| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #890 | 3.762 | 3.762 |
| Audio | #1289 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
| Creativity | #2725 | 3.548 | 3.548 |
| Artwork | #2727 | 3.357 | 3.357 |
| Narrative | #3057 | 2.524 | 2.524 |
Ranked from 42 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?
When you reach the end of the level the level flips updside down and now you need to loop back and forth through the level each flip as the game gets harder and harder.
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
see description for full credits
(Optional) What would you like to be called if GMTK features your game?
Woodland Cat
the starting part of the game was a bit confusing since i didnt realise i had to turn back, but the rest of the game was really fun! also yes, last minute rating is real
and i like that the cat has a light coming down from it so i know where ill end up, really makes the game for fun to play :D
I LOVE THIS GAME!! As a huge fan of neon white and other speedrunning 3D FPS platformers, this game scratched an itch in my brain that no other game in the jam has. The cute cat teleportation mechanic is really stand out, and I found myself just messing around with the movement so much due to how smooth it felt. Especially with the added feature of being able to shoot and teleport in mid air. After a few tries, I was doing so many skips and flying through the level. Despite little texturing, the visuals are really pretty, with the blue yellow gradient colouring being really nice, and the collidable surfaces were clear and lit well. I can tell that you are a fan of this genre as well, with all of the implemented skips and cool mechanics. The level design is truly peak. The little blue shooty things are so satisfying to use, and the orange trigger platforms add nice variety.
There is so much potential in this movement system, and I'd love to see this idea expanded into multiple levels. I think this system would serve well with multiple shorter speedrunable levels like neon white (if you haven't played it you should check it out), which would allow the mechanics to be introduced at a different rate, and would give more opportunity for unique use of the level design flipping.
One final thing is that I'd prefer the controls to be taught early on, and then for the UI to reduced, just to have more gameplay focus in the screen (the timer, sand bar, and reticle are good, the cat could be shrunk a little). I totally understand if you didn't have time for some of this though, and just needed to put it somewhere.
Overall, this is a really well made game, and I really enjoyed it!! The level design and tight movement really stand out, as well as many other good things. Great work making a cool and fun game!
Man, thank you so much! It really means a lot! I'm glad I've finally found someone who understands and likes the gameplay and can zoom through the level! While I may have not played what people consider games of this genre I definitely have played fast paced platforming games and love them! I'm glad my level layout was fun to exploit, even I stuck to the main path quite hard so I do wonder how insane skips can get. While visuals did get rushed I feel as though of all the games to be untextured this vibe somewhat works and I'm glad I picked the right colors with post processing and ambient lighting!
This is certainly a game I can picture getting a proper game version, the hourglass/sand vibe is cool and is why the game is named "Time Flies" but I certainly want other levels that have their own design style, my point being the hourglass made sense to flip when you reach the very top but maybe making level flipping something more common and can happen multiple times throughout one level (without looping back on yourself) sounds really cool. I really like the move set myself (I didn't even add nearly as much game juice as I wanted and it still feels good) so I do want to make the most of it one day! I agree that some shorter levels could really help create dense but well thought out levels that could be done in seconds with cool skips!
Yeah, you're spot on with the UI and lack of a tutorial, next jam I'll have a much better understanding of pacing and should hopefully have more time to do far better UI to go along with better explanations of the game within the game and not just the itch page.
I'm so glad you enjoyed it and got to experience the game the way I intended it to be played, I was losing hope in the game but you saved that, so thank you so much! (of course everyone's feedback is very well deserved and includes things I'll take into account later).
THANK YOU!!!
No problem at all, I was just saying the truth. Now that I think about it, the name “Time Flies” is literally perfect, it’s just so good.
I definitely hope that you release a solid post jam update/expansion, as that would be SO FUN!! Anyhow, good luck with whatever you decide to develop next, you’re awesome!
Thank you! I really can't guarantee an update but I do think it'd be cool, I need to learn quite a bit for the brackeys jam so I don't know how much time I have but maybe I can do a bare minimum small update and have a still small but bigger update later, good luck to you in your future projects as well!
A bit jank here and there, though i'm not sure whether thats an intentional feature of the rage-platformer genre. that being said, those rage game platformer genres usually don't reset you to the very bottom every time you fail unless you get particularly unlucky, I would have appreciated some way of recovery if you fall. I liked the launch pads, they feel satisfying and work consistently, not exactly sure what the vines are supposed to represent though. if they're just decoration, they clash a bit with the rest as the only piece of pure deco and the difference in artstyle. in the case that this isn't supposed to be a rage game, to make the player want to go fast, give them the ability to do so without risking immediate failure without godlike precision, and give them a way to somehow use the travel time of the teleporting cat instead of waiting for it to get to the right spot. i found myself playing very slow and carefully, because going fast simply led to immediate failure, and so dying by falling through floors or phasing through walls just became very frustrating.
