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This is a really well-implemented idea! The visual design is absolutely sublime (I love seeing different approaches to making a sheet of paper look pretty), and the time limit fits very well with the theme and setting of spy thriller. I also like the requirement of performing real-life tasks as part of the roleplaying! Everything seems to fit together seamlessly; I'll look forward to playing this with friends!

Ah I see! Good to know :)

This is so cool! For starters I really like the visual design, it's very clean and elegant. The premise is funny (love me some goblins), and the positions are a very interesting  new mechanic that introduce a bit of tension into the usual "roll to hit" dynamic. I look forward to playing this with some friends, well done!

This is so creative! The name by itself is spectacular, but the premise is also perfectly suited to the medium of one-page rpgs. And I really like the novel mechanic of determining which dice you roll with, it's clever. Well done!

Hello! I just wanted to say a quick thank you for creating Lacksmith - it was the first one-page rpg that I was exposed to, and it inspired me to submit my own game to this year's One-Page RPG jam a few days ago! I think that this is a stellar example of what you can achieve with a single page, tight mechanics, and gorgeous visual design, and I'm greatly looking forward to playing your future projects!

Hello! I just submitted my most recent game, Desperate Dating, to the One-Page RPG Jam, and I'm quite proud of it! It's a ttrpg dating sim in which you and your fellow players are thrown together in a blind date and must navigate all of the resulting romantic complexities that arise; you can find it here. 

The gameplay is fairly simple: you choose a Crush to devote your attention to and a Charm Card that reflects the way in which you want to woo them. The card's value represents the difficulty and the suit the type of action you are performing (Tender, Suave, Funny, or Adventurous). Then you select and roll up to two of your dice, trying to meet or exceed the card's value. If you do, you succeed, and get to keep the Charm Card! But the twist is that the higher you roll, the more Desperate you appear to the others.

Desperation is a mechanic that I'm particularly happy with: it adds a bit of risk to the otherwise simple act of trying to succeed a check, because other players can use your desperation to increase their dice rolls, which in turn causes them to collect more desperation, which increases other players' rolls, and so on...

The final piece of the puzzle is the performances that allow you to attract and direct the affections of the other characters, To do this you must roll all five of your dice, add your desperation tokens to the result, and see if the result is below the combined values of all your collected charm cards. This imbues the gameplay with a natural rhythm in which the chances of succeeding gradually increase, something that I find very important for maintaining tension and excitement. It also allows for plenty of meddling! Jealous of two other characters? Become a Bond-Breaker to drive them apart. Or, if you prefer to be the center of attention, you can express your inner Stage-Taker and force everyone to choose you as their crush!
And that's it! I had a lot of fun making this, and I hope you'll have just as much playing it. I'm always eager to hear about players' experiences, so if you have any feedback or suggestions, please share them with me via the game's comments!

Hello! I'm just making a quick post here to announce that we recently released Links, a tile-placement game about depolarisation and dialogue, which you can find here. It was made throughout the month of June as part of the Mzansi Climate Justice Game Jam, which was an international and interdisciplinary collaboration between creatives in the Netherlands and South Africa.

In Links you and your fellow players will each take on the role of a Citizen Councillor, whose job it is to vote for policies that will further their values and enrich society. These policies take the form of tiles whose coloured borders reflect the political facets that they embody: environmental, social, cultural, and economic. By matching these borders with one another you reinforce that facet's influence in the political landscape, eventually creating long links that players can either support or disrupt.

There's much more to the gameplay, but those are the basics! All you need to do is download and print out the materials on some nice thick paper to start playing. It's currently completely free, but we do have plans to continue working on it in the months ahead, so that may change at some point as it develops and grows.

In line with this, we would love to hear your thoughts and critiques if you do end up playing it! Every piece of feedback helps significantly with figuring out what we can refine or let go of, so please leave a comment on the game's page if you have any. Thanks!

Thank you! I'm pretty happy with how they both turned out, although I'm sure there are still a few kinks I can work out.

