itch.io

Thanks for the great feedback! I left you a very long review on your game as thanks.

Hey, thanks for leaving such a in depth and constructive review on our game. Since you left such a review, I assume that you also want fairly harsh constructive feedback. If you aren't open to that kind of feedback, you might not want to read the rest of this review. I am aware that you were attempting to deal with scope and perfectionism, and I will touch on that later in the review.

First of all, I'll start with what I liked. In general the game was a decently fun experience (particularly after 15+ minutes). The music was decent and the cat pixel art was pretty cute. I also appreciated the fairly unique movement option, and the stairs felt buttery smooth (I loved the spiral staircases).

However, there were some fairly major issues with the gameplay. 

First of all, the movement felt pretty janky at first, and I mean for almost 15 minutes before I really got used to it. The default sensitivity of the mouse was way too high, and I didn't notice that I could change it for a while (kind of my bad). It was also fairly difficult to control the teleport feature, especially before I read the note on the itch page. Even afterwards, the teleport feature felt pretty janky, and very unlenient. I would frequently clip through walls or just barely miss a platform, and that always felt bad. One way to fix this would be some form of coyote time leniency (expand the player hitbox right after teleportation so that they can stay on ledges more easily)

Secondly, the switches and purple arrows did not feel that they significantly contributed to the fun. The puzzles that I encountered felt pretty half-baked, it was almost always "shoot at the orange thing" or "shoot at the purple thing". It would have added great depth to the gameplay if the player was supposed to analyze the switches and see if they should hit them or ignore them. (I was actually playing this way, but I kept getting killed by the rising sand, so I had to stop).

Third, the rising sand was a good idea to provide time pressure, etc. but was poorly executed. The visual warning was bad, and since most of the level was spent well ahead of it, it mostly felt like a random death event instead of a persistent threat. I would regularly get to a new section, pause to consider how to beat it, and then just die. That sucked. At the very least, there needed to be a much more clear way to see how close the sand was to you, or some sort of warning.

Most importantly, the size of the levels + lack of checkpoints was infuriating, I played for 45 minutes and literally did not reach the end of the level. The fact that every death brought you back to the beginning of a giant level exacerbated every single problem above and was what personally took the game from "kind of fun" to "oh my god, I hate this" on a regular basis. If you were attempting to make a rage game, that would make sense, and honestly would have been well executed. However, you specifically stated that you intended for the "looping" part to be replaying the level, but upside down. That does not work if a fairly skilled platformer player can't complete the first level in 45 minutes. I would have enjoyed the game much more if the level had been quite a bit shorter and I'd really gotten to experience the looping idea, which sounded quite fun.

This brings me to another point, the lack of a looping feeling. Many games that I've played (and frankly my game as well), stretch the looping theme pretty far. However, in 45 minutes in this game I really did not experience any looping, unless the main movement ability is somehow looping, or the spiral staircases count. I understand that I did not reach the looping part, but if the player being able to reach the core relation to the theme is in question, I would hope that the game would include some other looping sub-theme (I did not count having to replay parts of the level over and over again).

I have mostly talked about the gameplay, so let's talk about art. I understand the challenges of being a solo dev, and I think that we should always prioritize gameplay in a game jam. These are merely my thoughts on the art. 

As you've mentioned. the art style was "brutalist". However, imagining that it had been textured, I still have a few suggestions. The mixture of billboarded pixel art sprites for the player and vines mixed with the low-poly levels/switches/arrow thingies was a bit strange. I also am not a huge fan of this style in general, but that's just my two scents. I loved the vibe of the cat, but it didn't mesh with the rest of the environement. I think making the arrows and switches throughout the level billboarded pixel art would have been a nice touch. A pixelated font would've gone a long way too.

Just a minor nitpick, but the ambient occlusion on the level looked a bit strong (much better than none though).

Nothing much to say about SFX or music, they were quite good for a solo dev.

Overall, I want to conclude by saying that this was still a really good first game for a game jam, and aside from what I mentioned above I have two pieces of advice.

1. This should have been a 2d game. The mechanics were fun in 3D but an idea like this is much easier to make fun with the precision of 2d games, and it would have been easier to make assets in the same style (though you would need a player character).

2. You mentioned how you were working on scope/perfectionism. The way I see them is almost like a tradeoff between scope and polish. In your case, I would highly suggest that you continue to minimize scope, but leave some room to really polish mechanics and/or graphics, even if it means making a much smaller game. 

I didn't mean for this to just be a beat-down on the game, but I hope to provide the same level of detailed and fair feedback that you provided for our game, since you were one of the few that left truly harsh feedback.

Man, I was blown away by this game, what a hidden gem! I'm a sucker for the cosmos, but boy did I love the feeling of zooming into these solar systems and planets. The ending was a little confusing, I think it would've helped if the other directions were less explicit, and slowly ramped up to the cryptic final instruction. It could have also been clearer that we were search for earth specifically, since I totally forgot about the apple pie part until the end. Overall, though, I really got a kick out of this.

Absolute cinema

Omg, Jimmy C has replied to my game 2 years in a row. As for the conveyor belt, we overscoped a bit, and thus missed some very obvious softlocks, but I'm glad you enjoyed it up to that point! 

P.S: Your youtube video has singlehandedly carried my itch.io career, so thanks a ton for the shout out.

A very simple but pretty fun game, I struggled with the control quite a bit, but it could've been a skill issue.

