Great little game!
This game has much more to it than I thought at first glance, I hope you'll polish up this submission page so it gets a little more of the attention it clearly deserves. :dog: :smiley:

I got here because I was checking out top entries from the last LD and seeing what they made for the current one, heh.

Everything I expected out of a Punkcake game, so much fun, spent a while trying to get further and further :smile:

Oh my god. Just a single line completely broke me. That twist is so powerful and effective. How dare you. It's so polished, so efficient, so full of juice, so full of heart. The storytelling is minimalistic but effective. The progression of the difficulty works well.

On the other hand, it was very easy to accidentally pick the upgrades before they even finished displaying themselves, which prevented me from seeing the gorgeous upgrade cards.

Incredible work as always, thank you. I'll be playing the full version.

Wowwwwww 🤩🤩🤩
I'm in love.
Just a small bug report: when the boar follows you to the first platform, it can kill you during the dialog / bonus selection / throwing, and if that happens, the game devienne fou (everything is 20 times faster), and going back to the menu doesn't fix it.

Rated 1 for humor though. How dare you.

Un chien qui ramène une balle, et ben j'adore qu'est ce que vous voulez. Au bout de 5 min, je sautais devant mon maître et je partais en anticipation du lancer avant de perdre parce que je suis allé trop loin et que la balle était en fait à ses pieds. Je me moque de mon chien quotidiennement. Aujourd'hui j'ai compris :laughing:
On est d'accord que vous êtes installé à Bordeaux? Sinon désolé du francais -_-

Fantastic entry as always. I am always most excited to see what Punkcake make every Ludum Dare. The style of the graphics was really nice and there was a lot of depth to the upgrades. I now understand why dogs love fetch so much

At first I was like "Oh that's a cute little game !", and then you rip my heart out... Please do it again

How many levels does the game have?

Smooth control with well-polished graphics and soundtrack. The visual effects are fantastic such as the 1 pixel offset of the tile that Gale is standing on. Nice work!

Oh wow I adored this - so impressed that it's a jam game. The music is great and the graphics are lovely and the world just feels so _vibrant_ - delightful!

My one gripe so far is that I found it pretty hard to manage the tree-climbing ability - it's hard to place why, but the controls just didn't feel intuitive to me (maybe because I had to stand in just the right spot? maybe because 'up' was mapped to something else too? idk) and I ended up regretting it when I took that power.

@eieio Yes I struggled a bit to find a control to climb on a background part of the level. You have to be in the air going upward AND press the up button. Gale will collide on the tree and will climb while your press up.

Very nice and funny gameplay. And very cute graphics. I love it so much

Going into the game I got this ominous feeling from the dialogue and all... the game over screen didn't help! :p
Cool idea, solid execution, all around real nice! Great job!

Super nice graphics. I find the game really polished. Controls are feeling good. It's a solid entry.

Beautiful, I can see some fx from shotgun king! I like the little deck building mechanics, and the main loop. I'm also very sad that the girl dies if you fail :frowning2:

Great idea! Love the interpretation of the theme. I'm gonna be a bit different than other on my feedbacks : i just love playing the dog and playing catch and i feel like i would have love is the game was a little less serious! And would have love just to catch ball without the life and death situation. This was already a mervellous interpretation on the theme!

I think it's more not for me/not what i excepted than anything, the game is still a marvellous jam entry!

Gale is a good boy.

He jumps high with his two paws.

He spots danger with his two eyes.

He searches for targets with his nose.

Gale is a good boy.

Please don't break his heart...

This was a really cute game. I really liked the pixel work that was done from the animations to the grass particles. The world felt alive. I would've preferred a bit more leeway with getting game overs. I liked the playing fetch part and I think adding distance and platforming over boars and porcupines would have made me like it even more. I wanted to explore the world more and see all of the characters dialogue.

I really enjoyed the game! At first, it seemed simple, but then I realized that delivering the orb became more and more challenging. The upgrades appeared just in time and greatly diversified the mechanics.

A simple idea that works so well, this is really fun to play and the twist was great! I loved the mood and found the music quite relaxing (until you encounter a boar). My record so far is level 17, I wish the game would show you where the ball was before the game over scene in order to see what I missed.
Anyway incredible job, reminded me of U-Turn :)

Cute game, very interesting mechanics!

