itch.io

I remember playing OSRS and a bunch of dumb Flash games way back in 2004. I think it's incredible how much we can do nowadays inside a browser window. All the music, graphics, controls, etc. here are insane.

For some reason, my mouse sensitivity was at zero when I first launched the game, so I couldn't rotate the camera until I fixed that, and the Options menu is very buggy. Moving between Audio/Game/Controls changed the size of the window, but not the actual list of buttons available. Exiting the Options menu and re-entering did NOT fix this.

At one point, I accidentally started talking to the person in the bathroom stall, which caused a dialog window to appear. But it did NOT disappear after I exited to the menu, or even when I started a new game. I had to completely exit the game and re-launch the .exe to make it go away.

I got in the van, drove a bit, found an underground tunnel hidden under a bunch of wooden boards, and was teleported through the exit. When I came out the other side, I was apparently very very small. I tried climbing on some giant toilet paper rolls, but I got stuck and couldn't move. Some insects appeared on my screen, then I turned off my flashlight and somehow managed to clip under the game world.

Also, pressing Esc brings up the menu, but it doesn't seem to actually stop the game. You can still move around. Is that intentional?

I can't seem to keep her alive for more than a few minutes. The little face at the bottom will light up, but her stats are normal and she doesn't want to talk. Then, the little droplet symbol will light up, which I assumed meant she needed medicine, but apparently that wasn't right. The "???" button also lit up, but clicking it didn't do anything. And then she always ends up dying.

I actually like how the UI is unintuitive (having to memorize which of the three main buttons does what), and having to hide her whenever someone knocks on the door. I think this would kinda be fun, if I could figure out what I'm doing wrong lmao.

Hey, thanks for the kind words! Without spoiling too much, I do plan to have all the characters cross paths at one point. Thank you for the feedback, and I'm glad you liked it!

I definitely think the controls need to be improved. In this kind of game, I think Space is better than W or the up arrow for jump, and being able to use the actual mouse to control the arrow would be really handy.

And be sure to watch for typos.

There is a LOT of text here, even for a VN. Even the tutorial was really wordy. Instead of just having one massive wall of text, I'd rework the tutorial as a very simple level in the game's story. That should hopefully make it much easier to understand and play through.

Also this bitch got six fingers.

I really like all the feedback. Every button click, every single item, every action is accompanied by a nice sound effect and visualizations. Great job.

CHANGES SINCE LAST DD:

==== WIZARD DANCE ====

Added a temporary game-over screen.

There's now a countdown timer while the game is frozen after un-pausing.

Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause the level to not end, even after all notes had passed.

==== SHOOT-EM-UP ====

Fixed a bug that could cause the fairies to not animate correctly after activating the shield.

Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause enemies to immediately die when their wave began.

Fixed a bug that could cause the player to earn points for shooting an enemy, even if that enemy was already dead.

Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause enemies to perform the wrong death animations.

Fixed a bug that could cause the hit markers to freeze if the player died while they were on-screen.

==== TEAM BATTLE ====

By pressing L-Ctrl, you can now cancel and switch attacks if you have at least two party members with combo charges of 3.

Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause the wrong characters to animate when using a combo attack.

==== DRAGON RUN ====

There's now a VERY small chance that some of the red slimes will show you their red slimy asses.

The countdown clock will now turn red when you're almost out of time.

Added a very basic death animation for the player.

The player will now blink upon taking damage.

Fixed a bug that caused some sound effects to not play when the player died.

==== PLATFORMER ====

Fixed a bug in level 1 in which some platforms didn't check for collision.

Updated sprites.

Updated cutscenes.

Added a temporary game-over screen.

==== IMP LAUNCH ====

Slowed everything down even more.

Replaced the big rocket sprite.

Added some new visual effects.

Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause the camera to move horizontally when launching.

Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause items to suddenly move when launching.

Fixed a bug that could cause the player to freeze for a few frames when at very high altitudes.

Fixed a bug that could cause the magnet sound to continue playing even if the imp has landed.

