itch.io

I was skeptical of the control scheme at first, but came around. It totally works. Really makes you plan out, when do I run and when do I take a stand?

Love the background music too, and the blaster’s pew-pew sound is just spot on.

Main thing I’d change is the terrain hit boxes. Because the big crystals are angled so severely, it’s hard to tell at a glance where we’re able to walk. I wonder if you could change the ground under the crystals, like have it look elevated, to match the hit box more closely.

Overall, excellent work here. This is probably my favorite of the jam.

Fantastic! The squiggle-vision cutscenes had me in stitches.

Is the bread game incomplete? I played up to it twice and both times it stopped after two notes.

Only other thing gameplay-wise, is you might consider randomizing the speed of falling things in the ham game. The constant speed for everything plays kind of bland.

Overall I love it! Really wanted to keep going with it.

I love the low-res black-and-white graphics, really feels like a PC game from the 80s (in the best way).

This could really be something, if you flesh it out with quests and combat.

Oh and just so I don’t worry about missing something: Is 1000 years of darkness the only ending? I found the witches pre-ritual hiding in their cave, and like… can we interfere with them at that point?

Cool graphics!

This would really benefit from Pointer Lock API (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Pointer_Lock_API), you should look into that. As is, there’s an arbitrary limit to how far one can turn, based on the width of the window.

I missed a lot of jumps, I think due to pressing Up while the hero is bouncing. Ended up pretty much holding Up the whole time, which actually works out pretty good. But there’s an opportunity here to create more nuanced controls, like you ought to be able to do a tiny jump by just tapping the button, or hold it in to jump higher. And as cool as the bouncing looks, it really ends up being just a nuisance.

Nice work overall though! Especially those background graphics, that’s just beautiful.

Nice take on the basic survival game. I like the variety of powerups, like how the dog is a qualitatively different thing than say the laser.

If you’re going to keep working on it, you might want to add a texture on the ground. The flat gray makes motion and distance kind of hard to read. Just a little bit of noise on the floor should improve that.

Nice! Runs crisply, and the interface in general gets right to the point. I felt like it needed some more feedback when you’re charging or getting hurt, it was kind of easy to miss that these things are happening. Some kind of wub-wub-wub sound while charging maybe? All in all a nice solid game. I could only get 4 (or 5?) waves in before they juiced my moon.

Thanks! And no, you can’t set the bird on fire (but now I’m kicking myself for not thinking of that!)

All my games here use custom engines, but Upsy-Downsy is the first using Pebble. And will probably be the last too; I’ve decided I don’t quite like it, and I’m planning the next one.

(also, if you’re curious, a lot of my pre-Itch games are on https://aksommerville.com/ , with even more custom low-level fun!)

Nothing here uses Emscripten or SDL. I try hard to use the absolute minimum of dependencies, usually only platform I/O drivers (eg ALSA, X11, PulseAudio…), and of course on the Web there’s none of that :)

No scripting languages either. My feeling there is if you want the convenience of an interpretted language, we already get Javascript for free, so use that. Too Heavy is in Javascript. Cool thing about Wasm though, it doesn’t have to be C at the source. C++, Rust, Zig, Go… in theory they should all work. Maybe I’ll dust off my 1980’s Pascal skills someday and write a web game in that ;)

The easiest thing is to write in Javascript, and then the only homemade thing you need is the bundling logic. Or just use Webpack or whatever. Standard browser APIs really do all the work for you. TBH I’m not even sure what the high-level frameworks are for, when targetting web!

Hey thanks for that! Believe it or not, that was the first time I’ve watched somebody play it. (and you did great!)

Clever! Playing it feels just like being a frog.

Fantastic game! Nice simple rules, and it stays fresh and challenging after a bunch of plays.

The look and feel is dinstinctive and consistent, it really feels professional.

Great looks, and the music fits nice.

The physics needs a little fine-tuning in places. It seems like gravity goes up too fast when you’re wall jumping, or something. The room where you jump up on a bunch of waterspouts, it seemed like I was falling too fast sometimes.

Amazingly detailed and consistent!

