Great graphics, fun and well polished mechanics, simple fun core gameplay and easy to pick up. Pretty much the perfect jam game.

Yes, CONSUME!

I didn't realize I was going to be played as the Keep, that's hella smart! Not a single one escapes :D

This game is brilliant.
Way to addictive.
I have no negative thing to say about it.

Very nice and fun game! Loved it!

@minibobbo @jamesolivermusic. This game is AWESOME! Super fun game play and design, and fantastic 8-bit music by James. Great levels, love the background changes and audio design: love the 8-bit downsampled geese and wildlife sounds. Everything is perfect. I'll be coming back to play this again for fun! :)

i loved!!

This is definately one of my favorite games so far in this jam

I love the animation and the gameplay!
5/5 Theme.

The food are always run in a straight line, what if they can fly or sometime jump?

Great fun! Well done! Really liked the variety of guys to eat and the ramp of difficulty. Could be a casual game that deserves further work and a release with more levels etc. One of the best I've played so far.

Really fun game, graphics and audio were great! I really liked how it was clear that the different edible guys have different abilities, so you could plan your ambush more easily! It was also really nice how intuitive the gameplay was, no need for a tutorial, etc.

@wxzuir Did you make it to the construction workers? They jump (and are quite annoying). Flying guys were actually an idea I had very late on the last day and didn't have time to implement them correctly, so oh well. It would be nice to have something happening on the top of the screen, wouldn't it?

@liam Glad you liked it! I've been experimenting with ideas for touch because it could be fun to fling guys with your finger on a smart phone. Extra levels for web would be easy.

@joewolf Thanks! I tried to make the different guys different enough visually that you could plan out ahead of time, until you get to the trees and the scaffolding that blocks your view. I was playing around with the idea of an endless procedurally generated escalating mode but figured a tighter limited game was better for the jam release.

Wow! It's really funny) I like it) Effects and graphics style are very cool,mechanics are simple and funny, but controls can be more intuitive. Nice work!

This is probably one of my favorite titles so far! The music and graphics are PRISTINE and tie together nicely. I legitimately could *not* stop laughing while playing this. The quips the NPCs have are the perfect icing on this cake. Great entry!

Amazing! The graphics, the audio, the gameplay! As you said in your blog post, it **IS** really polished!

Lol I would not have expected a game like this for this jam. It was a lot of fun and very juicy! great job.

One of the best I've ever played. Good job!

I loved the soundtrack. I actually realized juggling the people is more efficient then stomping them. Great game!

Great game, super polished, music and art is awesome, and a interesting take on the theme. It was fun just tossing the knights in the air! I sort of wished you could pick up the swords and spears to throw those too! Nice job

It was awesome. 5/5 theme. I really liked the little barks of the pnjs before you wake up. It adds a nice polish to the game, even if there aren't a lot of them.

This is brilliant. So much fun! I've realized how many small tiny mechanics are in the game and they all well polished.
Like the shake, trace of hands. You can actually knock, throw, grab and even launch pisants into space. Incredible :D Loved the spears flying and ending up with different angles in the ground.

This game was very fun and polished, but level 13 and 15 are not like the others. I give up, your game defeated me. https://streamable.com/gew0xv

The grabbing people and then smashing them against the ground is super satisfying!

Although not super related with the theme it is a really fun game! :smile: the physics and the different little man mechanics were awesome! :smile: Really nice job! :wink:

@sneakyfox Thanks! Do you have any suggestions that would have helped you pick up the controls more easily?

@megamasterx I will admit I was giggling like an idiot while playing it. Plus, I let my kids have a go at it. They aren't very good with a mouse, but they love playing it. Their favorite level is level 1 because they can just throw the guy around as long as they don't accidentally eat him!

