itch.io

There's a lot of clever and interesting stuff here! I think the mechanic of observing enemies to "identify" them and learn their symbols is really cool. It was fun and exiting to try and sneak around close to some dangerous-looking monsters long enough to get their symbol.

The spell casting system was very fun to play around with, and it looked great. It was possible to make some powerful stuff! I like that feeling of being over-powered for a while and then encountering a dangerous enemy that brings you back to earth, hehe

The dungeons were nice and compact. Not too crowded but there was always interesting stuff close by. Having many stairs was a good idea, I don't miss having to search for them!

First of all, I love the art and the animations! The characters are adorable, and so well drawn! 

The dice mechanic was fun and interesting, especially with the loot and swapping the abilities on the different sides. I like how there was an element of randomness to the game but the re-rolls still allowed for quite a lot of tactics. 

I'm thankful for the generous undo-system! It was nice to be able to roll back a whole turn and try a different approach. 

It was fun to play and I wouldn't have minded if it was a bit longer. I would happily have played a few more levels. 

It looked great and was such a cool concept. I played it yesterday and enjoyed it but couldn't win. Tried again today and beat it. It was really fun! I'm so terrified of the Admins XD

Great job, it's a game I'm going to remember

This was great! I had a ton on fun!

I loved all the levels of strategic decisions; choosing your party, distributing upgrades and exploring the dungeon. The way the doors and the graph of the dungeon worked was really clever and intutive! The locked rooms were great too.

I think the difficulty was just right, I beat it on the second try with a messenger, a tree and a bulwark. It felt fun and challenging throughout.

Wow, really cool! I loved the concept, such a great idea! It looked great and was very fun. There's a lot of strategy involved and I love how such a minimalistic game can result in gameplay that is so complex.

The procedural text was awesome.
Forgive me. Four pebbles, maybe six. Too much!

Haha, thank you!

Thank you! We're happy to hear you liked the game! Sorry for the lack of secrets, haha. Great idea, though :D

Loved it! :D Nice illustrations!
It was fun searching for all three endings, they were all very funny!

Wow, thank you so much for the video! Really appreciated it :D It was fun seeing you play our game and react to it!

Sorry about the second puzzle being confusing! It was good seeing you play it to understand the issues with it. I've tried improving it a bit so I hope future players will get a better experience.

Thank you for playing the game and for letting us know about your video! :)

Hi! Thank you for playing the game. Sorry about the puzzle being a bit confusing, thanks for letting us know! I've added puzzle solutions to the description above, if you're curious. :)

Edit: And I tried making it a bit more intuitive now, by moving some stuff around. We much appreciate the feedback!

Haha, thank you so much for the kind words and for the encouragement! :D

Thank you! We're flattered by the comparison :)

It's good that you felt that you wanted to play more! I think you're right, the last puzzles got a bit to easy. And prone to being solved by accident too. I think I got too caught up thinking about shaders and stuff, and forgot to actually design the puzzles in the end. :P

Woah, awesome! You know I like grids, and I really enjoyed the game! :D

The concept was great and I enjoyed figuring out the rules 

Everything was well animated and there was nice feedback on all actions. I think that contributed to making it so easy to understand.

I really liked the progression from fairly simple interactions to more and more complex puzzles.

I got stuck for a long while on level 7. Kept hitting 32 but could not get 33, grrr... I got it in the end, though. And I had fun figuring it out!

The music was cool, it fit the game well and kept being fun to listen to even after I had been playing for a while.

Nice sound effects too!

Great game, guys!

Oh, and it looks great (as always ;)!

Hi Vexagon!

Sure, that would be aweseome. We would be honored! If you do, let us know so we can check it out.

Glad that you enjoyed the game and had fun searching for corn seeds ;)

Thank you!

I’m sorry about that. I needed to find some time to export the tracks from the game and upload them to SoundCloud. I know I can be quite slow at replying in general though. My apologies.

Hi! I'm flattered that you asked for a release. I've made an EP with the tracks here: https://soundcloud.com/vidarn/sets/mirror-city-ost

As for my game making tools, I'm using a little engine I've written myself over the years. It's programmed in C and uses OpenGL as a graphics library.

The art and music are also made using some tools I've written myself. They are quite simple but I find them nice to use since they are built directly into the engine and I don't have to export/import files to get stuff into the game.

Yes I did, so I’m happy you liked it 😁 And thank you for the comment.

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you for playing the game and for the great question! Sorry in advance for the long reply :P

This game was made for a game jam where the whole game had to be made in 48 hours. I love the improvisational nature of doing challenges like that with no planning in advance.

Before the jam begun I had no idea what I was going to make, and I had to work so focused during those hours that there was not much time to stop and think.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not sure I can describe the lore behind the game in any detail. It's more the product of a stream of inspiration than a well thought out design.

