Amazingly captures the feeling of those old games. It's amazing that you went so far to animate the hardware and fingers too, really sells it. The game is surprisingly good, an actual challenge with a good ramp up and always staying fair. I really liked that the challenge was a different one for the second stage, where i also very much felt the old "push this button as fast as you can" mode. The music ramp up was also very cool, a nice surprise. It was a great decision to not have the player timed to the ingame clock. I quit at the submarine stage - a very authentic reminder of times when we perceived unfairness differently.

Despite being seemingly simple, one of the most fun games i played in this jam.

Super cool! :)

This game is so great! I love the style of the old Game and Watch games. And it is full of things to do. The hands are a nice touch

Oh wow, this is a gem. Really scratched an itch of mine, and also took things to the next level. We are all love logistics boy!

such a cute game and quite addicting too ! graphics are pretty cool and the sounds are quite fitting. great job :)

Nice work. Fantastic art style. I really like your game.

Wow, it's amazingly done ! Great graphics, sound effect, design...very coherent idea ! The most polished entry I have seen to far !

I don't see how it's related to the theme however ?

I love it, so so polished :) Even the game page is so tidy and inviting :) Hats off ! ^^ Extra kudos for the player breakdancing when moving :) Turning the non animated aspect into a strength to tell more story.

Simple and very memberberrieish :)
Excitation and audio are on point - great job!

Oh my god it JUST KEEPS GOING this is GREAT!!
The first and second stages were great, the music rampup as well as the increasing speed really got me excited!
The third level really did feel a bit out of place with the rest though, the design being a bit more unfair (the final pick-a-door killed me on my final life on hardcore mode) and also not really fitting the art style? The mines' jumpy movement would've probably made a lot more sense if it was still matching the LCD style. (Worth it for the ending though, the final line had me giggling)
The presentation and the first 2 levels were absolutely great, though. Best game I've played so far for the jam.

I really enjoyed the vintage feel to the game! But at first I was a little confused who I was controlling and I didn't enjoy how the movement is on the left (even though the arrow key are on the right) and vice versa with the action button. Then at some point the mc disappears after dying. but really enjoyed the feel of the game!

One of the best games I've played here so far! Very well made, fun to play, not too long or difficult. Well done!

Oh my, I loved playing Game and Watch games I had when I was a kid and this is such a great throwback to them. Especially first two stages are great even though I had feeling that the speed ramped up quite fast. But yeah, considering you decided to do more content and not just have base task repeating all over again it is understandable.
Diving deep was a bit confusing to me and I couldn't really get very far since I usually relied on some rythm to coordinate my own movements with this kind of games. Great work though, it really is a great find in this jam!!! Keep up the great work :slight_smile:

The surreal escalation here is a lot of fun

Very nice game. and drawn cool. At first only the music didn't seem to be there. The sounds are cool, just like when I was a kid:)

I someone managed to bug it out and the guy didn't respawn but this has a fun presentation.

I loved the two first levels, they really capture the essence of the old game & watch games. Congratulations for that.

It is also a very good idea that we can see the fingers actually using the game.

The third level however was not has good in my opinion: the graphical style changes a lot and it is more about memory than skill (one cannot know in advance which way has to be used with the submarine to avoid the mines)

This was actually a really fun game. I love the simplicity and had great fun dodging the tentacles and bird poo. Once I got to the submarine stage I got too frustrated and stopped. I liked the balance of difficulty and fun though, that is what made it addicting!

Nice work, tons of fun.
Mines section was an odd one and tentacles was hard to understand. And so sad that fingers appeared only on the last section, they look cool

really liked this trip down memory lane :)


(btw. fingers are not visible 'till the end in the web version)

Really fun, and a lovely vintage feel :)

Wow, this is impressive! The first level really nailed down the feel of a game and watch game perfectly. I really liked how creative you got with the later stages too. This was a joy to play. (I will say I'm very glad you added continues/checkpoints - I could not have survived that on hardcore mode) The atmosphere you developed is great, and the ending got a really good chuckle too. This is definitely one of the higher ratings I've given out.

Oddly enough I didn't hit the fingers bug on the web version that others mentioned. I didn't really hit any noticeable bugs.

With any entry I try to give a little constructive feedback. So - the mine level felt a little slow/off compared to the rest, as a couple others have mentioned. I really like what you were trying for there - it felt sorta like an early handheld, but it felt a little bit slow and it was very hard to see where was safe until it was too late.

Constructive feedback aside, you really nailed a lot of aspects of this game. Thanks for a fun game!

@akronsus @corruptor2037 Thanks for pointing that out. I did a quick 'n dirty fix for mobile controls and it hid the fingers too efficiently. That was fixed too, that's why they did work for you @cppchriscpp !

