Sorry for the delayed response.
I've been thinking about this a lot, and I don't really have a good answer. I think part of what interested me in the idea was that I was almost expecting a puzzle game similar to 2048, but the physics of splitting was hard to control, so trying to bounce things or merge them back together always felt a bit tedious. I think that was the main drain for me.
Really interesting game idea (though in the end I don't think it was quite for me)
Having to be economical in even the easy levels to be able to attempt the harder ones was interesting. And, I couldn't quite tell, but if you went back and did an old puzzle level more efficiently (like with the new upgrades) did that increase the movement you had for other puzzles later?
I did feel like the controls were a bit finicky. Might have been something with the web build but I felt like I often had to push a button multiple times to get it to work, and I didn't think I could hold to move at first, but then about halfway through that started working.
Really interesting idea! The risk-reward of waiting for a clock to get close to 0 was a nice touch.
Controls definitely felt awkward. Arrow keys plus mouse was kinda awkward positioning for hands, might have been nice to be able to use WASD for navigation. And my mouse wheel made it really hard to accurately shift between weapons, and my instinct was always to click on them anyway, which made some levels a lot harder than it felt like they should have been.
Really interesting idea. Having to make a squad that exactly defeats the enemy is such an interesting twist for this sort of RTS adjacent game.
It did take me a moment to realize that your troops only revive if they died on the round you killed the enemy. (Which makes sense. If you didn't have that, you'd just send small squads that would definitely die each time. Just took me a few rounds to realize)
I did do two runs, and I did notice my enthusiasm was a lot lower the second playthrough. It seemed like the kind of game where optimizing each level would feel really tedious to me, so redoing some of the early bosses had me zoning out a bit. (but that might just be a me thing.)
(also, did the final boss not do any damage? I was not expecting to win with my 8 guys I had left but I don't think any of them even died.)
Interesting idea, but definitely hard to understand. A lot of mechanics and not a lot of time to figure them out.
The cold open was interesting, but didn't quite land for me. It almost seemed like a buggy first level at first, and having to redo each time you die while trying to figure out the controls definitely stole some of its power I think.
It also felt hard to feel like you were doing something right. There wasn't a lot of feedback to enemies hitting you, so I didn't even notice it was happening until I started only watching the healthbar while I spammed buttons. I think I kept getting killed because an enemy would be behind me or right under me and I wouldn't notice, but again, hard to tell.
Seems like an idea with some promise. Pogoing felt fun. But this version made it a bit hard to see where it could go.
Really fun concept. Felt very polished. Loved the cat and the little "Yays" when you cut the floofs.
But, I definitely did start noticing my energy flagging after playing for a little bit. It felt like the initial 'shock and awe' of the concept had worn out and the actual work of playing the game wasn't as exciting as I wanted it to be. But that might just be me.
Really solid game. A really nice feedback loop of trying to keep energy high and buying upgrades and threading the needle.
Only two things felt off. Having to use the mouse to buy things, having to leave the directional controls to use the mouse felt jarring. And it did take me a while to tell the difference between coal and stone. Even with the instructions, I assumed there were 2 types of stone and avoided both.
Really solid game!
I really love how the premise of finally taking the leap to become a game developer just adds so much to the life sim experience. As others mentioned, the art and audio really worked to make you feel like the world was ending.
Only real complaint would be control clarity. The popups having an X in the top right made me assume that I should use the mouse to close them. I figured out to use space bar pretty quick, but it did feel jarring.
Art looks great! Game feels pretty good for the most part. The tutorial section helped a lot, but I did have trouble getting used to the three actions. Good job with the balance. I think the spacing of checkpoints was just about perfect for something like this. After the tutorial, each felt like a stretch to get too. But not so long that I'd get demoralized after dying. And the checkpoints seemed placed so that goofing up the beginning meant you could easily reset the timer while preparing for the next attempt.
Only real complaint would be about wall jumping and the size of openings. I'd often find myself trying to jump into the opening from a wall jump but jumping too high and hitting the ceiling and then not having enough horizontal velocity to make it into the opening, so I'd have to try again and wind up burning a bunch of time.
(And I did notice that if you walked off a platform and jumped you would do the normal jump rather than hover. It didn't really cause a problem, but was definitely not what I was expecting)
Really fun!
Took me a second to figure out that the extra paint splotches were actually the fuse, but once I checked the description and realized that it all came together.
Really interesting puzzles. Especially when the buttons and trash cans got added in. The last few definitely hurt my brain, but I got them figured out. Definitely hit the sweet spot of most of the puzzles looking almost impossible until I saw what I needed to do, then the solution felt really simple and elegant.
Biggest complaint would just be timing. Sometimes I'd need to add or remove a tick to allow for the time of the player moving. And I think I might have cheesed the last level because half the time my player would move through the gates and half the time he wouldn't since I had the same bomb moving him as flipping the switch for the gate.
(But that definitely feels like a reasonable bug for Jam game to have)
I just love it when healing, buffing and casting banes are substancial and crucial parts of the strategy
Me too! Really glad that part landed for you!
And thanks for checking out my game.
(I checked yours out as well and I did not realize how badly I want an endless runner rhythm game until I saw it.)
An endless runner rhythm game is a really fun idea.
