i find the idea to be quite interesting - having a Zelda-like isometric adventure game with a companion that you actually control (instead of having something like Navi annoying you all the time with dialogue...) and for a 4-day Game Jam game, the idea is quite well excecuted. i also really like the dialogue system and how the statue keeps on encouraging you to keep on going when you die!

my only gripes with this game are:

- the controls are really weird and i wasn't able to check back on them without restarting the game

- the game sort of just "plops" you into this world and doesn't really explain its mechanics

- fighting was bland and a bit clunky, for a full game you'd need to make it a bit faster and smoother and maybe add a few attack variations (light/heavy/charge etc), but i understand that it wasn't really manageable for a jam

- puzzles really weren't much of a challenge and didn't really feel rewarding. the game suddenly ends without much of a build up or anything, just some text

hey there! thanks for the nice review

i thought that the level design would teach this to people automatically - from my playtesting it did at least - but you're supposed to do an arced throw where you aim a bit upwards and let the stone fall, instead of just throwing the rock in a straight line (i dont know if i explained this clearly enough)

absolutely amazing. the visuals are top notch, level design is great, and it's impressive how you got a whole visual scripting system working in only 3 days. clearly a winner for me!

preety charming visuals and i find the level design to be quite good.

it definetly is on topic, but i found the "ai companion who shoots down aliens for you" to be - excuse me for the term - quite lazy and badly executed. the "gun bug" also ruined my experience, and at the end i was swarmed by enemies and left with absolutely no ammo.

try also not putting an arbitrary (and very short) time limit, especially right at the start of the game - that's a really bad design decision imo.

using AI to generate beautiful backgrounds like this is genius! i really liked the story too - it was quite intense for a 5 minute-or-so playthrough. great job!

this game is absolutely god awful and I LOVE IT

hey! note that you can restart a level in the pause menu if any bugs like that happen !

guess why the indev name for this game was "robot torture"

eheh, i doubt that's a tiny bug but sure x)

it is something we knew from the get-go after choosing to disable collisions on boxes (which as Imated mentionned, lead to abusing levels and outright skipping most of the puzzles), so i did my best to minimize the chances of that happening via level design: i gave more than enough vertical cleareance at every button drop, so it rarely happens in normal gameplay.

the robot blocking you was totally an oversight, and definetly leads to quite frustrating gameplay sometimes though - i'll give you that. the only reason it happens is because of the interaction where Bebop gets mad when you throw too many rocks at him (totally worth it btw)

glad to hear you've enjoyed the game though!

As the sort of lead of the team - i think we can all thank our pretty well organized Trello x)

It's a must have for a team, especially of this size!

Everything is so satisfying in this game, from the slowmo to blowing up rockets mid-air!

This is essentially AI-guided Time Crisis and i love it-

-5 stars for the WOWIE!!!

Quite a fun concept!

Great art and music but even after 10 minutes of playing i couldn't understand how the game works. Am i supposed to press the arrows in a sequence, or just press the one direction which as the most arrows? Why does my attack make me lose a life even when i press space at the correct time?

The tutorial doesn't explain the quite punishing game mechanics and i quickly ended up frustated, unfortunately.

Absolutely amazing. The presentation is nothing short of stunning, the attention to detail and amount of content for a Game Jam game is unreal - i absolutely loved it!

I've tried understanding what the purpose of this game is, but i still haven't figured it out. Apparently this is just a random map generator with an asset-store player controller on top of it...?

Quite a unique concept! I especially liked the inverse gravity and how you've designed levels to be played in both ways - that truly amazed me the first time it happened to me.

My only gripes with this game is that the exit isn't clearly indicated and took me quite alot of time to find, but also the camera: it frustrated me to no end to constantly fall into pits of death because i couldn't even see where i was going!

Concept is preety fun and you guys nailed the visuals, but unfortunately i was confused what was going on most of the time. Enemies hid behind the HUD and the slot machine bonuses weren't explained. I'm confused as to why enemies stopped shooting at me: was that one of the bonuses i got from it?

With a tad bit more polish, i could see this as an amazing endless shooter with a really fun slot machine mechanic!

Fantastic presentation and great gameplay loop! The dice-throwing platforming is surprisingly fun and i really like the dice number activating traps and acid mechanic. Absolutely splendid job on your game!

Concept is preety cool! It took me a quick second to grasp the dice-rolling mechanic but when you get into the flow of the game, it's quite fun.

I found the platforming mechanics quite frustrating though - i often fell just before reaching a platform, and because of the unusual jump mechanic (more of a leap than a vertical jump) i fell into the void quite alot of times.

The dice animation is quite slow too, and it's length added to the frustration of losing a level - it almost felt like a punishment!

This is far from a critique of the game though - it looks really, really nice for a 48hr Game Jam game and has quite alot of content (i heard some people spent 20 - 30 minutes finishing the game, that's a heck of alot for a Game Jam game, great job!)

Really interesting concept! Surprisingly well executed, coming back to another room didn't feel frustrating, the mechanics keep making you push forward.

Thanks for the review! Yeah one of the features i wanted to add in was a "reset loop" button to instantly go to the next loop, and it is in the game, but it's disabled; it causes so many bugs, like activating buttons before the clone gets to open it and such, which would've opened room to exploitation.

To answer your UI question:

• the red bar is indeed the healthbar
• the white bar is the ammo count bar
• the last bar is the "loops used" bar. unlit bars indicate that the loop of that color is not yet in use, lit bars indicate it is in use. so if all 3 bars are used up, it means you're in the 3rd loop where you have all 3 clones.