I totally missed that the platform next to the guy telling you about down-jump platforms, is a down-jump platform. Oops.

Once one manages to notice obvious things it’s really great!

Not sure if this was intentional, but it’s possible to double-jump if you hit it fast enough. I leaned on that pretty hard, but it might have made things too easy, that last room especially.

Great work here!

Stunning! This is really tight, well executed, and the visuals are so slick. I’d love to see a longer-form take on this.

The UI is tight and snappy, it’s really satisfying to play.

Fun idea, and nice snappy execution. The whole package, concept and delivery, is really coherent. Great job on the music!

Ha ha, really cute and squeaky! A few bits, like the invincibility, had me laughing out loud. Well done!

Oh wow, it’s just like Double Dragon! Really impressive to pull this off in just 2 weeks! I would play this thing until I run out of quarters.

A cool idea, well executed. What a great game!

Complex and very interesting.

The aesthetics here are just spot-on, couldn’t imagine a better look and feel. Bravo!

Very appealing graphics and music. I felt cheated sometimes by the birds and squirrels, like once they appear there’s not much one can do unless you’re already in a good spot for running away. All in all a good solid game.

Clever puzzle! I like the look and feel. Music was nice, but I think something more in the chiptune vein would have gelled better with the visuals.

Clever puzzle, and really difficult. I ended up stumped before completing the second row. Really love the background music too.

So intensely gonzo.. it’s exactly like dropping acid and jumping down a well.

This could benefit from Pointer Lock API (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Pointer_Lock_API). I kept spazzing and sending the cursor way out of bounds.

Impressive! I really like the judicious use of color here. Creates a great spooky mood.

Super cute, and everything works. Lots of lively animation. Wow, this is really professional!

What a great game! Graphics and sound are top notch.

I would have preferred for the dpad to also work for movement, and for the gamepad to work in menus too.

Also some scorekeeping would be cool, or at least indicate which levels have been completed this session, it’s easy to lose one’s place.

Hack-and-slash platformer stripped down to its bare essentials. I really dig this. It’s satisfying to play a hundred times and try to optimize for speed (47.13 here, but I’m sure I could still do better…)

Well done!

Ha ha ha, so cute and silly, this is great!

I think the core rhythm engine might need some fine-tuning, or maybe that’s just on my end. Felt like I hit it more reliably by swinging just a hair late.

Way cool! I haven’t seen a combat engine quite like this before, and it totally works. Love what you’re doing with the lo-fi graphics and music too.

Rock solid, one of the best games here! The graphics and sound are top notch, I can’t imagine Nintendo or Capcom doing any better.

One thing that bit me a few times: It’s not always clear when you can go up or down. In the city level especially, I think an Up Arrow sign on the wall could have helped a lot.

Incredible! The scope of this, and the level of detail, hard to believe it was made in just two weeks.

The graphics are gorgeous and there’s no point where it feels like it’s struggling against the 64x64 limit.

I did encounter two bugs: First, I got stuck in the warehouse by walking behind some furniture and had to reset. Second, some time around getting the Arc Thrower, sound effects stopped playing. Music and the black holes’ sound still did play fine.

I really like this one. No matter how much I practice, I’ll always miss a jump or two, “$#@!”, and it keeps me coming back for more. :)

I like this a lot, it could really be nice if you finish it after the jam. It needs timekeeping, obviously, and a high score list would be cool. Another thing to consider: Could you use Z for gas in addition to Up? Up is a little awkward when playing with a gamepad.

Really novel and engaging! With gamepad support and some background music, you’d have something really special here.

Simple and pretty, very nice. A minor detail: It could use a sound effect when you jump, and maybe one on landing too?

I was also getting that stalling problem that BlindChaosPanda mentioned. After a few throws, a goblin will chase the ball and get stuck near it. Which is cool, hey, I can just chill and run down the clock.

But on the third round, they glitched, I sat back and took a sip of coffee, and then they unglitched and balled me!

Touche, goblin, touche. :D

Way cool! I really like the combat mechanics, haven’t seen it done like this before.