itch.io

Thanks much for the play and the comment! Glad you liked our sim 😂

Thanks for for playing—we're so delighted that you enjoyed it!

The sound designer would agree with you on the sounds. He had lots of plans for doing foley of his own cat, but had some things come up during the jam, so was only able to get us a first pass of his instruments -as-sound-effects concept, and only the one BGM track at the end. Still, we're happy we got some of the idea in there, and it looks like it resonated with players, so we're excited to possibly expand on that concept in future projects (or maybe even continue this one).

The animation of the ending, of course, was a product of how much time we had. But we felt it stronger to have some representation of the story in there, even if we didn't have the time to create sprite animations for everything.

I appreciate your comments on the level design. It was challenging to fit those sort of core metroidvania level ideas of backtracking, multiple paths, and having abilities change the way you can traverse the areas you've already visited all into the relatively tiny world of a single house. I'm super happy that you noticed the effort and it worked for you!

Thanks again for your feedback and for spending the time with our entry!

Hello again! And thanks for trying out our entry. Proud to be the first you were willing to fight through to the end (and that you enjoyed the ending)!

I appreciate the list of pain points! Some are interesting to hear, like the vent areas and the closed window in the library. I had intended the vents to simply be dark maze areas, the first with a mild penalty for missing the jump (you'd have a longer way up the dining room), and the second just being a straight maze. Was there anything in particular that made you want to explore them instead? The closed window (in my mind it was a door) in the library was me just trying to make it make some sense of the layout of the house. I put the door there to "make sense", but it wasn't where I wanted the player to be, so I closed it off. I'll be more careful with the visuals for something like that in the future.

I hadn't thought of making a forced "death", but it's a good fix for some of the design problems I'd run into (and easy to explain premise-wise with the blossom spirit doing teleports already). Trying to make different parts of the room contain different parts of the main path (i.e., the dining room has path 1 through the middle, path 2 along the bottom, and path 3 along the top) was tricky for the checkpointing. I think it suffers most there and in the dash part of the top of the library. (We did provide a path from the bottom of the dining room straight up to the top that was possible once you had all the unlocks, but you're not the only one who felt like they had to go back the long way, so I wonder if there was a better way for us to point it out.)

Thanks again for the feedback and the nice praise. Glad it wasn't too frustrating in the end ; )

Okay, if it’s where I think, it is a very vertical double-jump heavy section. Sorry again it prevented you from experiencing the whole game!

Oh! I did one fall down to what I think was supposed to be the shortcut back to the first green block, but then turned left and chased the little friend again, which seemed like a mistake after I did it, ‘cause I think I got stuck having to loop back to the first fall. Did I get that wrong after all?? 😓

Glad you enjoyed the cleansing mechanics! We were experimenting with making a metroidvania that didn’t require the usual kind of combat. What’s in there is a fraction of what we wanted to do, of course, but it seems to still resonate with people! (You can “die”, by the way. I put it in quotes, because the effect for it shows the kitty being saved by the little blossom spirit at the last second and teleporting it to a nearby checkpoint ; )

I feel your pain with the the controls. I’ve had similar problems in reverse on many entries. It suggests that giving the player the ability to remap keys is almost a necessity. It’s something I’m definitely going to be developing between jams, so I can put it into future projects. That being said, did you try with a gamepad? I think the engine actually supports it, I just never tested it.

It could probably port to mobile okay. If I did, though, I now know to add a lefty flip for it ; )

Thanks for trying out the game and leaving a comment! If my machine supports your team’s entry, I’d be happy to give it a play! [Alas, I just checked, and you don’t have a Mac or web build, so I’m out of luck >_< ]

Oh no! I’m sorry the level didn't work out for you! Do you remember what the background looked like in that area and where you’d just come from?

Happy that the game was otherwise enjoyable! Thanks for trying it out : )

Thanks so much for playing, and we’re super happy you enjoyed it!

Nice entry! It's snappy, the power ups make sense (though I don't know that I figured out what the sticks do), and in true metroidvania style, allow you to go through the same areas in new ways. The art is fun, and surprisingly I was able to make the keyboard with mouse aim work for me, which is a first!

Some small nitpicks that didn't work for me:

- I'm not a fan of having enemies outside the camera's movement area that can attack the player. If the camera is restricted, I think the enemies should have blocked line-of-sight, be disabled, or otherwise be restricted in shooting at the player. This happens in one area where there's a shooting mushroom on the right-hand side of a camera area, and it can shoot at the player on the left-hand side of the adjacent camera area.

