Fun game, the idea was creative, the polish on art and music were really nice (the rooms looked very good especially), and it was cool to have a fairly complete little game. The ending got me real good, I wasn’t expecting that and gave me a genuine laugh.

I generally enjoyed the gameplay and didn’t mind the deaths at first cause bosses keep their HP loss, though by the final fight I started brute forcing with how bullet hell it gets combined with almost non-existent i-frames. It was tedious farming at the end without having read the tip though, so I would suggest adjusting the cost at the end (maybe after you’ve done it once) or making the info more obvious in game cause I didn’t know you could leave the corpses to loot later.

Nerissa’s fight felt really easy where you just stand in a certain spot under and can’t be hit by her while spamming attacks…until the sixteenth notes drop around you and you get comboed to the bottom of the room and just die. Unless I missed someting obvious, I would suggest a change in her battle style to be more engaging.

I also had a few minor comments, one is about the camera in the Shiori battle room scrolling down, it gets kinda weird on the second phase when Ceci spawns and immediately gets hit down to scroll the camera to outside the room. Second is while I think the inventory mainly being flavour text is fine, it feels like it should at least be some kind of pause screen since it locks all your controls anyways but you still can be attacked while it’s up.

Otherwise, great work, I really enjoyed the game!

The pixel art is really nice!

The music is also well done!

The multiple self concept is also really well implemented. It was fun to discover, little by little, what had happened in the past that caused the end of the world.

For the boss fights, I mostly facetanked them.

In Rissa's one, I think I got lucky with the notes, because I just stood diagonally from her and kept hitting her for probably 90% of her HP. Then she changed to double notes and that was the end of me in that run. Next run I got combo'd before I could land 2 hits. Eventually she went down.

For Shiori's, I found a safe spot again diagonally from her, where I could sit and get her HP down to about 40-50% before more novelites spawned.

Fuwamoco's was the easiest as I just stood my ground and hit Mococo. She couldn't get close enough to hit me before my next attack pushed her back until her HP went down to 1% and switched with Fuwawa. The it was just about running around and waiting for another Mococo hit. XD

I honestly knew I'd have to die a bunch of times to progress, so I didn't mind the chattino bombardment or the flower room doing a touhou barrage on me. XD

The ending was great! I was too surprised to act, but I wonder if I could've ran away from CC or beat her and become "the one" CC.

Some improvement suggestions:

- I got combo'd to death by Nerissa's double notes attack. I feel longer i-frames after taking damage would help give the player a chance at dodging and getting back into the fight.

- I don't know if it was intended but I failed to defeat the big grem in my first timeline (got it down to 20%) and when I came back it was not there anymore. Every other boss-like enemy was there when I came back after dying, though.

- I think it would be nice to limit the number of explosion SFX that can play at the same time. I somehow managed to get an army of otomo with me into a boss fight and they all exploded at once, making a LOUD noise.

Great game!

This was a super unique idea, and its crazy to think that it stemmed from an offhand comment Cece made one time.

All of the systems at play here are super impressive and culminate in an awesome take on the theme!

The art, music, and writing are all fantastic, especially the twist with the final boss, I totally wasn't ready for that.

But I do think the combat can really weigh the game down at certain points. I had to cheese the Rissa fight by stepping in and out of her attack range, since they didn't spawn at the top of the room. I came to the comments to read the clarification you left on the rest notes, but it was after I finished the fight. Great idea, but if you don't know sheet music, that's not even something I would think you would consider, unless you noticed that the notes didn't do damage. I wasn't so lucky, and mostly just got caught ping ponging and stunlocked by the music notes until I realized you could walk out of her attack range.

Shiori had a similar issue for me, it was really difficult to weave around her projectiles, so it really just boiled down to me throwing myself at her until she died, since her health didn't reset.

I know the combat was intended to be difficult, which is fair, but it didn't really feel satisfying to finish off those two fights - I just wanted to get it done by the end.

I do think some slight i-frames or damage immunity after getting hit would help out a lot while still keeping the majority of the difficulty already present in the combat system.

I think I also somehow managed to erase the fat grem from every time period despite not killing him in any of them. Not sure if homie was just supposed to leave, but he peaced out for me and I couldn't finish the fight against him, which is small in the grand scheme of things, albeit a little confusing.

But otherwise I think this was an insane project to put together for the jam and deserves so much praise for its originality and unique ideas. Great work!

This honestly feels like it designed to feel terrible. There are just so many moments that randomly punish the player with no recourse. This does make the time travel more likely to come up, but it still means that most of the game is miserable to play. The point I stopped at was Fuwamoco, just cause I had no interest in fighting a boss that is absolutely guaranteed to damage the player (when swapping) multiple times with no likelihood of nearby healing.

Also, I don't think the player being familiar with other stories involving time travel would matter at all. Nearly all the stories I've seen about time travel have more limited mechanics and most of them establish paradoxes. Furthermore, the only character I've seen that's so quick to murder themself was Rick Sanchez. I have trouble even imagining Cecilia purposely putting herself in that situation. Rather the closest comparison I can think of is actually The Prestige (the one adapted as a Christopher Nolan film).

This is insanely fun, I still haven't completed it after 2 days (skill issue) but I really want to talk about it.

The main mechanics of the game go perfectly with the theme, I really enjoyed the fact that even if you lose against yourself you end up controlling the other you.

The art is super cute and the music gives it a very nice feel.

In one of my playthroughs I found myself stuck on the room to the right (with the otomos in the jars), they all exploded and I found no way out of the room, not sure if something else was supposed to trigger but after a few minutes of trying to interact with things I just refreshed the browser to play again.

Overall I love it and will continue to play it until I complete it, and then I'll start wanting a sequel :D

I think it's hilarious the otomos can kill you by "helping." I think the Nerissa boss was the only one that felt unfair because if you get stuck between two double 8th notes, you ping pong back and forth and die immediately. The others were a good challenge and felt about right. My main question is: how many paradoxes are there with the amount of self destruction going on? :P Great job with the concept!

Great game with innovative gameplay tied to the theme. Once I stopped caring about dying, I enjoyed it much more. I also cheezed the last 3 bosses. Stood to the left of Biboo and she only shot right, stood above Nerissa and kited, and found a fuwawa blindspot and wailed on Mococo.

Very good game. Final twist was great. The only thing I didn't understand Nerissa's fight at all. I found 1 note that don't damage me. I probably missing something. FWMC that can swap with each other good idea. I have same one for my other game (not in Jam). Ceci related games this Jam so good :D

Very fun game! Beautiful art and awesome music! The story is funny and interesting until the end. Love the "double it and give it to the next person" mechanic.

The only thing I would suggest is implementing some way of avoiding stun-locks upon getting hit, either by disabling enemy and projectile hit-boxes or giving a global invulnerability timer to the player for half a second. Without this some fights become frustrating, like the Nerissa fight. Other than that this game is amazing! Love the ending putting a neat little bow on the joke lmao.

Really cute sprite work, love how its very 2D zelda inspired. The idea here is pretty interesting.

I do think the amount of hostility in general in this game is a little too overwhelming currently. The grems are too fast with minor knockbacks, the chattinis and otomos randomly explodes, the flower just bombards you with projecttiles and they revives too quick.

Not sure if it is just me, but I am not getting any audio. 

Couldn't make it too far, I'll prolly need to come back and try again later.

This game had me on the edge of ragequit. I cant even tell how many times I DIED. I also got stuck after getting the painters brush :(