Note: It took some time for me to get back around to finishing comments on the jam games. Pardon the late comment!

I really enjoyed the familiar feel to the gameplay. Even though it's made in Godot, it reminds me a lot of Cave Story! The sprites are also quite cute and they fill out the game well even without a themed background. I'm also a fan of the upgrade system throughout levels, where I can configure the helper friend to handle the environment better.

Some of the audio seemed rather loud compared to other sound effects, especially the max-upgrade blaster - but it was all pleasant to listen to nonetheless!

Otherwise, I liked the theming a lot and found it to be a fun challenge overall. Well done on this game!

(review based on 1.0 jam release)

well i for one think the sukusuku is delightful and not at all a burden

very charming game with good art and cute presentation. but for a while, a frustrating game. the slippery movement and annoying enemies definitely caused a lot of issues, and the time limit was the unsung villain of the story. frustrating mechanics that you HAVE to take fast don’t make for a fun time.

and then i found out about aiming down with the oni killer upgrade.

HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT.

from a game design perspective, it’s probably not a good thing if your platformer becomes far more enjoyable when you give the player an insanely powerful jetpack, but my god i can’t stress enough how fun the game becomes once you realize the potential. not only do you get to shred through all the enemies and fling yourself past obstacles, it makes the slippery movement feel less like an obstacle and more like the price to pay for having an awesome bullet jetpack. honestly, it’s so good i genuinely wish the game was built around it. it’s so much more fun going around collecting stuff when you fling yourself around like that, and it pretty much saved the game for me. most gameplay issues i had were totally negated. praise be to the oni killer jetpack.

really adore the pixel art on this one! and i really loved the concept of the platforming + getting upgrades. the gameplay reminded me of cave story (especially after the final upgrade for the weapon)

but yea as others said, 2nd stage definitely caught me by surprise. i think i could beat it now w/o relying on combat upgrades, but the amount of enemies on it compared to the 1st level was pretty surprising

all in all, fun game!

The initial few stage is a bit of a slow burn until the upgrades start to kick in. When it does though that's where a lot of variation start to come in, it just might take a while to realize. Also might want to make it clear that you could un-upgrade

The main aspect that makes it a bit hard to get used to is probably the controls, There's a lot of different buttons when many of the buttons could have shared functionality. The friction is a bit slippery too at least for no-upgrade platformer. I eventually got around to A+ on every stage though, so it's not detrimental tier it's just mostly the early game that might turn off new player.

I was so delighted to find out you can fly using weapon knockback.

I want my own sukusuku that risks its life gathering firewood for me.

Game is definitely weird in terms of difficulty, probably due to the upgrade system. After all, you cannot entice the player with big damage upgrades unless the enemies are tanky, which is a real problem during stage 2 which is by far the hardest stage. I suspect the game might have felt a bit better to play if the upgrade trees hadn't had the damage upgrades and the enemies were better balanced around the starting damage.

Still a fun jam game, very cute art.

I agree with Valonad the game does get a pretty massive difficulty spike but i see the vision. I really liked the upgrade system it felt really impactful but not too OP. Great work!

game gets really hard from the second level onwards and movement feels very slippery, but the game is fun when you do get into it and deal with the difficulty on its own terms. Some of the upgrades are fun and the art is really cute. Sukusukusukusuku.