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You gave me a big review, so here I am, hoping to return the favor! 

This is an interesting and unsettling  point-and-click game! The vibes are terrific, and the "stitched together images" ideas is super creative! I don't really get why looking at an eye is so unsettling to me, but it was. I got two of the endings (well three if you count dying on the swing), and I'm not sure if I managed to fully experience the game/story. Are there more endings I've not seen? I would like for the game to tell me, perhaps in the menu?

Gameplay wise, I liked the little mini games as a way to mix-up the point-and-click gameplay. I died more times than I want to admit here on the swings part. But I think it's not really my fault? The optimal time to click the button seems to be right before it lights up, or very early in that phase. In fact, in my experience, clicking it consistently slightly later than that won't  even get you high enough to reach the sphere. And furthermore, the game registers the button press on the mouse_up (like a UI button), not the mouse_down I was personally expecting.

I was also very confused as to why the game ends there, both narratively and just game structure-wise, if you fail the mini game. Initially, I didn't even realise that I failed the minigame, until I retried the game and realised there was no other path to take, and then died there a second and third time,  then I realised that I was failing, and then I failed many many more times trying to do it right. Forcing a game over / ending is just not necessary I think. You're essentially creating an exit point, a point in your game where players feel it's natural to stop playing. It's good to minimise the exit points, so you get to have more time with the player to convince them your game is great!

Narratively, I guess you're trying to convey the nonsensical / strange nature of a dream, but I think you're alluding to something more sinister going on, during the dream. Some action that the player is guided to perform, that will release some horror upon the world or himself, or prevent it perhaps? If that was the some of the idea, I must admit, the latter part does not fully land for me. But it's entirely possible that is because I missed an ending? I mostly felt a little bit lost / empty at all the endings.

I've had dreams before where I felt compelled to do a thing, and I think that's an incredibly cool concept to work with. Especially if it's a recurring dream. I did see some mention of the dream being recurring during one of the endings, but I feel like maybe that is a narrative point that needs to be conveyed during play too.

I think that's all I got. Good job to all of you, including Mirco with the C, not the K. And good luck on the rest of your jam!

Thank you for the kind words! I would have liked to give the tracks a little something extra too. I tried to give them some personality, but I'm not sure I fully succeeded in that regard. I tried to have a mix between short and long tracks, I made Pulmonary Speedway narrower (not sure this was fun or even noticeable), I made Aorta a wide level (not sure this was fun), and Vena Cava had the spiral boost crazy ending you talked about. I feel I could have done more interesting design with the little plaque boosts, but all in all, I'm reasonably happy with the ~4 hours I got to work on all the levels! 

If I could re-do the week, I would have probably asked a teammate to take over a few of the levels, and work with them a little bit more to figure some more interesting design ideas.

It's a little bit silly to me that I wasn't able to devote more time to the levels, since it's such a huge part of the fun of the gameplay experience. But that's the game jam life sometimes, I guess.

Punchier... noted! This is good feedback. It's an area of game development I've been trying to work on! Thank you.

I certainly did!

You're a little nanobot specifically made for the purposes of clearing blockades! You get injected into the vein at the start of a level!

It's an incredibly interesting narrative-centered idea, and I like your interpretation of the theme. Ghosts, and haunted rooms are certainly strange places! I played together with my dyslexic friend, and unfortunately we were not able to reach the end of the game despite trying a few times. I am a little disappointed, because I was certainly curious to find out more of the story and setting. I would have liked to see a lower difficulty setting, or an option to turn off the timer, maybe offering the option to lower the difficulty after dying a few times. Having the player reset back to the start also felt a little bit bad.

I don't think this game needs to be challenging (through the timer) to be fun or interesting or even scary/unsettling. It has a lot going for it in the atmosphere, and narrative!

Very funny interpretation of theme, and it's especially with the funny squeeky sounds, but the progression needs to be more interesting. The fish look awesome though.

