Beautiful game. Games like this make me really wish I had better graphics for my game. I also enjoyed your gameplay, but I don't like some of your collision choices. I understand that I can't walk through hay piles, but it felt a little bit like they had been left directly in the path of movement to walk towards an enemy. Also didn't care for the archers ability to shoot me when they are off screen. However at least the actually enemy damage levels didn't make it feel unfair.

Minions are so cute! Especially their voice. But I like exploding minions too.

@theseusinabottle Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I found out too late that hay bales and even other stuff like river edges doesn't work well with collision system. I wish I would make hay passable (and smashed when doing that) but the hourglass run out! I wish I had one hour extra to fix stuff like that + enemies :)

@jisam I wanted to make minions mechanics fun so I'm really glad you liked it! <3

Awesome pixel art! The webgl version is glitching a bit where I can see black lines in between tiles. Some collisions are annoying like it was already said. But otherwise good job!

@barrier Yes, I didn't set the proper resolution for WebGL which would worm with PPU size. Maybe I should do a quick fix for that. Thanks for feedback :)

The game is absolutely amazing!! It is really beautiful, and the core mechanic is quite interesting (lol, it reminds me about the Overlord), great job:)

Looks really good, and plays nice. The minions are really cute, too.

@erendelous Overlord was for sure inspiration behind it - that and Myth + Cannon Fodder :) Thanks for the amazing response!

@feilkin Hehe, thank you :)

This is fun little game. Both the graphics and music is really good. The controls was overall good, but I sometime felt that the minions did not do what I expected them to do. Overall a very good LD game. Well done.

I really like the game! Good job, keep it up! :joy:

Awesome. Feels great. Looks amazing. I love the critters bopping around on their own. It can be a bit tough to slide around objects, but that's my only real complaint. Really nicely done.

Well... I think this is my favourite thus far! Aside from some little issues with the minions, and finding the keys a bit unweildy, you did a fantastic job here. High scores all round, looks, sounds and plays GREAT!


A solid and satisfying experience that left only wish for more. Good job!

impressive job !!
the command systeme is a good idea maitain click to force minion catch enemies , but space key isnt really the best i think

edit your right : i have no idea where put this maybe when up key ?

I did the penance ! And wished it was longer.

Very nice graphics and controls, game is smooth and ennemies are very good at aiming (damnit !).
Sound is quite immersive and it was fun to play. great entry.

Solid Entry, fun to play with and Nice graphics!
I hope there can be more interaction between player/environment with the minions like they can block an arrow for me or maybe the player is shooting the minion out but not the magic ball.

@jk5000 Thanks! Yes, minion control isn't perfect because I have hard scatter offset which won't allow them to go directly to the mouse cursor. I'll be fixing this in the after compo version for sure :)

@daniel-abeleira : Glad you enjoyed it and I'm happy to hear you did the penance! :smile:

@justalocalhero Oh thanks! :wink: Yeah, I didn't have time for proper pathfinding (had problems with setting up NavMesh) so minions & enemies just slide... Hopefully I can fix it in after-compo version.

@arkiruthis :bow: :bow: :bow: It means a lot, thank you!! Yeah, the keys are not the best, didn't have enough time to experiment with the controls :(

@sun-wukong
@marcellus
:heart: :heart: :heart:

@egos : Thanks, I'm glad the mechanics work in a fun way! I feel weird for space key as well, what would you suggest? I had it bound to Q before that but that forced you to drop A or W in some cases.

@goldranger Thank you! :smile: There was a plan for deeper mechanics like using minions for protective wall, constructing hellish-cannon etc. but I simply ran out of time. Minions can't be killed currently but I had a plan for Farmer with a Scythe that would smash minions in a whirlwind way. Oh so many options!

Thanks for the feedback, hopefully I can attend to after LD version soon!

Very nice looking and fun game. I would love to play more levels:)

@luker128 I'm glad you enjoyed! :wink: Yeah, I would also love to make more levels and maybe one day I'll update LD version.

Great job, real polished and art style is a treat.

Great entry! Really nice pixelart. My only issue is the haypiles being unable to be destroyed as my minions liked to get stuck in them. But I got through and it was fun.