Also the UI automatically hides itself after a short while. If you get damage or shoot something it shows itself again.

But yeah, one of the problems i've faced during this jam is time management. I've spent like 75% of my jam time on the loop mechanic, UI and different level mechanics, which left me little time for level design and polish!

I'm currently planning on working on a complete version with 15+ levels using all the amazing feedback i've gotten from the community!

Also i'm surprised to see you liked the art style, alot of people said it's too basic, we spent little time on it too but it's good to know we're heading in the right direction!

I get the theme now, it makes sense!

But yeah holy moly i cannot even understand how you haven't played Firewatch yet. I mean it's not that i care but your game's story and alot of the dialogue is so similar to Firewatch this is incredible! I urge you to play it, it's very short, i think it's like 2 or 3 hours tops if you take your time, and it's absolutely amazing.

I'm stunned! The art is amazing, the story is really nice, really reminds me of Firewatch (ah the memories) and it manages to keep you hooked for the short 5 minutes it lasts :)

Only problem is that the player sprite isn't correctly animated, it's constantly in a move cycle even when you don't move, and the player kind of hides some of the background! Also it doesn't fit the theme, i guess, but it's not the point of the jam either.

Thanks for the nice comment! :D

I've been thinking on turning this into a finished product but i have to get alot of work done on the level design department especially! And i agree the visual artstyle needs some work, too.

I'm not sure about sacrificing the game's level design just so people on 4:3 can play it though lol

Did you play on a different aspect ratio, like 4:3? It should work fine on bigger ratios like 16:10, 21:9 etc but i know Unity games dont scale well to 4:3 and i'm not sure there's much to do about that.

I've got the chance to play the beta, but i never got around buying the full version. It definetly was an inspiration for Quantum loop though! :)

nice logo you got there 👀

If you're still lost, you're supposed to shoot down as many enemies as possible. You'll quickly run out of ammo, and you'll have to die. When you die, a clone of you appears, that will repeat your past actions. You'll have more ammo and will be able to gun down the enemies left with it. When all enemies are dead, the red door opens and you're able to jump up to the exit door.

Well i didn't mean to say that's the purpose of the time limit. There's only two conditions to create a loop: die, or run out of time.

You don't often die, so the game is designed around having limited resources: time, ammo, etc. As to create a need to use the loop mechanic.

It might just be my incompetence but i find it especially hard to design around this mechanic. Not a good start for my 1st ever puzzle game, and my 2nd game, well ever.

But i get what you mean - it's not worth it to design the game for multiple difficulties at once. It makes the game boring for players that actually care about the game. 

Thanks for the constructive review! 

I agree the level design is preety bad. I should've definetly spent more time on it but alot of the dev cycle was spent on the loop mechanic.

One of the biggest issues with the game design is the difficulty. As you've told me the puzzles are very easy, mostly because of how linear they are but also the time limit being very generous. But from other reviews i've gotten, and some playtesting i've did, some players struggled with the time limit. It's a balancing act and well i haven't balanced it well enough!

Frankly it doesn't seem like it. It's on a FixedUpdate() so it only updates 60 times a second. At worst a loop can last 30s so a list can be 3600 entries tops. Might seem like alot but it's like 3600 Vector3s or bools or floats, it's maybe slightly RAM intensive but i doubt it has a significant impact on performance.

Thanks for the comment! Indeed i got the inspiration from Corridor Digital's video.

It's really simple, you just gotta wrap your head around the mechanic. Preety much you have a script on the player that "Lists" (kind of like arrays but endless) stuff like the player's position, and when he shoots.

I store all of that data in a "loop" container, and when the game is "reset" i.e when you run out of time, i spawn "puppets" that use the lists in their corresponding loop to mimick the player's actions.

This game definetly needs more praise! Overall the most creative and ambitious game of the jam.

There's alot of great design decisions here. I particularly liked the green trail of... stuff... that indicates where you've went - it complements the open world design of the game really well. The time mechanic is really well balanced, you're never stressed out of running out of time but you're still encouraged to actively find stuff to die from!

But don't get me wrong - jumping around, climbing stuff and exploring the vast world is great, it feels a bit too sloppy, especially the jumping after climbing - i grew a bit frustrated from it and that's what made me not get all the way to the end (if there is one? 🤔)

10/10 would die again

Incredibly well polished, the level design is excellent, the dying mechanic (if you die too many times you have to start over) is great, over all my favorite game from this jam.

10/10 would feel hopeless again

I really enjoyed this game! Although a lot of games in this jam have used the same "use your past deaths as a platform" mechanic, yours definetly stands out. It constantly introduces fun, new mechanics and it's great, but i think the level design goes often in the "dangerous" side, and past level 3, levels felt like they lasted longer than they should've, because of how the player is wider than he is taller i spent alot of time dying, coming back then dying again just to build a platform for me to jump on.

Overall for a jam game this is excellent, great job!

Preety nice! The mechanic isn't very original but it's definetly the best implementation of it in this jam. The polish is on point, it looks splendid, though i find the jump effect to be a bit overdone. 

The movement is fluid and nice but it's a pity that the map is not designed for the wallrun mechanic. Overall the map feels a bit clunky but i can totally see this as a great game if you would add more maps, if you're interested on working on it outside the jam! The visual style is neat too and there's alot of good ideas like the weapons having arced projectiles and the death adding time.

I'm probably going to grind this until i get the best score lol