The imp will now flail his arms while in freefall.

Updated the background.

Added a new item: the fan. Press F to activate it and it will slow your descent for a few seconds.

Added speed lines.

Updated tutorial.

==== MISC ====

The main menu music will now resume when exiting the WD calibration state.

Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause the camera to shake when it shouldn't.

All the text and options right at the beginning was a bit overwhelming. I might not be the best person to review this game, because I don't really play a whole lot of games like this. For what it's worth, I'm on an AMD GPU and the trees and grass looked just fine.

The first thing I'll notice is the writing feels a bit off. The way the protagonist is talking doesn't really sound like how an actual human would talk. As an example: "It came from somewhere in that alley! I should check it out." That's not something a person would think inside their own head after hearing a scream. In my opinion, something like: "I blink quickly as I turn my head towards the source of the sound. That alley?" You could also work the character's emotions into the text. It sounds like he's unafraid and eager to help, so maybe: "Knuckles cracking, I step into the shady passage. Let's see what that was all about."

 And be sure to watch for typos:

The art is kinda ugly, but I'm assuming it's all temporary.

It took me way too long to realize I could open my inventory and equip the coffee cup. There doesn't seem to be any consistency about pressing LMB or Space or Z to navigate the inventory. I would definitely add some tutorials and quality of life improvements.

Looks like there are some places where the enemies can't reach:

I wasn't able to get past this part. I figured I was supposed to throw the coffee cup at the attacker, but that just stopped him for a few seconds, and afterwards I wasn't able to thaw the ice on the vending machine. I tried to grab the pepper spray out of the woman's purse, but by the time I got to it, the attacker was immediately behind me, so I wasn't able to use it before he grabbed me.

Is the grass supposed to be this tall? lmao

Obviously, there's not much to it right now. The health/hunger/thirst/fatigue meters go down, but nothing happens when they hit zero. I expected that jumping into a pond would restore my thirst meter, but nothing happened.

The night sky looks kinda cool.

The art, music, and sound effects are excellent, but it doesn't look like there's a whole lot of gameplay at the moment. I tried the bow, crossbows, gauntlet, and staff. I kept getting stronger with each gate, but I barely took any damage from enemies.

In the Options menu, there are left and right arrow buttons for increasing/decreasing the resolution, fullscreen, etc. You can press the same button multiple times in a row to cycle through the available options, but it doesn't look like this works for the "Retro Filter" button. I assume this is unintentional. You might be changing the position of the button so that it's no longer under the mouse.

CHANGES SINCE LAST DD:

==== FISHING ====
Updated tutorials.
Added decorations to levels 2 and 3.
Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause music to not play when restarting the level.

==== WIZARD DANCE ====
Rewrote much of the logic for loading and playing music, and moving notes down the screen. This should result in a smoother experience, regardless of the type of audio device the player is using.
Added a calibration screen in the Options menu to adjust the offset based on the current audio device's latency.

==== SHOOTING GALLERY ====
Added a sprite and sound effect for when you miss a target.

==== DECIPHER ====
The name of this game mode was changed from "Letter Editing" to "Decipher".
Updated map icon.
Fixed drop zones appearing in the wrong spaces in level 3.
Added a background to level 2.
Added some auditory and visual feedback to level 2.
Updated cutscenes.
Re-did level 3.
Added hints to level 3.
Fixed a bug that could occur in level 3 if the player let go of a word directly above the Submit button.
Fixed a crash that could occur in level 3 if the player pressed Submit without inputting a guess.
Updated Submit button.
Added a very easy problem to level 1 to help explain the gameplay better.

==== TOWER DEFENSE ====
The cursor is now visible while the buy menu is open.
Updated tutorials.
There's now a small puff of dust whenever an imp dies.
Imps become lighter when they take damage.
Swapped the circle's outline when placing a weapon with the full circle after it's placed. Hopefully this should make it a bit less "busy".

