itch.io

Re: email, still setting up that sort of thing properly, but for now mar.malade.1066@gmail.com should work to get in touch.

Ah, nice, that makes a ton of sense for Flying – that goes so well with the fact that you’re playing on a kitchen table, which likely has the stuff on it that kitchen tables seem to gravitationally attract. Thanks for clarifying! I’ll let you know if I ever ‘get it to the table’ :P

I really liked this! I’m getting more into designing games that have kind of an inbuilt soundtrack to them, so this is kinda my jam. The idea of sharing invented memories implies that this game could be about playing a now-dispersed high school friendgroup at a reunion or something – or a good game to play along to a character playlist by yourself, fleshing out backstory as you go before you play a different TTRPG. Could be a great game to pass time on a road trip, too! Thanks for submitting it :)

I’d love to know more about your own creations that include music as well!

Well, since you ask! It was on my mind because one of my submissions to this jam, Space Banjos, asks the player to play some of the titular space banjos genre; mainly because the game was very much inspired by listening to a playlist of that as work music while working on the art for one of my other submissions. Useful for efficient tone communication.

But the main resonance I felt with your approach here was a game I made a few weeks ago, Dreamlined, for the Tabletop Train Jam. Dreamlined is about playing as a sentient train, and I wanted to give the journeys between stations a feeling of progress and meaning and time, without being too prescriptive about duration or mood and without that time stretching on into boredom. I ended up with the idea of marking the time between stations with songs – It’s about the right length of time to wait, it gives the imagination a sense of movement, and it resonates with how often I listen to music while staring out a train window.

Of course, reposting now.

I really liked this! I’m getting more into designing games that have kind of an inbuilt soundtrack to them, so this is kinda my jam. The idea of sharing invented memories implies that this game could be about playing a now-dispersed high school friendgroup at a reunion or something – or a good game to play along to a character playlist by yourself, fleshing out backstory as you go before you play a different TTRPG. Could be a great game to pass time on a road trip, too! Thanks for submitting it :)

Nice! Love the duality here between hunter and hostage; the combining emotional prompts are a nice dose of unpredictability, and the final question evokes the doubt at the thematic heart of this genre really well. Great name and icon, too!

Loved the name and theme, the three-act structure, the use of domains and a crux of conflict to help players get into character.

Minorest of notes - ‘exhausting’*

This has a lot of promise as a worldbuilding game, too - I can see a fascinating campaign/oneshot spiraling out from the central idea of ‘the barely-holding-it-together gods are wiping the slate clean to begin again’! Nice job.

Oh this is very exciting. Short and sweet. I’ve only just learned about bookmark RPGs and this is a really evocative example; I love how each table option so clearly bloomed a different story in my mind’s eye – and then of course the penny-drop at the end is clever and heartwrenching all at once.

You’ve nailed the essence of these stories – an single terribly impactful decision, and then the experience of watching how the out-of-place grows up where they Do Not Belong. Thank you for submitting it!

Neat, I really enjoyed this. I have a real fondness for dead-simple wargames that use what people have lying around (I respect those who go all in on incredibly detailed miniatures as well, but, there’s something delightful about seeing that and going ‘nah what if it was just anthropomorphised dice’). If you’ve never heard of the BrickWars project, about a wargame designed around repurposing LEGO collections, that might be up your alley.

I’m a little unclear on what the mechanical effect of training a die into a flyer is? But other than that it’s solid, creative, and well-illustrated. Nicely done. 36 words is short enough to stick in my head, next time I see a huge pile of dice I’ll have to talk someone into giving it a try with me!

Oh this is very nice work! It’s simple and straight to the point; I love the efficiency of language and design but there’s an evocative and heartfelt core… I can see this being an excellent game to pass time while waiting on a platform, alone, late at night - I’m struggling to find the words to describe that particular environment and state of mind, but I suspect you might know what I mean?

Focusing on the arrival-interlude-departure loop, those intermittent bustling moments of activity… yeah, this is really clever. Thanks for making this (and for hosting the jam, obviously!)

Immediately listened to that album and it was excellent, thank you for the recommendation! I’m still working my way through Discworld and haven’t made it to Raising Steam but it’s one I’ve definitely looked forward to.

Thanks for giving it a shot and for the kind words, hope you enjoy :)

Enjoyed this a lot - love seeing what people do with (mostly) system-agnostic setting descriptions, it’s a neat in-between genre I have a lot of fondness for. The world here is very specific and evocative, and I love the work you put into describing its influences and vibes. On a thematic level, the paradox of trains as progress and trains as destruction is compelling, while on a mechanical level, trains as hexcrawl analogue for an OSR playstyle? Excellent excellent…

The presentation and writing are really impressive (though image credits would probably be a good idea!) and I saw you mentioned this is just a beta? I’m glad you decided to share it, best of luck with any improvements you’re planning!

