This game was pretty cool. Very solid and polished experience overall, although there were few hiccups.
I got softlocked twice:
- Got stuck underneath a room in the top right area with a lever.
- Got stuck in midair in the rainy area to the left of where you get the time wand.
Thankfully, the game does save your progress, so it wasn’t too big of a deal.
Another minor bug I found is that bubbles can sometimes get stuck in walls and start spamming the bounce sound effect for a second or two before popping. It's a funny glitch, but it's easy to accidentally trigger when using the bubbles normally, and also it sometimes seems to cause the music to stop playing (although it doesn’t happen every time, so it might be something else causing that issue).
The final challenge was pretty cool, but I think it was maybe a little too short (and simple?). When I got there it felt like it was a bit too early for it (I only had two shafts and two toppers at that point). It didn’t help that you couldn’t backtrack either due to a wind current blocking the way you entered, so when you enter that room you have to complete it with what you have at that point.
Also, it’s pretty easy to accidentally enter the final challenge from the wind currents in the room below, which is something that happened to me quite a few times when I was collecting all the items I missed. At that point I didn’t know that you could press R to respawn at your last checkpoint, so I was closing the game and reopening it to return to get out of the final challenge. That was a bit of a pace breaker. Knowing that you could respawn at the last checkpoint you saved at would've been nice to learn about in-game (or in the README), but it's at least listed on the jam page, so I eventually did learn about it.
Aside from that, I’d say the game was great overall.
The visuals are very charming. They make good use of "flat" coloring.
There were some specific visual details that I want to point out:
- The little twirl animation of the dash ability was pretty cute.
- There are 2 versions of the slash effect when attacking rather than just 1, which gives some visual variety/flair.
- The wind movement of those foreground shrubs is pretty nice, although it seems a little inconsistent that none of the other foliage type stuff moves.
The music is also pretty chill. I specifically liked the track in that area in the top right with the blue terrain. The start of it is very serene, then the beat comes in and it gets a nice groove while still feeling laidback. Then the beat leaves and you get another very peaceful segment again. It feels almost nostalgic; it reminds me of Minecraft’s soundtrack a bit.
That area just has a pleasant vibe in general. I can't think of a good way to describe it, but the color palette of that area feels... cozier, vs the other areas. The leaves(?) blowing in the wind also contribute to the vibe.
I like how the wand construction system is an interpretation of the "Construct" theme that isn't just robots. It's a neat system, although I found that I ended up sticking mostly with the bubble shaft and the dash topper once I got them. It felt like the most flexible combination; all the others felt too niche.
Another reason I used the bubble shaft so much is that it was also my favorite shaft. I really liked how the bubbles have good movement utility but are also pretty good for taking out enemies. It was very fun to spawn tons of bubbles and gain a bunch of height with them, although it feels a bit too spamable (and because of that, exploitable) imo.
The map is pretty well-designed I think; it leaves enough room for some good exploration, but it doesn’t feel meandering. The map screen was a big help though. I referenced it a number of times to help me navigate, especially after I beat the final challenge and started trying to find everything I could.
The NPCs you could find scattered about the map were neat, although they mostly only seem to be there for flavor text.
The alternate colors you get when collecting hp upgrades were a nice little touch that made collecting them feel a little more fun, but I wish you could select which one to use. Also, having some sort of item collection tracker would've been cool too I feel like. I believe I got 8 health upgrades; I'm not sure if that's all of them, but that's all the ones I was able to find simply by exploring all the room connections marked on the map screen.
There’s for sure a good few flaws, but I don’t think they’re major enough to drag the whole experience down. Very good job!