Sorry, I haven’t played it yet, but I wanted to leave a comment so I don’t lose track of it. From the screenshots – it looks really beautiful and unique!!! Definitely adding it to my wishlist to play later :)

Damn im conflicted, on one hand this might be my favorite game of the jam yet, on the other it's really slow and tedious to move each squad one coordinate at a time, especially when you've already lost a few squads and the grid is stretched out... it seems like being able to go from any two coordinates was intended since the character says the voiceline, but the squad just doesn't move unless the destination is directly next to their current coordinates.

Everything else is awesome tho, the habitation with the window to the outside world and all the stickers, the controls feel good and intuitive, the voicelines and banter are funny and a great way to give a good pacing to what would otherwise be a pretty slow game, and it fits the theme perfectly :)

A unique idea, I like it! The banter between one of the squads was funny

Fantastic! I can't express how I appreciate your game! It's the best game I've played in this jam so far. I will give perfect 5.0 in every category.

Dude this game is great! Am definitely coming back to give this a couple more tries. I'd love to see this as a co op game too where you send out little drones or smth. I'll be watching your work with great interest :)

It's a really unique game and I loved playing through it! Also it had a nice twist in the end.

One issue I had though was that once you get to the right side of the "map", travelling there start feeling really slow, and with my luck (had around 8-10 squads die there, I was unlucky and pretty much always chose the wrong way), I feel around half an hour of my playtime was just waiting for the squad to make it there over and over again, without much player interaction, just to immediately choose the wrong way on the next node. I wish there was a way to speed it up, or have a minigame you can play to pass the time.

Aside from that, I really enjoyed the game, and it's a creative way to track progress to have the player use random stickers, and assign a meaning to them, marking out the traps and safe ways with them.

Great job!

It's just amazing, so far it's my favorite on jam.

Very nice game to play, the gameplay is good, nice little radio, very creative !
I see people complaining about the slowness of their squad, but as said in the game, you can queue multiple destinations so it's not that long. Or you can not queue and listen to the conversations of the squad, which are very funny!

What a great idea, and well executed. From a design perspective I love how much of what happens in the game is text and audio (plus one ominous camera move). Squads taking longer to reach new areas, closer to the end, raised the stakes. It added more tension, I like it.

You've accomplished an incredible amount within the gamejam. I really enjoyed the game's visual style, attention to detail, and interesting gameplay. It all comes together to create an impressively immersive game experience. Thank you for your development!

wow! The idea is really cool! Very nice work!

The visuals are super fun and stylish! But I honestly had no clue what I was supposed to do 😅

@devilxrom hey, thanks for giving it a try! Did you try pressing the big green button in front of the screen?

Just WOW! This was an experience! Mood, sounds, narrative, stickers, mechanics... for 72 hours is just insane. This is bookmarked and I'll be returning to this game!

Also, thanx for the Linux build!

Kudos!

a very cool, original idea. With a fantastic execution. Definitely my favorite at this jam. The interactions between the squad - look alive and realistic. The atmosphere is incredible, I fell in love with this game. The gameplay itself doesn't bore you and keeps you in suspense throughout the entire playthrough. 10/10

This is such a cool idea and really well done! I really enjoyed the chat along the way too! Great work!

This was great, fun hub game controlling a crew through the caves. Definitely coming back to this one.

Outstanding!

This was by far the best game I've encountered so far.

The mood was excellent. I really felt like an anonymous operator, in charge of those poor souls. I started to care for them. Was agitated when something bad happened to them and everything.

I think it strikes a very narrow balance of letting the player figuring everything out themselves. It gave enough guidance without handholding. Felt very rewarding.

The sticker idea was also excellent. It gave you all the controls and info that you need, without being an actual UI-UI. All in game

The only improvement idea I have is to add some music.

Well done!

(The end caught me by surprise! Even though it's probably obvious from the start coming to think of it)

This was lovely! The pace is maybe a bit slow, but I enjoyed the conversations among the crew. Luckily, it only took me a few tries - I correctly guessed I would have to go to the far right first before really starting to head down, since otherwise the game would be over rather quickly. I also got a bit lucky. Nice twist for the ending, too, though I figured out what was going on a while before the game explicitly revealed it.

I need to play it again. Great job!

love the atmosphere and mood. The dialogue and the way they talk is also great. Love the concept and ending!

Best game of this jam)

Yea, this is an outstanding entry. Well done guys. I was invested all the way through and I got _a_ squad to the bottom in the end. It all looks and sounds great, and everything worked as it should. Fantastic work. :8ball:

This is one of the best concepts I have seen in this LD, definitely have great potentials.
Well executed as well, great scene and assets.

One of the best games i played in this jam. Amazing work, I love when you run out of stickers then you have to use potato stickers or other silly ones.

Very interesting idea. I liked the gameplay, that you can set a queue of commands, listen to the characters' conversations, the music in the game and the ambient. Overall, I liked the game, well done!

Really loved the game ! The graphics, audio, mood, concept, everything ! The idea is brilliant and kept my attention until the end.

