Widget Satchel by Noble Robot
A game by Sara Ferret, Lane Davis, Mark LaCroix, and Stephen McGregor.

Widget Satchel is a 2D action platformer. You are Sprocket the Ferret. Collect widgets to build doohickeys, and avoid the maintenance bots in order to escape the space station you are on for some reason.

Collecting widgets weighs you down, reducing your jump height and making it hard to reach certain areas. But hold on to your stash, because at the end of each level, you'll reach the Fabricator, where you can use your widgets to create helpful doohickeys.
DOOHICKEYS
Wrench - Whack a bot! Press X to swing.
Jef's Boots - Double-jump! Don't lose them, though, Jef is going to want them back.
Antigrav Sled - Lighten your load! Widgets only weigh half as much.

Three levels! (NOTE: Level 3 doesn't have final art).
CONTROLS
Jump (A)
Swing Wrench (X)
Build a Doohickey While standing in front of the Fabricator, select with the analog stick and press (X).
(Pro Tip: Don't lose your socks!)

Ratings
| Overall | 217th | 3.8⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 294th | 3.618⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 668th | 3.061⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 376th | 3.66⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 79th | 4.441⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 86th | 3.948⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 317th | 3.433⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 181th | 3.79⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 106🗳️ | 98🗨️ |
The controls are a liiittle bit too slippery, but that works well with a pad still.
Maybe add some pictures in your post!
Edit: I see them now |m/
Looking at level 1 and 2, this game is very good, and I hope level 3 will be finished someday.
@the-triumvirate Thank you! I'd love to see level 3 finished too.
@mateusculpo Thanks for the feedback, especially about the music ;)
@fluidvolt Thank you, glad you liked it. Big thanks for your music comments!
The art direction is really cool and I especially like the music. Good job there! Nice little game, keep up the work!
One thing i'd like you guys to try to improve is the camera. When you move too quickly, the camera is having a hard time following the character. otherwise, the game is very fun to play!
Good job! :)
I also was frustrated by the sliding. It made moving stressful.
one of the best games in this LD
Well, there is one thing I suppose: I got stuck on a robot when starting the game (because I didn't know it was a mob yet -- is that specified anywhere before you begin?) and after I shook myself loose, I got the same camera-overshoot problem that another commenter had. I sort of suspected that it was because I got stuck earlier, so I restarted, which fixed the problem.
Concerning the Linux build: I had to adjust the permissions, but it's not that much of a big deal. More serious was that I had to force-stop the game when I was done, which was made difficult by it grabbing the focus.
I'm a lot more positive about it than I let on here. Sometimes (not always though) it seems like the more negative comments I have, the more I enjoyed it... :upside_down:
Glad you got it to work in the end!
_Long story short_:
Just type in `chmod 755 <path-to-executable>` and you'll be good to go (replace 'path-to-executable' --including brackets-- with the relevant filename, so for example `chmod 755 ~/workspace/jamgame/awesomebinary` or `chmod 755 /mnt/datadisk/repo/mygame`.)
_Extended explanation (which just scratches the surface really)_:
In order to view files, first navigate to the directory (with 'cd', just like in dos/windows, -- you can use ~ as a shortcut to your homedir). The command `ls` is sort-of equivalent to 'dir', but in order to view the permissions (and a host of other info), we need `ls -l` or `ls -la` (so often used, there is an alias `ll`).
Now, in front of each file, you see the permissions, something like `rwxr_xr_x`. For 'normal' files (non-directory, non-'device', etc.) the letters, which show the permissions, can be 'r' for Read, 'w' for Write and x for eXecute. As you can see, there are _three_ times a group of three letters, one for (in order) login, 'group' and 'everyone'.
We'll need to change the game-binary to be executable for 'everyone', so we'll use the command 'chmod', short for 'change modifiers' (file modifiers include the permissions). We could use `chmod a+x <filename>`, to set '+x' for 'All', but I usually use `chmod 755 <filename>`, to explicitly set every permission (three numbers = '7' for 'me', '5' for 'group', '5' for 'all'.. each number has a meaning, see the extended explanation [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chmod)).
Hope that helps! :smile:
P.S. Also useful is `chmod -R 0755 <directory-name>` (read _and_ execution permissions for all) or `chmod -R 0744 <directory-name>` (read-only permissions for all), which does (basically) the same thing, but recursively on a directory (extra 0 is for directory related stuff). Useful in the sense that sometimes games need other files to be readable by 'all', if they're not created by default in that way.
Unfortunately my impression was that the controls really worked against me. Since this game has such a high polish in all the other areas, and I think a few tweaks could change the feel a lot, I'll go into some detail here. But don't take the fact that I'm going into detail on the critique side means I think this is a bad entry. On the contrary, it's because it's good that I dive into the area for improvement.
Here is a short unlisted youtube video of me demonstrating my difficulties with the camera and movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80uplWd4wJg
I'll highlight a few of the issues that I have:
1) CAMERA: The camera is pretty wild in how fast/far it whips ahead of my motion. The most obvious problem is demonstrated at the start of the video, where the main character is totally off the screen. But more generally, the camera was so eager to change positions that I felt it to be very disorienting.
2) INERTIA: It's okay to give a bit of inertia to a character, but I feel it takes too long for your character to get up to speed, and then to get back down to a stop. I had serious control issues. In the video you can see I struggle badly with a basic jump. At the 17 second mark you see an example of where the air control inertia is too high: I have positioned myself near the base of the platform and I jump and then hit right, but the character does not start meaningfully moving right until later than I expect. I fail to make the leap I wanted. The next try, at the 21 second mark, I start pressing right immediately and I do manage to ramp up the air control to get on the platform, but then upon letting go of the controls I slide right off because the high inertia causes a slipperiness. I think I would feel more in control of the character if the time between direction-press and full-speed (or full-stop) were significantly shorter.
3) JUMP INPUTS: At 54 seconds you can see a clear instance of where I press the jump key but don't get a jump. I even get the jumping sound effect! You could consider adding the "ghost jump" idea where if I was on a platform in the last ~100ms or so, you let me jump even if I'm currently not. That way, input lag won't rob me of jumps. At 13 seconds you can see another instance of where I get the sound effect without a jump, this time on the ground. A window of time where you'll buffer a jump to see if I land in an instant is nice to add, so that I don't lose a jump if I press the input a frame before landing.
A jam is time-constrained, but my advice is to spend a LOT of your time just moving around with your character, especially for an action game. Try spending 15 straight minutes right now with your game, just in that zone from my movie, leaping up onto the various blocks. Do it over and over and over for that 15 straight minutes. See if you can stick all your jumps, and if you feel like a total boss. If you don't feel like you're smooth and in charge, you have to start grinding out all that little stuff that really matters in the feel. 15 minutes is *nothing* either, I do this for hours and hours over the course of an LD!
OK I'll stop being hard on you about feel, which again I only do because you have such an awesome game in the other aspects!
I liked your character, your environment, the whole thing felt tightly cohesive in its presentation. There were lots of awesome little touches to the animation, such as the way the character rolls when landing from a jump over a certain height. You could really do something awesome with a handful of feel tweaks to bring me into the game's world.
Hope that's a helpful write-up and not going too far!
Also, thanks for doing your 1-minute rip through a whole slew of these on youtube, that was great to watch. :)