Great art, clever puzzle mechanics! I really love how many different functions the water and block mechanics serve which allow for such varied puzzle designs. Gotta say once I wrapped my mind around it I was feeling pretty big brain by the end! If I had something to complain about the block tileset was a slightly annoying to look at; too bright I think. Great work!
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Magical Girl Acorn: Overflow's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Theme Interpretation | #5 | 3.656 | 3.818 |
Magical Girl Concept | #7 | 3.656 | 3.818 |
Originality/Creativity | #7 | 3.830 | 4.000 |
Overall | #7 | 3.370 | 3.519 |
Engagement/Fun | #8 | 3.220 | 3.364 |
Audio | #9 | 3.307 | 3.455 |
Graphics | #9 | 3.395 | 3.545 |
Polish | #13 | 2.524 | 2.636 |
Ranked from 11 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the Magical Girl Genre?
The main character is a Magical Girl
Which theme(s) did you pick?
Stone Ocean
How does your game fit the theme(s)?
The game revolves around a flood that turns people to stone
Were the graphics/audio assets for your game made during the jam?
All music and art was original
Comments
This is cool puzzle game! I enjoyed the water manipulation quite a bit. I did have a LOT of trouble on one screen, but thankfully someone in the comments had figured it out. All the other puzzles were intuitive enough that I could figure them out on my own.
I love the intro story and ending art! The level sprites look good and all work well enough. The platforming is functional, though can get a little frustrating jumping out of the water on bricks sometimes, especially in tight spaces.
I would have liked a little more story/explanation of what was happening in game.. even though the intro was cool, it didn't really tell me what was happening.
A little more polish in general would really kick this up a notch! I really liked the core concept, I'd love to see animated water, the people doing a bit more, more story, tighter controls.
Overall, this is a good game with a great concept. I hope you keep working on it!
I like the music and graphics in the intro sequence. The character sprite ingame is also very cute. This game is a puzzle platformer where you can place and destroy blocks. I had to figure out myself that you use left click to place or delete a block, since the page didn't say anything about it. I also figured out that you can only do two actions before needing to pick up a green cube to recharge. Also if you want to play this game, R can be used to restart the current room, if you don't want to watch the opening cutscene yet again. Maybe there is something I'm missing, because I only made it past a few rooms and then got stuck in the room with one man and one submerged statue. Again, some instructions would have been really nice. You also lose some points for not marking the game as downloadable for Windows (makes it impossible to download and install through the convenient itch.io client)
Regardless, I liked what I saw. The game looks good and has the potential to be a fun puzzler, but severely lacks polish in its current state.
This one was a real puzzler! The magical girl transformation sequence at the start was great and the way the actual mechanics tied into stone ocean was also unexpected but well done.
I think the underlying fundamentals of the puzzler are quiet solid. I had a good time breezing through until I hit a wall and had to sit and think, then did a few moves and it worked out. That's exactly what you want from this kind of puzzler. I'm impressed with the water displacement mechanics - perhaps it's easier in a proper 3d engine like unity than I am used to, but it's pretty cool nonetheless.
The main thing missing is bits and pieces of polish, mainly in the UI department. The exits early on aren't obviously marked (before the water mechanic is introduced). Also, the way that water is displaced if a block is summoned in it makes sense intuitively but there's mechanical elements, primarily to do with the gems, that are probably worth tutorialising or explaining.
I don't know if it's possible to trap yourself in a failstate and not realise it - perhaps an easy-ish way of preventing this is to allow players to rewind their moves (either placing or removing blocks) and reverting the water. Maybe this doesn't play well with the platformer mechanics, who knows, but it does seem a bit odd that players have to simply recognise when they've screwed themselves.
I also think the cursor UI is probably too small and slight than I would like, particularly when what you're interacting with is so big and how important it is to see how many clicks you have left.
Still, I really enjoyed it! Good job!
The platform-puzzle game mechinic is quite good (plus it matches the theme).
i do find something which may be misleading and may need some visual to improve. There is one puzzle that player simply needs to fill some stone and raise the water level. The water is visually not high enough to cover the upper block, but it does in game logic, triggers the gem and pass the level.
Maybe it just needs some polishing. Anyways, good job, my friend.
I finally was able to finish the last level. Perhaps make the exits more obvious in the early levels. Other than that I think it's a great game.
A lot of puzzle games this time, which I wasn't expecting. I like puzzle games but I am terrible at them.
I love the intro and the pixel art in it, though the delays should probably be shortened a bit. I skipped past it the first time because nothing seemed to be happening.
The ingame tutorials are a nice touch, but the instructions are somewhat unclear. I didn't realize that allowing water to touch a gem would recharge you in addition to purifying the water. The format also has the disadvantage that you can't go back and reread what you may have missed.
I didn't finish the game; I couldn't get past the water puzzle with two gems in the room with very low water and a third gem several blocks away. I though it would be easy- place block, jump on block to get gems- but I found I couldn't jump on the block. Not sure if it's a glitch or not. I was almost able to beat this by manipulating water levels but couldn't quite figure out how to make it work.
I love the use of water for puzzles, but I second that the water really needs an animation, and sometimes water levels change in a way that seems unintuitive based on your actions. I also agree that the game shouldn't allow you to waste charges at all.
The platforming controls are just okay, but I realized quickly that this isn't a game that lives or dies by it. As far as I can tell there are no sections where you need to be quick and precise to not die horribly.
This game is definitely hitting that length where the lack of quality of life features hurts it. I really wish I could stop and come back to it, but there is no save or level select of any kind.
Overall it's a charming and fun little game.
I like this, its a really neat little action puzzler. The graphics, audio and everything gives the game a nice little atmosphere.
The thing that is really holding it back for me is polish. The people you rescue just kind of sit in the water, where a nice little float animation would have been really nice.
Similarly, a liquid puzzler without a water animation seems odd. I would have really liked to see something, even if it was only a few frames.
Allowing me to waste charges clicking on things that I can't interact with isn't great either. Maybe add some sort of feedback for a bad click?
I'd really like to see this get more love and attention, there's a good core idea here.
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