gonna lie lol
but yeah I do think we need more games that interactively explain hard abstract concepts

the visuals are kinda cute, makes me remember of dos games I played in the 90.

the music sets a nice tone .... but man I am not enjoying the controls too much I have to say, maybe its me but I dont like to have to use mouse for keys

Yes, the game got me pretty hooked from the start, I think the first thing that got me excited was to notice there is a way to hit multiple enemies with one fireball

tbh, I am not a fan of gaming with the mouse, so would love to see this with a controller.

I see you have a lot of stuff when it comes to evolution and menus and all, but the game itself lacks on juice ... add some cool interesting effects and adaptive sounds and this can be quite a blast.

Yeah I think this has potential, but really needs some work on the juice part

This had me feeling like playing Starcraft, used to do that A LOT and I like the potential here.

This is a hell of a challenge though and there are some rough edges like animations, feedback, maybe tutorials (not much of them, just enough so you can survive an attack) well although I think single player campaign is cool and all, I think it might not be worth the amount of work you would have to put into it, so my vote is to focus on refining what you already have and focus on a multiplayer experience

This IS  a very interesing and inventive simple idea! First time I let it generate for too long and got locked ... second time I thought oh this is kinda cool.

I believe you could add some disadvantages or things that limit or change the type of movement your player can make ... one that I thought out of a sudden was ... since its grid based, one of these modifierss could be like, "your piece moves like a knight in a chess board" ... it would make this even more challenging and with kinda infinite possibilities to compete in the craziest combinations of puzzle+mod

The art is very lovely, I like the kinda baba is you vibe and the soundtrack that makes me think a bit of undertale ..

I am pleasantly surprised, works with a controller .... oh no kinda, AWSD and Menus dont

clever puzzles with exciting good music .. about level sequence, yeah there seems to be steps missing between introducing new mechanics ... one thought I had is ... instead of moving to the next mechanic, bring bigger more complex puzzles that use the same already learned mechanics .... there is an amazing recent game that could also help you with level progression in this type of puzzle, see the analysis GMTK made a couple of days ago

The soundtrack with the lofi pixelart kinda sets an interesting surviving dystopic vibe ... interesting idea this GTA zoombie apocalypse thing. 

of course, you could add animations and some effects, but the vibe is interesting and has potential

such a beautiful music

sad I died single in the first attempt, lets try again

I like that there are changes in tone like when the ad is posted, real nice

lmao the frog with the abs got me rolling lmao.

I want to see the continuation of this.

btw I spotted a few small english errors like this

BTW just noticed that the volume on your game in specific might be a bit lower than average, I thought it was on my side and increased the volume ... now just started another game and almost went deaf lmao

oh this was reeeeal good

I thought I was doing so well, then forgot to cover an area an ended up dead ... 

I think the evolution of this is going to depend on clever level layout and having a diverse set of tools and soldiers to feel the depth of the strategy that can be made with this.. but gotta say I genuinely enjoyed my time with this, loved the soundscape and the gun sound effects in particular ... the vibe makes me feel kinda like Carrion,  kinda like helldivers ... kinda old school starfox on choosing the planets and missions ... which perhaps is something I never seen a progression like the old starfox games where you go planet by planet ... love it

I see you are already on Steam, just added to my wishlist

Indeed the game loop is quite clever, simple and addictive like you said, you can easily spend a lot of time with this, but I do miss a couple of things that I think woul make this even more addictive an add more depth ... 

since it is a small interface I keep thinking this was meant for mobile and in the mobile this could make good use of accelerometer in clever ways (well, you might have already thought about it cause it was the first thing that crossed my mind on my first minute of gameplay) ... like, I want to have more ways to control the movement of the ball, so I feel there is depth to be explored and expertise to be earned ... like games that are easy to get started an feel the addictiveness, but can also offer some depth for those that want to be the best at it. I do imagine people moving their mobiles like crazy to get high scores though lol. 

Great concept!