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Queque's sprites turned out amazing, and yewn's beautiful music style is why I even wanted to commit to this jam in the first place.

The damaging blocks were probably an unnecessary addition. The enemies firing at you so early was not something I wanted to do but I only made one AI type. If I had another day or two I would have added something that takes away their ability to do that until you reach a certain point. Maybe fewer enemies in that first area could have been a good enough solution.

So glad you enjoyed the fever mode! That was really the core focus of this game and the part I might wanna explore again in the future.

Thanks so much for playing! Already reviewed your game a while back, it was so tense and awesome!

Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I overdid that last section. I was so worried that the game was too easy that I made the end too hard. I need to remember that players are always gonna struggle a lot more than the dev. I should get it to where its fun for me, then crank it down a couple more notches from there.

I didn't want a more precise controlling character for this one, him being like a personified snowflake floating and drifting through the air was the vision. But some of the level design simply doesn't fit that vision. Thanks the feedback will be so useful in the future!

Thanks for playing! The player character does have a large amount of homing movement, but I'm sure this can be confusing since its not explained in game. Even though he stops walking while attacking he can go flying long distances toward his nearest target while attacking, espcially in fever mode. When using this right you can get through any combat section without ever stopping movement.

Aw what a sad ending! But you're right that is how it is. Very beautiful and sweet vibes otherwise. Good graphics and music. Controls well. I found combat awkward, some indication that my attacks are landing would have helped a lot. I also got stuck in an enemy once where I couldn't move or attack and had wait for them to finish me off. Otherwise wonderful game.

Very fun game! Surprisingly easy to know when to jump over obstacles depsite the semi-3d angle that I often find difficult to gauge depth with. That effect looks nice too.

It did seem like sometimes the game would generate obstacles in quick succession that were impossible to avoid. Like one of the far left then the next far right and not enough time to get there. Not sure if there's some trick I could have done in those situations.

Wow! What an ambitious and well made game for such a short time. Really impressive. Graphics are beautiful. Was initially gonna critique the short music loop, then it changed with progression and was super impressed there too. Game feel with the controls and bouncing was great.

Only critique I can give is that it is too easy to really capitalize on it's mechanics. After a bit, I stopped even reading the upgrade cards or looking at arena, just clicked the cards random and fired at a random enemy.

With more time to design actual challenges to overcome I could see this being a legit full game!

Cute game. I would've been happy to play longer but I won!

Its so impressive when someone manages to make a compelling game without much graphics or music. Just rectangles and gameplay and yet it manages to be fun. 

I'd say level 3 was perfect difficulty. Initially felt way too hard, failed a bunch, then it suddenly clicked and I could easily do it which was satisfying.

But level 4 crossed the line for me. I tried quite a few times and couldn't do it. Fine for a game with only 5 levels, but if you do a longer version I'd ramp up the difficulty much slower than that.

I'd at least see if the change fixes the stump glitch because if its the cause of that glitch it could cause all sorts of other ones in the future.

Otherwise, I think the smaller hitbox gives the effect you were going for and seems fine to me.

Lol that works.

I noticed when the blocks reach that final animation frame, the player falls like 3 pixels in to them. I would bet the stump bug is related to that. Maybe that final animation frame has the wrong sized collision box or something?

It was. Wanted fever mode to feel as powerful as possible. They can be taken care of fairly easily in normal mode though by alternating between attacks and jumps. Their melee hitbox is shorter than your jump height and their attack wind up animation is just long enough to give you time for one hit and then a jump.

They're a serious problem when infected though. Should just stay away from them until infection clears up.

Yeah I personally liked the infection lasting longer, but I was worried it would irritate the player so I reduced it heavily. Another option would have been to have longer infection, but have it not affect your jump height as that is really the most detrimental debuff.

Good point on the controls. This game could have easily been a one hander if I'd done the controls that way. And having the both WASD and arrows is great a idea.

I did experiment with higher knockback on enemies from player attacks, but with the way player controls this lead to having to chase enemies down after each hit which I found annoying. But maybe with increased homing distance that approach could have worked well.

Yeah my heart was really set on the slippery floaty controls for this game. Partially inspired by the winter theme, we thought of the ninja as a personification of a snowflake falling through the air. Also inspired by our musician's albums which have a lot tracks with a slow dreamy vibe.

For my next game I may go in the opposite direction, make a really tight precise character similiar to the Megaman games and then I can go crazy with the precision platforming design.

