This is a super cute game! Definitely one of my favorites for this jam! At first I was thrown off by how fast we were, but it quickly made sense and felt really good for the scale of the world. The generosity theme couldn't be more spot on! The gliding felt good and natural and this entire project seemed to take a lot of inspiration from Legend of Zelda Wind Waker which I love to see. Our character (who I assumed is named mana) is super cute and visually interesting. I also loved the placement of the optional loaves. They were extremely "videogame" feeling. It felt really rewarding to look somewhere probable and be right and the ending screen after finding all the loaves made me smile. I thought the color change was going to be all there was (which was still cute) but the ending really made it super special. I think that the dark clouds and little particles make it super clear where the points of interest are and what we should be doing. I also thought the gliding felt really smooth and freeing and I like how the optional loaves push what you are able to accomplish with the glider. It really forces the player to stretch the mechanic to it's limits. I like all the aspects of gameplay, but I would love to see more expression and background. where are we? Why do we have an endless amount of bread? Why are we living on this island as a human girl among these animals? Did they ask us to give them this bread? Obviously a lot of these questions are out of scope for a game jam game, but I think animation, more detailed UI, more detail on the houses or world, or even different animals besides a bunny and bear could have went a super long way to make the world feel more full and alive, even if it was at the detriment to the size of the island. I also thought that although the music was produeced well and felt relaxing, it didn't quite fit the environment. The island is specifically covered mostly in woods/forests and greenery, and based on the description, the island is taking inspiration from Polynesian culture. It would have been super interesting to see visuals and sounds that are influenced by Polynesian architecture or sounds. The current music to me, seemed to loosely mimic the sounds of a kotekan from balinese gamelan (albeit more relaxed) similarly to the Lost Woods from Super Mario Odyssey. The instruments and notes used spoke more to mysteriousness, enchantedness, and sacredness, as opposed to the quaint, cutesy, island-y vibe the visuals of the game had. I think even something that sounded more like animal crossing or even a Hat in Time could have made more sense with the visuals. But despite the few gripes I had, I really really enjoyed my time with the game and thought it was a really solid project! I really hope you continue work on this project! I included some of the bugs I faced/suggestions below in case you do more work with this!
- Walking on the mountains didn't work super well. If the ground is too slanted the parachute opens as opposed to jumping which made mountain traversal a bit of a headache. I know mountain traversal was never necessary in game, but because the player is able to access and walk on the top of them and there are optional loaves that could be anywhere, it might be worth revising.
-anywhere on the island, if you angle the camera downwards and towards the collection of mountains in the center, all of the water becomes invisible
- I think forcing the player to open the parachute in order to go up in an air stream makes more sense than having the parachute automatically open. It took me a second to figure out that I had a parachute because the game let me use the air stream before figuring out how to glide.
Overall fantastic game! Good work to all involved!