I really enjoyed the game, I replayed until I managed to win ^^. I love graphics, music works well with pixel style and the idea of building houses on a guy's head is just great. Bravo !

The dithering of the sky makes it hard to read the HUD. But nice use of the Gameboy aesthetic overall. Fun little game. Nicely done. :)

Wow, such a nice concept, I really really dig the gameboy visual style, I agree with 30 ninjas though, the sky's dithering makes it tough to read the text on top, maybe some outlining would help with that.

Your game is an original take on the theme, really interesting idea. I'm also very impressed that you made this in just 24 hours! It's difficult but still fun. As the other comments have mentioned, the gameboy visual style is great. Good work!

I really enjoyed the graphics and the color effect. The music is very interesting also. Cool concept! I would have liked a larger screen maybe.

Solid work you did there.

As for the issues, nothing game-breaking, but some improvements could be made in future version:
### Improvement suggestions.

- First and foremost: the game requires precision, so it would be best to make player movement less floaty (maybe use translate instead of force to allow for precise controls?)

- clearing up the sky to make text more readable - in fact, maybe just ease with the background altogether to make the front objects stand out, that would make things clearer for the player

- making help text in the beginning optional

- balance tweaks (nothing major, just to keep the difficulty consistent)

- feedback on what exact area is going to be struck by hand (though it's quite clear already, and hit detection seems tight) - at times it still felt like hit was too wide for the area visually represented by hand

- add some time in the beginnning of the wave for player to accomodate with the unusual controls - some initial blood to pick up

- to keep the play consistent with Gameboy style of controls, it could be changed to z-build, x-hide and 'up' to upgrade (it would be easier to pick up IMO)

- make blood sprite more suggestive of blood ;)



### The game 'as-is',
is very neatly done. You picked both a challenging art style to work with, and an unusual mechanic. You did a good job putting this all together, and it's commendable given the time restraints. And as I've said before, all of my suggestions are just for post-jam further development, your project does very well as a jam game :)


Cheers, leaving my rating for you, and stay awesome :)

Cool game, it's certainly a neat concept.
The music was really repetitive, which was annoying, and it didn't seem possible to build a house anywhere where the hands wouldn't destroy them (which maybe is the point?).
That said, I like the 4-color GameBoy graphics, they were cool.
Good job!

The Game Boy graphics drew me towards your game and I have to say, I really enjoyed playing despite some flaws. The difficulty was pretty brutal but still motivating. I think this is because you pulled off the pacing really well, resetting the player into the game immediately after death and not taking too long to increase the difficulty which would otherwise have created some problematic tedium towards the beginning.

My first thought was that the game was unfair because the hands were always destroying the houses faster than I could rebuild, so I thought I could cheat the game by collecting 30 blood and quickly building all the houses. This didn't work (good design), so I played around a bit more and noticed that the 2-story buildings actually served a purpose and I couldn't get around using them (again good design). Then I realized that the fleas were only killed when they were without shelter and a destroyed house didn't decrease your score if you rebuilt before the hands came again. At this point, the game came to life for me and I managed to finish it after a few more tries.

My biggest complaint would have to be the music which was quite jarring from the beginning, and didn't get any friendlier. I understand you may have wanted to go for a strange, insecty vibe and it might have worked better if the music wasn't so repetitive. Definitely could use some more polishing.

A minor issue was with the placement of the hands. I found no sense in going up and down since the hand would hit me whenever I was in the same x-coordinate. Going up and down didn't add any value in the building of houses, so I would have preferred if the hands came down at different y-coordinates, indicated by a shadow and then could only hit you when you were in the same position as the shadow. Also they shouldn't kill you when you run into them from the side, especially while they are going up again.

A tiny thing about the animation, which was pretty good, but I think it would have worked better if the hands didn't animate while reaching (or maybe just change one frame about halfway), but then they would scratch exactly once when they reached their destination. It seemed pretty random the way you did it and the other way may give it a more visceral, threatening feel instead of a comic one. I think this would give the game a lot more character without having to draw any additional frames.

When it comes to controls, I would strongly advise against using the Z-key for an international game because some folks have different key positions (Germany for instance). You can circumvent this by choosing keys that are the same for most players or set actions to more than one key (Z and Y for instance). Personally, I found the hiding mechanic a bit superfluous, as for me, the game didn't gain anything and I had to keep track of yet another key that I didn't end up using.

Overall I enjoyed playing the game, despite some flaws and I think its main strength is the fact that it made me come back for round after round long after a less well paced game would have had me quit. Great job!

Took me a bit to "see" the graphics, so my first few tries were terrible.

Once I saw the blood and picked them up, the game was enjoyable. I got how to play and it was a lot of fun.

I do like the classic Gameboy feel, but for some reason it is a bit difficult to see everything... maybe because the color scheme or the large blocky graphics?

Overall though, it's a great entry. Congrats!

@cerno-b @takusan I really glad your long and careful comment . THANKS :D

this is definitely the greenest game I've played so far! :smile: after I figured out I needed to use the arrow keys also, I was off and running. I'd suggest making it a bit easy - at least at first. also, the music loop comboed with the giant tutorial text started to make me a little crazy I think haha!

Interesting game, I loved the Gameboy aesthetic. As others have already said the HUD was a little hard to read, and the blood could be made a little more obvious. Otherwise, well done!

This game reminded me of the minigames of undertale hahaha I liked it a lot :)

Surprisingly challenging game, and quite addictive too. The music is nice too which is hard to believe when you first hear it, I thought the short loop would drive me insane, but it harmonizes with the intensity of the game and somehow becomes really welcome.

Is the screenshot at the top real one? I was never able to build so many houses.

@mortus nope :D I did in editor thanks your comment

Good idea, very good art but sound is creppy. In any case great job!