Thank you. Played your game and left rating and review. 

Thanks for the feedback! I'm surprised people are finding the enemies so strong. I was more worried they were too easy. You can really abuse fever mode a lot to slice through them. But players are always gonna have very different experience with a game than its dev. Great knowledge to gain for the next project.

Your game was very fun.

Oh and a funny bug I found. If you partially destroy the three blocks surrounding the stump, like get them to the last animation stage, then destroy them, the stump doesn't fall! Haha games are weird.

As you've said this is more of starting point, but its a great start! Read what you have planned, followed you and will check back later on your progress! The graphics are great and I was really charmed by the stump actually falling when I dug around it. I dug around the house hoping it would fall too but nah. You've probably already thought of this but if you aren't going to give the house physics you should probably put unbreakable blocks under it or something. I dug so much that I never could have gotten back if it was enterable.

As far as my prefence goes, I would like if I could hold the chop button to break blocks rather than mashing it. Dunno if it thats better for the game feel or not, just something I would prefer. 

Good work!

So glad you enjoyed the fever mode and infection systems. Those are really the core of the game and took a lot of fiddling to get them interesting.

Yeah I'm always so unsure of control layouts. For this game I just used the same control scheme as Ninja Gaiden 2 Black and hoped that would land. But our game is very different. You can actually change the controls by pressing CTRL+Y. But default controls are important regardless.

The enemies were tuned pretty difficult to make fever mode more pivotal. Early on the mode was useless, you could just stay in normal mode and spam them with basic attacks. I may have taken them too far though. They don't drag you towards them, they actually knock you back. But your attacks have pretty strong homing ability, especially in fever mode, which is probably what you were noticing.

And yes your last point seems to be running theme with all feedback. The floaty slippery feeling character was very intentional, one of the first things we decided we wanted for the game, but my late decision to include some precision platforming sections to try and spice the game up was a bad call. Should have kept it a purely combat driven game with maybe just some easy platforming.

Thanks for the compliments on the visuals and sounds, the artist and musician both worked really hard I'm sure they'll be happy to hear that.

And thank you so much for the thorough review. I'll rate and review your game later tonight!

Thank you! An in game tutorial to teach things like that would have been ideal but didn't have time. Hopefully everyone will find the README like you did. I imagine the fever mode is pretty confusing without any guidance. Your game was great btw!

Rated and reviewed yours. Here's ours:

https://itch.io/jam/1-bit-jam-5/rate/3309751

Short, sweet and fun! What I really love about the melting snowball is that it isn't just a time limit for the level, the ball being smaller also provides opportunities to use alternative paths or just get through obstacles more easily. This creates a really satisfying risk/reward sort of system where waiting out the timer a little can actually be good but overdoing it will cause you to fail. It also naturally creates this system where the game gets a bit easier if you are doing poorly, kind of like a dynamic difficulty. 

Having the snow pick ups grow the ball bigger again provides has a ton of potentional for interesting level design. But speaking of the pick ups, on one level I found an oversight, if you quickly fire through the course while the burners are off, gathering all the pick ups this happens:

The ball gets giant, stuck in the walls, and you get blasted with the collision sound. Have to a wait a while for the ball to shrink before you can continue playing. So you should probably put a max size limit on the ball or something.

Reviewed and rated yours! Here's ours.

https://itch.io/jam/1-bit-jam-5/rate/3309751

A solid well made game. I love some of the little details like firing knocking the player back and the slow motion when landing a hit. Character controls well, weapon being a shotgun is satisfying sometimes hitting multiple enemies at once. Graphics and sound are great.

I would like if the difficulty ramped up a little faster at the begining. After dying a couple times I wanted to try again but the very easy early game lasts a little too long. Maybe some kind of faster melee enemy to force the player to move around so they cant just stand still in the middle shooting. 

I also didn't understand the dynamite. It seemed worse than the shotgun to me, with a longer cooldown, more difficult to land, yet not doing much damage or having much of a radius. Think buffing it could be fun.

Went ahead and made due with the browser version. Pulling off a 3D fps for the first time during a game jam is impressive. I liked the ideas here too. Choosing one weapon for your run instead of having them all is interesting. The choice changes the feel of the game and gives replay value. Having to stay near the fire was a very smart way to deal with the lack of any walls or level. It could have just been back strafing while firing forever but the fire forced me move in more mindful ways, make decisions in each moment if the cold or the enemies were the bigger problem, and have to walk towards enemies when the cold was the bigger threat.

