Any game using pixel art is an instant win for me. I also enjoy the mechanics, but feel they could have been fleshed out along with level design. As others have already said, it definitely gives an impression of Celeste, and would love to see where you can take this concept in the future. Even so, the art is where the game truly shines, and brings atmosphere and personality to the game in ways I think even full releases fail to capitalize on.
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Em's roots's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #1519 | 3.260 | 3.260 |
| Overall | #2642 | 2.749 | 2.749 |
| Fun | #2888 | 2.468 | 2.468 |
| Originality | #3443 | 2.519 | 2.519 |
Ranked from 77 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?
Em is joined together with Warrior soul in one body, both have unique abilities and are needet to beat the game
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?
No
We used pre-existing audio
Comments
Cool game! It was simple, and was pretty fun to use the combat. I found that the increased jump height was a little underwhelming, especially because it's on the warrior, causing me to wait patiently for the meter to go down to progress. The art was nice as well, really detailed animations. Overall nice game!
Submitted
I'll Take Your Word For ItThe characters remind me a lot of Celeste - the art is incredible. Really good job on this game, it's a lot of fun playing it, amazing what you did in the 48 hours!
Submitted
Defying InstinctsI'm going to join the chorus of people praising the art - did you really make all the trees and ground tiles and enemy animations within the jam? That's ridiculously impressive!
The long cooldown to wait for the warrior to be available is kind of painful, especially since the default character is so slow and has no abilities. Maybe the main character could be fast and agile, so you run around dodging enemies until the slower but powerful warrior becomes available to wreck everything?
Aside from that, game feel could definitely use more work. The animations and visuals are great, but I would've loved some sound effects and visual feedback for getting hit or landing hits. Some music would also be nice to make it feel a touch less barren. It wouldn't take much to make this great-looking game feel great.
Great work on this entry! I had fun exploring it.
Submitted
Golem GrooveThank you for this review, I really worked hard on the pixel art so I’m glad that a lot of people like it. But I’m a solo developer so while most of the pixel art is mine, not all is.
Ground tiles, grass, bushes, animations are all mine, trees were a pre-made assets (I will link all of them when I get home, big thanks to those artists for filling in the gaps). I hope that next time I can team up with someone and create all the assets in the game.
As for the long cool down, there is a under explained feature in game for this: Em can pickup skeleton remains and cut that time down, you do this by standing on a skeleton bones and pressing [c] key
There was a plan to have Em and Warrior do different tings, but I ran out of time in the end :/ Same goes for effects and music, it kills me that I didn’t have time to include them..
The time crunch is tough, for my game I was basically exclusively working on assets while my teammate did the code, and we still nearly ran out of time. That might be because we have a habit of our ambition outstripping our skill, but that's besides the point...
In any case, it's honestly a pretty major accomplishment to ship anything in the first place, especially something that looks this good.
Damn i cant cross the skeletons so i jumped over them. 😁 Didn't know i can do that. The art style is awesome and controls need some fine tuning. Great game !
Submitted
The Ghost of the PastLove the art, the character art gives me big Celeste vibes, and the parallax scrolling is a great touch that makes the game just look that much more interesting.
The mechanic is interesting but I feel both the cool down and the transformation time could've been shortened a bit so I wasn't just waiting around before I can continue playing the game. An animation or an indicator to show that you are currently transforming as there were definitely a few times where I felt like I was for sure doing it correctly but must have pressed it just ever so slightly before I stopped moving.
Great looking game and concept overall though, good job!
-Scott
Submitted
Sig-NullThanks for taking the time to play my game, Celeste is one of the inspirations for this game and I’m proud to admit that I spend way too much time to fine tune parallax background scrolling :p
There is a mechanic in the game that I under explained, when you are waiting for the Warrior to charge back up, Em can press [c] key on the skeleton remains to cut down on the wait time. Every skeleton adds 3HP, -5s from charge up wait time and increases your attack power by 0.1HP
There is a bug in the game where if you are standing on a slope game starts treating you like you are falling, that blocks the transformation.
The art style is beautiful. The character reminds me of madeline from Celeste. The idea of two souls joined together is a good integration with the theme. Some music would make the game better, but that's okay since this is a game jam. Overall, very good game.
Submitted
Link-Man And The Magic BlockThanks, I worked hard on the pixel art so I’m glad that you like it, The character Warrior was inspired by Madeline from Celeste and Em by Madeline illustrations from Ludwig Bemelmans.
I know that that game is missing music and it really needs it, but as a solo developer my time was stretched so thin already that I forgot to reserve time for a soundtrack :/
Thanks for playing! I wanted to include a better tutorial for the game but I finished this build of the game 30minutes before the deadline, that’s the problem with being a solo developer I guess.
And yes Warrior was inspired by Madeline from Celeste, Em was inspired from Madeline illustrations by Ludwig Bemelmans.
Had fun, didnt knew how to switch to warrior first time as you see no indicator and read the ingame tips (which dont talk about the 3 seconds delay). Wish they both had there seperate roles as atm i always felt i just had to go back and wait for warrior to recharge putting the game on pauze sort of speak.
