The GGJ25 post jam writeup

I’m no expert in giving out this feedback, and most of what I’ll write here will be my own personal thoughts and opinion of your games. Given in alphabetical order.

Agent Silky Whiskers: Operation Catnip – Award: “listen here kiddo”

This game was rather fun. Puzzling out what to look for by sneaking around, while also trying to figure out who the crony for grabbing the code, allowed me to see the potential in adding a chain of puzzles where the player gets to sleuth out a whole list of things. My only gripes really were that it took awhile to listen for the different parts of the phrase, that you could peak outside the room and see the skybox and that the music volume could not be turned down. Patching those things up would set the tone for a detective-like experience that’s worth further updates and more story development. Definitely liking what I’m seeing here.

Blobert’s Day: Bubble Survivor – Award: “yahhh yeah bahbahbahbah yahhh yeah yahhh”

This was fun to play! The sounds made me giggle, the sudden epic boss music and Hank, the upgrade use from collecting bubbles: they all worked well together. I feel like the movement speed could have been a little bit faster and that Hank also needed a health bar to show how much damage you’ll need to deal to conquer them. I can imagine a future revision where there may be creative ways to deal with a boss, multiple bosses, and/or a sequence of bosses in a row. For what it is, it totally scratches that bullet hell survival itch.

Boba Holdings – Award: “best game I suck at”

This was oddly funny as it had all these elements of being a calm game, but the nature of the game (and it being physics-based) itself is far from calm. I did like the addition of the ticker and live stock chart together with the atmosphere that tied everything thematically to boba and stocks. If development continues I would love to see those boba kittens more animated and maybe even mewing as the players interact with their straws and cup! There were slight issues with collision/UX, but that’s something one could fix after a game jam. On the whole, it’s got a great experience and feel for a quick party game.

Bubble Burst – Award: “awooo!”

The game had a good vibe and was easy to get into. I liked that it had an ending and looped easily back to the start. It may be an idea to include a second contextual button if more mini-games are included in future. There’s probably then a good way in to explore other interactions and to vary the goals of the mini-games further. There may be ones that involve holding the button down for a short while before release, or having to time multiple presses, or instructions to not press any button. This type of arcade experience usually has a lot of things one can try and figure out as intuition for such games are quite straightforward. In contrast to WarioWare I also like forgoing the use of the d-pad and relying simply on a button interaction (or two).

Bubble Yaga – Award: “the game to cackle to”

The thought and interaction behind this game really shines through because of the medium you play it with. I was surprised when using a tablet display to play this game. The graphics were super fitting, the black cats were charming additions, and the gameplay was bewitching. Matching properties as the concept works really well, and drawing a bubble around those ingredients was not frustrating at all. I suppose the next step would be to figure out how to end the game in a creative way. Perhaps a certain collection of ingredients collected would give a result of the game that describes some kind of outcome (e.g. “You’ve created a adjective, adjective verb potion!”). Then give the choice to continue playing if desired. I enjoyed this game a lot during the game show.

Bubbles, come home! – Award: “super monk- hamster ball”

The controls and game feel are working neatly in this game. Lots of visual details that were considered and it runs smoothly overall. In future if updates were to come, there should be a shared timer for the 2-player mode and the ability to wreck the home house too! For the single player I feel like the home target should be more randomly selected to allow for a greater replay value. And power ups! I believe the addition of some variation to playing will help give the spacebar more use maybe. The hamster is charming, and would like to also see more funny expressions from it in it’s ball. This entry has a great foundation for further improvement to get a lot more of the fun that one can have here. Great work!

Burst the Bubble (the housing bubble) – Award: “Your parents don’t understand what you do for a living”

The game runs smoothly, and the music is quite soothing given what the game’s ending is about. I can imagine a future version of this game where the pricing is less static from month-to-month, and where there may be mini-games whenever those popups occur, and/or having to manage personal finances on the side in more detail to drive in the point of the financial aspects of the game. Then the last thing to implement would be a score-based system so that players understand how well they’ve done for a run to make it more replayable. Overall it did feel well put together and somehow felt cozy to play in contrast to the topic presented.

Lovely Bubbly – Award: “most trumpety”

This game got me to have a good laugh! Everything is wonderfully exaggerated and ridiculous, from the music choices, the narrative, the wonky aim the player must perform and the visuals of being a server who can’t look up past the clients’ chests. While the disco portion could use some improvement in some way, I would happily keep the rest of this game the way it is just to retain it’s whimsy and fun. If you would continue development on this, I would then just urge you to build upon it with a change of scenery with maybe a different perspective and slightly different gameplay. Just keep that whimsy and I’ll be happy to play this again to see what other utterly silly tasks Bubba will have to perform. This was fantastic!

Malmö Traffic Controllers Present: Bubbleware – Award: “three button award”

I enjoyed the experience of this game. It was a bit of a shame I did not try this during the game show to really play the Comfort Bubble mini-game. A great start for more mini-games to make it in. The three button control scheme worked really well, the game runs a little slow but kinda acceptable (maybe the speed increase can be ramped up and tweaked), and it’s a solid experience overall. Eventually it could do with a little more juice and variety within each of the mini-games. A consideration of how the multiplayer aspect may be developed further too, as I feel that having more people involved in each game (with Comfort Bubble in mind) would give it that something extra. I liked the theme use in this entry, it really shows that there was quite some thought into tying into the different kinds of bubbles. The groovy tune absolutely fits.