- Similarly having platforming sections at the top of camera areas the trigger a camera-area switch every time the player jumps is disorienting and sometimes dizzying. I'd look for ways to move the platforming down, increase the height of the camera area or move the platforming to the bottom of the camera area above. (Apologies if this feedback is hard to parse. In my engine I call these areas "rooms", but not knowing what you might call them, I thought room might be confusing. I'm happy to trie to clarify more if you need/want.)

- Would love to have a prompt that tells me what I just picked up.

Kudos for a finished piece, and a fun one at that!

I really liked the atmosphere of this entry. The character art and major prop pieces are gorgeous. The little friend is a fun premise and the mechanic works pretty well.

I'll admit to not having the patience to finish. I fell back down to where you get the friend by accident, and it seemed like the only way to get back to where I needed/wanted to go, was to do a giant loop again. You have other places where you've set up shortcuts that open up after you've passed an area the first time. It would be nice to have one here, too.

My other main gripe is the movement of the character. Smaller platforms can be very hard to land, especially from below. After experimenting it some, I realized it's because the jump stops moving left and right as soon as you let off the movement key, but the walk has momentum. The inconsistensy leads to holding the left button (for instance) while jumping to get up to the platform, but because the platform is close to peak jump height, as soon as the engine detects that the character is grounded, if I let off, the character will slide right off the other side of the platform. If I tried to be gentle about the jump velocity, as soon as I let off, the character stops moving in the air and falls straight down, missing the platform from the front. I found the best way to deal with it was to always hit jump again when landing on small platforms so that I could have the character jump straight up to stop the momentum. It made the rest of the platforming palatable, but was definitely awkward.

Lastly, an aesthetic note: the platform/level art lacks the detail of the character stuff making the overall presentation inconsistent. The levels seem really bare, but the characters are very detailed.

Overall, there's a lot of good stuff in this build, and the premise, atmosphere, and mechanics are compelling enough that I still may come back to it to see it through to the "end" after I've had a break from the 40-some-odd metroidvanias I've played in the last few days ; )

Beautiful aesthetic—really loved the art style and color palette. I wasn't a big fan of some of the sounds—for instance the throwing star sounded too mechanical to me, almost like a gun shot, instead of throwing a star. Minor nitpick, though.

Bigger issue for me was the control. Like others, I thought the gravity felt too strong, dropping the player really fast. I'm also not a big fan of Oni-style controls (WASD with mouse aim in a platformer). I personally just find the combat really inaccurate and hard to manage since the angle for fire changes both from the cursor moving and from the character changing position on the screen.

I disagree with Michael Greishofer's opinion on the merchant, and found him/her to be one of my favorite parts of the game. The look of the text was jarring, but I thoroughly enjoyed the commentary, and laughed out loud at the existential crisis comment. It is a jam, and we know that everyone runs out of time to do everything they wanted (except maybe Michael, his entry was like a full-length game and über-polished[!]), so I think there's room for being a little tongue-in-cheek about it : )

I do agree about the map, though. For me part of a metroidvania is the exploration, but having the completed map ahead of time takes away that part of the game. If it was intentional, I would argue that it wasn't helping the game. If it was meant to fill in, but you didn't have the time, well at least your heart was in the right place ; )

Overall I'd be proud to make something this pretty and polished in the time given. Nice work!

Aside from the respawn issues after death (which required me to restart the game if I died), the biggest issue I had with the game is the one dan.collings.dev mentions about the camera's position. You had one downward jump that was led with coins, which helped the player assume that is was safe. More of that would be great to improve the player's confidence in moving forward. Adjusting the camera position down and/or adding a look down feature are other ways to improve.

I did like the big ghost and how it spawned the little ones. And the "You died" screen is actually pretty funny and works as a nod to both Super Mario Bros. and the Souls games : )

Loved the atmosphere and the color schemes. I agree with some of the other comments here about the floaty movement and the awkward key mapping. The grappling hook is the highlight of the game and feels really good. The kunai were pretty solid as well.

You've got a cool aesthetic and interesting ideas, so I'd focus on developing a good movement controller and more feedback from actions (sound effects especially) to really solidify your gameplay.

Kudos, too, for packaging what you had into a complete experience with titles, instructions, and an ending!