@toxs1ck Most of the time tossing is better than stomping. It is slower though and you can only do it to one guy at a time, where a good stomp can get multiple. Plus, the construction workers are hardly affected by tossing, so you really want to smash those guys. The best is tossing them from the outside of the screen into your mouth in the middle, but that is deep magic :)

@tic They need more lines. It is kind of an easter egg because I think most people will start the levels before actually seeing any dialog. They have about 6 - 10 lines apiece and just pick randomly so there are a lot of repeats. There really need to be more to make it work better.

@dick-claus I enjoy throwing the guys and seeing how many times I can get them to bounce off the walls before they hit the ground. My current record is 4 (which is on the scrolling hints on the menu)

@jefvel :confused: Uhh... wow. I'm not sure why but your guys are jumping about twice as tall as they are supposed to. No wonder it is impossible. It's like the timestep is not reporting correctly or something. They should be on the ground way more often than they are. I'll have to look into this. What browser are you using?

@sir-syko I object! I the theme is right there in the title! What could be more related to the theme than that? :wink:

@minibobbo ahh, they're supercharged! It might have something to do with screen refresh rate. I'm using chrome on a 165hz monitor.

Don't get me wrong @minibobbo it was a very smart (mis)use of the theme! :smile: I found it really funny :joy:

This game was really fun. The final version definitely had much harder levels than the one I had tried earlier. It also felt a bit smoother than I remembered so that was nice. Probably one of the funniest twists on the theme of any level XD

Just noticed the game name. Awesome twist!

Cool Idea! Love the twist on the theme. Gameplay wise, it's pretty simple but solid. The difficulty is a little easy, but that's ok. The grabbing mechinic worked well, even though sometimes it seemed like it was a little too specific and i wasn't getting the people even though I thought should have.
The art is nice and I like the addition of music and sound. Helps the mood and immersion.

All in all, a good entry!

sick beat! i loved feeding those silly peasants to the fortress, also nice touch on the cursor-hand!

Wooow! I Think its on my top 5 list better games i play this Jam.. Teach me! Hah Good job

Im very impressed, i came here from your comment on my game about the simliraty in approach, i didn't expect your game to blow my game out of the water like this though. This could be on the app store right now and I would play it. Amazing!

rly fun game :) nice graphic and sound. Great work!

Clearly a great entry. hahaha
I saw people talking about this concept in the discord. I'm glad such a great iteration of the idea was made. It's almost perfect.

This is brilliant! Very solid gameplay with a nicely ramping difficulty, enjoyable graphics and sick beats to play by (that ending beat is awesome). It's a funny twist on the theme too. A pristine example of a great jam game by all accounts.

Really nice work!

Your game seems really interesting but I have an issue with my cursor drifting to the left. This doesn't happen out of your game or in any other game. But as soon as I click on your game's window it starts drifting. This makes the game extremely hard to play so I stopped playing and will try again later.
Is it an issue other people faced ?

Ha ha ha ha real cool game, cute, funny and cool understanding of the theme. I played your game with great pleasure!

@pyrotrap Thanks! The mechanics and the basic game were complete in the the version you played. I cleaned up some things and added content but it was nice to have the basics done early!

@duke The grabbing works on the first person that it finds within 20 pixels center of the fist to center of the guys. On my list of things to clean up is actually grabbing the closest to the center of the fist because now if you click and two guys are within the distance it just grabs the first one it found. That might be what you are describing and why it felt slightly off sometimes.

@vulgaris Thanks! The cursor hand was something I wanted from the beginning. The second hand only came in very late in development but I'm glad I had the time to get it in!

@colan Teach you? OK! Watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U

Done!

@invixel My partner in crime posted over in your game. Yours is on my list of things to play! I really like the walking keep idea :)

@endytroll Thanks!

@arden I was over in the Discord early on but didn't see the discussion about this as a theme. I would have liked to bounce ideas off everyone! I actually had this idea spring into my head almost fully formed when I saw the theme "You are the dungeon" in one of the earlier rounds. I thought it would be funny to have the dungeon just eat everyone. Then when Keep It Alive was chosen I realized the idea still worked and was a stupid take on the theme, which was just bonus points :)

@devastus I love the music also. @jamesolivermusic did a great job on it. I've played it without the music and sound effects and the whole experience is just lacking without them :)

@x-c Thanks!

