Okay, this leaves a really strong first impression visually and sound-wise and just in general sensory as a whole. Very charming stuff.
Though, I did find an area where there seemed to be two textures overlapping each other and flickering when you move the camera because of it… mainly here:
Anyway, the music is very nice here, helps set the overall atmosphere very well. The visuals look great, I think it’s very nice in that regard. The sound design, I cannot stress enough, feels particularly great here. The sounds for jumping, for climbing, the footstep sounds for moving, it gives the game this really nice game feel once you really get used to it. Would not have that any other way!
Before I get into the issues I had which I felt held the game back and which ultimately led to me giving up on finishing it, I do want to stress that I did have a good time here! I just felt the game wasn’t very well executed and needed some more work despite a charming presentation and generally being pretty fun to just move around in and try to play.
Now… unfortunately, there were a few problems I had though…
The game’s player guidance leaves something to be desired, as does some smaller, somewhat more nitpicky play control aspects. If you hold down jump long enough, you can kind of just… jump a second time when you let go of the button? Considering that in a lot of platformers you can jump higher by holding jump, it comes across as a bit odd at first. Once you get used to it, jumping around actually feels pretty good! Just kind of an odd quirk with it.
Unfortunately, ledge grabbing seems to be a bit buggy and can lead to you seemingly just randomly grabbing nothing when touching walls occasionally and such, and I feel like I might have clipped into geometry briefly a time or two with it before getting myself out with jumping and moving on.
Also, where the jump button issue is fine for normal jumping, it gets a bit awkward with wall jumping: If you let go of jump when near a wall, you jump off it just like you’d initially pressed jump. Also, the game’s behavior when trying to jump while climbing a ledge is a bit… odd.
…very small nitpick as well, is it just me or is the main character not actually a rat?
I do think the biggest problems, to be clear, are navigation and buggy ledge grabbing.
Well, and that I’m not entirely sure how well this fits the minimalism theme. The description for how it fits the theme doesn’t really give much insight on that one, and outside semi-low-poly visuals (which… aren’t even that low poly?), nothing else too big stuck out to me on that. The comments have pointed out the small character fitting the theme, but admittedly I’m not quite feeling that as a proper connection to the idea of minimalism. The moveset seems small enough that I’ll say that it gets somewhat a passing grade on this point, just, do think it’s worth throwing out there that it could’ve fit a lot more.
If I may ask, did you have many playtesters on the team? Getting outside playtesters who haven’t played or seen your game much in advance can go a very long way in catching issues like these early and help prevent them from making it into a finished game, even in the context of a gamejam.
Anyway, I had a good time here, thanks for making this! Kind of surprised more people haven’t given it a try at all, there’s a rather charming experience in this thing.