My new favorite math game, will 100% share with my non-GMTK friends, if I share any game. So unique, natural difficulty, but understandably hard to balance. I went from 18000 to 10^89 in one round :P

Awesome game guys. I loved the puzzles, they felt straight out of Legend of Zelda but not too derivative. The character felt pretty good to control and the art and music fit the game pretty well. I also appreciated the narrative, it gave me a good chuckle to discover that there really was milk at the end. My only minor frustration was that I died so many times on the spikes because I mistimed my walk onto or off of the platform, but that might have been intentionally designed.

Awesome concept, great music/art. I do wish the bike started out a little faster, as I did a whole loop before realizing that I could place obstacles, and that was a pretty boring loop. Other then that it was a blast. I also kept getting killed by the goose, but that was just a skill issue, :(.

Unsurprised that the creator of IRIS thought that the game was too easy, jk. Thanks for the kind words, and difficulty curves are definitely not our strong suit.

One of the few games that I've played in this jam with a solid narrative that's really integrated into the story, nice job!

Excellent idea, with good execution, it was one hard son of a gun, but I loved every second. Pls make more levels when the jam is over, following so that I'll get notified if you do.

Loved the art, gameplay, sound effects, voice acting, everything! Absolutely the best take on this idea in the jam. Definitely the GOAT snake remix in my opinion.

Man, we need more ASCII art games in jams, phenomenal atmosphere + creative take on the theme. Solid game mechanics as an incremental games fan, although I do wish that clicking had stayed semi relevant. Overall, very fun game and definitely deserving of its popularity.

Awesome take on the "snake follows mouse" genre, I went in thinking it would be about mouse dexterity, then thought it would be about puzzles, and was amazed when it blended both skills. I was a little frustrated by the beginning levels (I must have chose the wrong 3 to go for) but that melted away very quickly with the later levels, they were just so much fun (though i semi-softlocked myself). 

The audio was great, the art was nice, and the level design was solid. The story was a nice touch too. 

As others said, my jaw simply dropped when the levels just kept expanding. I don't know how you guys did it, but that transition was just seamless and buttery smooth, definitely a highlight of the jam, and one which I will point people to in the future.

A lovely little game with a great idea and soundtrack. I struggled wth the platforming, but it didn't kill the vibe.

This was a very fun game! The concept definitely fit the theme, and I enjoyed the branching paths of each level. I often found myself forced to explore an alternate route, and that was pretty neat! The music was also a vibe, and the double jump felt super good.

Really original idea, solid execution, common BadPiggy W. That said, the balancing was actually spot on, I loved having to manage health as a single resource, and it didn't feel too unfair. My only suggestion would be to make it so that if your health is too low, you can't flip the colors, since I just straight up died three times flipping the colors when my health was too low (it was probably a skill issue)

Very fun hidden gem. I got up to 170 seconds left before the bad guy got to a cow :(. I wish there was some sort of score to see how many cows I looped, but overall very very fun game. It had a really cool arcade game feel and was just FUN. 

Been looking for this since I saw the post on discord, did not disappoint. Very difficult, but very rewarding. The controls are the right mix of "this is so easy" and "my god this is impossible". The art definitely has a solid vibe and the music is great too!

What an incredibly creative game idea, it has these vibes that I just can't place, and almost all of the jokes really landed. Something about that ending was just hilarious to me (no spoilers!). The crt shader was on point too.

Thanks, punch is in fact broken, will update itch page. 

The theme + narrative is one of the best I've seen so far today, 5/5 from me. I thoroughly enjoyed the movement too, especially when I figured out how to move more than one per round!

Interesting idea, I particularly liked the story, although I was sad I didn't get to open the Box of Lhuot.

Super fun game, it's the very definition of short but sweet. That thumbnail is everything too.

Jamadoo Games absolutely cranks it out of the park again. My favorite game of the jam yet, literally every part of the game was polished and fun, and it was just a crazy good take on the theme. I only wish I could've spent all those extra coins on something.

Yeah, we needed to make it clearer that there was not supposed to be control in the conveyor round, since the game was way too easy and less fun when you were able to plan an exact path. I think we tried to compromise which just ended up being frustrating as you described. Would it be better if the player was just locked to a spot on the conveyor belt instead of being bounced around by the other sushi?

The controls had a steep learning curve (at least for me), but when I got them just right, my goodness was that satisfying. The art and music were also just amazing.

Very interesting game with quite good puzzles, the video was an unexpected twist (bit of a jump scare), but I think it added something to the experience. I have not played many sokobans but this was the first time I have seen such mechanics, and they played really well.

Absolutely nailed the vibe/atmosphere. Gameplay was pretty cool too. Once I realized that the shield recharged I stopped hoarding it and the game was much more interactive. Watching the enemies get mowed down was blast!

This is a super cool concept, and was quite fun! The audio was also nice. I was a little confused at first, but the concept was intuitive.

What an awesome game! Really good concept and awesome execution! The feeling of mowing down my bodies with the spray gun, then realizing I'd totally screwed myself for later levels was peak.

This was a simple and really fun game! The graphics were cool too!

Thanks for the kind words! In case you haven't figured it out, you need to select weapons by pressing A/D in the menu, and then point your weapons at the boss. If you have weapons pointed at the boss and they aren't firing, you have a glitch.

That was quite fun, and well worth the download, although it was quite difficult, I have to say.

This was a super unique one, I loved how you couldn't actually attack at will, which made combat feel totally different than other games like this one.

That was some hectic fun, and a great use of the theme!

Cute art! The gameplay was quite good too!

I love the visuals, and the gameplay is quite interesting.

Dang, that art is awesome, and I loved the boss design too. Those fights were brutal, but really fun.