Thanks @adventureislands ! Yeah, haypile was a bad decision...hopefully I will fix that for after LD event. It would be much better to just destroy them when walking over :)

Fun Game, really like the art style. Would love to see this expanded

I love the core gameplay loop, had fun playing it

I really liked this representation of controlling and exploding your minions. I'd like to see more things blow up, just because. Nice job!

Dang a little short, but really nice work! Great classic aesthetics with pikmin style gameplay, really enjoyable. keep up the great work.

Evil cute satanic Pikmin.

I really liked the name of the game being a twisted version of penance.

So for a game jam I think this is pretty great. The concept is simple and well executed and yet it must have been hell to get the presentation this good while also having a full level of what would be a game. So by that standard I can only say well done.

But the more interesting way I like to look at these jams is to imagine what a full game born from them would be. The only problem I have is the way you acquire minions: having them placed in cages near the enemies and buildings you use them on means that the amount available must always be balanced or else you could get stuck. So unless the game is a bunch of quickfire rooms (think Super Meat Boy) so that you can allow for mistakes and compensate with quick restarts, players will quickly learn that they can run their minions into whatever they like without the risk of running out.

This makes the minions sort of like a weapon durability problem. If the game is the most interesting when using them, then resorting to a permanent last resort weak weapon would be a bit crap. It was definitely more fun to run your minions into stuff and make them explode rather than shoot. Maybe a constantly spawning horde is the way to go, with dead bodies adding to your respawn rate--so demonic necromancy. Your corpse army could act like a regenerating health shield that enemies can pick away at like peeling layers from your horde that you also expend by sending out, and you have to balance periods of evasion so that your demon zombie numbers can recover. Corpses making this max number higher (sort of like Katamari Damacy) could also be used to gate off areas in levels until you've done enough elsewhere to collect corpses, or maybe acquire special versions of the minions that are being swept along in your horde.

The game already makes you feel powerful in a great way as your sweep your mouse ahead with the right mouse button held down. It feels like you're waving your minions along with orders and orchestrating chaos. Good job.

See the title screen I knew, not only I a person like this game:)

Very good. One of my prefered compo :-)

Very cool, impressive game with a high level of polish. I did want more content after finding the book :)

@thisismyjam Woah, what an extensive review! Your thoughts were exactly what I needed through the weekend because at some point I really wasn't sure which direction to choose. Minions were just meant to fight, then you could explode them freely without attaching them and then there was this idea to explode them in order to get powers for yourself. What I did was the final decision for sake of simplicity and I spammed cages around because I didn't have proper tutorial implemented :( But what you suggested is great, relying more on minions than your powers because it really feels great. I might do something tiny out of the game after the competition and your ideas will help me a lot. Thank you again for all the kind words and the time for brainstorming!

@morriss Haha :smile:

@jihem It means a lot, thank you! :bow:

@jhell Believe me, I also wanted to make more. Plan was to break into the fortress and fight inside, causing chaos. But empty walls and a book is everything I could do. Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it :grin:

@enver-arco : Thanks, me too :wink:

@ballo : That's the most important thing to me, I'm glad it worked!

@arkinrev : Haha, yeah, I'm glad I decided to go for exploding minions at the end, it really has its own charm.

@walterp : Woah, thanks, it means a lot and I will do my best :bow:

I did the penance! Such a fun game, one of my favorites for this LD. I ran around trying to sacrifice my minion as little as possible. In the end 8 remained. Graphics and sounds are great as usual from you. Great job!

@blodyavenger : I'm curious to see your next games. I have just subscribed to Courier of the Crypts newletter ;-)

Well designed area with resources balanced/placed carefully, graphics and sound are lovely. Minion ai felt smooth and mostly bug-free. Wish there was more of an ending though.

Great level. Could make a great full game. Am I understanding the note on the itch page correctly that you will not continue work on this?

I really loved this game, I wish there was more content to keep playing. The take on the theme was really great and well adapted as a gameplay mechanic. The sacrifices were soooooo cute!!! :)

Lovely game :). At first I didn't realize you had to hold down the mouse to send the minions to buildings / enemies so it was super hard 😂. But once I realized that, it was a breeze. Cool graphics and very juicy sound effects. Nice!

Great game! Amazing graphics and a really cool idea too. I especially liked the few "optional" areas to get more servants, which makes the game a little more interesting than go forward and kill enemies. I encountered a glitch in the web version where I would get stuck moving in the last direction that I held even after releasing the key (probably just me since no one else got it).