@adinimys Thanks for the report. I'm using a feature called cursor lock which is supposed to tell me the change in the mouse every frame. It makes it so the mouse doesn't move outside the window, because stomping guys would be extremely frustrating otherwise. I'm not sure if the bug is in my engine or the browser code. This smells like a problem with an interaction between the engine (Phaser 3) and the screen display size (and possibly the browser). Can you let me know three things?

Your OS:
Your browser:
Your scale and layout settings:

you can find the scale and layout in Windows by right clicking on the desktop and selecting display settings. It should be on that screen.

Thanks!

Dude......make an offline downloadable version. Please.... This is honestly the most original game of the jam. And the most fun one. Graphics were simple and nice. I cannot express how much fun it is to smash other characters in this game XD. Absolutely loved it. If I had to say something was bad, I'd say that I wish the characters did a little more than just run towards the left or right. Awesome game none the less :)

Wow that was quite something for a jam game; extremely polished, innovative idea with an addicting gameplay loop topped with fitting graphics and audio. Your take on the theme was quite a unique one also, I would never had come up with an idea of a game where you play as a castle/keep which eats people to stay alive lol.

Not much to complain, only thing that felt a bit odd was cursor movement speed (it somehow moved faster than usual when focused in browser but I got used to it pretty quickly). I feel this game would work pretty great on mobile with touch controls too, so maybe you should add some more content and release it there? But anyways, nice entry guys!

ok this idea is gold! :D I have seen your progress during the weekend already and I knew this is something I want to see! And the result is really great! Good job

@minibobbo I'm using Linux (Manjaro) with Firefox on a 1920x1080 screen. I haven't tweaked anything recarding scaling so I assume it's 100%.
An offline downloadable version could be a solution for me if Phaser supports Linux (don't know, never used it ^^)

Thanks for taking the time to fix this :thumbsup:

@minibobbo Interesting stuff : I found that by switching my window manager from i3 to xfce there is no longer any issue.
On to testing your game then !

Alright, I played it to the end.
It's really really good ! Beautiful pixel art, nice gameplay, great theme interpretation, cool music that fits the gameplay and is simple without getting annoying.

If I had one remark to make I would have prefer hands a little bigger or at least a bigger hitbox as I was sometimes missing my target during tense moments
The way the levels are varied with different enemies is really nice and adding stuff in the foreground to alter visibility was a nice and unexpected addition.
Regarding those enemies I feel like the difficulty could be handled a little bit better as right now speed is by far the biggest component in the difficulty of an enemy. The big dudes that need two times to eat are way less dangerous than the small speedy ones. I just needed to ignore them and take them at the end.

So I feel like the game could take advantage of some slight gameplay tweaks and if you had time some more levels with different enemies but it's already in a great shape and a nice bit of fun !
Good job :)

@minibobbo Woooow! thx for the video.. soo much to learn!

"If you find this game hard, try getting better at it" -- hahahahaha that's great.

You've said it only loosely fits the theme, but honestly I think the fact that it's such an out of the box interpretation of the theme makes me more impressed with how you used it, not less. The feedback via screenshakes, sounds and visuals for slamming your fists down is A+. Good stuff!

whoa.. cool entry here :heart_eyes: adorable pixel arts and audio is great. this game should be suitable for phone as well, i think you should build one..

Clever take on the theme, crisp and addicting mechanics, hilarious animations and sound, great 8bit music and art, good difficulty ramp and variety of target behaviors, perfect scope for the jam... This one just might stomp and grab its way to the top. I got 3 stars on all levels (including 13 and 15) and thoroughly enjoyed each one. Excellent game, well done!

This is great, love the chiptune music and hilarious take on theme. I made it to level 10, cheers!

Like this kind of game. Good entry for this Jam. Well realized.