Frankly your game is fantastic! Could you share how did you come up with this idea? I'm really curious about it. I always lack the ability to set the mood. Are there any inspirations?

Really impressive work — this one definitely stands out! The presentation is super polished: love the visuals, ambient details, and the squad banter gives the whole thing a lot of charm. The sticker system is a smart and creative touch too.

Still, the concept is unique, and the execution is solid across the board. One of my favorite jam entries so far — awesome job!

Thank you for your comments @rinevard

We often use references to convey what we have in mind to each other, this alliviates ambiguity and makes communication more efficient. Made in Abyss was our main inspiration for the lore/story setup. We knew we wanted to try doing something moody, without being full blown horror. This oriented us towards this proxy mechanic, where you are not directly the one being in danger.

On the gameplay and art side, we found inspiration in games like PVKK, Inscryption, Strain (mreliptik.itch.io/strain), @kenforest's games, and more. Basically, for each idea we got, we see how it already has been done and why it works. We also work on multiple game mechanics in parallel to gain time, and we try to do as much polishing as we can before the deadline. But despite our best efforts, there are still bugs, features missing, and balance issues. The game is not perfect but we try to learn from our mistakes, and hopefully we will improve to make something better next time.

@leperidot Thanks for your reply! Awesome job!

This is actually incredible and it´s amazing how much you accomplished in such a short time. Congrats on the great game (love the stickers)

I saw someone mentioned a bug on the itch page. I also had a bug, not sure if it's the same one. I accidentally pressed E2 instead of E3 once, and couldn't find a way to clear it (maybe an oversight, maybe I'm dumb and missed it). I had to enter it, then figured I could immediately fix it by entering E3. Only after that, the squad stopped responding to any commands and I couldn't see anything else to do except quit out. I'm not sure if I took over 60 seconds to try to fix it, as I didn't know about the failsafe you implemented. If it happens again, I'll make sure and time it out.

I'll definitely come back to this one though, one of my favorite games of the jam! Love the music and all voice acting, really helps establish the mood!

This was fun to play! I tried a couple times, and didn't finish because each time the squad would eventually just... stop responding to input. Maybe I just did something wrong, but each time I tried to fix it by clearing the queue, hitting the start button again, etc, and they just kind of sat there no matter what I entered. What I did see was fun to play with though, and I liked the descriptions of each node, and the stickers.

@jcourt @oter Sorry about the bug and thank you for reporting it. We uploaded a new build that hopefully fixes it, if you want to give it another try

-OK squad, you all keep on going deep and I'm gonna spend some time with my radio.
-Ahhhhhhhhhh----
-Oops, maybe next squad will take care of themselves better.

Wow, I really enjoyed the experience. At the beginning, I was kinda lost, even with the written instructions, but I understand what to do when my squad died the first time. I reach the end at my third try and I was surprised by the conclusion. Simple gameplay mechanic but very efficient. Good job to the team !

That's a top 1 game for me *-*

I loved to play a role of an operator in Lethal Company. And that's a really cool implementation of that!

I ran into a softlocking bug when my squad doesn't listen to my commands (they went to a wrong direction, different from my coordinate queue). I hope it is fixed in a post-jam version (Didn't have time to check it out, spent around 30-40 min playing this, he-he). But I'll definitely play it later! I would love to see updates for this.

I really like a narration from a squad describing where are they now. Crystal caves, vines, dangerous creatures, etc. It's really comfy to hear all those dangers and interesting places from such a comfy place :D
There was one funny thing when they passed a crystal cave then run into a dead end, returned and talk about crystal cave again as they have a fish memory :D

Memorial screen with a digital candle is a fun detail :DD Love your game, good luck to you all!

This might be the most atmospheric and creatively executed game I’ve played in the jam. The voice lines, sticker system, and whole operator vibe really pull you in.

It looks great and is pretty fun but every path is a bad path? literally every path I try loses crew and eventually all of them. A no win scenario game? Is this a bug? there isn't a single path that is safe or worth going. I'm confused.

@whysguy52 yes, there is a good path, and the map isn't randomly generated so it's weird that you couldn't progress. Can you recall what coord you were stuck at?

The game is just so well-cooked! I love the graphics and the immersive ambience. 5/5

Really cool idea, and even better execution. At first I thought it was an escape room, but eventually found the button to spawn the crew. I probably worked through 90% of the invalid paths before the end. The ending was worth the wait. Nice work!

Good entry! I enjoyed the squads' idle banter.

Really solid game, I had a good time playing it

I really loved this. Great gameplay mechanic and ending. Like others said a bit slow retracing your steps when you are dying a lot, but a pretty minor gripe overall. Great amount of dialogue to flesh out the atmosphere.

Atmospheric! Really cool work with sound - played with headphones. 4 squads in a row killed unfortunately, but maybe I did't fully understand how to play :skull:

Really cool idea! To be stuck in a room with the squad taking risks is a smart way to keep the scope small. Gameplay feels good, but it gets boring when you get farther. It's missing some way to speed up known paths, or have some puzzle to figure out in the mean time maybe. The screens graphics are really nice, audio is great. Stickers are a really interesting idea, it's fun to use and useful. Congrats!