Interesting that you have to manage both versions of yourself and I like that you have to really think to get through a level. I do feel like some situations that you put the player in are a little unfair though. In particular, I don't like the segment in, I believe, the third level where you have to navigate through a narrow path with thorns both above and below. This requires very tight platforming and will take a lot of players several tries to pull off, but you put this right at the end of a level with several other difficult obstacles prior and it killed my motivation entirely when I saw I had to do everything all over again. This sort of thing would be fine if you gave the players lives or had more control over the height of your jump like in the Super Mario games, but as it is right now it just feels a bit unfair, though that might just be me. I'd also like more specific details about Johnathon's trauma throughout the game. Having to piece together the story with little breadcrumbs on each level would definitely be a huge motivator to continue playing. On the whole, though, the art and music were really good and I like the implications of the story. Nice job!
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Looking Back's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #63 | 3.837 | 3.837 |
| Art Direction | #75 | 3.776 | 3.776 |
| Overall | #121 | 3.347 | 3.347 |
| Game Design | #123 | 3.327 | 3.327 |
| Fun | #226 | 2.898 | 2.898 |
| Innovation | #236 | 2.898 | 2.898 |
Ranked from 49 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Yea that is a lot of the feedback I've gotten and I have definitely learned a lot this week from all this. I was afraid to get actually specific with John's memories because I don't want to trigger some ones actual trauma so I decided to keep it vague since I am not a story writer and don't want to do something unless I know exactly what I am talking about. I appreciate the feedback and thank you for playing!
Nice game - cool concept. I think that it could be much improved with some tighter platforming controls... I found that the jump was a bit floaty and the lack of coyote time messed me up many times. Also, I didn't like having to use the mouse to click though the dialogue, so would appreciate a key binding to do that. Final nitpick, your pixel art should have a consistent pixel size... the background pixels seem to be much bigger than the foreground, and the players are smaller again. Fun game though, well done!
Nice art and music, good gameplay too, i like that its a platformer and a puzzle, my only problem is that when i loose i have to restart all the level, but its a really good game. Nice job!
Nice art. Only the pixel sizes in the character and in the surrounding world are different.
Nice pixel art (and page!) :)
One thing to improve: When the dialog appears I had to press press the left key exactly when I clicked on continue to avoid falling in the pit, maybe use a timer?
The story incorporated in the tutorial is a good idea and I understood what to do very fast!
Nice job, this game is really interesting! I like the music and the vibe, and the mechanic here is both interesting and well connected to the theme! Great job!
Couple things. To start with, there were a few glitches. In one of the levels, you could walk off the edge to the memory thingy with the non-inner self John. If you did so, he would be frozen, but he would be able to go into his walking animations, and if you held jump, he'd just... flip out, haha. If you are close enough to the edge of a platform, you can turn that character into the falling sprite without actually falling. Nothing gamebreaking, but just thought it should be mentioned.
One thing that kept happening was with the seeds of doubt/spikey plants of doom. They seem almost TOO sensitive. There's no buffer around it - it often felt like I would literally touch it with one pixel, just one, and have the whole level reset because of it. It got annoying when I couldn't even tell that I touched it. Nothing too major, but it was definitely something that took away from the experience for me.
Overall, this is some good work! Good job!
Wow wow wow! What an experience! The gameplay itself was fun and challenging, and on the later levels I really had to stop and think sometimes to complete them! Everything was smooth and snappy. Story wise this was also neat! It's not the first time we've seen a game where you control two different players, but this was a nice twist! And as far as visuals and audio go *chefs kiss*
I liked the artwork, especially the colour palette you went with. The music fit well too.
Personally I found this too difficult, I am truly awful at platformers. Which is a pain, because I wanted to experience the whole story. Some checkpoints would have been great, or just an easy mode with fewer spikes.
*Edit: I persevered and completed it, I still agree with my original comment though.
Very interesting game!
The choice of controls is a bit awkward, having to use the mouse button to progress dialog (especially in the part where you have to land on a safe spot), when everything else is done by keys.
I would make the transition when restarting the level smoother, the music in particular cease too abruptly, I think.
Also, I found going through the same dialog on every retry of a level a bit annoying.
The game was made with right passion and heart. Enjoyed the mechanic but I felt it a bit short on art direction (it’s still serviceable and actually sells the point of the game) and the floaty jumps/collisions were bit hard to get around to the point that my character fell through the floors 1-2 times.
However, you did great on writing. Mechanic was solid too. It also met the theme pretty nicely. Level design was also bit generic but was never boring.
Overall, I had my fun with it and it’s intriguing throughout but just the few glitches (not bugs) made it bit hard to play for longer time.
Loved the mechanic. Loved how you tied narrative into it. The physics and collisions were a bit dodgy but this is a strong entry that I enjoyed. For me, I think it would have been made stronger if the movement was smoother and the levels were designed slightly more elegant but this is a gamejam and there's not much time for that so all in all, great job!
It was fun to play, I like the mecanic and visuals too ! Very good work !
(ps: I thought something was going to happened when characters meet each other in lvl3 and 4 haha)
This game is awesome! Great levels, great art, really nice music and a clever twist on the formula. I'm really impressed :)
Hi. Great narrative and puzzle. Levels we're well made. Only the effect of the pickups sometimes confused me.
sadly I did not make the music, I linked it on the game page if you want to hear more of that YouTubers music. Most of his stuff is non copyright and open source.
Maybe I did not do a good enough explanation on my page. But the green door will teleport the other character to the blue door. The main objective is the memories spawn the doors. The links are how you end the level. Thanks for the feedback, I will try and make it more clear for future reference and thank you for playing!
Art style is great. Music is great. Concept is great. Dialouge/stroy is great. Level design is great. Theme is true to the jam. The way you portray the character's emotion with the art, music, dialogue, and game mechanics, such as links/memories/etc. is great.
This could definitely become a popular game if you keep working on it. I loved every second I played it. I also really love the name; It's very fitting for what the game is about and is a unique title, not some generic "Connecting with my past" or something like that. A+ game
I liked that you kept the mechanics simple, complicated doesnt always equal good. Also, while visually not stunning, you definitely conveyed all the right atmospheres and feelings through the graphics. The 2 players controlled by 1 input is also very similar to what I had in my game, so obviously I enjoyed that mechanic too. (Funny how when you give 400 people the same word to make a game off of some people make similar games). I did encounter one problem which was sometimes I would land on the side of a wall like there was a platform there. Not a huge issue though.
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