I really liked the game. Is impressive! I love!

Animations, graphics sound effects and music are all really well done! I think the only thing lacking is a bit steeper difficulty curve. I found the game a bit too easy honestly. BUT, really solid entry for this jam!!!

Underwear and jumping guys were my favorite. Castle animations are so good! Like the retro sounds. Found it pretty challenging. Also nice star rating system. Good job!

Oh god, a pun. Nice take on the theme!

Excellent! I didn't laugh like that at any jam game this year. The animations and the sounds are brilliant. And I loved the twist on the theme.

I noticed one maybe strange thing. Let's say I have a poor sod in my left fist. And I shake him around, as I am known to do on Tuesday afternoons, holding the mouse button down all the time. If I shake my left fist too close to my right, I change control between the fists. Maybe it's intended, cause it would make some sense, but it confused me a bit first time.

Overall, I had a blast!

The animations are all great! It's also nice that, like you say, the controls are quite intuitive.

I really like the concept and pretty much everything about the hands (switching from one to the other, using it to stomp the ground, etc). The art is cute too. I think the weakest point is balance (which is always tricky during a jam), levels didn't feel too engaging, they usually felt either too easy or impossible to complete with 3 stars. It'd be cool to see a post-jam version.

Yea, I think it fits the theme perfectly. No problems here at all.

Cool execution of a simple yet catchy (ha!) concept. It was indeed a bit hard to get all of those pesky foodventurers running around, but it felt great to learn how to be better at it. Nice job!

Love all the subtle little effects, like the broken up dirt shakes and the castle growing/shrinking - adds life to the game. I like that it can be played with just the mouse - very laid back and straight forward.

For future updates I would recommend the following:
* An in-game mouse sensitivity slider which would help players have a bit better control over where the cursor ends up every frame
* An infinite mode to let players have fun with the mechanics of the game without having to worry about winning or losing
* Music/audio on/off or slider

I did encounter one bug where a first level solider was eaten (and counted as eaten) but was left floating up in the air.

Overall a very polished game, very much, fast paced and easy to get into and learn the mechanics. It would be nice to see in future iterations maybe some additional mechanics which you can open up or discover. A must play game I would say.

Well I'd say you kind of stretched *the theme*, but I have only one thing to say: "DAT MOUSE". The mouse-hand transitions were gorgeous. Switching hands seemlessly, the pixel perfect precission while following the mouse. Just how did you do it?

Awesome game. I loved every bit of it. It was good to have different types of people to eat, kept the game interesting. And probably the most creative and unique adaptation of the theme.

Nice take on the pun, had a similar idea myself. :)
Great animations and really innovative gameplay. Would love to see some enemies that tried to damage the keep.

Love it. Gorgeous graphics and sound design!

Probably the most amusing game I've seen this jam. Extremely polished; love the pixel graphics, music, and general mechanics. Can't think of anything really that could be improved.
Would be interesting to see how this would work on a touch-screen like a tablet or phone.

Apart from the annoying screenshake when the Keep awakes (it's more subtle and fine when you smash you fists on the floor) this game is TOP notch. Funny and entartaining, a bit too difficult for my skills. But it's a nice small mobile game :D good job

WOOOOAHHH!! I actually got scared at first! :laughing: Very unique concept of making the castle eat the characters!! The sound design and the pixel art is amazing!!! I like how unique the controls are!
Greato Jobu! :smile:

GREAT GAME! I love the music and the art style! The concept is fun and the feel is really good! Strong entry!

Lots of fun! Wonderful idea! Great pixel art and animations! The game was quite hard, but I like that you do not have to be perfect on each level to progress. You did a great job, thanks for this game!

Super addicting game. Simple gameplay but the little details are very well thought. Graphics and music are also great. Very good job.

Game was Super Fun to play. Keep it up. :v:

hey that was funny. super little game with a good portion of humor. but in the last levels i failed quite a bit.