Very fun idea, and a very well polished game! Love the little intro cutscene. And the flipchick is a cutie!Congratulations! My main gripes with the game are in the strategic department. I really like the concept of the game, so I want to give you some proper feedback. Here are my notes:

1. First thing I noticed: I couldn't tell from the sprite what way the flipchick was facing. I thought he was facing right when he was actually facing up. This led to my first actions being turning around twice.

2. Coinflips are an interesting idea. Every coin you add having two sides, or a 50/50 of something you might really want to do, and something that is less optimal is fun design. However, having infinite flips just makes that part of the design obsolete. You can always just get the result you want anyway. Furthermore, it becomes more of a chore to flip the coins. If I have all my options available to me at all times anyway, why do I have to jump through hoops to do the action I want? I think you should have maybe stuck with flipping all coins at one time, then choosing your actions from that.

I like the idea of moving the window to flip the coins, but then you can't guarantee that all coins flip once. So I would have probably cut that feature and added a flip button. In my opinion, I think, in this case, preserving good strategy design is more integral to your game than a fun coin flipping mechanic.

3. Defending is way too strong. In a game where you have 5 hearts, getting an extra life whenever you want is super significant. Compare this to Slay the Spire, where a defend card blocks 5 damage (out of 80 hit points) for often only one turn. It was very easy to beat the game because of it.

4. The one dimensional movement can work really well (like in shogun showdown) but I think you will need to play around with attack ranges more, so I would recommend starting with two attacks for different ranges by default.

That's all I got for now. Hope you keep working on this! Good luck!

Really cool idea. Props! I thought it was maybe a little short, I wanted so much more! For the last level, I couldn't remember which teleporter I came out of. It would've helped me a lot if they were color coded maybe, so you can see which one links to which.

Great little game. I love platformers with unique mechanics, and you obviously do too. Good job!

Loved the art, music and the narrative design. I sent it to my mom and she loved it too. 

I will say, I thought the first dried flower book was maybe a bit too many flowers. It took me a while to do, and it stressed me out a little bit. Then later, mechanically, I was expecting the paper puzzle pieces to click together, but they only seem to click to the correct spots. So that threw me off a little bit.

The second flower book (or leaves, i guess) I realized the strategy was to just move all the leaves off to side so I could properly see what I was doing. That helped, at least.

Great job on this. The visual effects were an interesting touch beyond what I was expecting from the game initially! Very polished little jam game! Enjoyed it!

Just call me Kevin. Mister Kevin is my father

These types of games are always fun! You can be proud of this one. 

Very creative idea visually, narratively, and great use of the theme!

One of my favorites this jam! Really cool, amazing concept, very slay the spire and luck to be a landlord-esque. I hope you keep developing this one, it has great potential! Very strong design. Wouldn't change a thing! The only point of criticism I have is that I don't really like how you applied the theme. 9.5/10

Congratulations on a successful jam entry! I see you're using godot! I don't know if this is your first (itch) gamejam, but I would recommend that you figure out how to add a webgl build with godot so other people can play your game in the browser. It's just a big barrier to access your game, and most people don't want to deal with that. In this game jam specifically, the rules say you're allowed to add other platforms (like webgl, or linux, whatever) for up to 48hrs after the deadline. I would really recommend it! You will have an easier time getting ratings and feedback.

Now here is my feedback on your game!

I read from your description that you're going for either a vampire survivors type game with an extra goal (a delivery service) or something more story based. I think either could work. I like the bullet heaven games like vampire survivors personally, but this is something you should decide for yourself.

 When I loaded up the game, I first spent a minute or so battling enemies. The controls were intuitive enough, although I definitely kept wanting to reverse my spaceship so I could fire in the direction of the ship spinning around me, and attempt to avoid their bullets without having to drive into them. I think you should add reversing for sure.

I died 2 times. They're very evasive, and it's just very hard to keep shooting them! If you're going for the Vampire Survivors idea, it's okay to just make them real slow, and just spawn them just a little ways outside of the screen all around the player. Also, setting their health really low at the start, and then gradually increasing it throughout the game is good. You could consider little health bars for the enemies, but I don't think it's super necessary.

