The hand-drawn style is very cool, great watercolor portraits. Though I also find the child-playroom dreamworld style very unnerving, so, kudos if that’s what you were going for…

Great audio work.

It’s hard to navigate without getting lost. I can keep some reference if I look at the map at the very beginning but I tend to lose all sense of where I am before long, especially with the ice and the other-world transitions. (Also, I once ‘woke up’ on a water tile and was unable to move.)

I’m impressed with you getting a turn-based tactical grid combat system into a week-long jam. I thought the combat was impossible, clowns were just warping into me in one turn and annihilating my party, but then I saw your youtube gameplay clip and felt that my original party composition was just completely worthless for battle. Taunt wasn’t helpful as I’d still take enough damage to die. I don’t know how I’d do it without Lion/Witch for the stuns and move speed. (And even then my party got wiped very fast after managing to navigate down some stairs, so that’s as far as I got.)

All in all fairly sophisticated, but could definitely use some balance/difficulty adjustment, and some way to keep a sense of where I am on the map.

I liked it! I think the combat and Ui could have been a bit more clear, but it's always hard in game jams to focus on stuff like that so I understand. I think the game used the theme well and I had fun overall.

I liked the different characters, and I liked the flipping between the two realms. Combat was absolutely brutal though with enemies just being able to teleport wherever they wanted. My mage was the only one capable of doing any significant damage, but she was taken out in one hit by most of the enemies I encountered. 

It also crashed on me repeatedly. 

Overall liked the concept but the brutality of the combat and the crashes brought it down in the gameplay.

I really like this game, the interesting combat system was really fun, the hand-drawn style looks really good although it can make the game a bit confusing at times. the movement was a bit weird though, i would expect s, a and d to move however they are used to look around. the different player classes are really cool, and i appreciate that the player portraits change when changing worlds!

I like the hand drawn maps and controls. The duality theme is very strong and the graphics support the dream / waking world. I liked that you could select 3 from 5 characters, which makes replays more interesting. Thanks!

It was an interesting idea to go into a tactical turn based combat system for encounters. Very much like Battle brothers, but on a square instead of hex grid. It would have been good to see how many movement points the enemy had and also see an animation of their movement. They were suddenly on you when it was their turn.

The graphics weren't a style that we're keen on,  but they were self-consistent, at least, which is good.

Having the maps, even hand drawn, was a nice touch. We needed a "You are here pointer" though.

We couldn't remember the keys once in game and couldn't see a way to bring them up in game.

Auto save was a nice feature, seemingly after each combat.

Messages blocked progress until you pressed Escape, which wasn't obvious and sometimes brought you to the Exit game message if you pressed it too eagerly.

We kept expecting the music to kick into the "Cagney And Lacey" theme.

When you die the game doesn't seem to have a way to restart, we had to kill the Java process. Is that right?

You might want to check the Windows checkbox on your download so you can install and run it directly from the itch.io app. Also, when you filter by platform on the submissions page it doesn't show up under the Windows section. Someone pointed this out to us on Discord. We missed your game when looking for Windows downloads.

Out of interest, could you supply a Linux and OSX launcher for this since it's written in Java? That would be neat.

Well done for making a unique and interesting entry to the jam.

I really liked the idea of a different characters and how dream world and reality were represented. But I found combat system a bit difficult to get my hands on.

I absolutely love the visual style of this game, and I think it's probably the most visual evocative version of the theme I've seen. You did a great job establishing the contrast between the dreams and reality. Good work!

This is funny but this game scariest in the jam. So liminal space vs raw real world. Realy cool.

Seeing the game go from dream world to cold wasteland is probably one of the most emotionally shocking and interesting things I've seen from the jam so far. It feels seriously unsettling.

With that said, it's really frustrating because what enemies do in battles isn't conveyed well, and like people say, they teleport all over the place. The idea of it is fun, but it made me give up pretty quickly.

I really like the different player classes. The graphics are great.

A lot of work went into this game and it shows. The art and presentation are really great. its handdrawn and feels very lovely. "Reality" being that "bad" and frightening gives you sense of urgency regarding the story right away, in stark contrast to the colorful "dream-world", where exploration is much more pleasent. At least until you meet some of the monsters, haha.

I like that there is already a choice at the beginning of the game, where you can choose between several characters who have different abilities.

The game itself plays pretty smooth, though it was a bit overwhelming at first with all the different gameplay mechanics I have to understand (exploration on 2 planes, rations, fighting, reading the maps etc.). But once I understood it it feels very rewarding. It felt a bit like a survival simulation at times, which is pretty cool.

I love maps with annotations which integrate into the story like that. Though sometimes I just got lost, but my sense of orientiation isn't the best anyway, haha. Battles were a bit hard at the start with enemies teleporting through the entire grid, though. This was a very great entry, it took me sometime, and some restarts to "get it", but then everything went much better. :)

The graphics were excellent with a unique style that fit well the theme, the audio was a nice touch, and the abilities of the characters made the gameplay very interesting.

Now while I have to say I liked the surprise when we quit the dreamworld and understand better where the game is leading us in matter of story, I have to confess I didn't managed to complete the game despite having tried different party, also trying hard to understand the map...

The fights are too harsh, as all enemies seem to teleport and we don't deal as much damages as they do... and sometimes the dungeon is vicious in the sense there are holes in which we can fall and die if not enough health, electric floors or tile pushing us backward without anything to warn us.

I even ended up soft-locked by reaching a place by crossing a tile of water with the pirate in dreamworld, but ended up back to reality without ration and no way to leave the place, having to restart the game.

I've made three full retries and never managed to beat the game. I guess the difficulty is a bit too hard to me.

But still : no grudge since the experience was good overall, I still did enjoyed it and it deserves to be tried! Maybe if there's an update after the jam, I would give it a fourth try in which I would maybe beat the game this time! haha

I like I lot this game, this is a great application of the theme, great job!!

The only thing that prevents me from going further is losing a sense of direction. The map could be a little more informative with some landmarks. The combat was quite unique but also somewhat confusing. Clowns just teleport half the combat grid.

If I understand the map, maybe I would have a chance...

If you are planning to update your game so that it is easier to locate where we are on the map, I will definitely check back!

I liked the different characters to choose from.Navigating was very hard, got lost very quick. Map didn't help much.

Graphics and music are great, great submission

A unique entry, nicely done.

The character selection is varied, each with distinct abilities not only in combat but during exploration, allowing for tackling the dungeon in different ways (neat!). Not to mention, they're very flavourful given the premise of the game. Speaking of, the premise is very cool, and implements the theme well. The visuals are fitting too.

The game was super challenging! Maybe less so for old school/experienced dungeon crawlers, but I was terribly lost most of the time, and I found the enemies very deadly. I was able to beat the game, but probably not the right way – only through grinding the random wolf encounters and save scumming was I able to get strong enough to brute force my way through the dungeon. And the lion's ability was vital while I tried to find my way around.

I'm glad there's a happy ending after the initial gut punch upon leaving the dream world for the first time. Looks like our games' ending messages are kinda similar ;)

Wow! Great job! The graphics are perfect for what you were going for. The painted textures are whimsical, and the hand-drawn black and white graphics (and the absolute lack of music, excellent choice there) provide a stark contrast between the dream world and reality.

When I started the game, I kept trying to press E to enter the dream world, not realizing I was in it! When my hunger got too much, and I was shunted back into cold reality, my jaw dropped as I realized the implication of what was happening.

Nicely done!

I liked the graphical style of the game even though it feels like it could need some refinement, liked the Audio! The game was pretty confusing to me. Certainly very good fit for the Theme category :D