I don't think your platforms are working correctly. Other than that was pretty funny. :smile:

@eboatwright Did you try pressing the grind button when landing on the yellow surfaces?

Good game, music is pretty amazing but the controls are kinda weird

The controls were a bit difficult but I eventually got the hang of jumping and grinding and taking phone calls. I still found it difficult but it was a nice idea. The visuals and audio are great, good job!

I'm in love with the music of your game

Nice music and who doesn't love that pico-8 graphical style. I had some difficulty with the controls but nothing I couldn't figure out within a minute or two of playing

@chris1919 Ohhhhhh I didn't know there was a grind button XD thanks :smile:

@eboatwright oh phew! You had us worried! I'm glad you figured it out

@chris1919 Sorry I worried you! XD I completed the game now that you mentioned the X button. :smile:

@chris1919 Sorry I worried you! XD I completed the game now that you mentioned the X button. :smile:

Music reminded me of Shovel Knight <3

But I want the the small talk!

Very catchy music, a bit hard to read the text sometimes, but overall very readable.
How´s the weather?

@ancient-pixel Sorry, this is a really important phone call. Can't talk right now

This is a creative and fun game with a lotta charm. Having the fail states be literal conversations was a hilarious touch and the writing is extremely clever. I can relate to this game on a personal level as someone who doesn't wanna get bothered while shopping, so this is a very relatable and forward thinking protagonist that I think we need more of in the game industry.

Thanks for the game, and I love how there's no fail state so I don't feel bad for getting a score of 600.

Aw, I just dig Pico8 games!

I may just be an old man with horrible reaction times, but I think the control timings were a little bit too harsh. Maybe it would have helped if the actions lasted like 10-15% longer, so that you could push the buttons a bit in advance?

Still a fun and charming game. Oh, and the music was awesome!



This is a very clever game. Definitely difficult to get the hang of, but once it clicked, it was really fun to build up momentum throughout the level. Sound and visuals were great, and I always love to see PICO-8 games. Extremely engaging jam entry!

(also my game has the same name! sorry for sniping the url from you)

Wow such a cool concept! Had fun with this on stream. I do agree with some others that the controls felt pretty punishingly tight. Would love for especially grinding to be more forgiving so that I could have much more fun with it. Here's the timestamped link to the vod from the stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1003143985?t=3h3m32s

@DecadeDecaf brb, renaming our game to ~~Surfacer~~ Surfacest Level.

I love the speed, and I relate to the idea the game conveys trying to avoid doing small talk. The art is really cute, I particularly like the "Player" and their shopping cart. The song is catJAM and the entire idea of the game is hilarious! Congrats on such an awesome pico8 game! <3

As we discussed on stream, I'd love to try a version of this with a less steep difficulty curve. Also, I'd suggest reconsidering the use of using swear words; most of the time it isn't necessary.

Enjoyable game, highly addictive - simple, smooth controls and a challenge. I felt like every single time I went through a run, I was getting better, but my score highly disagreed. My favorite part is when I activated introvert mode and just didn't have any customers at all hehe
Cute graphics (I love myself some pico 8), catchy audio and a high score system are my favorites in this entry!

Really nice game, I've played it through about 4 times, it definitely has a learning curve, but it's very enjoyable. Nice music and fitting art too!

Pico is cool! I like seeing games in it. Played it 4 times. It's pretty difficult, but addictive. I feel like the timing needed to perform some of the actions are perhaps just a bit too tight, but you really do get better on subsequent plays. The graphics are charming and the music is great.

Also, thanks for playing my game on stream!

holy cow this is AMAZING!! I was about to go back through the games I played onstream to leave ratings, and I got sucked back in and played this for another 30min just now

I love the mechanics, and the feeling of building up speed and trying not to mess it up as the level comes at you faster and faster. The music works so well, and it's the main thing that kept me playing long enough to figure the game out. I have a lot of tiny little notes that I'm about to dump right here, in case they're helpful to you, but overall WOW I am blown away this is such a cool game

