Absolutely Incredible! I loved the art so much! The concept is awesome, the puzzle aspects are perfectly paced, super fun, lovely music, great sound effects, and a ridiculously gorgeous aesthetic to boot...its a truly wonderful game :)
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TetherGeist's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #10 | 4.417 | 4.417 |
| Fun | #11 | 4.365 | 4.365 |
| Presentation | #14 | 4.663 | 4.663 |
| Originality | #91 | 4.221 | 4.221 |
Ranked from 104 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
This is a puzzle platformer that dynamically changes as you separate and rejoin with your spirit.
Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?
Yes
We created the vast majority of the art during the game jam
Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?
Yes
We created the vast majority of the music during the game jam
Comments
This is great feedback! Thank you so much for playing. Are you referencing a specific level? I personally found the level in my screenshot here more frustrating than it should have been based on the frustration you're talking about, not allowing a diamond-less player to start a new spirit tether while airborn unless timed just right after collecting a diamond midair. As I've watched play test, I think we just need to change the character's max fall speed so the player has a bigger window to initiate a new tether before landing. Thoughts?
So I played through again to check and playing those first levels again after mastering the mechanic is SO much fun. You guys did a great job! On my original play through I got stuck on the second to last level but the one in the screenshot also caused me some trouble. To me it felt like the controls were unresponsive. Playing the last level, which is supposed to be a freebie I imagine, still gave me difficulty but I think it illustrated the problem. When you're re-joining (as the orb travels to your spirit) you can't split but during that time I am often hitting J and expecting too. The player loses all control in that time which makes it really hard to chain together tethers. I'd suggest just being instantly teleported to the spirit or being a lot more generous on the time when you can re-tether again. Hope that helps!
Got it. Thank you so much for adding clarity. You've already sparked some ideas for me on how to fix this. We'll definitely play with your idea of having the spirit rejoin instantly instead of having a delay. I also think we might experiment with input buffering so the player pushes J while in the returning state, they immediately starts a new tether when they rejoin. Smash Bros uses input buffering like this and it makes it feel super responsive. I've found it to be a very player-friendly affordance that makes for great design. Thank you again, this is huge!
2 years ago(+1)
Thank you for the kind words and thoughtful feedback! The jump-pads do feel a bit hectic don't they. With more time, we'd have liked to adjust the spirit's location to better follow the character as she bounces. Post-jam stuff!
Thanks for playing!
2 years ago (+1)
Thank you for the kind and thoughtful feedback! We actually had a discussion about this exact thing. We originally used left shift, but in playtests that sometimes activated people's "sticky keys" function on Windows. So we opted for J, assuming that the player would use two hands, one to control the character and the other to split/rejoin the spirit. I agree the WASD controls feel much better than arrow keys with J. I've only really playtested it with the WASD actually. My favorite is with controller though.
For our post jam build, what button besides J would you recommend we use for spirit splitting to accommodate people playing on arrow keys? Thanks in advance! And thank you for playing!
2 years ago(+1)
Thank you for the kind words! We really wanted to ramp up the difficulty so it's super great to hear that it hit the mark!
2 years ago(+1)
Thank you for the kind words and the thoughtful feedback! You're not the only person to feel the movement is too fast, myself included. I think the momentum compounds when you rejoin with the ghost too, making it really tough to control sometimes.
Also, thank you for calling attention to the platform bug! That's something that we're aware of, tried to slap a band-aid on, and still couldn't quite debug in time for the jam. It's honestly validating to hear that you too found this bug, so we know it's worth digging into.
This is excellent feedback that will make our post jam version all the better. Thank you so much for playing!
2 years ago(+1)
Thank you for the kind words and high praise! We honestly spent a ton of time brainstorming, designing, and planning out the mechanism and how it would interact with different elements. Who needs sleep right? The graphics are thanks to our phenomenally talented artists Rae & Noah Allen (power couple!).
2 years ago(+1)
Thank you for the kind words! I'm still blown away at how much we accomplished in 48 hours. All thanks to an incredible team and severe sleep deprivation..
Lol and thank you for showing us that "secret." This kind of feedback is super valuable. I'll be sure to add that to our debug list in our post jam version :)
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