Really love the idea! Quite ambitious for the amount of time you had, yet you managed to actually pull off the main mechanic. Like RienKT, I did find the pangolin's ball frustrating to use for much the same reasons, and as you warned, it is glitchy in places. Still, I applaud the effort! I wouldn't even have given a second thought to attempting this concept in 6 days, haha

I think the premise of collecting monster DNA to active abilities is clever, but it was not explained well, so I didn't quite understand how to take advantage. More feedback when using the syringes (some sort of sound of effect) would help. After clicking on them they seem to simply disappear, so it was unclear that anything had happened.

I agree with some of the other comments here, too, that the player feel is a little floaty and hard to control. The character seemed to gain a bit of momentum while jumping that would carry it past where I wanted to go and letting off the movement key didn't reduce that momentum as much as I would like.

A good start, though.  There's potential in there!

D'aw, so glad you enjoyed it! Happy to hear that someone finds that cleansing as satisfying as I do, haha!

Thanks for playing and leaving the kind comments!

I actually do the same hand position when I play it. We didn't get around to remapping the dash after the initial prototype, just got used to it, then the jam ended, haha.

Glad you appreciated the ending. We pulled a little bit of retro JRPG animation for that one ; )

Thanks for playing and for the kind words!

Thank you much! Glad you enjoyed it : )

Really solid little game. Has a nice progression, loved the cinematics and titles, the rest stop music was hilarious, and you get that feeling of a good metroidvania where you start of moving slowly through areas, but after a couple power-ups are going through the same areas in different ways. 

One small thing for me was that it took me a couple deaths to figure out that I could wall jump from the start (I assumed it would be a power-up later, so never even tried till there was nowhere to go). If there had been some way to teach the player that early on, maybe with an early wall to jump up, or simply making it a power up and putting it in one of the early rooms, I think that'd help quite a bit.

I also like that you added the extra challenge pick-ups. I didn't have the patience to get all of them, but I appreciate them being there ; )

Very nice entry, congrats! 

Think of it like a maze! You just have to look for other ways around! : )

Yeah, it seems like just a start. I like the premise, though—the dad reaper is especially amusing. Like Cormorant42 mentions, the movement is really free—you can wall jump single walls, basically climbing the wall—which can be some troublesome for level design.

Also, pushing ghosts around and off platforms is oddly satisfying '^_^

This game is both delightful and infuriating for me. I loved the little eyes while in the ground, and the ground mechanic itself was neat. Being able to bump slimes from underneath was fun and the whole aesthetic was working for me. Holy heck, though, the amount of precision require for some of the areas coupled with the super-fast character movement had me about ready to smash my keyboard. I finally had to give up because my keyboard simply isn't precise enough to edge up to a red block to squeeze a jump through a one-tile opening.

I think dan.collins.dev outlines really great suggestions. I would just add that I think you don't necessarily need to do both allowing more hits and improving the player movement. Either one on it's own would make things much more palatable. Even reducing the player's collision box width by like 10% would help the area I was having trouble with.

All that being said, there's still a lot of fun in there. Kudos!

That's a super common gotcha even for experienced designers. It's really hard to be objective about the difficulty of a game when you developed the movement, know where everything is, and set up the optimal path, especially when you programmed it and know its inner workings. Getting to watch as many people as you can play your game is the best way to gain that objectivity.

Modern design trends, for sure. Especially that one area before the girl's room xD

I totally get not spending the time with the key-remapping screen. It's almost such a necessary feature, but doesn't seem like it's worth it when you're on a tight deadline trying to actually make, you know, a game. I did the same thing in mine, and the second comment was "dash should've be on another button" haha

Aw, bummer! I would've liked to have seen the boss!

Thanks for the feedback! I'd guess that you're a sound guy? : ) But yeah, you caught us out, we didn't spend spend a lot of time on the sounds—we didn't even get around to doing a pass to normalize the levels. Admittedly, what's in the game was just the early prototype draft of the audio. Our sound guy had stuff come up and wasn't able to finish up before the deadline, so I was stuck using the placeholders.

I'm glad you enjoyed the game otherwise, and appreciate you spending the time to provide feedback!

There's a lot to like in this zany space adventure. The power ups are fun, the bosses are ridiculous, the levels feel like a metroidvania, and there's voice acting!

As I started to put together my thoughts to write up a comment, I found that I enjoyed this more than I realized. There's actually quite a few things that were messy or cumbersome as I played through, but by the end I'd sort of forgotten about them in the glow of a good time. So kudos for that!

