Several layers make a great presentation here. Definitely a project worth sticking wtih.

PROS:

• It's impressive how much level art layering is on display. I honestly couldn't really pinpoint a tileset for the levels.
• The boss fights felt unique and the ability to actually have pacifist runs is a nice touch.
• Watching the rate of progress on this it's very impressive how much you were able to accomplish with such limited time/resources.

CRITIQUE:

• Playing with controller I noticed some input lag on both the jump and attack actions.
• Slopes (very much like the game I worked on) had some odd affect on character movement. Much less egregious in your game, but definitely notable.
• Another controller issue was sliding to the sides a bit when attempting to either up-angle or down-angle my throws. Increasing the horizontal axis dead zone a bit could help players that play with control sticks mitigate this issue.

Great job with this!  I played to the finish and enjoyed it.  This game really excelled at creating a sense of place.  The tree interior spaces were outstanding, with their glowing bugs, mushrooms and light holes, and you did a great job of making those interiors feel like a tight space, yet still allow for platforming.  I also really liked the title animation and especially the animation of the background ants on the march just prior to the ant boss.  And the idea of the different types of acorns for different functions/speeds, etc. was great.  It was also an impressively large game.  Nice!

The tradeoff under game jam time limitations for having all of the narrow and sloping geometry of the tree interiors is that it's hard to make crisp platforming in that space.  On jumps I often got stuck in a spinning animation on walls, and sloping surfaces were a little slow to navigate.  I took the blending-in of the grasshoppers and spiky plants to be a design choice, and those were the ways I took damage.  I don't think I ever died from start to finish, though, so I personally would have enjoyed more difficulty.

After reading the comments, I see that people had quite different paths to completion of this game, so nice job adding that layer of complexity.  I never saw the "intellinut" that people talk about, so the signs were always unreadable.  I never faced a hive boss -- I assume this was the boss that I paid off with honey, never realizing that there could be a boss battle there.  And I think something went wrong for me with the ant boss:  I saw it, climbed up on something to its left, and just sat there pelting it with acorns until it died.  It never moved, never said anything, just stayed in an eating-type animation until I hit it enough times and it crumbled.

Over all, an impressive game that I had fun playing -- nice job!

So, overall, I enjoyed the game a fair bit, and it’s nice to see a game about a squirrel, hehe.

The art and world design is quite well pull together in terms of environment design.

I haven’t finished the content on offer.

Nitpicks:

• The Grasshopper enemy, at least on my laptop screen, was very easy to miss in the background in a lot of areas. I ran into them or landed on them more than once on accident. It didn’t seem on purpose, which is why I brought it up

• I had a hard time having any accuracy with throwing nuts, which didn’t mix well with small targets for doors, or flying enemies. It could be a level design thing, tho, where a lot of enemy placement ends up in hard-to-reach spots when throwing nuts

• I may not have found it, but the amount of wall friction felt like a precursor to a wall jump.

• I think that the run speed should be the default, and walk speed, if it exists, should be an optional thing, especially with a map of this size. The player is going to be wandering around a lot, having to hold shift the entire time got old. If nothing else, having a toggle would be nice, since I ended up running almost everywhere

• It was surprisingly easy to get caught or slowed on slopes. Kudos for having them, but they definitely felt like trying to walk through sand at times? Maybe making grounded movement go along the normal of the surface while the character is grounded would help?

Silly goofs:

• I might have just gotten lucky, but the hive boss got me down to 1 hit point, and then didn’t kill me ever? I then turned around and died to a stealthy grasshopper , heh.

• By engaging in the honored tradition of wedging into stray geometry wall and jumping a lot, I was able to get to the exit for The Crown, though it was locked.

This was really great (as expected after seeing the progress you posted in the Discord). I liked the mechanic where you can choose to fight the bosses or help them with a thing to get past them. Though the dialogue options weren't entirely clear which would lead to which. I suspect that might have been a deliberate choice, but it left us a bit disappointed when we saw we could give cherries to the ant queen but then had to end up fighting her because we chose the wrong option.

Overall a very good entry, so I'll just note some other bits that I would have liked to see:

- In the outside bits, the contrast between the enemies/player and the backdrop wasn't enough, so that it became a bit hard to quickly pick them out.

- Some things that looked like you could jump on them turned out not to be jumpable. Some clearer indication of what's background and what isn't might have been helpful?

- Some of the hazards / ability "locks" sometimes blended in a bit too well with the background; I would have liked them to stand out a bit more.

Fantastic job!

I love the style, spritework and charming mood of the game. The music is very nice and fitting. I think some extra clarity and action when something changes, such as a door opening or when killing an enemy could be nice. I like the teases for different abilities that you come across as you explore. The patterns of movement and attacks for enemies are nice and predictable. Sometimes the background branches would confuse me and I'd try to jump on them, perhaps a greater differentiation between foreground and background would be nice. The characters you encounter are nice and varied, although the spider boss felt a little easy while still being quite long, until I figured out just where to hit it. The controls are responsive and feel good.

The game felt very well fleshed out and well polished, and it's particularly impressive for being made in one month! Very well done.

The art and music are amazing! ^^ I think I saw everything, though after a certain point the prompts to read/talk didn't work? I hope it wasn't a bug and missed something, for instance the frog didn't have any dialogue? It happened right after beating the bees, there was a prompt above them that didn't work for me. I made it to the "thanks for playing" and got every nut, and intellinut :') great submission!

The only thing I didn't like was that I couldn't jump high enough to hit that second switch so I couldn't progress further. That seems like more of a me problem though. This game looks amazing and is surprisingly bug free.

Really awesome job!  This had the best tutorial system I've seen so far.  I didn't feel confused at all about what to do :D I learned from this, thanks!

Hey, really enjoying this one. It's a hell of a lot of content to fit into a game in a month, especially given you were away for some of it. The world you've created is charming and inviting, and the tutorialised introduction serves as a good way to get us into the game world. There is very good use of URP for the rays of light coming into the trunk.

The design is good - I think the one thing to look out for is colouring assets more to make sure they stick in a player's head and they can remember to back track to them, particularly assets that serve as gates once you get an ability. For example, I'd make the vine plants very colourful and possibly even have a light source, as sometimes in the interior area they didn't register with me the first time and I found them more by stumbling upon them again rather than suddenly getting an idea of where I might use my new ability.

The platforming is generally good. It's a little floaty for my tastes at times but that might just be me. Some of the collision on the slopes and how the character controller handles it could use some work, but I know how hard it is to get that right, especially given the timeframe.

Music adds a lot to the atmosphere and the SFX on a new room discovery is a very good addition.

Overall, really had a lot of fun with this and it was interesting to follow along as it was being made! 

Quick question - I'm stuck here and not sure if it's me or a bug - the screen seems to go dark when I select that option then return to the same area, and I can't get back down and lack an ability to progress further right. Would love to finish it if there's a solution, no worries if not! 

amazing looks! It felt a bit slow, but I made it to the hive boss. I could not go to the door at the top for some reason, and after that I could not read any of the signs (I had the intellinut already). Great work overall!

The graphics and world building for this game is extremely impressive. It all feels like a really big sonic level, and it's music makes it all so atmospheric. It seems like a game made for the sega genesis, if you've heard of that.

Now, unfortunately, it was quite easy to get lost, in a bad way. You're stuck in one area for an eternity, because you forgot to check that one room, which looks a lot like another room you've already visited, so you think to yourself: "I was here before" and go back. This happens multiple times in the game. The minimap helps a little, but not by much. 

Still a banger of a game though, the rate at which you managed to produce content is insane.