==== SHOOT-EM-UP ====
Updated tutorial.
Fixed a bug that could cause time to go into the negatives if the player died while there were only a few seconds left on the clock.
Enemies now arrive in waves.
Redid all three levels.
Fixed a bug that could cause some enemies to shoot bullets while the player was dying or dead.
Slowed the enemies down.
There are now three different possible death animations for the imps, depending on how they die.
Added a small explosion animation for when a bullet hits an enemy.
Fixed a bug that could cause the fairies to enter the "THIS IS OVER" state, even if the remaining enemy had more than one health.

==== TEAM BATTLE ====
The name of this game mode was changed from "JRPG Battle" to "Team Battle".
Updated map icon.
Fixed a bug that could cause the wrong character to blink upon taking damage.
Added a "Success" screen.

==== DRAGON RUN ====
Fixed a bug that caused the enemies to not animate in level 3.

==== PLATFORMER ====
Tweaked some hitboxes to make the projectiles less deadly.
Tweaked the jump height and camera to hopefully make the gameplay feel better.
You can now see your score during levels.
Fixed a bug that caused some platforms in level 2 to not check for collision.

==== IMP LAUNCH ====
Updated map icon.
Slowed everything down.
Increased the number of items that appear.
Added a big rocket sprite for when the imp is on the ground. It's not really good for anything, just felt appropriate.

==== MAP ====

Added a "drawer" that can be used to quickly navigate between levels.
Fixed a bug that could cause icons to freeze in their animations while navigating via the W/A/S/D keys.
It is now possible to scroll the map by moving the cursor to the edges of the screen.
Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause icons to become selected after exiting cutscenes.
Fixed a bug that could cause icons to freeze in their animations while navigating via the next/previous buttons on the level card.

==== MISC ====
Added some short SFX that play when a cutscene ends.
You can now press LMB to skip through the results screens of most game modes.

Thank you for the feedback! I'm still doing a lot of tweaking in the platformer mode. Hopefully by next DD it'll feel a bit nicer.

Simon Sayeth and Higher or Lower are both bonus game modes; they don't have any story and they rely on random numbers a LOT more than the main game modes. Eventually, you'll earn coins from them and you'll be able to purchase dolls from the doll shelf. This might take a very long time for me to implement, and it probably will not appear in the demo. Either way, I definitely plan to add some more visuals, SFX, surprises, etc. to each of them.

There's a circle that appears around the crosshair in the Shooting Gallery mode, which indicates when you're reloading. Maybe I should change the color or something to make it more obvious.

For the fishing game, you CANNOT move the hook horizontally while it's in the water, only vertically.

This was kinda fun. It reminds me a bit of this. I like the jazz music.

If all the spaces on the grid are already full, does adding items to your inventory do anything?

Thank you for playing! I've definitely thought about adding a list off to the side of the map, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

You're definitely right about the platformer, and I've already shrunk the hitboxes of some of the projectiles to make it a bit easier. I might have to keep tweaking it.

In some levels of the spelling puzzle game mode, some words will be written in blue, which cannot be changed. There are practically none of them here in this demo, but they do exist.

Right off the bat, I thought this person was a woman with a beard, because the back of his seat kind of looks like long anime hair. But that's probably a "me" issue lmao.

I wasn't able to defeat all the red bugs. I tried a couple times, but all of my characters ended up dying. Sometimes they would be fighting enemies, then start moving in the wrong direction for some reason. Maybe I'm just not very good at this type of game.

F1 - F4 for the missiles felt a bit awkward to me. There might be some better buttons you could assign missiles to by default.

This was pretty fun. Lots of nice art and sound effects.

I was playing with an Xbox controller. Is it possible to aim in any direction besides left/right? Because that's where most of the difficulty comes from. When you're being swarmed by enemies and bullets, it can be hard to escape if you're not able to shoot up or down.

I'm not entirely sure what the little cat dude is for, but I love how he cries when you die lmao.

NNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SO CLOOOOOOOSE

CHANGES SINCE LAST DD:

==== FISHING ====

Made the game mode a bit less difficult by increasing the distance that fish will attempt to bite the hook.

