Well, that's a bit of a, uh, heavy topic for a game jam. I absolutely love the gameboy/pokemon style graphics, though.

Nice entry, I love the gameboy rpg feel. I might of went with a different topic but sure.

Wow, such a dark topic, but with a clever puzzle mechanic, i liked a lot

My feelings working menial jobs too

Awesome style!

Man I just wanted to move boxes :(. The game looks great though.

I'd like to give 5 stars for the graphics. Because that Game Boy style is really cool.

@chillertyp thank you! I just felt it wouldn't really be fair to enable the graphics vote since most of these assets i already had laying around from another project i'm working on 😅

Shockingly effective depressing thoughts, was not expecting "okay that's a bit too real" from a jam game about pushing boxes with very nice gameboy graphics.

I liked style . Gameplay is fun

Not sure if depressing or humorous. Extra points for those awesome Gameboy aesthetics! Well done.

I should go back to therapy...

Awesome style!

Shall eventually be taught in school as a serious game in the following future!

Brilliant writing - the thoughts were really effective, and an interesting juxtaposition with the gameboy art style :)

Very cute game! Love the pixel art which looks so cool

Well written. Even though the sprites aren't being rated, they are very good. Heavy stuff - and I don't mean the boxes!

Nice music and idea!.

i like the style of the game

Great graphics , a nice concept to switch between 3 poeple to advance, only one wrong point for me, people are talking way to much even if i keep spamming the space button.
Anyway we can feel the pokemon inspiration well reproduced

Reverse Escapism. 10/10

Enjoyed this a lot. Character swapping is a fun puzzle format, and this was a very stylish way of interpreting the theme. I liked how each character had unique struggles (person 2 is trans in my headcanon lol) and their experiences felt real, even when oversimplified as a game mechanic like this.

oh I very much want to play this, the title is so interesting and the clips seem so stylish.
any chance of a web version?

@velvetlobster Thanks! sadly a web version is not possible as far as I'm aware. I think Rpg Maker only exports to a windows exe.

I enjoyed this philosophical take on the "Every 10 Seconds" idea. The focus of the game is definitely on the dialogue and the thoughts, since the gameplay and "puzzles" aren't meaningfully difficult. Yet still, I felt like it was offering me something unique.

Admittedly it did get a bit depressing, though I thankfully don't suffer from chronic depression anymore.... but this is a real issue that people face, and I can see how a game like this may be cathartic for them, feeling heard and explored. Or maybe it will make them feel worse ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Conveyed the feeling of "is this ever going to end" pretty effectively. I never seemed to have enough time to get what I wanted done. Felt more like it had a message than for entertainment. Hope you're doing okay! Good job completing the jam!

Aside from the rather lengthy dialogues that interrupt the flow of the game, the core idea is really smart! The text goes deep, and each mistake really hits me irl :')
Each unique worker's available mechanics could also be better taught in the tutorial, like how person 1 and 2 can push boxes, but 3 cannot, and how person 1 and 3 treats box goal positions as walls.
All in all, a really solid game, and 8 levels in such a short time? That's quite some content!

@decadedecaf : ngl I put a fair bit of my present and past struggles in those characters, so they're all probably trans by default xD

@cypheus : the puzzles were supposed to be better, but I got stuck making most of the levels in the last half day of the jam and the "boxes stay stuck in place" mechanic ended up hindering me a fair bit. Definitelly think i could have done better on the puzzle design front if i had a bit of foresight!

@shogeku I'm doing ok enough lol, thanks for the comment!

Wow that was a bit depressing. I ended up skipping through all the text because it wasn't fun to read.

I struggled to fully complete any but the first level - even the really long horizontal one that seemed pretty straight forward.

I like the mechanic that all three people have to work together.

I really enjoyed the puzzle mechanics once I fully understood them. I suppose there's some dark beauty to the idea that all three of these poor folks are suffering together while preforming their menial wage-slave job. Here's a timestamped link to me playing it on stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1609528446?t=1h23m12s

A really smart design to me. I can't say i have some fun when i play it, because of the frustration during the game (which was obviously the point, don't worry i got it) but i really enjoyed the experience.

As a Pokéfan i really like the graphics and the puzzles. Despite the serious topic, i appreciate the global tone of the game.

Dark, I love it. Unique idea to have such a dark game in the style of a gameboy game. Great job!

Unique concept. Love the gameboy look, but honestly had to stop due to the negativity.

The graphic style took me right back to old-school pokemon games. Iconic monochrome color scheme, chat bubbles, and clean pixel art.

It was hard to read the dialog, as it hit home in many ways; battling with self-doubt/low self esteem, imposter syndrome, wondering what one's worth is in the world. I felt bad for the characters, as I wanted them to battle their inner demons. I had to end the game early just because I was streaming playing the game, but I need to go back and finish this, as I hope there's a happy ending to this lol.

Many games for this theme suffer from this, including my own, but I found there was times where I had accomplished my task for a character and was just waiting around for the 10 seconds to end to switch to the next character. Perhaps having an option to skip the remaining time would improve a player's experience.

Nice aesthetic! Suprisingly heavy for a jam game

always love the 1 bit gameboy artstyle！your game is great！（rate back plz!)