NPFL-241 – Award: “where pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop”

Once the player realizes that they can upgrade their popping ability and that they can also move to a new sheet, this game suddenly becomes real addictive and satisfying all at once. It feels like an enticing fidget toy that one wants to be frantic with the longer one plays. The aesthetics and sounds fit so very well, and from the conversation I had with a group member, there was a lot of thought in adding more visual feedback and possibly more upgrades. Definitely worth continuing the game’s development and finding where players would best experience that flow. I suppose the only thing that may be missing is some kind of meter to show the air level (if still following the idea that the player is popping these to gain more air; it does not need to be air really).

Office Chameleon – Award: “work-life balance get”

The open nature of this game is what really makes this game interesting. I feel like there’s an indicator missing for how much progress one has made with any character, but otherwise this feels like a ‘short & sweet’ type of game that shouldn’t overstay it’s welcome. Both for it’s novelty and for the amount of player input made. One thing I would recommend if you do continue to work on this game is (at the end of the game) to cut away and show the character’s portrait together with a printout/report that outlines how the player did that run. The topics used and any other stats would allow for some kind of satisfying finality to it all. Given that the interactions themselves can become a little more complex, it could become a game that gets revisited from time-to-time just to openly explore what triggers each personality and what one can get away with.

PAPERAT – Award: “ratagotchi”

This game is incredibly cute in concept and looks. An interactive desktop pet; this type of idle game is something I would for sure get into no question. It looks like there’s potential in developing it further, where more activities happen and different situations may turn up. I suppose one suggestion (or at least, something I haven’t tried when playing) was to implement both the right and left clicks of the mouse, where right-clicking would pet it and left-clicking would pick up the rat. That then leaves other interactions where you would left-click said object or click and drag other objects on to the rat. I look forward to future versions of this where I get to have cute and adorable interactions with this pet.

Puppin Bubbles – Award: “i bubble therefore i am”

The game was silly fun, and somehow got me feeling a little mischievous. It took a few tries after succeeding to understand that the music tune had to complete in order for the winning condition to trigger. So a suggestion for the next version would be to somehow make that more obvious to the player I think. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the animations, the premise, the interactions generally, and what happens after. I would only slightly tweak the end bit so you can mess around a lot more before restarting the game again. There’s something in having to be put into a role where one gets to misbehave in some way. Good job!

Sticky Trials – Award: “ninja racer bubblegum edition”

This had me try a few times to beat my previous records and to see if there were any techniques and shortcuts for the level. I was pleased for each try that got better. It almost felt like this could do with a ‘previous best score to beat’ value and that would have had people play multiple runs for the two laps they had to go through. That aspect of fun was definitely the focus, so you’ve succeeded in bringing that forward! In further versions this could also do with a small % value telling the player how much of their run is complete, and multiple levels to choose from. A leaderboard could also be in consideration here. Either way, I had a good time trying to find the best way to tackle the route, and the overall vibe and feeling seems to fit just fine.

The Bubble Bender – Award: “crab hell metrovania”

A pretty alright experience! This has some interesting UX issues, like passing through the portal before defeating enemies locks you up and minimizing the game locks all the controls. I would suspend belief a bit more on the narrative if the kid was transported to an odd sandy beach-like planet and was attacked by a crab-like alien race that included crab-faced bipedal creatures shooting plasma bullets, who unfortunately have a weakness to the carbon dioxide the kid is able to generate. One thing I was hoping for was the ability to ‘bend’ my shots using the mouse cursor (and maybe that causes more resulting damage). That and a map would help immensely with knowing how far I’ve explored. I look forward in trying further versions of this game if those features make it in. I am big on crabs in games. And I actually can’t describe why! Nice work.

The Good, The Bad, The Bubbly! – Award: “unpop my heart”

Solid entry! I tried a whole bunch of times to both get different power-ups and survive for a longer period of time. This is a game where I would feel uncomfortable controlling the character with anything but a keyboard because of the tank controls. Props for implementing a leaderboard that one can reset! I’ve enjoyed the idea of grabbing tumbleweeds as pseudo-bubbles and the concept of surrounding oneself with bubbles as a form of defense against the prickly cactii. The one drawback I’ve experienced is that if you have multiple bubbles of the splitting type and one of them pops, the player suddenly can only shoot single file. Unsure if the same applies to other types of power-ups. I almost felt like power-ups generally should always enhance the amount the more one collects, while the enemies show up exponentially over time to ramp up the difficulty to pop such bubbles faster. Or at least that’s one way to challenge the player and vary the gameplay over time. I’m certain there’s other ways to keep things interesting of course. Well done!

Troubble – Award: “evil bubble vibes”

This is a good start to unleashing the eventual terror on to the world. One aspect that I found appealing already was that the music seemed to come from one part of the level. I flew around and spawned a massive amount of gray goops and already vibe with how it could become evil. The main character looks whimsical enough that I’d imagine a future version of this game where the gameplay involves a lot of mischievous yet nefarious interactions and decisions from the player that becomes part of an exceedingly large and overwhelming scheme. Or it could be something entirely different and my imagination has gotten the best of me. I look forward to an update sometime!

ubbleduction – Award: “for science!”

This is my own game, and this is for future me to read. The first mini-game has what feels like the most fun, but can do with improvement on each ‘hold’ card. Perhaps more actions could be done, and more dice can be added. While the game is played in stages, maybe a variant should somehow be played where all stages at once are active and where each player decides what is being contested. Removing two cards out of nine is taking too much away, so maybe the players randomly trade a single card to the other instead. The third mini-game needs the most work, where maybe resources from the previous games allow players to manipulate the results a bit more to their favor. Overall, I’m content that the game even plays considering that there was no playtesting involved.