This is fascinating! I really like what you’re going for here; the real-life integration of rolling to see when you get out (and framing ‘getting out’ as running from an enemy) is a great way to make a game about trains. Having this as framework and excuse to wander places you’d never normally go, and see those places with an eye to reinterpreting them through a fantasy lens… right up my alley! The list of secondary worlds is extensive and evocative, too, nicely done!

This is really nicely put together. I remember adoring the periods of silent waiting in Artefact, the way they convey the passage of time; I love how rather than that game’s lonely sadness, this evokes a more hellish horror/tragedy… feels like this approach would be at home with conveying the bleaker side of a time loop narrative. Thanks for making this, it was an enjoyable read :)

Thanks for playing, and commenting, I really appreciate it! And absolutely - I actually programmed a full dialogue-tree system into the game with plans for a bunch of additional retroactive conversations between the player and their partner, launching off of specific items. It would have taken maybe an hour or two to write those scenes in a spreadsheet and just copy-paste them into the game’s database - then I looked up and realized I had fifteen minutes left. So, unfortunately, had to cut back to just a hastily written one-sided conversation with minimal testing to figure out the clipping problem. But the tech’s still in there if I get the chance to improve it.

Definitely wishing I’d planned things a bit differently! I’ve never played Unpacking but what I’ve heard about it was probably an unconscious inspiration. Glad you found the core concept compelling and I’m sorry for the poor rendering of that idea!

This is fantastic. Good system (phases, face card question pattern, epilogue), excellent prompts (as someone who’s written a 52-card prompt game before, though suit+number combinatorial prompt games are valid, I will always have mad respect for folks who will also write a prompt for every card), deeply compelling premise (who hasn’t wanted to be part of a semi-symbiotic micro-ecosystem??)… genuinely loved reading this, well done.

Really polished and fascinating approach to some intense subject matter. The slow back-and-forth of the cardplay seems like it would really let players steadily simmer in the emotional state you’re aiming for - and I always appreciate when games that have a lot of freeform in their roleplay hang that on top of a robust mechanical process-framework, to take the pressure off of players who aren’t universally comfortable just spontaneously generating narrative content - lets them shine when they can but relax when they can’t. Congrats on submitting! [Love the TTS screenshot :P]

That’s what I was going for, delighted it worked. Thanks for reading!

Apologies for never responding; this comment made my day back when it arrived! Glad it made you laugh, and if you do ever end up using this I’d love to hear about it sometime.

Thank you! The appropriateness of the day is right; it is interesting to me, in retrospect, how the game is literally unplayable for around 9 months out of the year.

Intriguing! Sort of a Countdown roleplaying game. I’m someone who quite enjoys the operations of these sort of small maths puzzles (though I’m not always good at them, they are fun) so using mental math as the resolution mechanic for a hard-sci-fi oneshot game is compelling!

(As an aside, I’m curious why you start the players in a stadium - is this a station large enough to house sports events?)

Clever stuff! Love the physical components and freedom inherent in the design, I’d be very curious to see how this plays out.

(One note - in the order of events, there’s nothing saying that the LOOKOUT should respond with ‘Roger’ to the confirmation of the All-Clear card, but failing to do so is noted as an event that informs security. Is this an accident or deliberate obfuscation?)

Gave it a quick try, started with only 1+1+1 = 3 carriages but 5+8 = 130mph, made it to 0 speed by 1 stop remaining. It’s an interesting little gambling game, and the decision of detach vs. slow down has a neat push-your-luck statistical implication when you bring the take-lowest-but-all-6s-mean-derailing idea into account. I’m a little disappointed with the lack of any real roleplaying elements in a TTRPG jam, but I still had fun!

Real impressive minimalism here. I like the way the questions are pretty general, but contextualized to the specific (deeply compelling) theme of losing a company-town relationship. I think some example/archetypal factions might help players who are unsure about how to embody interesting groups in this setting? (the way that helped my group’s first session of Beak, Feather and Bone is where I’m drawing this advice from, if that helps explain what I mean). Nicely done!

Interesting concept, and I like your title art! Would have been nice to see an example or two, as it took me a reread to tie together the section about actions in combat with the trigger for rolling bullet dice. And I’d be curious to see how often 1s actually come up in a game once you reach max BD - maybe it’s just me but the d20-d12 jump is pretty big; I’d consider making d12 the max myself! But the core idea that ties the ‘click’ of an empty gun inextricably to the thud of a bullet in your own heart by making them mechanically identical is very cool. I can so clearly see a character sitting behind cover, weighing their last few shots, and, unlike other RPGs (ones that don’t interest themselves with resource management at least), wondering if there’s any way out of this that won’t ask them to fire away their final breath. Nicely done!

(I read this around when it was posted and really enjoyed it, sorry it took me so long to comment!)

