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slipperhat10 days ago(+1)

What a brilliant take on theme, I'm also really impressed with this being a GameMaker game!? I feel like that's almost a slanderous statement against GM and I'm just ignorant to it as an engine (which I think is probably true in this case!)

On the theme, I do really think it's well applied; but it's abstract in that it relies really on someone knowing what Samsara is and making a connection with time. So I potentially might say that with the power of hindsight you could have tried to be a little bit more on the nose with the theme? Perhaps a clock face spinning back in time, just spitballing. Really this is only to allay any accusations that the theme has been applied spuriously.

The application of time travel is excellent, and the bootstrapping mechanic works excellently. I don't  play a great deal of puzzle games so it doesn't come too naturally to me, however I was able to bumble my way through. I totally understand you were up against it a little bit with regards to fleshing out the lore and getting it to work with rewinding, but there is enough there for the player to cut their teeth on.

I also thought I'd share one observation that I've had before which you might find interesting. I play a bunch of old-school grid based dungeon crawlers; and I have encountered games in the past whereby there is some sort of mechanic, timer or stat drain associated with the number of steps taken. For some reason this always makes me stressed and uncomfortable because it feels like a punishment for exploration. In this game that is not the case at all, but I still couldn't shake that feeling. It's a strange one, because I know it's all in my head, but I thought it would be interesting to share! And had minimal impact on my experience of the game.

This is a really nice entry, and I love the theme application and not just another wheel to spin. I had fun, thank you.

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Naturu9 days ago(+1)

Thank you for your kind words. Honestly, I also have no idea the limits of GameMaker as well haha this is my second game jam where I submitted something but technically my first time submitting a somewhat complete game (my first game submission in a previous game jam only had movement and one cutscene). I really learnt a lot from this, aside from the sprite assets and audio, I basically made everything from scratch, from the movement, to the rewind mechanic, to the dialogue system, audio system, cutscenes, etc.

I actually had another name in mind, Ouroboros, cause in a way the game's ending is the beginning that will end up looping itself. Samsara also worked well as you surmised, though not just with the time aspect, but also the world line theory where every divergence results in a different world line similar to how in every reincarnation will be different depending on your karma (which is determined by your past actions). I ended up favoring Samsara more and went with it. Though, I was also referencing to Steins;Gate where the names the main character gives isn't supposed to mean anything (though it usually does connect in some way).

There was an idea to limit the number of turns actually, but I wanted the players to be able to be free to explore the map and learn a bit about the world, however cryptic it may be. So I decided against limiting it. Leaving the turn counter in, was initially supposed to tie to the mechanic of rewinding 5 turns, but I ended up unable to make a proper level, aside from the first one, leveraging it. Actually, I probably should have completely hidden that, given that the 5 turn rewind is already visually apparent when the watch is pulled up and I wasn't going to use it. 

In any case, thank you for taking the time to play it and giving me feedback. I am glad you enjoyed it.

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