I hope so! Let me know how it goes if you end up trying it out :D

Hello! My name's Aengus; I recently got into analogue game design, and have just published my first two projects here on itch. They're free, and the only things you need to play them are the printed-out cards and a whole bunch of dice!

The first is Rolling With the Rules, a game for based on Yahtzee but with a little spice thrown in. Most players throw dice and try to arrange them into categories like Large Straight, Full House, Sixes, and so forth. So far, so Yahtzee. But in addition to this foundation, every round one player chooses a rule that offers bonus points if its condition is carried out. For example, if the sum of your dice is between 15 and 17, you earn 25 additional points. The kicker is that only certain players know what this rule is, and they'll have to choose between obeying it or working for themselves. I'm pretty happy with the design!

The second is TransiStory, which I co-designed for a university project about a month ago. Three players represent the Past, Present, and Future, each of whom is trying collecting enough energy cards to sustain their populations. There are two things that I think are really cool about this one. The first is that you need to fill up the values of the cards by rolling your dice; these stay on the cards so that other players can add to them after you. Every player also rolls their dice in a different way, so even though you're working together you each have distinct and important roles. The second cool thing is the transition mechanic: once you collect a card you can transition it into the future along with a couple of dice, which your fellow players will dearly need. You need to be selective about what you transition though, as the cards you pass forward can also be very damaging if you're not careful.
Give them a go and let me know what you think!

Ah, thank you for the tip! And many many compliments to your game designer and the rest of you :D

Oof that was hard. But what a cool interpretation of the theme! Everything looked and sounded amazing, and the rate at which drivers fell in was perfectly random. I was fairly stressed, so I wasn't doing anything much other than picking up drivers from the water, but it's the kind of difficulty that can be overcome with (a lot of) practise. Well done!

Cool idea! I do wish that the main storyline had a conclusion, or maybe an underlying reason for why it starts over at the beginning of the day; maybe the narrator doesn't want the story to end, so the character is trapped in an endless loop? But what's there is good! The art style and UI were gorgeous - well done on making this in two days!

Doww, thank you! Really cool to see more narrative-focused takes on the theme!

I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed it! It was a lot of fun to make; I'm not sure if I'll work on it more, but who knows! Maybe once I'm more experienced with programming and such

Oh no what a shame! If you decide to update the game once the jam is over I'd be excited to give it a go :)

This is so well made! I absolutely love the hand-drawn models and animation, it looks great; hitting the birds is very satisfying, what with the sound effects and expressions; and the music fits the vibe to a tee. Incredibly well done!

Argh, this looks so cool, but I can't get past the second level! For those stuck, you can right-click to change which controls you're allowed to use - for example, you can either jump and move right, or (when you right-click) climb and move left. It's a really clever interpretation of "Roles Reversed", and I wish I could explore it more, but I'm stuck at the beginning of level 2. Maybe that's just me being silly, or I'm missing something that wasn't explained, but either way, well done on creating this!

Cool game! Great use of this year's theme - I think it's really unique that you have to help the person fighting the enemies, not fight them yourself. Very inventive! The pixel art was really nice, and I liked the variety of enemies. Well done!

Really cool game! Great job on adding a twist to the 2d platformer genre - it was fun trying to intercept something on a time limit, rather than just get to the end of the level intact. Sound effects and/or music would have been nice, but I was really impressed with how you increased the challenge of each consecutive level. Well done!

This is adorable! Really great job on the artwork and coding; everything looked and worked great. It's nice to see such a cosy game in the jam.

It would have been great if the gameplay reflected the theme of "roles reversed" more, a bit like how Terra Nil does (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1593030/Terra_Nil/). Other than that, very well done, and thank you for making this!

Cute little game! The animations are absolutely gorgeous and the sound-effects are simple but effective, so well done there! Also the jump and shoot mechanics are very responsive, which feels great. It would have been cool if the theme of roles reversed was reflected in the gameplay as well as in the visual presentation; for example, what if you control the carrot and have to chase the chef? That introduces a fun twist to the endless runner formula. Still, very well done!

