Nooooo! The tower of cans that I so meticulously stacked T_T

Great game, I enjoyed it a bunch!

Some variation on the enemy 'death' sound effect would be good, it got a bit grating (or perhaps that was intended?)

basic 2D top down shooter his working . But not so interesting
in the theme concept

The concept alone makes it really fun, though I think a bit more new stuff apart from the turret-defense game loop would have served it well. Nevertheless it got me hooked for sometime and thats definitely something! Keep at it!

Nice job! I like to shoot Karens with non lethal weapons. It is fun and kind

Thanks to everyone who's played the game already! I wasn't expecting to wake up the morning after and see that we've already got feedback :smile:

@toc I'm glad you enjoyed it! I'd like to be able to say that the grating-ness of the death sound was intentional, but that wasn't the case. Some variety there would be good, especially since we have some distinction between different enemy appearances. I think we simply found the 'perfect' sound effect and never considered how it would sound after it's been played a thousand times :sweat_smile:

@sega23333 Thanks for playing! I'm sorry the theme didn't jive with you, but if you have some specific feedback I'd be happy to hear it :smiley:

@dogesquad I'm glad we could get you hooked for a while! I think mechanically the game is a little too simple. We've only done a couple of jams as a team, so we're still trying to find what works. This time around we told ourselves we'd keep our scope really limited and then work on polishing for the rest of our time. I think it was a good strategy overall, but it really limited us in what we could include in the basic loop :thinking:

@kurakurture Thanks for your kind words! In our original concept we gave the player a real shotgun. Sometime later we decided the enemy should be able to storm off in a huff - after all that's a total Karen move :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

@bougiebirdie I rather meant that it's not very interesting to interact with the jam theme

@sega23333 Ahh, I get you. Thanks for the quick reply

I like the mood of your game ! It becomes pretty fast hard, and that's what we want with this theme !

It was fun to play and the sound fx/voices makes it even funnier. Good job !

This was fun! The music is pretty dope and the announcements after each shift cracked me up :)
Recoloring on the Karens is well done, I'm missing a little bit of depth on them and the maincharacter though. Could be easily solved with some dropshadow underneath 'm.

@number6406 Thanks for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I'm never too sure about balance whether I'm making it too hard or not, but it seems like it worked for you :smiley:

@laurens Thanks for the feedback, I'll pass it along to our artist. I'm glad you got a laugh out of it!

Hey nice game! I like those character sprites and animations, and the humour in the announcements is a nice touch :).
As said above, the damage sound could use some variations.
Kudos!

Great game! Loved the concept and how you interpreted the theme. The graphics were nice, and the announce audio felt really good and helped to enhance the context of the game. I think the main issue I found was that the Karens appeared to have messages of some sort when ever shot them, but I could read or see what they were as the Karens and their messages were thrown off the screen too quickly for me to read. Other than that though, I thought you did a good job on everything! Well done!

Immediately clicked when I saw the title LMAO, I played for a while to be completely honest and the Karens irritated me just as much as they do irl (excellent simulator in that regard), I wish I could read what they said when I shot them bc I'm sure it'd make it even funnier than it already was! Nice job overall!

Sprites were good :)

Loool! I enjoyed this game very much. So fun to play and also very funny. "Our CEO is very tired so please consider donating your vacation days" was my favourite line.

Hah! I enjoyed this. Upgrade system was nice - I got a kick out of pumping up my nerf gun. The spray pattern made for some nice risk/reward gameplay with trying to close in on the Karens.
Voice overs were funny - someone's clearly worked(or is working) in retail...

As above, some variation in the sound would have gone a decent way - but that's jams for you :)

Nice work.

Nice & simple game! I got frustrated when they kicked my cans :( How dare they! Anyway, I liked the announcment :smile: Maybe there could be more sound effects for hurt and perhaps they could grab the cans and throw it at you? Just some ideas for improvement :smile:

I like the idea and the store radio's quips, though I do wish the gameplay mechanics reflected the game's idea more, since now I could just replace Karen sprites with zombies and it would still make sense gameplay-wise. But maybe that's the idea :)

Nice and clean. the game works perfectly as it should. I liked the mood and humor in the game, upgrade system music and radio announcements. long delays between shots at the start and the rate that game grows harder could be better though. The only thing that annoyed me a little was the sound effect of shooting :D

Holy crap this is a lot of feedback! I hope I don't forget anybody

@mogmi I'm glad you liked it! Even if someone else reported an issue with the sound effects, I still want to hear what you think. After all, getting better at making games is kinda the whole point :smile:

@eoshadows I'm glad you got a kick out of it! The text that appears over the Karens is like a cartoon curse string: "#@&!" or something to that effect. Like the vitriol of an enraged Karen, you're not meant to pay them too much heed. However, for your own satisfaction I've dug up the sprite:


@arianad :point_up: This is for you too. I'm really glad you enjoyed it, it's a tough line to walk between making a character annoying enough to want to fight them, but not so annoying you don't want to play the game

@hcs-hades Thanks! I'll pass that along to our artist

@soe At least he'll lend me his PTO next year when I need a break... right? Thanks for playing!

@lachlan-james Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you liked the upgrade system, and I definitely agree about the sound effects. You're also spot-on about our work history: all three of us are retail veterans and I'm sure you can tell we're over it :sweat_smile:

@noiyy Throwing the cans back at you is a total Karen move, and now I'm sorry I didn't think of it :laughing:

@iamwave It's funny you mention that because our very original idea was going to be zombies, so I guess the bones of the game didn't really change when we adjusted our idea. Or maybe a Karen *is* just a lot like a zombie:
>It can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with. It doesn't feel pity of remorse or fear and it absolutely will not stop. Ever.

@viho I've always found the balancing to be the toughest part of any game, and this one really was no exception. The rate of fire is a bit of a tricky one for me because if it's too quick then there isn't a lot of point in upgrading it - but if it's too slow then it ceases to be fun anymore. I thought I walked that line, but I guess I fell a little short. And you're definitely right about the enemy spawn curve - it's more of a cliff than a curve :sweat_smile:

games really fun, the speaker is hell of funny. i was just hoping the entire time a line from one of the karens saying i want to talk to the manager!!! xD! very good, you should be proud

Hilarious concept and proper execution come together here to make a great game. Congratulations on submitting this high quality entry.

Thanks for the game

Nice game! The gameplay mechanics/overall concept was funny but could've been deeper, I would've liked to see it tie into the theme more. I thought the dialogue voiceover was funny. The graphics and audio could've been a bit better, but they fit the vibe of the game well. Well done!

Oh no, I was defending myself against so many Karen's before one of them got me! Ha, really enjoyed this game, great job, nice art, loved the announcements!

Pretty basic game, it just works. Fun design tho.

@confidant17 What a missed opportunity, they definitely should have been able to talk back to you. Thanks for playing!

@projectunfun That might be the nicest thing somebody's said about something I've worked on. Thank you so much! :blush:

@gdesecrate You're most welcome, thanks for playing! :smile:

@notapollogising I agree we definitely could have had more depth. Our original take on 'Delay the Inevitable' was going to be an ever increasing horde of enemies until, basically, they blot out the map. We definitely ran into some performance concerns that made the game decidedly unfun though, so we had to abandon that. In hindsight, we could have pivoted to add some new feature, or else maybe we could have given a level limit with a game over animation (imagine a literal tide of Karens washing over you :grimacing: ).

@marc-grabow Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it :blush:

@kro I'm glad you liked the design, thanks for playing!

Fun little game, I liked the voice lines.

Hilarious concept! I liked the art and had a great time playing :)

Lol, I loved how the game started in the menu.

Nicely done. Lining up shots is pretty fun.

Fun game, could do with some kind of score/end screen so you can keep track of how far you got. All I know is I got far enough that the entire screen was filled with Karens :joy:

@cody-holt Thank you, I enjoyed recording them!

@pequi Thanks for playing, I'm glad you had a good time :smile:

@hilkojj We figured we'd start off strong. Actually, I wanted to learn a new skill, so I thought I'd take a crack at a timeline animation in Unity. As someone who thinks they're really bad at animations, I'm glad it was well received :blush:

@reneantunes The multi-kill is particularly satisfying for me. It feels quite skillful to get 2-3 enemies per shot in the early waves, and then suddenly you're blasting a dozen enemies at once when you're fully upgraded. Thanks for playing!

@physcokillermonkey We wanted to keep a 'customers served' count, but had to abandon it due to time. Regardless, I'm glad you gave as good as you got!

I like top down shooters, so I found this game quite alright at the first level. Unfortunately, my character would just stop shooting when I acquired the rate of fire upgrade. Is there an ammo system or were I missing something? o:

I really wanted a quick reload

Artwork, humor, and digs at late stage capitalism all top shelf. Lining up shots was very satisfying. With more time, might have done more with the upgrades or added temporary upgrades on the field to incentivize risky actions or greater resource management.

"It was employee 8472's birthday today and the managers ate cake to celebrate.... they have been laid off due to budget cuts" WOW SO REAL lol. Great game, I'm still laughing XD

Fun survival game. Love the sprite work and the audio. My only gripe is that the game got laggy at some point due to too many Karens onscreen (I'm guessing that's the reason :p)

Thanks everyone for playing the game! I'm delighted to have received so much feedback, and I'm sorry it's taken so long to get to all of you: life's been happening :upside_down:

@sodoj There is no ammo system, frankly I'm baffled. The rate of fire upgrade is supposed to make the weapon shoot faster. I haven't been able to reproduce this yet so it's still a bit of a melon scratcher. :thinking: Thanks for the report though, I really appreciate it!

@marvis By 'quick reload' did you mean to be able to restart the game? We tried to take usability seriously so I'm surprised we missed that. Thanks for playing!

@lpettler Lining up the shots is my favorite mechanic too. If we had more time, I think collectible powerups would have been on the table - I'm all about that risk/reward so I would have liked to see it too. Thanks for playing!

@flyingkaida Thank you so much! I'm glad you had fun with it :smile:

@ruud-cremers You're probably spot on there. We have pretty limited hardware for performance testing, so I'm not too surprised that it lags out on some machines. The way that we're managing enemies under the hood also isn't very effecient - I'm kind of surprised it runs as well as it does. :stuck_out_tongue: Still, thanks for letting us know, it gives me something to think about, and I'm glad you enjoyed the game up until then!

The addictive gameplay and announcer made this one of my favorite entries so far.
I do think the rate of fire is too slow (I would rather have reduced damage), and at one point I got lost off the side of the screen and had to restart.

Overall a fun game.

Nice addictive gameplay loop and the annoucer had me smiling the entire time! Great job!

The most satisfying game I've played all jam! What could be better than herding Karens and firing a spray of Norf bullets into the crowd? The gameplay is smooth with simple controls and difficulty scales well. I like the upgrades idea since it meant you could try out different strategies each time and balance saving up against getting through the next level. I would have liked to maybe see a shot cooldown so it would be easier to maximise efficiency.

The graphics are awesome and have nice variations in the colour of the Karens etc. Contrasts well with the backing making them nice and easy to see. I also like how the bullets actually stick on them for a bit so you can tell who it is you've hit.

The phrases had me dying! The deadpan voice and creative announcements really made one hell of a wonderful company culture. I especially love the one about being a family which is what so many toxic workplaces call themselves haha. The sound effects were simple and effective giving good feedback to the player on actions. A little variation in pitch for hit/firing sounds would have been a nice little spice up.

One suuuper nitpicky point would be that you can't mute/unmute after the start menu. I accidentally muted before my first run (didn't realise due to the lack of sound in the start menu) and had to refreh the page to play my second run with sound. But that's just a really tiny thing and most games don't even have a mute option so great that you do!

Overall, really awesome game which was very well put together. Great job!

Every day I come on here and see that more people have played our game makes me so happy :blush:

@ldjq We had experimented with different scaling of damages, along with the rates of fire, angles of spread, and such. Several people have remarked on the low rate of fire, so I guess we erred on the wrong side of that. However, I'm so glad our game is considered one of your favorites, that's a great honour! Thanks for playing! :smile:

@polite-stories Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it :blush:

@teto Thank you so much for such a detailed review! I can tell that you've had a good time with the game and it really warms my heart. That's a good catch about not being able to mute the sound outside of the start screen. I think we probably could have done better to indicate what exactly the mute button does, and that could have been as simple as including the music on the start screen - that's definitely something I'll be keeping an eye out for the future. Thanks for playing! :smile:

Good job with this shooting game. The graphics look good and the audio was nice. I liked the little upgrade system. Maybe could use some more. Nicely done overall.

Vocal on the speaker was A++!

Games graphics were pretty great, and the game play was surprisingly balanced and definitely addictive. Begging for a scoreboard though. It really needs a competitive element to increase that replayability. Maybe with a combo meter for hair color kill streaks!

Pretty much it needs to lean in a bit more into the Karen theme in some way.

Great graphics and the gameplay is solid. I like how there are multiple versions of the Karen to make it look like a mob. The upgrades seemed fair and the difficulty ramped up appropriately. Great Entry!

