itch.io

Dude thank you for that photo, i was stuck for so long on that two islands of the city, i would have never guessed there was a boat there.

Every time you die you restart looking at a wall so i have dashed so many times into that wall.

The entire time i was playing it feels like running was kinda the default way to advance through the game, specially considering the first jump on the game requires you to be jumping, i didn’t see much of a point to having a non run mode, or be walking every time i died and having to toggle run.

The weapon selection didn’t really change unless i teletransported to a different map.

Double jump makes me lose all momentum and it is kinda confusing, especially since it’s a platforming heavy game.

The final stage having no saves is soooo mean :(

Loser girlfailure Fael looked pretty cool, tho, art was nice, although the contrast on the character was a little too big on the shadows so i wasn’t really able to see her face in the 3d model.

I don't know, maybe im just bad at the game, but between the maps being too small so i didn't have much space to move, the enemy position made it really hard to be on a good position to aim against the enemies, and the fact most of them dashed at me before i could ever attack them made it a non enjoyable experience.

The long corridors with blue magma where flying crabs that i cannot shoot before they agro, but if they agro i am completely unable to attack them because i will have to be jumping, so either the crab gets still bellow the platforms and i can just advance forward or they get stuck behind me on a low ceiling so i can't really attack them either felt like i was just supposed to run towards the corridor.

The fact most of the places are blocked by blue or gray weapon and the only path forward was a path consisting of: Blue magma corridor, a drop, Blue magma corridor, a drop, Blue magma corridor, a drop, Blue magma corridor and then i died here twice, i just... after dying three times i could not stand more blue magma corridor, so i dropped the game.

The graphics look great and the music was ok.

I mean… it’s technically playable.

The fact 70% of this game is walking somewhere on the slowest walking speed i have experienced, just so i got sent back to the place i immediately started was not a fun experience.

I thought this was a slightly dark resident evil style game, but then when the actual game start, it was 20 seconds of running towards an arrow while kinda having some enemies but not really.

The mood of the game was allright, i guess, but it’s not really a magical girl game, at least not on the jam version.

I wish the text at the start of the game didn’t change automatically because i the first text advanced fast since i wasn’t expecting it and missed the text on it. It was a weird choice to have it autoscroll except when the image changes, so you have the “next” to press and advance.

The movement being pseudo-tank controls was a little strange, it made her take like a second to start moving in the direction i wanted her to move, it’s not as noticeable on the magical girl section but i still was able to notice the rotation on it and it felt a little like the controls were fighting me. The character also kinda walks a little slow for my taste, the camera movement too.

After playing for a while, i was very confused where i was supposed to go, no marker, no objectives, i was roaming around trying to advance for where i managed to go through, but it didn’t feel like i was actually properly advancing and instead i was just managing to cheese through.

The time limit on the zone with the whale that kills you was also something that feels like it was intended for a more finished game, because the cat mascot told me to go back to school otherwise the whale that kills you will kill me, but i advanced through the level and i was completely unable to go back?

I also never found a single unlockable ability, but the game page shows screenshots of zones beyond the two small city-islands i was able to go, so i was really confused. Like those tornados all around the world, i felt like they were for a future ability, but i was never able to find such a thing, i tried going everywhere, i tried talking with that turtle that is just around but is completely unable to be interacted with, i tried cheesing through every place to get to the top of the buildings, but i could never find anything but two color changes.

It was a bummer, because the game looks real nice, but it just feels… like im just platforming on a mario 64 level without stars.

Control support for the game seems scuffed, i can jump with my controller but not move at all, so i had to use a keyboard for playing.

he attack animations are a little scuffed, sometimes they don’t show up, if im too slow only the first animation shows, if im too fast, it skips some parts, if i move to one side while i attack the character will look in one direction and attack on the other direction. Anyways,

All i have to say left is: BUBBLES.

Most of the art looks great, but the protagonist sprites look like they were shrunken down too much, they give the impression that they were intended to be bigger proportionally with the rest of the game.

A really calming main theme for the music, very fitting with the whole underwater thematic of the game.

Very cool, fast to 100%, i did however never found the 20th pearl, so i can only assume it was a trick and there was only 19 pearls to begin with /s 

The game, however, made me kill a kitty, and thus that makes it the worst game of this jam, sorry i don’t make the rules.

Personally, i think progression based abilities being tied to a mana bar is not a great idea, because i have gotten stuck having to backtrack to respawn enemies so i could use the toasted multiple times.

 I would highly recommend the mana bar to recharge slowly with time. 

Also, being only able to move with the d-pad instead of the stick is an evil choice deserving of punishment. 

PD: Honestly i was going to give a longer review, but as i shown you on discord, i got completely stuck because of my inability to use the abilities if there is no enemies to recharge the mana, so i could not finish the game, a shame honestly, i kinda liked the vibe.