==== WIZARD DANCE ====

Fixed a bug that could cause a softlock if the player paused/unpaused multiple times quickly.

Added a gradient to the background.

Updated some cutscene sprites.

Made the tutorial look nicer.

Fixed a bug that caused one of the background elements to not appear in level 3.

==== SHOOTING GALLERY ====

Added some final artwork to the cutscenes.

==== LETTER EDITING ====

Added the ability to move up/down along the list of words with the W and S keys (although it's still a bit glitchy and I might have to add some more improvements)

Fixed a bug that could cause the player to lose the level, even if their accuracy was equal to the minimum.

==== TOWER DEFENSE ====

Tweaked some health and speed values to make the game more fair.

You can now see a weapon's radius before you place it on the ground.

Updated some sprites.

==== SHOOT-EM-UP ====

Re-did level 3.

==== JRPG ====

Animated some stuff.

"Correct" attacks (ones that the enemies are weak to) will display their damage in red.

Made the logs look a bit nicer.

Replaced some sprites in the cutscenes.

Added some sound effects.

Re-did the tutorial.

==== DRAGON RUN ====

Fixed (for hopefully the last and final time) a REALLY annoying bug that could cause the player to lose time if they pause during dialog.

The speed up potion now makes everything around the player slower, instead of making the player faster.

Added some sound effects.

Updated some sprites in the level 1 cutscene.

Updated the tutorial screens.

==== PLATFORMER ====

Made all three levels slightly less brutal by tweaking the projectile emmitters' fire rates.

==== QUICKVENTURE ====

Added a handful of new cards.

You now level up (more health + damage + defense) after every round.

==== MAP ====

Added animations to some of the icons.

Fixed a bug that could occur if the user clicked the Back button while there was an icon directly underneath it.

==== MISC ====

Added an option to change the opacity of the dialog box.

Fixed a bug that could cause the Fullscreen button in the options menu to sometimes not work.

Fixed a bug that could cause levels to unintentionally replay if the player held down the Space key during outro cutscenes.

Updated the font again.

Pressing Escape in the Doll Shelf will now immediately return you to the map.

Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause a "??? NO CUTSCENE" screen when opening the Doll Shelf.

Controls for all nine main game modes are now customizable.

Thank you for the feedback! I didn't know that about holding space during cutscenes, I'll see if I can fix it. If you want to skip the cutscenes, you can press Esc and then Space. There's also a toggle in the Options menu to automatically skip cutscenes when pressing the "Retry" button from the Pause or Game Over screens.

Very impressive. Good luck!

Bruh, this intro feels WAY too intense for such a lighthearted game lmao. It'd also be nice if I could skip through some of the text faster, especially at the beginning. And is there a way to re-read previous lines?

What determines when you get a game over? While I was playing Challenge mode, the board was almost completely full, but there was at least one more move I could've made, but I still got a game over before I was able to do it.

Looks like it was inspired by OSRS?

For some reason, it won't allow me to type via my numpad.

The window is kinda small, and some of the text is hard to read, but I don't see any way to increase it. It's also VERY difficult to see anything once the screen darkens at night.

Is this all made in Pygame?

Very charming art and sound effects.

After a few minutes of playing, with several upgrades and autofire enabled, the entire lower half of the screen was just a chaotic mess. Enemies were dying really quickly no matter where I aimed, and at that point, my main concern was just avoiding enemy projectiles (and there weren't even that many of them). I made it to Wave 12 and defeated the boss, but the whole thing felt very easy.

This was actually pretty fun. I lost track of time while playing it.

What's the purpose of having to hold RMB in order to drop a ball? Seems like you could just press LMB, and nothing else would change.

sfw huniepop lmao 10/10 it's okay

Made it all the way to the end. It took me a while to realize I had to smash the mirror in the bathroom with the rock (I actually just discovered that by chance). I also kept dying at the explosive chest puzzle, I only finished it via trial-and-error. When I visited the library, it kept telling me to "invert" things, but I didn't realize I needed to open my inventory (is that what the "Primate Island" book was for?). Maybe have a sound effect or something that plays when your inventory gets updated.