As for making a game inside a mirror, the idea came from remembering those children's play mats with roads. I remember they would have the same roads and houses repeated seamlessly several times and I was fascinated with the idea of a city like that, which repeated infinitely.

Later, when adding the spire I remember that my thoughts were about the nature of society and how we always strive to build more and more advanced things, to the point that we eventually start ignoring or even destroying the environment we live in.

I'm not saying the game is intended to convey anything like that. But since you asked, it was where my mind was at the moment.

If you had another interpretation when playing the game, I would consider that just as valid.

Sorry if the answer was more vague than you hoped for! Thanks again for taking the time to play the game and leaving such a nice comment.

Haha 😆 Thank you so much for playing the game!

Thank you! Great jamming with you too :D

I had a lot of fun playing this! The Slime Keeper guy was very... intense. I love that he keeps piling up the slimes you collect on the counter before him.

The FP system was cool and I felt it had a lot of implications on the gameplay, like the fact that moving was much more expensive after attacking.

It was fun trying to figure out how to best combine the weapons you got to deal as much damage as possible. The order in which you used them was very important. I guess you want to use the ones with low FP first and then switch to the ones with higer FP cost.

It would have been nice being able to switch weapons with fewer clicks I guess, since it was something I found myself doing several times every turn in order to maximize the damage. That's just a nitpick though. I think you did a really nice job on the UI. There's even a mini map! And the hover effect when moving or attacking made it easy to figure out how to play the game.

Maybe highlighting the weapon icon when in attack mode and the character portrait when in movement mode would be a nice little addition to make it more intuitive. It took me a while to figure out how that worked.

There's a lot of depth to the gameplay and I liked how the enemies were smart enough to move out of the way so their buddies could surround you, it made the combat more strategic and meant that you had to kite them into choke points.

Great entry! And super cool that you did it all in vanilla html5

Wow that's very kind of you to say, thank you!

I haven’t read that one, but it looks awesome. Thank you for the recommendation!

Sure, I'd be happy to! There's a windows build on the page now. I got it running on mine if I set it to use proton, I hope it should work for you as well.

There's a bit of latency on the sound effects in the windows version, and there's no anti-aliasing on the graphics. But the upside is that the game pad support I added during the jam seems to be working, which it didn't on the web version.

I could upload the html as a zip too I guess, is it easy to play downloaded html games on the steam deck?

Wow, I'm really impressed by the level of polish. The sprites look great and the intro set the mood well. Everything is so crisp and the animations are a nice touch.

The systems in the game are quite deep and I enjoyed playing it through to the end.

This was really cool! The introductory text was good at setting the mood and the whole game has a really nice atmosphere

There's a lot of attention to detail, like how the interface changes if you play in landscape or portrait mode. I also realized it works on a phone, which is awesome and I think fits the game really well.

I enjoyed playing through the game, it had a nice length and challenge level. I didn't have much need to use the time travel mechanic though, which is a shame since it's such a great concept.

I liked having to figure out the meaning of the symbols and I think you had just the right number of different objects to make it fun and interesting, but not too confusing.

I didn't understand the rules behind the movement of the enemies though. At first I thought they were just stationary (but rotating every other turn). But then sometimes they move. And do they move towards me, or do they mirror my movement? I'm color blind, so maybe there was some state in the colors that I didn't pick up on?

I also had some issues with the time travel menu. The scrolling issue was not a problem when playing in fullscreen, but the menu still behaved a bit strange. When going up or down in the menu it would sometimes close and move my character instead. And sometimes all the options would show the same turn I think? It was a bit hard to figure out what was going on.

The game was pretty and fun to play, and I love the concept of the little device.

Haha, thank you! The tag system was.. inspired by other games I like, so feel free to carry it forward. It would be interesting to see your take on it!

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you, that’s very kind! I’m glad you enjoyed the game

Hi! Thank you for playing the game! I afraid there's no way of modifying the walls, sorry.

The only way of getting a different layout is starting over from scratch, since the cafe is randomized each time you reload the page.

Thank you so much!

You’re welcome! Thanks for giving the game another go

Ah, I'm sorry about the confusion. It's not very clear, but you need to solve all the previous locations for them to arrive at the house. In other words, you need to get a blue spiral symbol instead of a red X at all locations except the rightmost one on the map. Then, the seed and the creatures will appear at the house.

I believe you have the lake left to solve? A hint is that the "shovel" is supposed to be an oar.

Hi! Sorry about that. I've made an "improved" version of the game. Hopefully, the keypad should be easier to understand now.

Thanks for playing the game!

I’m sorry about the puzzle being difficult to understand. That’s definitely a failing on my part, not on yours as a player.

I don’t want you to think that you’re bad at puzzles, it’s just that this one was not properly explained. I hope the solution in the game description was helpful at least.

I’m glad you liked the game. Thank you for the comment!