Amazing game! The best I've played so far!

Really great entry!

I love love the theme and am extremely curious about how the story would unfold, but it's just too hard for me.

I think the only issue is the effect of RNG on gameplay.

On the perk side smelling feels like the only thing I need, while eagle eye, hearing feel so much inferior. The other perks are all nice but honest, without a starting tracking perk the run is basically dead.

On the hazard size it's not that much of a difference but the ground spike is honestly too annoying.

I got a really good run with kickoff nose followed by time increase, and 2 or 3 simple hazard (mushroom, branches etc) which allowed me to reach turn 13 or 14 something when it sound like I'm very close to the ending (well at least from what the girl said). But then I dropped on a boar and died.

After that the runs are never that good and I always died much earlier which led to a rage quit.

I really really love the game, please give me a slight toned down (where RNGod have less power) so I can find out the ending uhuhuhu

another amazing entry, well done guys :) art is incredible as usual, sounds and music are great. gameplay is very unique! I havent seen anything quite like this, the upgrades add a neat level of agency which is always fun to play with, but ultimately the best upgrades organize themselves in your head (e.g. the scent upgrade trumps basically any other search-based upgrade, and the extra time ones are a direct solution to the problems of the other mechanics). running fast is definitely the most fun part of it to me, which makes things like bushes and enemies more of an annoyance than a hinderance. (the collisions on trees was particularly annoying, since it felt more like a bug than anything). but im not sure what the best alternative would be for the player to overcome!
I got to level 32 and the game crashed, i was interested to see how the game concluded, if it ever did!
regardless, very cool game, really neat mix of mechanics and interesting take on the theme. fun to play and very nice to look at. wonderful job :)

I really enjoyed this entry. Fantastic ramp up in difficulty and I really enjoyed the alternating pattern of upgrades/difficulty enhancements.

This was a really nice polished little experience.

Loved the art especially for gale, soo cute. Gameplay is very fun and the addition of the perks was a big surprise but made for very fun gameplay. Sometimes struggled to find the ball in the time when the branches started growing but it made for a very fun challenge.

Got till level 18. It's rare for a game to really make me feel something. Well done on that. The small story the game has was intertwined with the gameplay so damn well.

However, it's the gameplay where my issues lie. Everything else was perfect.

I genuinely feel that the porcupines and the boars were too annoying and did way too much damage. Also, unless you have the sound or smell skills, finding the ball in later levels or if it's thrown damn far in the first few levels is next to impossible. Especially if it's hidden in the tall grass.

Regardless, it can't be understated how amazing this game is and how well you managed to weave a story among it all. Amazing entry. You could also take some of my issues with the gameplay with a grain of salt since I was so invested with bringing the ball back that I probably only disliked them because of that investment lol.

Fantastic entry. Well polished and interesting idea. I got to level 13, where the boar learned to jump higher, followed me to the girl and mobbed me in the corner until I was dead. Might want to make the final barrier before the girl unpassable by the boar.

I absolutely adore this game. I played it for a while on and off whilst streaming, kept coming back to it looking for more, and enjoyed it every time. I've got a vod here, but yea you'll needa scrub through and find the three or so fragments of me playing this.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1816190498

The dynamic soundtrack is such perfection. The gradual story told by the hooman was both cute and soul crushing. And bouncing around as a silly little dog fetching orbs was so fun, I love all the little gamey features that each feel so satisfying to play with. Really a perfect 10/10 game, incredible :heart:

hehe I found a bug, dying during a cutscene that is being skipped results in the game being permanently sped up. On that note, I really wish boars couldn't follow you up to the hooman, but with the high jump boars, they frequently get up there and hit you during cutscenes whilst you have no control

As always very nice and polished, this time around with pico-8 vibes. Really impressive how you can consistently deliver every game-jam such nice and well looking game. Great job! Big fan!

Okay wow I think we've found another contender for the winner here. This is really, really well-made! I love the simple pixel visuals and the game loop (plus unexpected power ups) is just incredible! Also there's a dedicated bark button. THERE'S A DEDICATED BARK BUTTON!!!

This game is the perfect jam game! My only suggestions would be to improve the control mappings (I found X and C hard to use) and speed up the cutscene animations (I want more balls faster).