@vatigo Good for you! :raised_hand: You saved a lot, I guess that's the record, I never really tried to go carefully through the level saving on minions. Too bad I didn't have much time to carefully design a level with that in mind. I'm glad you enjoyed and thanks for the compliment, it means a lot :heart:

@jihem Thank you!! I hope I can feed you curiosity, Courier of the Crypts will be also out quite soon :wink:

@arity : Thank you for such a great response, I'm happy you enjoyed the game! The game might be slightly too easy and more proper pathfinding wouldn't hurt but it seems it works for this version :smile:

Actually I would love to make more out of the game in the future but currently I'm busy with other projects I'm working on. At least I would like to make a proper campaign - short but proper. It seems like there's interest after all :)

@morg Thank you again for playing and for the wonderful feedback, it was nice watching the stream! And I'm glad you found minions cute!! :wink:

If anyone wants to watch, you can hop to [MorgStream Twitch channel and see the game in action - link will lead you to the Penance gameplay part)](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/345326966?t=00h22m44s).

@bradur Woops, yeah, I totally lacked time for the proper tutorial. Everything was planned but I was away for extra 6 hours on Sunday which is plenty of lost time 😐 I'm glad you enjoyed it though!

@boundtotheearth Cheers, it's really nice to hear such a positive feedback on the game! The extra hidden places should have tents with thugs but yeah, time got me. As for the bug, my friend found it but I couldn't reproduce it so maybe I'll get to it for after the LD version :smile: Thank you for leaving the comment and the kind words!

@blodyavenger : good news ! :-)

An interesting game with a kind of mechanics. I put a rating) Please rating and me, thanks in advance)

Great game! I really like the concept and I think you applied it very well. I did find some bugs where the minions got stuck. Also the colliders of the environment are a bit too wide currently IMO.

@mateusboga Yes, that's because I don't use any navigation - I couldn't make the Navigatio mesh working so they minions are just going straight to the player so if there is wall, they won't really go around.
And yes, colliers are too big on some spots, especially on the river part.

Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you enjoyed the game :slight_smile:

Great job! The gameplay feels round.

Love the art!

Could you please set your game to “Windows Download” on your itch page? I would like to play it via Itch client but it shows as “not available on Windows”.

@lucecyl Thank you :slight_smile:
@kciwsolb Thanks, I appreciate it!
@cerno-b : Sorry about that, I totally forgot to mark it as such, it should be fixed now. Thank you for letting me know.

Absolutely amazing game. The amount of polish is unbelievable.

The pixel graphics are wonderful, the music sets the atmosphere perfectly. I assume you took your sfx from a generator tool but the choices you made are amazing, it doesn't really show at all. The text popups of your minions are a nice touch.

The tech aspect is top notch as well, you tick all the boxes here: Camera motion, particle effects, following behavior, tiling, and everything plays very very smoothly.

I only have two very minor issues:

One is that the range of shots and the vision range of the enemies may have been tuned a smidge tighter. Specifically I think the archers fired at me when I couldn't see them yet, and the farmers could easily be picked off before they saw me. This could have been prevented by reducing archer sight and increasing farmer sight, at the same time reducing the mage's range a bit and adding a visual indicator, like stopping the crosshair if it moves out of bounds. I think that way you have a good indication about where you can hit, and you can see all enemies that can hit you, which would have made the game a little more fair to both the player and the enemies.

The other minor issue is that I would have loved to play this in hard mode. The game is very easy as it is (which is perfectly fine for a game jam for inclusion reasons), but another challenge or two definitely would have kept me playing for a while

As it is, short but very sweet entry, easily one of my favorites so far.


Short, but to the point, I guess. I "did the penance"! Hooray!

My main (pretty minor) visual complaint is the rendering seams between some of your tiles. It's not a huge deal at all, just sort of off-putting.

My main design suggestion is that this sort of game seems like it would work much better with individual (checkpointed) levels as opposed to one large map. Feels like it would be much easier to balance the difficulty as well.

Good job!

Did very well on pixle art. The human kind enemy and the minon of the cultist animation are great with good hit feed back with the player.
Sfx is great when the flesh broken.

By the way, I'd like to know more about your camera following. How did you make that, it is really smooth and make the whole game more dynamic.