I then noticed GIANT ARROW indicating my goal (I have been accused of being blind before), and then I drove towards it. But when I did so, enemies stopped appearing in my screen. I was faster, of course, and I was probably being chased, and maybe there is some maximum number of enemy cap thing, and that's why nothing else is spawning? Enemies should definitely still be spawning around me when I'm running away, so you keep running into them in front of you.

Anyway, I picked up the delivery, drove to the new goal, arrived there without seeing an enemy, and then the game showed me an ending screen. I was a little bit letdown. I was expecting there to be another few packages, or more things to do. 

I read in the description that there is a boost button. I didn't know at the time of playing, so I never pressed it, but I also don't feel like I needed it. I was going too fast for the enemies already.

Other than that, I like the little planets. Maybe there are a bit too much of them? It'd be cool if they varied in size more.

I've also had a sound guy not show up during a jam a while ago. It sucks. I would recommend that you definitely try to implement some sourced music / sound effects in that case in the future though. I learned this lesson too! There is plenty of free stuff out there on good licenses, even if it's not custom made for the jam. Most of the jam games do that anyway. Having some sound is a huge difference!

That's all for me. Good luck with the rest of your jam!

Thanks for the feedback! Both of you!
The minimap markers is a good idea, and I will get it added post-jam!

There is a retry button (R) but it's only shown in the game's description. Reset is also accessible from the escape/pause menu, but we also didn't show the option for that in game either. I guess we show the in-game controls it in the level select somewhere, maybe...

Thanks for playing all the levels! Love that you're comparing times, haha, our team has been doing that throughout the whole week haha

Gorgeous art and really great sound design! I really like the one inventory slot design too. Assembling the puzzles is a fine mechanic, the exact right level of difficulty you want, but I was hoping for slightly more variety in puzzle design throughout the game. Anyway, very professional! My mom would love this for sure. Amazing job!

The gold times are a mix of some of the best dev times, but all a bit slower. Cal, the lead programmer, has some really insane times on some stages. I'll get him to post a screenshot in a bit

Haha, all good. If the deadline allowed it, we would have made a bit more of a real attempt at explaining more in some tutorial stage. Having an "original" movement mechanic brings its own set of problems, I guess! I was hoping things would just kind of make sense if people just moved around and tried some more.

We had an idea to keep the heartbeat impulse synced up with the music more, but we did not manage to get to it before the deadline.

I think you really nailed the horror vibes! The rear view mirror gave me anxiety, I just couldn't keep my eyes on the road. I was sure the passenger would do something to me. And of course, they did. Lucky I was wearing two sets of underwear.

Graphics are great, the sound conveys the right vibes. It took a little long to really get going, longer than I was expecting for a jam game. But I think you've got a really cool vision for this! I spoke to the dev on Discord, seems like a cool person too.

Oh it might have been been a slowdown then, yes.

Re: wisps
I think if your world grows bigger it will be necessary to use wisps. Especially if you're forced to create little resource hubs some distance from eachother, or spots where certain resources would accumulate faster. Because my strategy very quickly devolves into building everything as close/stacked as possible right now. If I need to be in more than one place, I would immediately know to build wisps.

I forgot to mention how, as per usual, I'm insanely impressed with your quality of work in 7 days, yet again!

Wow, thank you! What a compliment!

https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-15/rate/4307801

Would love some feedback! Would also love to hear your ideas on where to polish more! it's an area I'm trying to improve on personally, even though it's obviously always hard to succeed on that front in jams! I'll be rating your game too, of course.

Hi again YYZ! That's three great games I played from you so far! I really like the vibes in this one. It's nice and chill, playthroughs are short and sweet, and building out a world is certainly interesting enough! The only thing I'm missing from this that I personally enjoy in these types of chill incremental/number go up games, is seeing the numbers or things go a little bit crazy at the end, or getting some satisfaction from the world you built in some manner. I got all endings!

Some other notes I took:

My resources were still accumulating in the top right during upgrade selection even though the timer was paused.

I noticed and read the story at the start of the playthrough, but after the gameplay started I completely forgot to glance at the top of the screen again, although I did use the memory feature to read it afterwards.