I did have some problems with the weapons actually hitting the enemies. I feel this could possibly be due to lower frame rate I played at due to my older computer. Felt like sometimes my shots were just passing through enemies and doing no damage. The sniper especially felt useless. I found that most of the time spamming melee attack seemed to be the best way of dealing with enemies. Didn't manage to survive very long with this problem. So maybe check and see if the game is programmed in a way that frame rate effects hit detection.

As far as design, the only thing I think would be nice is some hud notification of where enemies are hitting from. Getting hit in the sides and back was a little annoying spinning around trying to figure where I was getting hit from.

The downloadable version the game seems to be missing something. Its just the .exe without whatever this file is.

I'd like to play the download version as my computer is older and the browser version is stuttery for me. I'm sure the offline version will run fine. If you can update it soon I'll play it that way. Otherwise I'll just make due with the browser verion.

It actually does reset your velocity on respawn, but what I hadn't thought of until now is that I should have ignored player inputs for a few frames after respawn. If you don't let go of the movement keys almost immediately after respawn then you will run off. Thought I had this problem taken care but there's always something else! And you're right, the character's slippery floaty movement was very intentional but including some precise jumps with this kind of movement was not the best decision. It was originally a combat only game but I felt it might be too repetitive and added some platforming sections to try and make it more varied.

Fever mode is what made you a killing machine. Infection is gained while in fever mode and activated after the mode ends. Infection reduces your movement speed, jump height, and attack speed. However, I made infection go away much quicker than initially planned as I was scared of annoying the player if it lasted longer. I guess I overdid it, made it so quick that you didn't even really notice the downsides.

Thank you so much for the very valuable feedback. All useful things to keep in mind with my next game. I'll be sure to check your game out soon!

We worked really hard on our game and would love people to check out and give feedback. Unfortunately a browser version wasn't possible and requiring a download means most people are going to pass on it. Would greatly appreciate anyone willing to check it out and will definitely rate and review yours in return.

https://itch.io/jam/1-bit-jam-5/rate/3309751

We worked really hard on our game and would love people to check out and give feedback. Unfortunately a browser version wasn't possible and requiring a download means most people are going to pass on it. Would greatly appreciate anyone willing to check it out and will definitely rate and review yours in return.

https://itch.io/jam/1-bit-jam-5/rate/3309751

We worked really hard on our game and would love people to check out and give feedback. Unfortunately a browser version wasn't possible and requiring a download means most people are going to pass on it. Would greatly appreciate anyone willing to check it out and will definitely rate and review yours in return.

https://itch.io/jam/1-bit-jam-5/rate/3309751

Great music! Having the storm worsen over time, affecting your speed is a cool concept. Having randomized puzzle locations in a game like this is a great idea, makes you learn the entire map instead of just memorizing a specific path. Took me a while to realize what the npc meant by key at the lake as I was seeing those tiles as walls rather than icy floor.
I would make the default movement speed higher though. After four attempts, I had the map locations memorized, knew I needed to find the guys to tell me about the key then go get the key and take it to the cabin, and I would have done it if I could move faster. But I just couldn't face another attempt of moving between all the fires and wells at that speed.

Amazing tension and atmosphere. Panning over to the picture on the wall actually kinda startled me thinking it was someone for a second. The ghosts resembling the objects they appear over was really well done. Rushing around trying to find cell signal is a great concept. Cool game.

Clever twist on block pushing games adding some extra layers to the genre. Great difficulty progression that doesn't get too hard. Love the scribbly style intro.
The press spacebar graphic prompt was not apparent to me so it took me a bit of wandering around thinking this was a puzzle before realizing I needed to press that key. I also would have liked a way to change facing direction without stepping forward so that I could spacebar the blocks without walking down particular paths.

I get this error when I try to play. I'm sure the problem is on my end somehow since the other comment was able to. Dunno how to fix it though. Sorry about that.

Oh okay! Yeah my intent on that part was to have the upper floor without the spikes and then the identical jumping sequence in the lower floor with spikes so you could practice without fear of death and then feel cool when face it with added danger and first try it. But in my gut I felt that part was kind of annoying and guess I should have listened.
Thanks for the feedback! I'll try your game out tonight!

Thank you so much for playng it! Are you referring to the reduced jump height when infected?