Still great concept and nice art
Thanks for not giving up, I ran out of time to include a lot of my ideas for the game. The idea for Em was that she would do quests with the NPC characters.
As for waiting for Warrior to charge back up Em can pickup skeleton remains and cut down wait time when pressing [c] key on a dead skeleton bones.
The concept is interesting, but the gameplay is a bit lackluster. The warrior is just better at everything, so there's no real point to play as Em. I believe it would be a whole more interesting if they have different advantages (like, Em is really agile and can climb, but can't fight, while the Warrior can fight but can't climb) so the player had to "choose" when to use one or the other.
Having said that, the art is really good. I am quite impressed you did it all during the jam and by yourself on top of that.
Overall, good job doing all of this by yourself within the time limit (specially since it's your first game)!
Submitted
Tower Pull DefenseThanks for playing, the game-play is differently lacing in features, I had a plan to give Em a bigger role but I ran out of time.
Right now the only advantage she has that warrior cannot regain health back so Em regenerates it slowly or gets 3 heal points back when pressing [c] on the skeleton remains.
I really worked hard on the pixel art so it would look good, but as I was only a solo developer not every artwork is mine, like a skeleton sprites for example.
At first I didn't realise that you had to charge the warrior so an animation to give the player feedback that their input is being recognised is necessary. The art was good, the character design was a bit reminiscent of Celeste. One thing that could really make the game stand out is some music. There are a number of different libraries of copyright free music that you could use. The gameplay was good overall though I feel it could have done with a bit more development. That being said this is a great game for just two days of work, especially solo so well done on that. Good job overall.
Submitted
The Dark SideThank you for the review, I’m well aware of these problems and they are a cost of being a solo developer as the game was finished to this state with 30minutes left to go.
The character Warrior was actually inspired by Celeste, Em was inspired by Madeline illustrations by Ludwig Bemelmans.
I already wrote this but I know the game is missing music, and I’m not happy about it.. But you know start small and build your way up. This is my first released game, I’m surprised that it actually runs that well :p
I liked the artstyle, it reminded me alot of celeste and I noticed some of the sprites were premade free sprites (like the skeleton), the gameplay couldve been fleshed out a little bit more i feel, overall interesting idea
Submitted
Save the LandThanks for playing the game, Celeste was in fact one of the inspirations for the game. Game-play is differently lacking features I had more plans but ran out of time.
Thanks for reminding me, some sprites are not made by me. I’m a solo developer for this game so I couldn’t drawn all art and still finish a game. I will link used sprites in the description for the game.
Still most of the art is my own work so I’m glad that you liked it!
I love that you took the time to create the idle animation for Em, playing with her hair. As others already have said, the character design is reminiscent of Celeste and a charge-up animation is absolutely necessary when changing form Em to Warrior.
I am blown away however about the quality you achieved as a single dev that only just started out using Godot!
EDIT: Especially with also creating the game's beautiful pixel art during the jam.
Submitted
Soul Ma(gne)tesThis was my first try at using a game engine (I never used a program that has a level editor, scripting, tile map configuration, etc..).
If I had more time I’d use a game framework like amethyst.rs or bevy (rust libraries for game development), they offer more control and are written in rust which I prefer, but using this frameworks isn’t a good option for 2 day jam as solo developer.
I chose Godot because it’s open sourced and their documentation is decent for learning. It really is a good engine prototyping is quick and workflow is pretty decent to make a whole game in 48 hours
The graphics and animations look really good! The main character reminds me of Madeline from "Celeste". It wasn't immediately obvious how long you have to hold down X to change to warrior soul, or what the purpose of the two "health bars" had. I understood them in the end though. Really could've used some music and SFX.
Submitted
Joe & T-Bag: Mice In CupsThanks for giving my game a go, Em was actually partly inspired by Madeline: Her hair change an animations. The other inspiration came from Madeline illustrations by Ludwig Bemelmans.
I was working solo, so I didn’t have time to finish all features. Music was sadly one of them, it makes me very sad that game doesn’t have any.
Some of the game features are under explained, but I finished the game last minute so there was no time :/
Love the art & animation. It would be cool if I could use WASD and SPACE to move around. Some sound effects would also improve the gameplay.
Submitted
Squantum ExplorerWow very beautiful graphics! Gameplay was very short, movement needs some work, warrior change needs indicator to see when changing. With more work this will be a great game! :)
Submitted
Joe & T-Bag: Mice In CupsThanks for taking the time to play my game, I was working until the last minute to to get everything working, because of that level design is lacking in size and features.
As for the Em’s movement … The game was made with Godot, and.. Well I didn’t use it before or any game engine like it. I found out about the jam 3 days before it started, so I learned how to make a full game in Godot in the 3 days I had and hoped for the best :p
P.S. I will be remaking the game at some point as I like the concept, the name will stay the same so maybe keep an eye out!
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