I did not really end up using day/night cycle (left it on day), I couldn't really determine when it would be worthwhile to switch between the two.

The wisp system is cool, but, similarly, I couldn't really tell if they were really worth the investment, and it felt okay to do without.

I think that's all I got this time. Good luck with your game!

Edit: forgot to mention a bunch of the good things! Progression feels great, it's satisfying to play, it looks stunning, music is an excellent fit. Bravo.

We'll definitely add a tiny tutorial in the post-jam version! Just ran out of time unfortunately!

It is indeed the rain shader. Will be fixed in the post jam version

You hit the nail on the head with all of your feedback! We've very slowly been developing the game further for a small improved release after the jam. All the things you've listed have either been addressed already or are on our to do list! 

In the new development build (not published) we have fixed your targeting issues, and improved the tutorial messages, improved the controls in general, improved performance, and made the whole user experience a little clearer. Other things that are coming is enemy artwork (with animations), more UI improvements, better balance and wave design, an endless mode, and many more sounds and music

Thank you for taking the time for such a detailed write up! And thank you for enjoying the game!!

How are you so productive!! You'll have to tell me some day. Your ideas sound really cool. Can't wait to see what you end up cooking up!

Phenomenal game, I don't have any feedback or bad words to say about it! Awesome artstyle, amazing concept, love the use of music, ties in with the theme, fun, and obviously well designed. You're clearly a very talented developer, and I hope you continue to make great games

Really cool game! I really like how you use the "fantasy" of being a smith, and turned it into a fun micro game with excellent mini games. It's fun, it's polished, and it's pretty! I don't like the song too much, but at least it's slow and relaxing, and doesn't really draw attention to itself. I also thought the game was a little bit too hard. And I was hoping there was a teensy bit more to the gameplay loop. But everything that's in the gameplay loop is great and very polished!

I like it! The intro and outro were cool, and you obviously had a lot of fun making the sound effects haha. Especially the monster uggggghhhs, that made laugh out loud more than once!  I always say you can really tell when a dev loved working on their game, and I can definitely tell you did with this one!

I like tower defense games where you have to reroute enemies, and moving the base was an interesting twist!

What I did not like was the fact that the turret placing is on a timer. I guess it's an interesting concept, rewarding stalling out your enemy for as long as possible, but it's also just very easy for the player to end up being punished for not saving enough money to place the turret on cooldown. It would maybe be better tied to certain wave numbers, and I think that should make balancing easier on you guys too. Right now, it must be very hard to estimate the strength of a player a certain amount of minutes in!

Oh I see you made a tower defense too!! I'll check it out!

https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-12/rate/2973741 please try our game! I've rated and given some feedback on yours!

Interesting concept! Is it intended for the player to fly backwards after getting hit? Right now I'm getting teleported, and it feels strange. 

What you can work on in this game is more visual feedback, like when I hit spacebar to start a wave, and I don't see anything happening immediately (because the enemies are still walking forwards) then it's a good idea to notify the player through other means, like UI, or a graphical effect. Or something like just making sure enemies immediately walk into vision.

Another thing I didn't really understand is grabbing the ammo from the box. Sometimes i press the button for it once, and i press a second time, and it doesn't work, then i press a third time, and it does! Is there an internal cooldown? If so, either change it so that button presses always get the expected result, or notify the player of the cooldown through visual feedback!

I think that's all my feedback. Good job on making a game in 7 days! It's really hard, and you did a really good job!

Super smooth, polished game. You can be very proud of this one! I took some time to adjust to the responsiveness of playing a platformer like this on a keyboard. Gravity felt maybe slightly too strong for me (not sure on this), really requiring you to react very fast on all the falls. Maybe turning it down a smidge might make it slightly more accessible. But that's obviously preference, and maybe that's just me getting old :).

This game goes beyond the level of a game jam game. It is a fantastic concept, fits perfectly in the theme, feels extremely polished, and even has replayability features. It's pretty, the music sets the right vibe. And your economy system is incredibly interesting! In my head I'm already making an incredibly unfair comparison to the economy system to big indie hits I love like Against the Storm (ha). But for a jam game, that's very high praise. 