This is really clever - the way the narrative progresses randomly yet inevitably through the patterns of the genre, AND the way that each narrative beat unfolds into a slightly different yet completely appropriate mini-game, gives it a real propulsive energy. I adore the fact that, as far as I can tell mechanically, taking damage has no other function other than to bring you closer to the endgame. It’s the polar opposite of a traditional ‘death spiral’ because the ‘action thriller revenge rampage’ genre IS a death spiral by another name. Really nicely done, I hope I can give this a try soon!

This is a really nice. The way you’ve incorporated the rhythm of sentences into the mechanics by discussing the effects of different punctuation… I grinned when you explained how parentheses were optional hidden rooms; that’s my favorite rule.

Well done on the writing and presentation as well; it’s really clear and I especially enjoyed your application of this game to the game jam’s text itself in the excellent example of play.

Nice, I’ll look out for that book! Just wanted to confirm it was you before saying I liked it; well-rendered armor has been on my list to learn how to do for a long time so it particularly caught my eye is all.

19 “ye”s out of 10; this is fantastic! Love the conceit; the skills, the quirks, the items, the monsters - every new section was additional detail I was not expecting to get. Well done! (p.s. Did you make the art?)

This is a very clever premise! Though the minimalism is of course a requirement of the jam, I can very clearly see a version of this on an old-paper texture with torn edges or example poems in the margins. I enjoy the simplicity and brevity (though that’s not to say I wouldn’t look forward to more in this style, about other branches of magic and the specificities of their methodologies!)

Great art style, and I love the platformer inversion - falling is the goal, platforms don’t stop you they just slow you, etc… The speedup from gravity with the slowdown of clouds was experientially nice - leads to a snowball effect in either direction! We did find one instance where hitting the first cloud occasionally accelerated the bird up into the air again? Not sure if that was intentional. Luckily bouncing off of the ‘roof’ allowed the game to continue. Well done!

Compulsively replayable. The mechanics are straightforward, and the audio and physics movement are fun.

I’m curious, you don’t appear to mention anywhere - is the audio your own work, or from some other source? (Also, I second the comment that the music resets every time the gun finishes the firing sound - the music also does not loop)

This was fantastic! The intuitive gameplay, the creative puzzles, the undo implementation… If we had to find fault, the jumping-over-rocks mechanic required very precise (oft-failed) timing which felt odd and at times frustrating, but I mention that as the tiniest drop of critique in an otherwise stellar entry. The breadth of content is truly impressive - with every proceeding puzzle, we were certain the end had finally been reached - only to be proven wrong! Well done.

Thanks for playing, really glad you enjoyed! Swing speed increase is definitely on the list of features to improve once the jam concludes :)

Thanks for playing! Glad you enjoyed; the visuals and swinging mechanic were definitely the priority components! Fully agree on the ease of “enemy” avoidance - occasionally they make a piece of gold inaccessible but for the most part mushrooms are practically set dressing. The original plan had a combination of passive (mushroom) and active (falling rocks) obstacles to make for more interesting evasion gameplay, but had to be cut down for time - something to return to for polish after the jam concludes!

Thanks for playing! This is a comment I’m seeing a lot; you do already increase speed by pressing the arrows; it’s acceleration-based, but it definitely seems worth bumping that acceleration up a notch!

The timer’s definitely a bit… unnecessarily frustrating, yeah. In an ideal world there’d be more meta-elements, such as the ability to spend gold to increase the amount of time you have?

I have a mild personal desire to avoid endless runners, but I can’t deny that the version of the game you describe does sound more fun. Perhaps an ‘endless’ mode as an alternative to the timed challenge is the compromise the game needs!

Thanks so much for playing; I’m really glad you enjoyed.

Thank you for playing, glad you liked the swinging! That’s definitely the selling point. (We loved your game by the way!)

Hello! Thanks for playing. The delay is not deliberate - though I admit seeing the process occur over time rather than instantaneously is stylistically valuable to me, it needn’t last longer than a few seconds to achieve that goal - the time the algorithm takes is a function of it being a first-draft implementation that I basically finished just in time to submit… which means slapdash shortcut and unnecessary overhead.

Do you have a link for the other entry you’re talking about? The only other one I’ve seen in the jam was written in JS - https://axeladanger.itch.io/pseudo-wfc-map-generator

Not comfortable posting source for this atm I’m afraid - it’s too messy for my standards. But I will try to do so at some point - especially as one of my goals with the project was to help folks have an easier time figuring out the algorithm than I did!

This is extremely kind, thank you for playing and for the feedback! Your screenshots made my day, and inspired a friend and I to jump into it and play around for over an hour (I’ve added some of the results of that experimentation to the game’s screenshots - do you have any objection to me doing the same with the ones you’ve posted?).

I do feel like the limited palette contributes to the charm and style of the game, but definitely found myself banging against it too when trying to portray something specific… not sure. Definitely registered as feedback to think about! (And if there are any colors you particularly found yourself missing, let me know!).

Thanks again!