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This might be my favorite game of the jam! Each new level is unexpected but immediately intuitive, leading to lots of "aha" moments. The art is beautiful and the animations clearly communicate the mechanics. And in PICO-8, no less! Simply wonderful.

Love the theme (makes sense, given my game took a similar approach)! The writing is snappy and funny; the end was especially clever. The mechanic is okay, but felt disconnected from the narrative, and focusing on so many fast-spinning wheels at a time was a little dizzying.

Very well put together! I love the theme, and the simple mechanics come together nicely to give a sense of tension. I like the audio cues and morse code mechanics especially. It's definitely challenging; it took me two tries to finish the first level. Avoiding torpedoes felt the most challenging, and also kind of the least interesting, if I'm honest. It didn't feel like there way any rhyme or reason to the angle you need to hit to avoid them, so it came down to flinging the steering wheel around until the line turned green. It works, but for the main mechanic it felt a little flat. But you've nailed putting together an atmosphere with simple mechanics and assets. Simulators are typically get complex and hard to get into, and you've shown that it doesn't need to be. My hat is off to you!

It never clicked for me. I played around with it for maybe half an hour, also in the sandbox, but I'm still confused about how it works. I tried replicating the setup with the clock from the tip, but I didn't understand how to place them without breaking. I'd have loved a few examples on how the various pieces are meant to be used.

Thanks for the kind words, and the comparison to The Roottreed are Dead (one of my favorite games)! I agree the delivery could benefit from something other than running text dumps.

It's only during the tweening that the overlap happens, not after it's settled. I can see how judging whether something is free to rotate would be a different experience without the animation.

Thanks, glad you enjoyed the linking mechanic! It's fun to see others start with similar ideas, yet end up with such different games.

I'm a sucker for a time travel story, so I naturally enjoyed this a lot. I like the story (the references hit for me). It's a shame the rewind mechanic isn't used more.

This is intriguing! The dialogue flows naturally, and the atmosphere is great. I like typing in the response options myself, makes me feel more engaged. I've wishlisted it; I'm curious to see where this goes.

Nice little minigames. Shows how simple a fun mechanic can be.

I liked the 2nd one the best; the mouse controlled felt most natural to me.

Interesting how your game and mine comes from similar ideas! One of my early concepts was similar to this, before I switched to switching words instead of the whole headline.

I like the phrasings, and the ideas of flipping vs. softening vs. removing altogether. The moving eye at the top was a cool addition.

No worries, motion controls are hard. Perhaps more visual feedback could help finding the groove.

It's a text-heavy game for sure, I understand it's not for everyone. Thanks for playing anyway.

I like your highlight suggestion, really fits the idea of scrutinizing the articles.

Thanks! Haha I love your view on the story. Glad you enjoyed it.

Thanks! I'm surprised how many people went with the "spin doctor" theme. I'll be sure to check out your take on it.

Continuous circles. Was that not the intention?

Thanks so much for the high praise! I'll remember that tip. UI stuff is something I could use more practice with.

Very creative use of the theme! The unsettling art, the thumping music, and the rhythm of the hits come together to form a mesmerizing trance I hadn't expected.

Three nitpitcks: 

1. Once, I closed the ship before buying anything because my lizard brain had been conditioned to hit the first white block (i.e. the 'leave shop' block).

2. The purple guy (final boss?) was too much of a difficulty spike for me.

3. Pausing the indicator when you miss screws up the rhythm for the other blocks, causing you to miss more and get stuck in a spiral. Maybe that's intentional.

I'm not a fan of auto clickers, but doesn't pausing the automatic flow of cash with an upgrade screen kind of go against the general idea of an auto clicker?

Very cute! Shows you don't need much to make a fun game.

The upgrades could use more visual oomph. If it weren't for their description, I wouldn't have noticed they had different effects. Especially late-game I was just clicking upgrades without bothering to read them.

I'm personally not a fan of auto clickers, but the variety of upgrades and the visuals was nice. Good use of the theme.

Very creative! A simple mechanic with more variety in the levels than I would've guessed. The visuals and audio could obviously stand to be improved, but the basic concept is solid.

Funny, and charmingly executed, but I struggle to call this a game.

I'm curious: If you had a few more days to work on this, what gameplay mechanics would you add first?

Amazing atmosphere. The clunks of the controls, the puttering of the engine, the creaking of the metal cage; they all come together beautifully.

That said, I feel the gameplay needs balancing. I was overdriving the engine just for the sake of something to do. When the threat actually arrived, I had just pulled the lever to vent and stop the engine, so there was nothing I could and the moment fell flat. I'd already gotten bored of the mechanics by then, so I felt no motivation to try again.