Cool game idea. It's a nice twist on the theme. I love listening to the people going about their business and hen destroying them. Can't see any bugs. Good work!

Fun game with a good dose of humor! I liked the music, but it restarts every time you go the next level; I would like it to just continue playing between the levels. The levels with a lot of enemies were also a bit difficult, because you can only pick up one guy at a time. I managed to beat all of the levels, but the last couple were quite hard.

Thanks for all the comments and feedback everyone.

@adinimys Thanks for the report (and the suggestions!). I'll pass it along to the Phaser project. I'm not sure how much attention it will get because that is a very specific set of circumstances that affect a small feature of the engine, but we will give it a shot! Glad to hear you were able to find a workaround.

@ordineu That is my favorite comment as well. lol!

@junebug My theme usage is always hit or miss with people. I'm glad you appreciate it!

@amazura I have been thinking about how this would transition to a mobile game. I'd have to rework the mouse controls, but I think it is very doable. Thanks for the suggestion!

@entropymaximizer Nice work getting 3 stars on everything! You are probably better at the game than I am!

@marcusnystrand The difficulty on jam games is always hit or miss. I'm getting different messages from different people but I'd rather err on the side of too easy for jams that too hard. Thanks for the feedback!

@justin-c Puns are pretty much the only connection any of my games have to the theme :)

@fabula-rasa That is intentional. Basically any time your mouse is on the left of the screen you control the left hand and right side right. It means that you can grab a guy in one hand and then transition over to the other side and leave the poor shmuck stuck there forever. Emergent Gameplay!

@kjscott Thanks for the suggestions. I never thought of a sensitivity slider. That would be very easy to implement and a great addition! I also had an infinite mode for testing where you could press spacebar and drop a guy who you could throw around to your hearts content. I should have left it in. Maybe for a post jam version...

Also, you mean this bug?

I found that the day after releasing the game. The guy is sort of a zombie, alive and dead. He doesn't get affected by gravity either and you can't pick him up again after dropping him. But you can put him back in front of the keep and eat him again for double the points! It is fixed in my dev environment and it will be fixed in the post compo version.

@themadprogramer The mouse transition is actually extremely simple. Basically each hand has a location that it is trying to move to. It moves half way to that location every frame. One hand is active and that hand always tries to move to the cursor. The other hand has a home position that it moves towards. Then I just set the active hand to be the side that the cursor is on. Hope that makes sense!

@maniulo The original idea for the game was that the guys would damage the keep and you could eat them to get health back. You could also kill them by stomping. We dropped that idea early on and just made eating everyone the win condition. I was going to add some catapults that would stun you briefly when they hit you so you couldn't eat anyone but didn't get to it. Maybe in the post-jam version.

@amkingtrp Thanks for the comments! I'm going to try to port it to mobile using Cordova. And to Windows/Mac/Linux using Electron. We will see what happens...

@notapixelstudio There is never too much screenshake. (Kidding! Thanks for the feedback. I might tone down the roar shake a bit for future versions.)

@god-colo Thanks for the feedback. The Keep scares me a little also.

@zubspace I'm a firm believer that you should be able to experience the entire jam game easily. Glad you appreciated the experience!

@mika-la-grand That is good feedback. I'm sort of cheating by just reloading the scene every level (which is why the music restarts) because I'm lazy, so it isn't a trivial thing to keep it playing. It shouldn't be a big deal though. Thanks!

I love the castle animation and the grafic of your game in genaral. The music also fits very well and it was fun to play.

@minibobbo, yup! that's the bug!

Fun play on the theme
Art and animation was great!
throwing the little guys around was satisfying.

I liked the music. but it bugged me that it restarted with the levels.

I really love the creative interpretation of the theme! How to play/ what to do was also a very intuitive, pleasant experience! The art is great, music is great and the gameplay is fun! I'd maybe say that the difficulty curve is apt for a game jam, but for a release candidate it should be made juust a bit tougher, maybe, but other than that it's just fun! Super fun, even. KEEP it up :D

Finally I can be the boss!