Okay so a bunch of small suggestions:
* the colors of the background are a bit confusing; the (passable) dark blue can shelves look too similar to the (impassable) dark blue blocks, and the bright green produce bins stand out too much, given that they're passable
* I'd love a speedrun timer integrated in-game, and a quick-reset button in the pico-8 menu
* the phone call button is a bit awkward to hit, especially when I'm trying to always be speeding up or slowing down at the same time. I mentioned this onstream, but today I'm finding it easier to hit, so I think I'm retracting my suggestion that the L/R buttons should be removed, since they do add interesting gameplay now that I'm good enough to use them haha. Actually, I've just had an idea: what if pressing jump while midair did a spin; this frees up the spin button, which could instead become the phone call button! that might work
* It might be fun to have some incentive to hit the spin button juuuust before you hit a rail, e.g. some sort of speed boost or points boost
* I looked at the notifications at the top of the screen hardly at all; maybe small flyaway text right where the character was would be more visible? but of course maybe you don't want it to get in the way
* To really get a high score, as far as I can tell the strat is to go really slow, grind multiple times on the same rail to get your combo up, and come to a slow grinding finish at the end of the level. (I can get 9K points on the first level by doing this) I'm a bit conflicted about this; personally I'd rather the game encouraged me to get that blinding rush of speed by trying to go as fast as possible, BUT if you go too slow while grinding for score you can't make it to the next rail, so it's an interesting tension. So like, I guess it's fine? I think I'd remove the ability to grind multiple times on a single rail, that seems a bit exploit-y to me. there's that one bottom-route tunnel on level 2 or 3 where you can get 10x combo pretty easily with this

urg sorry for the wall of backseat-gamedesign; your team did an incredible incredible job and probably a bunch of my suggestions would break things in ways I can't anticipate. they're just some random suggestions from a fan! thank you for the game!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1007659333?t=00h12m05s

also: GET REKT MARSHALLLL


8bit Tony Hawk is the best game!

Awesome super fun game! I got 4900 my second run and I thought I was doing decent, but it's cool how high some people can get. Nice job! Awesome music as well, that fir everything perfectly.

Really cool! I sucked at it, but it was still really fun, I loved the music and sounds. Thanks for submitting it to us to play!

Just when I though a 'Tony Hawk' game couldn't be improved - annoying people and fake phone calls!

Definitely a bit of a learning curve here, but once you get the hang of it you'll be saying 'Ok just one more,this time I've got it!'

The obstacles in this game are the same obstacles I deal with in real life. 1. People tryna talk to me when I’m busy. 2. Shopping carts in my way. 3. and not enough rails to grind on. This game is very nicely put together. Impressive that it runs in pico. The art is on point. The sounds are fun, and the dialogue is hilarious. It’s a short play, but it’s dense with great stuff. Nice work!!
Thank you so much for bringing this by my stream. Here's a link to the VOD:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1007852839?t=7h24m36s

What a fun game. I had a pretty good time trying to get good at this, but I wasn't very good at it in the end. It has been a long while since I've played a game boy game and this nailed that vibe on the head. I really enjoyed the work you put into this, the custom music, the funny tones.
I don't think this worked toward the theme super well, but I still saw where you were coming from.
Great work on creating an addictive game I wish I had on my phone.

This was a lot of fun! I didn't get to 10k points, I think my high score was slightly above 6k. The mechanics were a bit too precise for my tastes, but I found the grinding very enjoyable once I got the hang of it. I also appreciate that you didn't make this an endless runner! Great work.

Nice game, this is my score

Hello! Your game was played on stream ( https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos ) on 5/05 (Day 3 of LDJAM streams).

You can find the timestamp of when your game was played here: https://tinyurl.com/LDJAM48-ursa

Nice game, the pixel-art and 8-bit music set the mood well, and the concept and conversations are funny! The grinding feels very satisfying when you can pull it off, but it's hard to tell sometimes which objects are in the foreground or background and which will damage you. I think a simpler color pallete would go along way towards making the graphics seem less cluttered and make more sense from a game design perspective.

Well I don't need to tell you how long I spent on your game, you saw first hand! haha
Seriously this game is addicting, well done! Sounds were great, music was great, gameplay was great! I really don't play these types of games, but with each run I was showing noticeable improvement. I can see where a couple people are coming from about the visual language, but after playing a couple times I think it all becomes clear pretty quickly

Here were a couple suggestions I dropped in stream that you liked:
-some slanted rails! nice!
-fake phone call duration is based on speed (or distance) so its not so punishing while moving slowly

Thanks for sharing this with me on my stream, you *know* I had fun with this one xD

This is a fun autoscroller for a game jam. The humor is fun and love the spin on the theme. The controls are in my opinion a bit inconsistent. If you touch a bed you automatically jump, but if you hold Grind you don't automatically grind.

The background feels a little empty and void and this clashes with background objects. I think a simple wallpaper and moving background objects one layer to the back should help to create the illusion of depth. The art of being on your phone could be a bit more flashy and obvious to stand more when performing this action.

[Thank u 4 submit game to stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1015053228?t=04h26m21s)

I really liked the arcade-y feel of this one. This game just oozes retro style and I dig it completely. I think my only bit of criticism was perhaps making the grinds easier to execute, but that's about it. Once you get into the zone, this game is a blast. :thumbsup: