Terra Smasher

This is great! Short and to the point (unless I'm missing something) which is perfect for a jam game. This idea has a ton of potential and with a bunch of additions (new enemy types, different weapons, new layouts, etc.) this could be a really great game.

Solid game! It was easy to pickup but very tricky to win. It's very fun nonetheless, and I wish I could play more levels. Art is really nice as well! Great job!

I think there's lots of potential in this. The presentation is super charming, and the premise is easy to pick up. I found it pretty tricky though, because there's not much time to react when tiles are disappearing from an enemy hit, plus the skeletons are quick little buggers, and it took some time before I could catch them with a hit.

The temporarily deforming terrain is cool though, and keeping a close eye on that provides a nice balance of aiming for the enemies and being aware of your position on the island. I think it'd be pretty cool to have later skeletons have hammers that can permanently destroy tiles, or experimentation with putting a player jump ability in there. Beyond that, imagine a multiplayer version of this - it'd be glorious chaos!

I love the polish and animations in the game. The island breaking is very satisfying. I also always enjoy gamepad support, so thumbs up for that. Tested it with a xbox one controller and that worked great.

It is a bit short but that's understandable, both being your first jam and having limited time.

It's a really strong base and I will definitely come back to look for a post-jam version. Good work.

Difficult but fun game! Art suited the game and looked good.

I had fun beating the game, it looks great and the simplicity gives it a nostalgic charm in my opinion. Would love to see more this stuff, or just this in a 2-4 player mode! Great entry!

One of the games with the most potential in this jam that I have played so far! It's very polished-- I love the hammer swing animation, and the way the ground surges up before it falls into the water. I can also imagine it being very fun as a local multiplayer game, in the same vein as Bomberman. As it is right now, though, the game is extremely short. There's only one level, and even when you take out all the enemies, it doesn't do anything, you're just on an empty island. With more time, this concept could definitely be expanded out into something really cool, but right now it plays more like a tech demo (albeit a very fun tech demo that I would be interested in seeing more from.) I hope to see a post-jam version that fleshes out the potential! Good job!

Beatiful sprites and animation, and the gameplay engine is solid. Very impressive for a gm24, as you put it. Would love to see this expanded upon!

Absolutely love the concept of this game. Think I can see lots of potential for this to be expanded. You are really skilled at making pixel art and animations that just feel so satisfying as well. Things are retro, punchy, very good quality. I love there is a gif of the game in the game page because I could appreciate the block crumbling animations more. I was waaay too hectic during the gameplay to appreciate them then :')

Definitely the kind of game that will be fun to play with friends as well.

Hammer smashing was just so fun. The ripple effect it makes is so cool to see. Also liked the level design with the logs and the stones in the middle. I know you had limited time but more island variety would be awesome to see post jam too.

I wish I made use of the shift to lock my position more but it didn't click naturally to me. Probably just a lack of experience though I eventually beat the game so pretty proud of that :D

I liked the pace of the game. The enemy AI was a little annoying because they were just so hard to hit but I guess for more experienced players that's a good thing. I also liked how fast the game is. When I die, I just start back up and can keep going. And I died a looot. So that was a really nice welcome thing.

It's really cool what you can do with the limited time you had. Hope to see more!

This has got a ton of potential! You can really feel the weight to the hammers, and I like that it can be an offsensive and defensive tool, using it to drown enemies or stop a shockwave from hitting you. The various terrain types are neat, too. I like the idea of the stone being a "safe" center area that can still crumble if it's smashed too much.

Happy to hear that you're working on a postjam version!

A fun little entry! Right before I say anything else I want you to know that I like the hammer smashing animation and sound effects so much that I just mashed the button for a bit on my second playthrough the entire time and did nothing else. Very good animation. Very good sound effect.

Generally the spritework in this game is nice, clean and well-done. I do feel like the lack of any control over respawning creates this weird sense of disconnection, if that makes sense; having a quick respawn button would've made it even more addicting to get back in there and BASH. That being said, I know this was basically made in 24 hours and you made a great achievement in that short span of time; great job!