I can't believe it - so many karens in the store that reality itself started to lag. I suppose they're going to be speaking to reality's manager after this. Can I just take this nerf gun and shoot the ceo instead?

Thanks so much for playing our game, gang!

@itskdog I agree that we could use a little more - always leave them wanting more. Regardless, I'm glad you enjoyed it until you ran out of content :slight_smile:

@cyzaine You know it's high praise when someone with a PaRappa pfp comments on the voice work :blush:
We had considered an in-game kill count with personal high scores but had to scrap it for time. Combos never crossed our mind though - and a combo based on enemy type is something really interesting too! I think that would have given us something fairly unique to offer and now I'm kicking myself for not having thought of it. Thanks for playing :smile:

@don-fouts Interestingly, the multiple types of Karens come from necessity - our artist had a very limited time commitment they could give to the jam, so we elected to use palette-swaps to give us some more variety. I'm so glad that was enough to give the game a bit more variety, or at least a pop of colour. Thanks for playing!

@piscythe Management has been made aware of time-warping reality bending related to serving too many customers at once. After an internal investigation, management has decided that these infractions of reality do not constitute unsafe working conditions. Moreover, management would like to remind employees that their employment agreement assures wages are paid according to the central company clock, and not based on relative experiences of time. (Thanks for playing!)

I like what you have going on with this game. Karen's will always be funny to me especially if I am not the one dealing with one.

+ I like how you have various Karen's to show the versatility of a Karen.
+ The radio is quite accurate with the atmosphere of a lot of these corporations.
+ Midway through my 3rd game play I realized the Karen's were after me and not the cans so taking them out with angles was an interesting change of tactics.
+ I like how you have the setting to turn on or off the radio. I'm not sure how many of those morale slogans are in your game but I could see people not want to hear them repeat too many times. I didn't mind it but I have an internal mute button from retail.
+ I laughed when my second job looked just like the job I just got fired from.






- Maybe add in some Karen's that are masculine to show how versatile a Karen really is.
- Maybe add in some music that varies or escalates/crescendo's the more Karen's are on the screen (Some basic examples: "Oh Fortuna", or "In the hall of the mountain king")
- Same as music, maybe 'pitch shift' the audio "uh huh" sound so it is random what the Karen sounds like
- Maybe add a button or a function to have you rebuild or replace your can walls since you essentially are at work. Not important but just a thought



Great entry and down with those inevitable Karen's!

@vixenmink Thanks for playing! The inclusion of Kevins would be grand, I have an idea what they'd look like since I've met a few in my career. :thinking:

I'm really taken with the idea of the music reaching a higher point the more enemies are present. Sound design is such an important part of the experience, and we've had some discussions about adding dynamic elements to our games' soundtracks. Unfortunately, we kind of lack the expertise to actually implement them - but we're getting there! :sweat_smile:

The sprites are super charming and the P.A announcements are very funny. Lots of soul for sure

@prismapunch Thanks for playing! We tried our best to make it fun

You definitely get 5/5 for humor and mood.
I also think the difficulty is quite spot on. The game got me hooked and I tried several times which is a good sign.

I have only one remark - the playable screen is actually 1.4? times bigger than what you can see. That adds a bit of randomness if an enemy will spawn off-screen and directly destroy you. In a game where you die from one hit - this is a bit tricky.

All in all, I think you guys did a great job!

@sopata We didn't enforce boundaries on the playing field in part because stepping outside the boundary might save you in a pinch. We thought of it as high-risk for a reward, but with the Karens living just off-screen you're right that it's a bit cheap you can just be killed in one hit by something you can't see. Technically the arena is infinite, so if you can make it past the Karen spawn zone you are free to frolic to your heart's content - not that you can actually see any of that frolicking.

Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it enough to play it more than once :blush:

Hey there! Thanks for this meta info about the infinite arena - it is quite interesting.
I think I have a solution for the problem with the boundaries:
- Have an SFX/VFX that makes it clear that Karens stopped spawning
- After that Cue, you will know that you can safely go outside boundaries. If you decide to do it while Karens are spawaning - it is your gamble

It is not solving everything but it:
- Preserves the "high-risk for a reward" scenario that you were aiming for
- Makes the game a much more fair

@sopata Oh, now that's a good idea. I wish I'd thought of that, it would have been quite simple to implement :thinking:

You know what people say - two game designers are better than one (kiddnig, there is no such saying :sweat_smile: ). Actually, sometimes it is even worse but this time around I guess was a good thing :joy:

GOOD LUCK with the SCORES!