This game had me CAPTIVATED. Cute cat and so many shortcuts. I did notice you can phase through walls (im not sure if this is intended). I died a few times because of it, but I also used it to skip past many of the orange barriers without flicking the switches. Really really intense and compelling gameplay. I wasn't able to complete the game, although I did get pretty far (I think). I had a lot of fun optimizing my route to save time, but it seems like the level is still quite long even with all the skips I found.
Hey, thanks for leaving such a in depth and constructive review on our game. Since you left such a review, I assume that you also want fairly harsh constructive feedback. If you aren't open to that kind of feedback, you might not want to read the rest of this review. I am aware that you were attempting to deal with scope and perfectionism, and I will touch on that later in the review.
First of all, I'll start with what I liked. In general the game was a decently fun experience (particularly after 15+ minutes). The music was decent and the cat pixel art was pretty cute. I also appreciated the fairly unique movement option, and the stairs felt buttery smooth (I loved the spiral staircases).
However, there were some fairly major issues with the gameplay.
First of all, the movement felt pretty janky at first, and I mean for almost 15 minutes before I really got used to it. The default sensitivity of the mouse was way too high, and I didn't notice that I could change it for a while (kind of my bad). It was also fairly difficult to control the teleport feature, especially before I read the note on the itch page. Even afterwards, the teleport feature felt pretty janky, and very unlenient. I would frequently clip through walls or just barely miss a platform, and that always felt bad. One way to fix this would be some form of coyote time leniency (expand the player hitbox right after teleportation so that they can stay on ledges more easily)
Secondly, the switches and purple arrows did not feel that they significantly contributed to the fun. The puzzles that I encountered felt pretty half-baked, it was almost always "shoot at the orange thing" or "shoot at the purple thing". It would have added great depth to the gameplay if the player was supposed to analyze the switches and see if they should hit them or ignore them. (I was actually playing this way, but I kept getting killed by the rising sand, so I had to stop).
Third, the rising sand was a good idea to provide time pressure, etc. but was poorly executed. The visual warning was bad, and since most of the level was spent well ahead of it, it mostly felt like a random death event instead of a persistent threat. I would regularly get to a new section, pause to consider how to beat it, and then just die. That sucked. At the very least, there needed to be a much more clear way to see how close the sand was to you, or some sort of warning.
Most importantly, the size of the levels + lack of checkpoints was infuriating, I played for 45 minutes and literally did not reach the end of the level. The fact that every death brought you back to the beginning of a giant level exacerbated every single problem above and was what personally took the game from "kind of fun" to "oh my god, I hate this" on a regular basis. If you were attempting to make a rage game, that would make sense, and honestly would have been well executed. However, you specifically stated that you intended for the "looping" part to be replaying the level, but upside down. That does not work if a fairly skilled platformer player can't complete the first level in 45 minutes. I would have enjoyed the game much more if the level had been quite a bit shorter and I'd really gotten to experience the looping idea, which sounded quite fun.
This brings me to another point, the lack of a looping feeling. Many games that I've played (and frankly my game as well), stretch the looping theme pretty far. However, in 45 minutes in this game I really did not experience any looping, unless the main movement ability is somehow looping, or the spiral staircases count. I understand that I did not reach the looping part, but if the player being able to reach the core relation to the theme is in question, I would hope that the game would include some other looping sub-theme (I did not count having to replay parts of the level over and over again).
I have mostly talked about the gameplay, so let's talk about art. I understand the challenges of being a solo dev, and I think that we should always prioritize gameplay in a game jam. These are merely my thoughts on the art.
As you've mentioned. the art style was "brutalist". However, imagining that it had been textured, I still have a few suggestions. The mixture of billboarded pixel art sprites for the player and vines mixed with the low-poly levels/switches/arrow thingies was a bit strange. I also am not a huge fan of this style in general, but that's just my two scents. I loved the vibe of the cat, but it didn't mesh with the rest of the environement. I think making the arrows and switches throughout the level billboarded pixel art would have been a nice touch. A pixelated font would've gone a long way too.
Just a minor nitpick, but the ambient occlusion on the level looked a bit strong (much better than none though).
Nothing much to say about SFX or music, they were quite good for a solo dev.
Overall, I want to conclude by saying that this was still a really good first game for a game jam, and aside from what I mentioned above I have two pieces of advice.
1. This should have been a 2d game. The mechanics were fun in 3D but an idea like this is much easier to make fun with the precision of 2d games, and it would have been easier to make assets in the same style (though you would need a player character).
2. You mentioned how you were working on scope/perfectionism. The way I see them is almost like a tradeoff between scope and polish. In your case, I would highly suggest that you continue to minimize scope, but leave some room to really polish mechanics and/or graphics, even if it means making a much smaller game.
I didn't mean for this to just be a beat-down on the game, but I hope to provide the same level of detailed and fair feedback that you provided for our game, since you were one of the few that left truly harsh feedback.
Holy moly, first of all I fully welcome the review and I gotta say, THANK YOU SO MUCH, I really appreciate how much time you've spent writing and I appreciate that you probably put a lot of thought in writing it out in a nice way but still with the feedback.