For the sake of future improvement, though, here are some things that didn't really work for me:

- The damage  push back seemed to get me stuck in a few hit loops—i.e., I'd get hit by something, bounce, but the invincibility would seem to time out before I had a chance to get myself out of danger, so I'd get hit again, repeat until dead or significant chunk of life is gone. Maybe less push back or more invincibility frames would help? Also landing on bubbles seems to extend the hit stun. Super frustrating in a few places (I'm looking at you, Massive Martia!), just sorta of mildly irritating in others.

- The moving mine carts of cheese gave no indication why they'd be dangerous. That one was just surprised more than anything.

- As other have said, the dash probably works better as its own button. I think why it doesn't work great in platformers is that we often find ourselves making minute adjustment to position to make a jump or set up a timed sprint, but doing a little *tap*tap* suddenly makes you dash across the room in this game. Works in fighting games fine, but maybe not so much here. Also the dash sometimes just goes insane and I end up flying all over the room, haha!

- I agree with dan.collins.dev that the one-way/drillable platforms were difficult to see in areas.

Again, though, I had a blast by the end despite some flaws here and there. Great job—thanks for the good times! ^_^

There's a lot to like in this zany space adventure. The power ups are fun, the bosses are ridiculous, the levels feel like a metroidvania, and there's voice acting!

As I started to put together my thoughts to write up a comment, I found that I enjoyed this more than I realized. There's actually quite a few things that were messy or cumbersome as I played through, but by the end I'd sort of forgotten about them in the glow of a good time. So kudos for that!

For the sake of future improvement, though, here are some things that didn't really work for me:

- The damage  push back seemed to get me stuck in a few hit loops—i.e., I'd get hit by something, bounce, but the invincibility would seem to time out before I had a chance to get myself out of danger, so I'd get hit again, repeat until dead or significant chunk of life is gone. Maybe less push back or more invincibility frames would help? Also landing on bubbles seems to extend the hit stun. Super frustrating in a few places (I'm looking at you, Massive Martia!), just sorta of mildly irritating in others.

- The moving mine carts of cheese gave no indication why they'd be dangerous. That one was just surprised more than anything.

- As other have said, the dash probably works better as its own button. I think why it doesn't work great in platformers is that we often find ourselves making minute adjustment to position to make a jump or set up a timed sprint, but doing a little *tap*tap* suddenly makes you dash across the room in this game. Works in fighting games fine, but maybe not so much here. Also the dash sometimes just goes insane and I end up flying all over the room, haha!

- I agree with dan.collins.dev that the one-way/drillable platforms were difficult to see in areas.

Again, though, I had a blast by the end despite some flaws here and there. Great job—thanks for the good times! ^_^

Mush, giant bird dude, mush! *smack*smack*smack*

I assume this is just an early pass at your boss fight and a demo of your controls. If not, then I definitely missed something.

It was obviously broken, but I actually was amused at just standing on the bird-dude's shoulder and smacking him in the face to make him fly.

It's a long way to go to a game, but the controls felt pretty good (though maybe the attack is a little slow?). I also like the look of the background and the concepts for the characters.

It's crazy how trippy and almost dizzying that Mario Galaxy trick is in 2D. You got it to work really well, too.

You'll see this in a lot of my comments, but I'm just not a fan of platforming with a mouse as part of the control scheme. For some reason, to me, as natural as it is to move with keys and look with a mouse in an first-person game, it's equally as unnatural to try to move with keys and aim with mouse in a platformer. On top of that I felt like the character movement was squirrely. The jump feel hyper to me, like they're a little too quick. Personal taste maybe, but I prefer having enough time to correct my jumps if platforming is going to be a big part of the gameplay.

Checkpoints would be a good addition, especially near the boss. The Boss Man actually ended my play-through, 'cause I didn't have the patience to go through the entire area again a third time. >_<

Overall, I think this is decent entry. Okay controls, but fun dialog, neat Mario Galaxy effect, and solid aesthetic. Nice work : )

Gorgeous looking game and very atmospheric, but über-punishing level design.

I see others have mentioned the jump-dash and here's my take: the jump-dash is a little tricky to use because, unlike a typical jump or double-jump, you have little to no time to do any course correction after the dash completes, especially when jumping to a higher elevation platform.  It means that if you overshoot, you're done. If you overshoot on a jump, you can let off the jump and have some time to move left/right to accommodate. (I did find that I could mitigate that some by simply dashing and jumping at the same time, which in your mechanics creates a sort of boosted jump instead of a jump and air-dash.) Anyway, all that's workable if you build the level around that lack of control. Instead, literally the first time you have the user try the dash, you're forcing them to land on a one-tile platform. Not too much later, you have a similar jump, but it's somewhat far from a reboot station, so you have to do three or four jumps, fight several enemies, then overshoot the dash jump, then do it all again...and again. I'm of the opinion that sort of stuff should be much further in the game after the player has had plenty of time to use the abilities, get used to feel of your game's controls, and have practiced several similar jumps in less punishing situations.

