Nappi

Nick's Dark Soul streams were a weird emotional rollercoaster. I felt really bad watching him be destroyed by the two bosses. Consequently, I was really happy for him when he finally beat them the next day. Most of the time, I felt incredulous about Nick being a real person. Nick, you are good content.

Sure did.

Good point! I mentioned it in the itch.io page, but many people probably download it directly from the Jam page, so they never get to see requirement. I'm new to itch.io and the separate Jam page thing confuses me a bit. I would definitely like to add mouse and keyboard support for the game. Shouldn't even be too hard; I just need to find the energy to do it. As this is still a two player game, one controller would still be required to actually enjoy main part of the game, but that would still be much better situation than the current one. I know that two xbox controllers is a really steep requirement for stupid jam stuff. :S

"'Lord of Cinder'? More like 'Lord of Good Times'!" As a side note: I have mentioned this before, but, ugggh, 'Lord of Cinder' is such a good title for a character in this game.

Thank you very much for trying the game out and for the comments! The player + goalie gave me some headaches, and I would need to play some multiplayer to actually see how broken the system is at some point. Someone else suggested separate controls for the goalie as well, and it might eventually be the way to go. I did not implement it yet, because (a) I felt like I didn't have the time/energy to figure it out during the jam, and (b) because I thought that fast enough switching mechanic might approximate the situation, since not many players would be dexterous enough to efficiently multitask between the player and goalie anyway. One of my ideas was to adjust the movement and shooting speed such that the defending player could easily move the goalie in a position where a direct shot would be difficult, and then proceed to try to steal or mask the ball with the player character. Again, balancing this will be difficult and require a lot of testing. I considered having more players on fixed lanes as well, but did not try it out due to time constraints. This would require quite good lane design and/or a sucking mechanic so that the ball wouldn't get stuck in a place where it cannot be picked by any other player (definitely doable, of course). As you say, it would be quite a different game, but super interesting. As for the visual stuff: I totally agree with the highlight thing and I will add colored highlight or something at some point. It is especially bad when your cursor remains on top of one of the options while your controller highlights another one. I can also see how the circle texture might be distracting. As you can see from my progress videos, I decided to add the background moving and flipping background texture at one point, because I didn't want the game to be quite so visually minimalistic. After that, the contrast between the textured background and the completely blank rink started to bother me and I hastily created a texture for the rink. As you say, this can be easily solved by having optional styles.

In case someone has downloaded this but not tested it yet, I uploaded a version on itch.io that is slightly less eerily quiet (i.e. I added some sound effects, and background music/sounds). I would like to do better job with music/sounds at some point, but I'm pretty burned out at the moment, so we'll see.

https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/StormyOtterStrawBeary This is a good stream.

This was my first time participating in the Wizard Jam (or any jam for that matter) too, and I liked the experience a lot! I prefer to have the diversifiers/"rules" as sources of inspiration and not restriction, and the jam was very good in that regard. I also agree that not having to base the game around an episode title was a good thing. As for the relaxed atmosphere vs never completing the game: I tried my best to complete the game within the two weeks, and mostly succeeded, i.e. the game is fully playable, but I would still like to add music and some sound effects (probably today actually!). However, if for some reason, I would have had to miss one weekend of jamming, I might not have been able to finalize the gameplay and therefore release the game in time. Estimating the time it takes to complete something is really hard, especially if you are making your first game or using an engine for the first time, and it is not always possible make the deadline simply by cutting content (e.g. when the key systems are not implemented). Therefore, I think accepting late submissions is very important in maintaining the relaxed, "everyone is welcome" atmosphere. Of course, participants should still aim for, and be encouraged to, have a more or less complete project by the end of the jam. Anyway, thanks a lot for jam organizers for their hard work and for everyone here (and on Slack) for their kind words and support! Although, I was occasionally frustrated and often tired, this was a very nice experience for me.

Thanks a lot guys! The game is now released. I will still add music, controller selection, and color options at some point, but I'm too tired to continue now. Please, let me know if the game crashes and burns on launch. The story mode is a bit of a mess, but I still wanted to include it, because it was one of the earliest ideas I had when I started to plan this project. https://ktomi.itch.io/live-from-the-past

The technical implementation of the grading system sounds really interesting. Thank you for sharing! I like the idea of trying to figure out what each critic likes the most. Reminds me of Day of the Tentacle and Escape from Monkey Island where you had to impress the three judges in a beauty pageant and a diving competition.

Oh my god! That is absolutely fantastic!

That trail thing is still very much a work in progress. I just wanted to see if it could be made with the Particle System in Unity.

Really happy to hear that! I left the previous stream running in the background as I was (Wizard) Jammin' yesterday, and it was really rough at times.

Looking forward to this!

Really strong style! I like it a lot!

Yup! Excellent work!

Did some tweaking, and played around with the title screen / main menu animations

Niiice!

Oh god, what are those things?!

This looks fantastic and relaxing! Like journey on skis.

That is hypnotic!

I have implemented nearly all of the gameplay features I was planning on. I still have to implement passing as a goalie (regular "passing" is essentially the same as switching lanes, but the goalie can't switch lanes, so I'm thinking that when goalie passes the ball, it passes the player as well). Lots of tweaking still to be done too. For example, as I was posting the video I noticed that the relative size of the puck and the player does not remain constant. I also need to play a lot with movement speed, shooting force curves, drag, etc. I hope I will actually get to the ludonarrative dissonance element of the game before this Jam is done. :S

This just keeps getting prettier and prettier!

Holy Dot Cobbler! Way to make an entry!

Title screen test. I'm not sure I'm focusing on the right stuff here...