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This a stunningly powerful game for its length. I don't have too much critique, more just notes on parts of it I enjoyed - I think thematically it does its job really well, so I don't have much to say there. 

The opening with a dictionary definition was great to frame the context of the game, it might have been a confusing start without this. Generally, I think the way you varied both the hypertext usage and paragraph lengths made for a game that flowed very easily, and gave resistance in just the right places. Overall, I think you establish an inner conflict of the character quite effectively and quickly, which was impressive. The contrast between moments like the character calling herself a whore (essentially) and then saying they don't know what a whore is, paints a stark picture. 

"i haven't kissed a boy but i've shown men older than my father my strechmarked bum" is such a strong line that I think you could have even ended with that single line on a page after 'he calls me boring and I smile'. 

Not so much feedback as much as an idea, but the second last paragraph, that begins with 'when I climb into my cupboard'. Perhaps because so many of the sentences are short, you could make a long chain of links with short sentences. You then click through them rather quickly as a result of their shortness. The quick several clicks could contrast well with the static final paragraph where you have nothing to click. I figure it could feel like it's building up to something, and then anticlimactically just leaves you to linger in the nihilistic, yet panging, emotions of the static final paragraph. Just a thought! 

Great job on this! Its really quite a startling and emotionally charged piece of interactive fiction. 

This was an excellent experience, and overall impressive for a jam game - I had a great time!

The different holds you can go for made for really interesting choices every time you moved, so it was engaging to play and see how far you could get. I also enjoyed the overall level design. It starts out really simple, and then in the middle you have a lot of choices and wide walls, and then towards the end the distance between holds is huge! I didn't finish, but I really enjoyed the progression of difficulty here!

My feedback would be on a few things! The first time I played, I didn't have the physics bug out too much, but my playthrough today had them bug out quite a bit, I'm not sure why! It's quite an understandable problem for sure, so I'm not too critical on that for a jam. 

Additionally, the first time I played it wasn't clear that the black holds were a negative thing - it was only clear once I died. You could maybe add some more negative feeling feedback, like a painful sound effect to convey this sooner? 

You could perhaps also add some wind/motion lines to the hands to emphasize the movement and speed, just for additional feedback/juice to how you move, and also notice how you movement changes over the course of playing. 

Again, overall this was excellent - great job!

You can reach me on ben.myres@hotmail.com :)

Hey!

We used Gamemaker: Studio :)

Update 1

We've been working on a bunch of stuff this week, redesigning a few of the levels and putting in an overworld system.

The programmer has been working on the character quite a bit.

He redid the system for procedural animation so it's easier to add animations:

He also started work on making sure the character shape follows the contour of the ground. This is early days though.

The artist started playing around with ideas for levels at nighttime too.

Thanks!

Most of it is! There are a couple different types of terrain: soft, hard, and non-reactive.

Soft is the most common and can be deformed, hard is frequent and you can use it to change your character's shape, non-reactive is rare and can't be deformed or change the character's shape :)

Semblance is a platformer where you deform a playdough world, and mould your character in order to solve puzzles.

On a planet where everything is soft and bouncy, an unwelcome invader appears, bringing with it hard and unmoving material.

You are Squish, a being made out of the very material of the world - willed into existence to protect the world from the unwelcome visitors.

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We're implementing the above art into the game now, but here are some gameplay gifs to show how it all works (with placeholder art).

Character Deforming:

World Deforming

We'll upload a build real soon!


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We're a little South African/Kenyan studio making our first game after we graduated from university.Follow us on Twitter or Facebook if you're into that.

Feedback is always welcome <3

Woahhhh! Haven't heard of marbling before - it looks really cool!

Glad you enjoyed it <3.

I'm glad you enjoy it! <3