So I'll try and reply to your comment following yours in order
So first, I hope I truly helped with my feedback on your game! Scope is indeed an issue I faced but perfectionism is a problem that I no longer deal with, it was my prior years of gamedev that it affected me (letting go of it was how I did this jam :D)
Glad you enjoyed the music! It's something I really enjoy despite still being somewhat new to it, hope to improve!
Sorry about the settings being tucked away, I decided I had no time for a start menu (may have not been the best idea, idk why I did this since the pause menu has all the same features really...but hindsight is 20/20). Personally I've wondered that of all the reviews of my game if people would have had a WAY easier time had they used the visualization or if I had just made a way better visualization, wall clipping is indeed the biggest bug of the game that I'll try and fix if I do a small update, I do see what you mean by the coyote time idea, I have a different solution in mind but that is very helpful!
I agree switches served zero purpose other than to slow down the player a little and get them looking around a bit, maybe the looking around does help to look for shortcuts maybe but that's a BIG maybe, I still personally like the launch pad (blue/purple arrows) as they just made me happy to use but I see what you mean, I think I'd have to change them a bit but the idea could work!
yeah the sand I fumbled hard, I just completely forgot to mention it at all in game, and having the bar turn yellow or red if it gets close would help (or something similar as you said, maybe showing that it's increasing in speed idk), I'd have to tweak it far better when reworking difficulty or adding checkpoints (I might make a checkpointless version of the level the "hard mode" (so the current game)).
I wasn't trying to make a rage game lol, for me the game is easy as heck, I was hardly looking at the screen when sleep deprived at 2 am and I was blasting through so I really did not gauge difficulty for others well, I really gotta do better on that for next jam , I was expecting people to be looping over and over lol, not quite XD
The "brutalist" art was very much a joke cause I just rushed art so hard and had no time to texture well, the cat has made at the start of the project when I planned the game to be a horror game (yeah bit of a shift) so it's a much different vibe, the pixel art vines were just a last minute, "I just want something interesting looking in the game" and may have not fit too well. A proper font would've been nice, I'll take a look at some jam games to see how to credit fonts correctly (big reason I didn't use one)
I'm sure this would be a good 2D game but this is one part I disagree with, skips and exploits are a huge part of the game, the level is designed in a way to be able to at least attempt skips, I don't think that would be as possible in 2D.
In conclusion thank you very much for the detailed comment, even though when I initially saw the size of it I saw a health bar appear above me and bloodborne music started playing, I can't thank you enough for the time you spent on the feedback, I'll look over it if I update this game or ever want to turn it into a full release (Will need a huge amount of work though lol)! THANK YOU!
bro you made catrol(cat portal) in four day's and 3d that's soo impressive!!!
This was a lot of fun to play! the controls feel good and the movement mechanic is really neat once you get the hang of it. I was pretty unsure of the looping mechanic until I realized once you learn more in higher up levels you can use the new knowledge to redo the early levels faster. That's a really fantastic way to tie the theme to the mechanic in a meaningful way
. Unfortunately I'm not too good and I kept getting stuck in the same place unsure of how to progress so I gave up, but that didn't effect my enjoyment, just made me sad I don't get to see the top. Resetting was a bit frustrating after a little while, I don't really know how that could be solved though. perhaps checkpoints but I worry that would interfere with the main loop mechanic.
All in all this game was a blast, fun but a bit too challenging for me. I think this is perfect for a speedrunner audience so you nailed it. Great work, thanks for making this :D
Aww, thank you so much :)
So what you described as the "main loop" isn't actually the loop mechanic of the game (which is flipping the level when you reach the top) but it was indeed designed in a way so you'd learn shortcuts and exploits/skips to get faster and faster, I tried my best to make (almost) every modular piece have multiple angles to approach from, so when constructing the level (and of course how the level sections connect) they'd be plenty of skips you could do once you get the teleporting! If I had the chance to go back in time I'd probably make the indicator of where you'll land when teleporting WAY better instead of checkpoints as I think that made things much harder for people (but checkpoints could work for sure but maybe only one halfway up or something).
Really appreciate the effort you put into your comment, it means a lot! Thank you for being so kind despite the present issues :)
Really feels like a good game to speed run! Its got a cute aesthetic and fairly tight controls I think. A tad too hard for me because it was difficult to tell exactly what was below the cat at all times. I’m not too sure if there is a way around that though. Had fun regardless!
Thank you so much! So it is a poor implementation but the idea is the line the shoots out under the cat is what you use to tell if you can land safely, if it intersects with the ground you know you can land there, even if I had remembered to explain this well in game (which I sadly didn't) it could be done better so I completely agree with you, glad you enjoyed!
Cute cat! I like the speedrunning aspect, and I love the mechanic, it's fast-paced, and the art style is cool too! The best part was trying to find exploits xD. Great job!
- Kairosolo
Really fun! I like the speedrunning aspect, as I caught on to some of the skips I could do with well placed throws. Really wish there were checkpoints as you traverse the level though, really sucked to die really high up.
Overall great game, super addicting, cute kitty
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