Pretty fun arcade game! The fact the friendly fire happens for both the players and the enemies gives the game a lot of depth that other GMTK game jams where they have two characters are physically connected lack, especially the ones where they basically act like a single character. The friendly fire really makes positioning matter and requires some thought put into it, and the player can't simply charge up to every single enemy and spam attack. My favorite feature that comes as a result of the friendly fire is making the enemies hurt each other, the easiest way of doing this is baiting a melee enemy into the line of fire of an archer enemy. Melee enemies can also hurt other enemies as well, especially the ones with a long attack charge up. Speaking of the enemies, the AI is simple, but still challenging in many cases. It's is easy to deal with one of them but when there are several enemies with different weapons and attack patterns, navigating fights against them is incredibly fun! Allowing the players to pick up some of the dropped weapons is cherry on top of an already great game. The art is great, the animation is clear and fluid, and sound design compliments the visuals and gameplay well. No complaints from me on the overall presentation of the game. Overall the game is very well made, the only few problems I have with the game is it freezing after I press retry and I have to pause and unpause to unfreeze it. Hitboxes for the melee weapons feels a bit bigger than what their sprite shows, and I'd prefer if they were slightly smaller. Getting two bows makes the game a bit easy and takes away much of the depth the melee combat has, but this is a minor balancing issue as it is unlikely that the player would get two bows in the first place and the enemies are still strong enough to eventually overpower the player. These problems are minor and you've done a great job making a very well balanced game that also has plenty room for mastery and fun!

P.S. you should join the GMTK discord (https://discord.com/invite/pd4rQKU) and post your game there to get more people to play and rate your game!

Great work. I think this idea could easily be extended to a well-polished game with more twists.  When we brainstormed, we kind of thought of chaining characters together seemed too simple and easy. However, the more games I played, the more I saw that you can make great game concepts with it. Like one did a dog, you have to tame which somewhat would fit the last GMTK Theme "Out of control" as well.  This one was one of them. Being cautious of not hurting yourself gives the game a lot of dynamic. Thumbs up <3.

Excellent game idea guys. Love the art style and music. Getting hits on enemies while avoiding taking damage yourself is very satisfying, though I did find it quite buggy to pick up weapons in the heat of combat. Still I had a very fun time with it, congrats!

Great work, very quality submission!  The game is fun, despite the constant deaths, and I like the dynamics of needing to thwack your enemies while avoiding thwacking your partner. 

In a more polished version, maybe a longer chain would be a good thing to experiment with?  As is I think there is usually too wide an arc that you can't swing in without damaging your partner, and it would be cool to see if you could tweak that challenge element so that you can purposefully avoid that state with skill. Also, in a polished version giving the player some way to better hold their own against archers would be great.

Very good work!

Really cool idea and lots of fun but i keep on killing myself :P