Yes! This is all kinds of win. I found level 13 to be the hardest to 3-star (darn those fast peasants!).

I feel like smashing was less efficient than simply picking guys up and throwing / eating them, though I guess YMMV. I almost feel like the smash was =harder= to aim despite being less effective at stunning enemies. I wonder if smashing ought to stun enemies for longer, or have a larger area of impact, or perhaps there should be a "swipe" move where swooping your fist horizontally momentarily stuns (and pushes back?) all of the people on that side. Just food for thought, I'm sure you can figure it out.

Probably the only "bad" part of this game is that a lot of people aren't going to see all of the funny quotes and listen to the entire song, haha...

Super solid entry and one of my favorites this jam. I suck with a mouse in situations like this so it makes me crave a touchscreen-oriented version so I can just tap/swipe to grab and throw.

I don't feel like there were any rough edges that stick out. The graphics, design, interface, and audio all fit well together. (Though I did find myself playing with my food a bit so I could hear more of the "dinner" music.) Great work, team!

It's a really cool idea and I enjoyed it a lot, but just to report a bug, when trying it out on Chrome (with Adblock, not sure if that could be bothering it), I got the error "v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net took too long to respond." and couldn't load the game. Tried it later on the Microsoft Edge and it worked well.

fun litle game, but the game freez long timen when i click on the window for focus

Impressed by the graphics and the soundtrack. Great job.

@majadroid The castle animation was fun to make. I'm learning a lot about animation as I go.

@eran-haas Thanks for the feedback. I like the silence and the calm nature sounds before you wake up and all chaos breaks loose, but you aren't the first person to mention they didn't like the music stopping. I'll have to consider that for the next release.

@trexxak I agree the difficulty could scale a lot smoother. Glad you enjoyed the experience!

@khud0 You are the dungeon. Wait, that theme didn't win! I made the wrong game!

@ddrkirbyisq Thanks! I've enjoyed playing your game for years! I remember Ripple Runner quite fondly and I think you also made Melody Muncher, right? Good times :)

I was trying to strike a balance between throwing and stomping. Throwing generally stuns for longer but you can only grab one at a time whereas the stomp stuns for shorter but can get groups. Then some characters are different (big knights can't be stomped and have to be thrown, jumping guys recover really quickly from being thrown and should be stomped) but things happen so quickly that some of that is lost.

I'm trying to think of a way to get the music loop playing more because I love listening to it also. @jamesolivermusic did a great job.

@ghostmaple Thanks! I am experimenting with Cordova to turn my Phaser game into a mobile one. I've got some fun ideas for mobile if I can get it working. I think this game would work well on a touch screen.

@jsladovic I did a little research on this and v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net is an itch service. Does it happen every time? I haven't been able to duplicate your problem and it might have been a temporary outage on itch?

@akitl Thanks! Just to be sure, you are experiencing a long delay the first time you click on the screen? Like when you click the Play Game button on the itch page, or on the main menu?

@sandra-martinez thanks for the comments!

@minibobbo on the main menu, but it can come from my browser

@minibobbo, it seems to be working fine now, must've been a itch.io issue, as you said. Thanks for the feedback!

Now _this_ is a game with a lot of personality! I love how you guys were able to strike a good balance between what looks like absolute chaos and the simple controls and premise. I think my favorite touch was how the keep switches hands based on where the player's cursor is. It's simple, intuitive, and seamless.

I also appreciate how you guys mixed up the gameplay by adding a few unique enemies and visual obstacles to keep things fresh. All-in-all, nice job!

"Play with the mouse. You will figure it out." Of all the instructions I've encounter this jam, these are definitely the best!

Hilarious twist on the theme and amazingly polished visuals! Completing levels was easy but getting a perfect 3-star score was pretty difficult, and it was an interesting setup being able to play through the levels in any order. The audio was really well done as well. Super solid submission, great work! :)