I do have feedback, but I don't think it's really fair for me to rate you any lower than 5*. The feedback would just be for things I think you should think about before you go for a release, and very obviously it would have been absolutely impossible to get everything perfect in a week in the first place. Know that I think the game is fantastic, and none of this is meant harshly! And besides, you asked me for feedback, and you gave me wall of feedback, so here is your own wall of feedback  :D

Feedback: 

The new player experience is a little bit of a mess. The tutorial helps, but a lot of resources get thrown at you fast, and I felt veeery overwhelmed. Each choice not directly guided by the tutorial is very hard to evaluate "correctly", until you get a sense of where things are going. 

 Maybe it would be a good idea to slightly more reduce the possible "incorrect" choices a player can make at the start of the game for the initial cards. Wood is a great resource to get at the start, but getting a building that helps you accelerate is more important, so the player needs to be helped to take one early. 

One of the things I struggled with is that it's too hard to differentiate between items you can acquire through buildings and only through the cards system (sand, titanium). I learned this pretty late, even though sand is an incredibly important resource early! Currently I think it's almost the most important one, because it activates so much accelerating/scaling. Perhaps it would help to show these two resources with a different icon shape, or  different icon color, to immediately notify the player that these resources are slightly different from the others, and maybe it's a good idea to mouse over and read the tooltip.

I played three runs of your game (all on the recommended difficulty). In my first play I tried following the tutorial, and somehow ended up not unlocking the wood farm until super late. This felt REALLY bad, because this building is so imperative, so needed, to succeed. I almost feel like the game should be a LITTLE more intelligent/helpful in offering me what I need to even stand a chance of winning.

In my third and winning run, i picked it incredibly early, built a lot of them early, and it allowed me to snowball and gain a whole lot more building cards due to not having to pick wood early every time.

Essentially, it feels really bad when you do not get buildings unlocked, card after card, that are paramount to progress to the win condition. Is there a system in place that decides when you get a new building choice? Or is it fully random? 

The same goes for citizens too. In my winning run, it felt weird having to build 50~ lighthouses because the cards would not offer me citizens. I expected the victory would come from continuously getting citizens from cards, but they just dried up. With lighthouse only giving one citizen, and the building being a lighthouse besides (what kind of bridge needs dozens of lighthouses!), it doesn't make sense for the player to be expected to make so many to get to the victory condition.

It took me a long time to figure out how to evaluate citizens. Maybe it would help to set more goals for your player to guide them to the right way to think about how to get a successful run. A % increase on your production buildings is great, but it only makes sense to do after a certain amount of production facilities are made.

Happiness and hunger are thrown at you quite early, but are essentially inconsequential early/mid game unless you really purposefully steer away from food for some reason. This really contributes to the overwhelming feeling.

Okay that's all the time I have for now, so I'll stop here. I haven't even talked about workshops yet. Anyway, fantastic game.

I'm going to check it out right now! I think the rest of my team is too, when they have time. We had already talked about doing so on our discord a few hours ago !

It's a 3d fps capybara vampire survivors! Cool idea! It was a little frustrating with the bullet not going where I wanted it to.

I love capybaras, and it was fun seeing all of them run towards me!!

 I hope you learned a lot from your first jam experience! You did a great job releasing this with less than a week's work, and you can definitely be proud of yourself. I hope next jam you can add a few more interesting features! 

 The pacing is a little weird to me, the building/gathering phase lasts a lot longer than I wanted it to, and I got a little bored of it. I realize that I can skip to the start of the storm, but that wouldn't be optimal strategy, so I didn't want to do that. I ran around my house in the storm, thinking I just needed to survive until the end of the storm, was wondering why the first wave lasted so long, and eventually there were so many mobs around my base, all my structures were destroyed. It wasn't until after reading the comments here that I realized that I had to destroy crystals!

I really like the rain effect and the thunder though, and the use of the theme. The storm phase is intense! And the metal music gets a big plus from me!