Hi! I tried playing this, but as soon as I select "Start", the game freezes on me and I can't do anything else. Just thought I'd let you know!

(Also the music is really good!)

Impressive that you made this in two days! I like the inclusion of the narrative, it adds a lot to the gameplay's context. I noticed a couple of bugs, like how the towers often didn't hit me if I just stood still. I would have also liked for the gameplay to be a little more complicated - for example, maybe there could have been traps on the road? Or maybe the tank, in exchange for being faster than the soldier, could have had a slower rate of fire? Still, well done on making this!

Really cool idea, I liked it a lot! Very clever how you integrated (and reversed) the mechanic of choosing new items and upgrades at the end of every round. The artstyle is great in that it's minimalistic but clear, and the music goes well. I would have appreciated something to show where the hero's destination was - for example, a red line - and it seemed a little too easy, given that I defeated the hero in the third round. It would also help if there was an explanation about what each of the monsters do. Other than that, good game! Well done!

Yay, that makes me really happy! Thank you!

Thank you! Yeah I completely agree, the green and grey text was the only solution I could easily find. I'm hoping to work on the game more once the jam is over, so I'll add this to the to-do list!

Fun! I loved the visuals and music, they're incredibly well done, and the movement is quick and snappy. I would like to see some other gameplay aspects if this is expanded upon - maybe an additional arm, or having to control two characters? Either way, well done!

Cute little game and a clever interpretation of the theme! There wasn't much to it, but what there was was good :)

Cute! Very creative idea that really adheres to this year's theme. The controls  felt a little floaty, and I would have loved to see some other player interactions than simply removing a block. But well done on making this!

This seems like an unfinished project, which is a pity. Would love to have seen this expanded upon!

Lovely presentation, nice polish, and frantic gameplay. I feel as though the balancing might need some work - my Peril meter filled up fairly quickly each of the three times I played - and the "Roles Reversed" theme seems to apply more to the narrative context of you being a quest-giver than the gameplay, which feels like a management sim. Still fun to play, so well done!

Interesting! As many other comments have said, would love a more involved tutorial, but I got it eventually. The mechanic of making patterns to improve your performance is very clever and introduces a great feeling of strategy to the game.

My main critique is that the link to the theme of Roles Reversed is only in the narrative context, not the gameplay. I'm not familiar enough with this genre of game to imagine how you could have reversed the gameplay, but it would have been interesting to see. Still, well done!

Really interesting idea, and I can see how enthusiastic you were about making this through the small, loving details, like how each character gets a bit of lore in the tutorial, and especially how the music changes for each of them. I also really liked how each character gets their own ability; it's very creative!

I just wish it were a bit more polished! I lost the first time, started over, only for the hero to immediately start making traps. It got to the point where they blocked themself off and I couldn't get through to damage them.  I had also forgotten the controls, but I couldn't get back to the tutorial without closing the game entirely. Fixing small things like that would make the game much more satisfying to play.

Still, very well done on making this! 

Then I'm glad that you found it interesting enough to play twice! Hope it was worth it

Thank you!

Thank you for the feedback! I was running out of time when I made Part 4, but I'd love to try and introduce more puzzle elements into each part if I have the time.

A fun and inventive little game! Great use of the game jam's theme - I liked all of the different ways in which it used the level mechanics to kill off the character. I only wish that I could have played for longer. If I'm lucky you'll expand this into something bigger - well done!

Yay! I'm really glad you enjoyed it!

Great game! Really liked how you have to use your keyboard to respond to the opponent - it made me panic (in the best way) about finding the right key to press on time. I feel as though the theme of role reversal could have been expanded upon, as you're essentially doing the same thing - pressing keys in time to the beat - no matter which role you're playing, but very creative idea!

If this were to be expanded upon, I would appreciate clearer UI - such as the point at which the player has to hit a key - and a bit more narrative context/a tutorial so you're not just thrown into the thick of it. Well done!