itch.io

The idea for this is super cute and I think has a ton of potential for creating some really memorable character designs that complement the puzzles in the gameplay! The theme of the importance of caring for your ecosystem and facing greater adversity as a community is also very promising! I also think it would be super cool if it could played either as a multiplayer or a singleplayer experience.

P.S. Where did the name Biorhythm come from? I was a little hopeful to see some climate rhythm game action (but this is great too of course!)

I think this has a lot of potential for gameplay depth while still managing to convey a message through said gameplay! That being said, I’d really like to see more expansion on the theme of being aware of the costs and ease of destruction, despite its ubiquity in modern day; maybe towers can be destroyed, and will actively sap power from towers around it until you take care of it and repair it? As a smaller note, I know there’s plans to lock out tiles in the future with certain enemy types (the plans for which are also promising towards the more political notes in the design), but at the moment the gameplay didn’t provide much difficulty when you just concentrate a bunch of turrets in one place, especially at the beginning of the path, so maybe there should be more locked tiles just as a part of the map’s design. However, what’s been implemented so far is pretty fun to experiment with and didn’t suffer from any bugs from what I can tell, which is awesome - great stuff and good luck for the remainder of the jam!

I hopped straight into playing the demo, and figuring out how the game worked without any instruction was actually very fun! I had to aimlessly lose a couple times in order to figure out how the day/night cycle worked and what exactly the objective of the game was, but because the systems and design are consistent and telegraphed, and the platforming makes things fun to explore, I was able to learn quickly with trial and error. I also really respect that the game has a clear vision and ties it very well and directly into the gameplay for its impact.

For the game mechanics, I personally thought there should be some sort of risk to letting the day pass without doing anything; having to escape in time in the night areas was a fun mechanic, but you don’t really have to plan anything you do during the day if you can just wait it out right next to one of the entrances, and you’re free to just play it safe and wait a whole cycle since nothing happens during the day when you’ve run out of seeds. As a side note, I think it could be cool if the different entrances/exits to the night areas are connected somehow to lead to some puzzles traversing them, rather than always coming out the same way you came in regardless of the exit you find.

A few little things:

• maybe it’s already been mentioned but I think the start screen should say ‘A -> left’ instead of ‘Q -> left’
• for some reason the input lags a lot if you play in fullscreen (it works great otherwise)
• maybe add some coyote time for platforming; you could definitely go without it to keep the platforming at the same level of challenge, which I did enjoy, but there were some occasions where I felt like my jump input got eaten, so maybe there’s a balance to find

The concept for this game was really fun and adorable, and I really enjoyed how smooth the animations were too. I also enjoyed how the background and story were delivered very organically, so I think a big improvement could have been to offer some background on who/what the character you play as is, since it could really tie together the game's mechanics/environment even further with the story. Overall I enjoyed it a lot, great work.