Thanks for playing!

CHANGES SINCE LAST DD:

==== FISHING ====

Added new visual elements.

Added dynamic waves to the surface of the water.

==== SHOOTING GALLERY ====

Added level 3.

Added background art.

Added a sound effect when the level starts.

==== LETTER EDITING ====

Re-wrote the tutorial for level 3, and added an extremely easy problem to the beginning. Hopefully the instructions should be more clear now.

==== TOWER DEFENSE ====

Added level 3.

==== SHOOT-EM-UP ====

Fixed a bug that could cause enemies to come back to life if they died at the same time as the player.

Fairies will now sometimes shout "This is over" if the last enemy in a level is killed with a deflected bullet.

Added level 3.

==== JRPG ====

When selecting two abilities for a combo attack, the name of the resulting combo attack will now be displayed.

Fixed a bug that caused dialogue lines from previous level's cutscenes to show up in the log when they shouldn't have.

==== IMP LAUNCH ====

Fixed a bug that caused the ground to not shake properly when landing at a high velocity.

==== DRAGON RUN ====

Added level 3.

==== PLATFORMER ====

Fixed a bug that allowed the player to jump twice very quickly if they hugged a wall.

Added level 3.

The camera will now follow you above the upper edge of the level, instead of getting cut off.

==== QUICKVENTURE ====

New game mode: QuickVenture (a card battler). This game mode is still VERY early in development (in fact, it's not even possible to win yet). But feel free to try it.

==== MISC ====

Fixed some text spacing issues.

Added the Doll Shelf. Practically nothing has been implemented yet, but feel free to take a look.

Thank you for playing! I'm glad to know that it's improving.

I'll look into the platformer bug. I vaguely remember experiencing something similar, but I guess I never got around to fixing it.

Imp Launch actually used to be a lot faster, but I slowed it down a while ago. Guess it's still too fast. I'll tweak the numbers some more and see what happens.

Yeah, I was a bit worried about the third Letter Edit level. "poing to pet" is 100% intentional, but it might be too difficult, since it's the first one of those types of puzzles. I'll see if I can come up with something better.

Thanks for the feedback!

Thank you! I'm glad you liked the humor.

walk in circles + mash M1 simulator

Very well made, but the difficulty is INSANE.

One suggestion I would have is to give the player the option to disable showing the death count every time they revive. Some players (myself included) might get discouraged seeing that number go up and up and up, especially since it persists across all levels.

Thank you for playing!

I definitely have a plan to tie the stories together, and for a currency system. But those will take a long time to implement, and they probably won't appear in the demo.

Hey, thanks for playing! There's still a lot planned for the shmup mode. Glad you liked it!

I did NOT have a controller plugged while I was playing. It might be because I'm using Firefox; sometimes in-browser games are better on Chrome or Edge.

Nice atmosphere.

I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing at this point. Apparently, some guy wants me to go to his shed, but instead I found some old abandoned hotel. Fell down an elevator shaft, wandered around for a bit, but couldn't find a way back up. According to my emails, I'm also supposed to be taking pictures? I didn't see a button for a camera in the controls screen.

Is it possible to replace this vase in the corner? I can't seem to reach it.

I also kind of got stuck right here. I was able to climb up to this spot by pressing LT near the green wall, but none of the buttons seem to make the character jump, so he just keeps falling. I may have missed something during the tutorial. The game also crashed when I clicked the X to quit.

Right off the bat, the first thing I noticed was that the camera slowly moves to the right, even when I'm not touching the mouse.

Having to manually cock the gun is a neat idea. Reminds me a bit of an FPS game I used to play called Receiver, which had very realistic gun mechanics.

Very nice SFX.

It looks like enemies sometimes won't disappear, even if they get hit? This seemed to happen more often if I shot them while moving.

I think this is a really neat idea. Good luck.