The rhythm part did feel a bit muddled since you had a pretty big window to react in. But even with that, the flow of dodge, attack, reload felt pretty great. I definitely wanted more.
It did take me a while to figure out how to reload since I didn't read the instructions in the description. I thought I had to dodge while they were going center, so I never just did nothing to get the reload. (But I also figured out that if you dodge endlessly you can get really high scores because the game doesn't speed up as quickly. I hit 400 before went back to the main page to figure out how to reload)
Really interesting idea. I really liked the art and music too.
I think my only real issue was the shooting enemies. The cadence of their shots meant that there were often odd little hiccups in your flow through the level. You always had to do these brief pauses before heading to the next bit.
That caused two issues for me:
- The platformers I like tend to have a good sense of flow, so those brief pauses tended to kick me out of the game, esp on the levels with tighter timers and longer dodging stretches
- It often made it so an early gaff meant the whole level was scrubbed, but you didn't know for sure until you got to the very end, which tended to make levels feel more irritating than challenging.
I did tend to prefer the levels that used the shots for puzzle solving, like needing to get a box in the way so you could finish the level. (And I wonder if that might be a deeper problem. Some levels were more precision platformer-y, others were more puzzle platformer-y, so having to switch from puzzles to precision may have messed me up.)
I did make it to the end and was glad I did because lighting the torches was a pretty fun mechanic. Definitely liked that.
Stellar game!
Took me a little bit to get into it, but that was really fun. Getting everything to line up felt super satisfying. And the puzzles felt really good. I'd be stuck for a moment feeling like it was super complicated and then notice something and realize "That's what I was missing!"
At first, I really didn't like the move 1 tick at 5 on the counter. It felt awkward at first and kinda pushed me out of the experience, but after a few levels, it felt great!
My only complaint was that I don't think it was mentioned anywhere that the basic clock moves around in 6 (or that it moves 2 spots each turn). At some point I got it in my head it cycled in 8 and that caused me to get stuck for a bit.
But that was it.
Really solid game. Really enjoyed my time and I'll be throwing it at some of my other game dev friends in a minute.
(I also really liked that the last 'level' was just spam space. That was a nice little way to let the player celebrate!)
As I recall, each time I tried, I walked right up to the altar on the right with the hourglass on (so the angel was chasing me) and then over to the opposite one and could look back and see the light still over the first altar. I tried turning the hourglass off as well and doing the same thing.
I certainly never noticed the lights following me.
Not sure what was going on for me. It sounds like other people weren't really having problems.
Tried it out and not sure if I was missing something but I could never find any souls.
I collected the lantern and could flip it. The angel would start chasing me. I could see the dimension portal and two balls of light over the altars to the left and right, but I didn't find anything else that looked like I should try to interact with.
I'm playing on the web build (in case there's something maybe not working specific to that. Or maybe I'm just missing something.)
From what I've seen, it sounds like an interesting idea, balancing the angles chasing you and rescuing the souls.
The only real complaint was that the walk to the hourglass did feel a bit long. There's an argument it was building the atmosphere, but even for that it did feel a bit too long, especially the walk into the cathedral at the very beginning.
(Though that may just be my expectations. A lot of Jam games seem to throw you right into the thick of it.)
Tried it out and not sure if I was missing something but I could never find any souls.
I collected the lantern and could flip it. The angel would start chasing me. I could see the dimension portal and two balls of light over the altars to the left and right, but I didn't find anything else that looked like I should try to interact with.
I'm playing on the web build (in case there's something maybe not working specific to that. Or maybe I'm just missing something.)
From what I've seen, it sounds like an interesting idea, balancing the angles chasing you and rescuing the souls.
The only real complaint was that the walk to the hourglass did feel a bit long. There's an argument it was building the atmosphere, but even for that it did feel a bit too long, especially the walk into the cathedral at the very beginning.
(Though that may just be my expectations. A lot of Jam games seem to throw you right into the thick of it.)
Glad to see more people Count's going down type games!
Artwork looks really great, and all the little flavor with the fire, falling chandeliers, and clouds was really fun.
The wall walk was an interesting mechanic. Really fitting for the theming, but it kinda felt awkward to play with.
I think a lot of that had to do with the key switch that had to happen to do something. I'd need to jump off the wall and continue to the right, so I'm trying to switch from wall walk -> jump and right, but if I hit right before I hit jump I wind up just falling to my doom.
It also felt like my jump horizontal distance was very much based on how much of a running start I needed, which seemed to need quite a bit more runway than I was expecting, so some of the long horizontal jumps felt really inconsistent.
This led to the game feeling hard, but not quite in the 'fair' way the really tough platformers often shoot for.
There was a general feeling of being unable to do something consistently, but not really being sure why.
That could just be my skill level or acclimation to the game. But one thing I noticed was that there was never really a place where you could get used to how the jump felt, things like distance, height, fall speed. The game is run from the very beginning and I wonder if that hampers the learning process. You never have a place where you can clearly see "that's how far I can jump" and the like.
Just some food for thought.
Really interesting idea. Love the bossfight on a clock idea.
Only issue was that I had a real hard time with dodge. I always felt like I would roll too far for it to be useful, so if I did dodge I'd wind up taking more damage than if I'd just eaten the hit. I found myself just walking around purple stuff all the time. (But that may just be a 'skill issue')