You have a diamond in the rough, here. It just needs polishing. Considering you built this in 7 days for a game jam, that's honestly the best possible nitpick I could give you. I hope you keep working on this.

The art is great, and the mounting chaos is really well done. Most minigames are appropriately simple but "I need your attention NOW". Though I never figured out what to do with the wire box -- clicking it didn't seem to do anything.

It's... boring? There's a lot going on visually, but player input boils down to pressing a button when prompted. I half expected this to turn into a cookie clicker. The number-go-up dopamine hit kept me going for 10 minutes (much longer than I expected), but in the end this felt like something I'd find at a casino.

It's ironic that Juniper Dev asked people to stay away from gambling mechanics, yet there's an abundance of games that use all the classic slot machine addiction tricks.

The more absurd it got the harder I laughed! This was great. If I had to nit-pick, it's more of a visual novel than a game, since there's no real challenge.

I like the theme (similar to mine, actually), and the puns made me chuckle, but I never really figured out the mechanics. There's a lot of fluffy text repeating what's also been said or is already on-screen, so my eyes glazed over quickly. Nothing much seemed to happen in terms of story development, so I was just going through the motions of spinning wheels and clicking through. If there's any player choice, I missed it.

I like the spin on the theme (predictably, since my game has a similar theme), but I'll be honest: I had no clue what was going on. I found the mechanics opaque and hard to grasp. Results felt random, making the choices seem inconsequential. I walked away feeling like I'd played a particularly strange slot machine. There's the suggestion of a deeply strategic game, and maybe it is, but (ironically) it wasn't communicated well.

I like the concept of the interlocking "rings" so the answer sequences isn't obvious. It wasn't obvious to me which rings could be rotated when, though, because they still clip through each other in 'valid' rotations. There was some frustration from having to sit through the rotation animation on every click. Puzzle games like this should respond quickly so it doesn't bog down the player's thought process.

Fun, wacky, love the theme. The physics felt inconsistent. I was expecting billiards-like mechanics, but it felt very unpredictable, not really in a fun way. I'm still not sure what the spin meter, the powerups, or anything really did. I brute-forced my way to the end more than anything, really.

I couldn't get above 20% no matter what I tried. Is there a trick to spinning in just the right way? It tried make bigger or smaller circles faster or slower with my mouse, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference.

Regardless: good job setting an atmosphere and stakes with very minimal assets! 

Thanks! Especially thrilled everyone seems to like the audio. I might do more with that in the future.

I agree on the music. I spent a whole 20 minutes (I know, I know: in this economy?) browsing royalty-free songs, but wasn't able to find anything that really fit.

It's cute! I like the way the boxes swing around on your hook. I was confused when I couldn't find any more boxes to deliver, and I didn't get the difference between the green and red boxes. I was expecting the controls to be more physics-based, something with momentum. As it stands, it feels more like a crane than a helicopter, and I was mostly just holding buttons until I arrived. I honestly had the most fun just trying to hook up the boxes.

I enjoyed it! The theming and visuals made me chuckle. I like the mechanics, but they are punishingly hard. I couldn't complete any level beyond the tutorial.

Ticks all the boxes for a basic game, but feels cookie-cutter. There's nothing new or interesting to hold my attention. The visual effect on the planet is great, though.

The hookshot is cool, and the idea of rotating the levels combines with it nicely. But having no way to reset other than to reload the game is cumbersome.

No worries. I knew going in this would be niche. Thanks for your honesty.

Thanks so much! I always love doing the audio :)

I love narrative games, but was never a fan of visual novels with their branching dialogue trees. I'm particularly tickled by games like Return of the Obra Dinn, The Roottrees are Dead, and The Case of the Golden Idol, where the story is linear and the engagement comes from the mechanics. I wanted to explore other mechanics that can do that.

The idea of the player writing headlines to match newspaper articles is one I've had for a while, and it just happened to line up with Juniper Dev's game jam theme of "Spin to win" (when interpreted sufficiently liberally). 'Spin doctor' is a slang term for someone who manipulates public perception, framing stories in a way that suits them.

The writing is only so-so, if I'm being honest, but I think the mechanics have promise. I was worried writing all the headline options and the feedback system would quickly spiral into a combinatoric nightmare, but it actually came quick and easy to me. As usual, it was the programming that took the longest. The art is very minimal (by virtue of the game jam's time limit), but it's amazing how much immersion a few choice sound effects can bring.

https://zekkox.itch.io/gunktown-gazette

Always happy to hear feedback!