I feel like I've sort of ranted on this, but it's only because the rest of the game feels sooo good that I was upset that I couldn't face playing it. I really want to learn more about the world you've set up, the melee feels nice and crunchy, the post-processing is tasteful despite how much of it there is, and the music and sound design is top notch.

You guys really did a fantastic job putting this together. Just give the level design some more love and you'll have a fantastic piece!

So much potential here! I really like the look of the characters and abilities. The different abilities themselves are also fun to play with. Really tight controls and the combat hits feel good.

I have similar notes to some others: the NPC convos got in the way sometimes and it's a bummer that you didn't have a chance to set up the unlock progression (though, if the only reason was that you couldn't set up the story, I might've just put the things where you'd wanted them to be anyway, at least then you'd have a game, not just a sandbox).

Having Meg just have a cooldown seems easily spammable by simply waiting a minutes then blitzing through a section, waiting a minute, doing the next section, etc. I might consider having it recharge based on item pick-ups, or only at specific locations (like a recharge booth), or have zones where she's able to activate because of the loose energy in those areas or something.

I can tell there was a lot of work put into this. It's a shame you couldn't quite put it together into a game, woulda been super fun!

Ah, we certainly didn't want to be annoying : ( 

Was it the sounds themselves? Or were they just repetitive?

Thanks for the feedback, and glad you enjoyed it otherwise!

A nice start. I like the premise and the limited-palette aesthetic. Obviously seems unfinished, so not much to do other than fall off the map '^_^

Of what you got, though, I will say that I think the the first jump is needlessly extreme. I would save that kind of jump for further in the game and give the player an opportunity try similar jump without danger of getting hurt before having them do it "for reals".

Edit: I only played the web version. I see in other comments that there may be a difference between it and the downloadable.

Really fun creative direction! I love all the little details with Scotch tape on the selector wheel, the cardboard edges, and even the cardboard texture on the loading screen. I personally wasn't a fan of the animation frames flipping effect, though—it was a little distracting for me as it looked like a mistake (like when an animation is missing frames), but I get what you were going for.

As far as gameplay, I thought the controls were a bit too loose. The character felt slippery and it was difficult to land jumps with much accuracy. I agree with some others that at times it felt like I had negative coyote time, falling off the platform before I expected to when trying to make a jump. The beginning, too, before you get a weapon is harsh. Too many small platforms where the enemy takes up nearly half the space was punishing while you're still getting used to the feel of the game's control. It was actually harder for me to get to the paperclip than it was to do anything else in the game and I nearly gave up at the beginning except for all the praises in the comments.

I did like the boss fight and the distinctive look of the different areas. The paperclip zip-lining is really satisfying, especially in long combos like the big vertical room. Going up the ziplines, though, wasn't clear, and I 100% agree with Starboi hooch that having the player have to use it to get out of the room/area with the clip would have been a huge help in teaching the skill.

Overall: could use a little love in control and balance but the mechanics are fun and the aesthetics are fantastic. Awesome job!

(PS - I'm jealous that you nailed the dust motes I'd wanted to do in our game xD)

+1 that idea. I wondered around a bit, too, until I accidentally figured out that you could jump off the zips.

You probably wouldn't have to worry too much about which is the starting position option with either the up/down or left/right, so long as you wrap the scroll like you already do with the current scheme. I like your up/down thought and reasoning, btw.

The alt scheme you proposed also has the benefit of allowing a player to play single-handed and would map to a controller well.

I will say that I didn't mind the quick select of the number keys. It actually felt pretty natural until I was going to 7 and 8. Two keyboard rows (e.g., 1234 and QWER) might be a nice option if you kept that scheme.

Similar to Cormorant42, I was not even expecting something running, and this turns out to look good, plays super smooth, has a cool cutscene, and you can play as a cat (which I'm partial, too, haha)! It also has a nice level flow and pretty good enemy placement. I love the look of the glowing mushrooms, and hate how hard it is to hit the bats xD

It did, however, lock up when going up to the room above the first health crystal. I wonder if that's just where the work ended for the jam or if it's a bug cutting off whatever else you might've put together. It would be extra sad if it were the latter, because I was definitely enjoying the game!

Same! A sleeper for sure