Thanks for the feedback everyone! The idea was that in every level the game evolves and goes "deeper and deeper", by introducing scrolling, more colorful graphics, moving sprites etc. I know it doesn't translate that well to the game and mine section was a bit rushed. Still, it was a fun to experiment with this kind of mechanics and graphics style!

Great entry! Much more fun than I remember these kinds of games ever being lol. The look and feel are dead on and the music really gives it a jolt of modern vitality, caught myself bopping along to it.
Stage variety is great and keeps things interesting, and the ending was cute, love the octopus design, is that made from material of some kind?
Considering I've just finished working on a similar retro/handheld gui, I must admit you did a far better job than me in a lot less time, great mood to it.

The game is very fun once you progress towards the end as pace picks up, however it is very slow in the beginning and can easily demotivate you to try again if you die twice or more. Nice work!

@jam373 Hey, man! Nice to hear from you.

The creature seen in the end of the game is entirely digital art. Here you can see the process!



I first planned the scene by drawing a doodle on paper the night before, and later did a very rough/low-effort draft on GIMP in a matter of minutes.

Afterwards near the end of the jam @Kaappis added some shading and detail finalizing the creature. (Using Photoshop, I think?)

He did a very good job, considering you'd even get the impression it's been digitized from a physical object. He's also the one behind the console-HUD and catchy tunes (along with a myriad of other things).


The scene admittedly has this certain "cut-out animation" feel to it, since the octopus consists of multiple floating parts.

Also, the seafloor is actually a photo from the scrapped FMV-intro I was cooking up. There would've been less than two hours for me to edit/implement the whole thing, so I decided to cut it even though I had already shot the material. In hindsight I've gotta admit that the usual creepy FMV-stuff I like to produce in my LD-entries wouldn't have fit the overall tone of the game. But the moving fingers on the HUD are a remnant of sorts left from the bigger scheme I had in mind.

---

I already noticed before that you didn't participate this time, but it's great to know that you continue your endeavors in this crazy world of game-development!

Don't be discouraged even if the stuff you mentioned you're working on isn't (yet) up to your standards. You'll get better all the time the more you do, and yet there will always be room for improvement.

And when drawing a comparison, remember to consider that there were two of us putting **a lot** of work into this, and we certainly couldn't have done all this only by ourselves.

@jam373 Thanks for the compliments! Dis0rder gave a good explanation how the seamonster was done, but I'll have to add that texture was hand painted on in Clip Studio, using "crayon" pencil setting. This was one of those jam moments, when trying out something new turns out to be OK. This also was my final thing I did for the game before going to bed and the expression on monsters face pretty much sums up my mood I had at the time:


Handheld was made entirely in Photoshop using shapes, text and layer effects (bevel, drop shadow), with scratch and grime textures added on top. Plus that smiling logistics boy gfx, which I regret not spending more time on drawing it. Pretty much a placeholder that I didn't have time or energy to replace. :D

@dis0rder @kaappis Ah this is so cool guys, thanks for the breakdown, I never would have guessed! I'll have to play around with digital crayon tools myself. Really a testament to the shading and texture that I would have sworn it were from a real material. I always love to see your fmv segments but maybe you're right it wouldn't have fit with the tone/style of this one. Besides this game feels "complete" in every sense which is about as best as you can strive for with a jam game imo.

Yea I really wanted to participate this time and so I set myself a deadline for the week before to finish an early release of the chess game I'm working on. But alas the deadline got delayed and I missed it. Probs for the best though to keep my momentum and I'm sure I would have been too burnt out to take part anyway. Next time!

Mostly the issue is that I'm working in a much lower res and so adding all the detail you guys have isn't practical. Trying to work out how to have pixel-art stains on the case like you guys have, but maybe it works better clean idk. Whaddya think? https://john-rajczyba.itch.io/tz

@jam373 I did a quick mockup of one of your screenshot. I was thinking of segmenting some of the elements and giving them some shading. Maybe add vignetting to focus the players eye more on the center. I didn't try this and I don't know what some of those elements mean, because I can't play chess. :D


Fantastic game!

I love the aesthetic, huge congrats on that!
The variety of gameplay is great, sometimes it's a bit confusing what you have to do, but it feels exactly as confusing as old game and watch games, without being as much punitive.

Thanks for the game I had fun 💕

@kaappis Wow you really went above and beyond, thanks so much for the help! I love the improvements, the raised segments for the main screen and score section really make em pop. I'll have to think about the vignetting as I haven't yet decided if the virtual console is handheld or more akin to a small pinball machine, and I don't know if that reduces a sense of size.

edit: oh and don't worry, from feedback the game is atm too confusing even for chess players so I don't expect a non-chess player to go anywhere near it lol.

[Thanks for submitting your game to our stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1015845981?t=03h50m23s)

I loved the surprise with this one! Y'all did such a convincing job making it look like an accurate Game-and-Watch game, which made the twist into a more modern experience all the more sastisfying. Well done!