This was an experience to play haha.

The visual presentation definitely hits that old school Pokemon vibe, and it's all really nice and crisp, even with the garbled twitter name text :wink: lol

The themes explored through the dialog are definitely heavy, as was warned. A lot of it was easy to internalize as its many topics I've struggled with myself in the past. Thankfully I'm in a better place now and playing through a game like this I can empathize better. The puzzles were fun but not very challenging, which is fine since they don't detract from the main presentation of the game. They serve their purpose as the vehicle in playing the game.

I really liked the GB style. I felt the writing was a bit heavy-handed at times, it'd be nice to insert a little more space for the player to reflect on the thoughts the character was having. I found the gameplay cute, in a very gameboyish style. If this were entered in the gameboy jam (is that where the assets are from?) I wouldn't question it at all! I did find the required unpacker in the download a bit sketchy for a jam game, it'd be nice if it were just a normal zip.

@nardandas No they're not from the gameboy jam, just another non-jam project i have been working on for a couple of months. And yeah, i learned the lesson that people (and OSs) are afraid of the rpg maker default unzipper xD Will definitelly find a way to export it as a zip for any future use of the engine 😅

I came in expecting a cute GameBoy style Sokoban game, it was so much more. I felt empathetic to the characters and wanted to see where they ended up. One of the more memorable games for sure, I really liked it.

That... was... an awesome experience. Normally I am not fan of text > text > text, but this one has convinced me. The crushy vibes that this game is giving to me are intense.

Also, nice to see a game made with RPG Maker (hitted F5 before mentioned ingame XD)

it was really funny, even though I see myself in all three characters, I laughed at the absurdity of the whole game. At first it didn't occur to me that I really had to wake up the others with the guy with the glasses. very original idea and execution. the graphics were a lot like pokemon. Thanks for that :)

Nice! Kind of gave me Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk vibes at some points, with all the trying to do every day tasks while dealing with intrusive thoughts.

I had to stop playing after Day 1 because it was starting to drive me to tears. That's a good thing, though. This tiny little game jam game has wrung more emotion from me than any AAA game I've ever played. It's just too depressingly relatable. You should be proud of having made something so powerful.

I'm also impressed at how much content there seems to be. Getting to the end of Day 1 took maybe 10-15 minutes, and most Ludum Dare entries can be played through twice over by then. A lot of that is down to the gameplay style and constant intrusions, but even so, creating a game with (guesstimating here) at least an hour of gameplay in less than 72 hours is highly impressive. The length and slow pace also adds to the feeling of drudgery.

My only complaint gameplay-wise - although this may only be the case for Day 1 - is that the workloads feel somewhat unbalanced. Human 3 always has work to do (i.e. snapping Humans 1 and 2 out of their dissociative states), and Human 1 has lots of Things to collect, but Human 2 only has four boxes to push and is then left standing around. I guess if someone's finished their tasks, I could just not wake them up when it's Human 3's turn, but I'd feel even worse if I just left them alone with those nasty intrusive thoughts :cry:

As an aside, I was extremely confused as to why the game was 190 MB until I downloaded it and realised it was an RPG Maker project with all the default assets left in. I'd recommend deleting all those unused assets as they're massively bloating the game's file size.

I love gameboy games. Whenever possible I participate in GBjam. :)

Your game was well thought out and well made.

It took me a while to understand the role of human 3 beyond pulling switches.

The depressing story just makes me want to ask you one thing: Are you okay? Need help with something?

Congratulations for the game!

@f1krazy Thanks for the kind comment! And yeah i'm still not sure how the whole assets thing work with rpg maker. I know if i straight up don't include the engine's data, the game seems to not start. But I need to try to just remove all the default assets manually and then zip the result and see if that work when i have a bit of time. I'm just not super familiar with the engine :sweat_smile:

@euler-moises i'm okay enough lol, thanks though

Firstly I didn't want to give my feedback because it's always difficult to say something bad about a sad story or a sad thinking. But finally, we are here to give our personal feedback, so...

However the story, the gameplay is interesting, but I really didn't understand that Human 1 could move boxes. Maybe I missed that in the dialogues, I'm not sure.

I'm don't know what assets are from you and what assets are not, but all that seems to fit perfectly.

And the story. I get the point, but it's too long (Personal feedback. "I found it" too long). Yes, I totally understand that's the point. But after a while, I wasn't still "yeah it's like the message" but more "OK, I get it, but I will do that 30 days ? Mashing dialogs each 10s ?".

It seems most people are fine with that, so I can't say it's objectively too long, it's probably good. But here is my experience. Good work anyway, of course !

I like how the very heavy mood of the game contrasts with the cutesy art style. Also very interesting mechanics that fit into the mood of the game and the theme of the jam. Very good tutorial in the beginning, both story/introduction wise and mechanics wise. It would be nice if Person 3 had some dialogue with the others when interacting with them. I would prefer it if the gameplay was a bit faster even though I get that slow is what you're going for the mood. I didn't make it to the end, but I do hope that the characters find some solace. All the best and great work!

Sorry it took me so long to get back to your game! As others have mentioned, the mood of the game is pretty dark, and not what I was expecting based on the graphics. But the art is super cute, and I love the old school feel of it. Overall, well done!