The sound effects are super satisfying and retro as they can be. I love em! The art style is nailed as well! It could benefit from having some form of ui for health / lives but that's about it I feel given the scope of the project. lovely game :)

The art has a nice style to it and it's very satisfying to pound the ground

Can't say much about it. I guess, i'm just too bad at this game to beat any bot, but I like the idea.

This is by far the best looking game here. I love the art style, very good use of colours! This is actually a pretty hard game, my kd ratio is like 1:100, they're just too quick.

There are some nice details like the ripple effect only passing through land and not over a gap, and the middle tiles being tougher to destroy.

The enemy pathfinding is really good too, they're pretty annoying to capture.

To me, the death is too sudden. You die before the block actually disappears, I assume as soon as a tile finishes the wobble animation, that's when you can die if you're standing there, even if the crumble animation is on frame 1.

I also wish that tiles didn't come back, or that you had to place them again, but I guess then it would be too easy to corner the enemies.

Finally, the controls were a little awkward for me but maybe that's less about implementation and more about my skill level. I much prefer WSAD over arrow keys, and also found it hard to position myself in the right direction to send the crumble wave to my enemy (would have preferred a twin stick approach).

Overall a very solid and stable entry, and also even more impressive that this was made in 24 hours. Nice work!

After about 5 minutes I got one of them but I never was able to get the other one.

EDIT: YESS! I read the description and saw you could lock the direction that you attack in. That makes it soooo much easier.

Also the first time I loaded it there wasn't sound.

Cute! Looks nice and is a fun challenge! Like you mentioned, I'd like to see more level variations and enemy types.

Nice to see you join gm48 after really enjoying your Amaze Me jam entry. I thought the idea for this game was really great, but obviously the lack of time affected things. I love the art and using the hammer was very satisfying. The skeletons were really kicking my butt at first but I managed to take them down in the end. Nice entry and glad to see you participate!

Pretty cool little game, I'll try to avoid critiquing things that are probably just a result of being so short on time.

The art looks super nice, I like the little squishing effects on the player and skeleton sprites when they swing, its a pretty charming appearance.

When I finished, I was kinda hoping there'd be something to cause the skeletons to come back when it comes to this just standing on its own. I do like the way that ground-smashing collides between players and skeleton swings, it seems like if expanded on, some nuance could be made for player decisions. I do remember finding it annoying trying to line up a swing when the skeletons were walking perpendicular to the way I was trying to swing, kinda like trying to squish a bug that keeps moving just a bit too fast. I also felt that it was very easy to survive for a long time if I would stop trying to sink the skeletons and just focused on walking around.

Thanks for sharing your work~

This is a really cute mechanic. What you've got plays well and looks great :)

For trying to do more levels and variety in a very short time, it might be worth looking at some basic procedural generation. In this game, for example, you could create and infinitely looping game by generating a new level (random pillars holes and enemy placement) and could get a pretty quick score attack by giving the player a score counter for number of levels/number of skeletons beaten.

Obviously, handcrafted levels and more enemy types or powerups would be better, but sometimes you can stretch a small amount of content a bit further with proc gen :)

Really cool idea! Could be a great multiplayer game. Especially with some other powerups and ground tile varieties. Good job!

In its current state, it's boring. I'm sure if you would've spent less time on the art/animations you would've had more time to add some more mechanics and made it more fun to play. However, what you've got now is a good foundation for a good game! Like someone else said here, this would make a good party game if multiplayer was ever added!

This game is deceptively challenging! As it stands the game fits the theme of the jam very well, and has a great foundation. All that is missing is some extra depth and presentation; for example, a title screen, penalties for dying, enemy variants, and music.

If you continue this game, I could see this being a fun party game if multiplayer were to be added! Overall good game.

Those skeletons know how to put up a fight! That and I'm clumsy and kept falling off haha! I think you have a really good foundation of a game here, with some expanding upon it with levels, music and fluff, it could be a good commercially released puzzle game - mechanically you've got some wonderful foundations and I hope you keep working on this post-jam!

Great Entry! I died a few times right away but once I got the hang of things I ended up winning. I know you said you ran short on time but it was fun and reminded me of bomberman multiplayer where you're fighting on a grid.