[WARNING, SUICIDE ATTEMPS ON THIS GAME]

The title screen school gave me Yanderedev vibes and honestly that just felt like it wanted to hurt me. The fact the highlight color is dark violet made me think the white was the highlight and press quit the first time i opened the game… and then while i was playing the game i accidentally pressed quit and had to restart the game.

The game starts with a suicide attempt and honestly that should have been a warning at the start of the game.

There is a bug that if you tab out of the game, it doesn’t let you go back in, it will start playing again but you will not be able to see it, so thank god for the saves.

Personally i find the fact that i had to spend style points to attack made me really try to avoid the enemies, since only the platform ones gave style points back, i felt like i was just wasting my points trying to defeat them, im not sure if it was intentional or not, but i wasn’t a fan of it, felt very pace stopper.

there is also situations where if you got to a zone but you don’t have the powerup needed to advance, you are just stuck on there for a while, because getting in is easy, but getting back out is hard. On the sea zone where there is a hole with a seal to use the left trick, since i didn’t have it, i got stuck for a good while trying to dash into the hole i came back, but the enemy was too far away to attack it, and if i had to dash, since the dash and attack both costs points, i had to do tricks completely still to get the 500 points to even attempt to leave, eventually i got tired of failing and just closed the game to go back to the checkpoint.

After being unable to find the top flip for like 30 minutes, i saw that i had been playing the game for 6 hour straight, and chose to go “Nah im good”

maybe one day i will finish the game, but hey, 6 hours of game for a gamejam, that’s ok in my book.

Anyways: 

Shredoka, become Shreguca.

The intro music was… a little confusing.

The music in general was a little scuffed, at some point the music stopped looping, until it eventually the music started looping again, i have no idea why, i think it was because i transformed?

Game artstyle is fine, nothing i can really say about it, good or bad. The main attack doesn’t work unless im jumping on the air… or so i thought, but then i did learn that the attack does work while in the ground, it just does not have animation, but still does the hit. This made the combat really hard because i never knew why i was missing or why i was hitting the enemies. The map ability was factually incorrect, when i obtained it told me the room i was in had another path, but there was nothing, nowhere to go, only backtrack from there, i later learnt that a zone later opens up to here, but… why was that secret shown in the map?

The size of everywhere combined with the fact everything looked the same made me get a little lost.

Lever just activate by hitting them.

In my defense, i didn't expect Caim to add jumping.

A little shorter than expected but that is really my only complaint.

A nice simple metroidvania game, the graphics were cute and the music was very fitting.

the protagonist duo is interesting enough that i wouldn’t mind a bigger version of this game, or even a sequel, just hoping it’s not the last of them :3

Yeah the problem is that i don't see the word turn white because im typing XD

Normal, the recomended one.
I didn't think it was hard, i think i was just bad at it.

However, having to focus on what i was to write while having to dodge different types of attacks that i couldn't see because i was focused on typing was probably a little too much.
Like the ones that are spells that i can dode are not so bad, but the instant ones felt impossible to dodge.

Opening this game induced me with fear the moment i started hearing my PC fans starting moving at high speed.

The option button at the start of the menu is not real.

the game starts with a long text introduction on a single image, which i personally found too long for what it was trying to say, the words also kept jumping to the next row so that made it a little hard to read.

when the game starts properly, you start being hit on the back with what it seems like an enemy, an honestly baffling choice to be attacked before you even moved yet. the enemies drop healing items, maybe? Could not tell you if they are healing items, because you can’t actually pick them up. everything but moving left and right has a weird delay on it’s action, because the animations have a lot of windup, that didn’t really felt great, specially on a platformer where you have to see the character prepare for a second to do a normal jump. a jump that does not let you control mid air, so you will be stuck on the first screen of the game for a while, trying to get through a simple platform. I don’t know if i beat the game or not, but honestly i don’t think i will touch it again even if i didn’t.

A really nice looking intro, but i feel like it was a little too long of a start for a gamejam game.

I see in options that there was supposed to be controller support, but i did not seem to be able to make my controller be able to work.

the movement feels a little slippery in the air, it did not let me do the precision jumping this game was asking me to do.

the attacks also felt pretty useless, considering no enemy is ever in a good position for the ranged attack, and the melee is so short range i will get hit before i can hit the enemy.

At one point i jumped so high i went out of bounds, and i could not manage to respawn at all.

the music is great, the voice acting is nice, and the art of the game seems cool too, however the camera seems to be very far away for having designs so detailed, feels like i was missing on the art most of the time.

A short nice game, cool designs on the witch, although the map art seemed to be premade assets? I couldn't find anything about that in the description of the game.

the camera was a little wonky, i do have to say, could use some retouching, because sometimes it got a little stuck somewhere.

The controls for the game had a little weird positioning, like I couldn't quite reach the buttons where they were

An extremely good entry, good music, good graphics, good gameplay.

The ONLY two complains is that i wish it had controller support and that sometimes i get a little stuck on the corners, otherwise a really good game, i can see the potential and i no doubt will eventually see it on Steam one day.

It’s an overall good game, the music was cool and the art was great, i definitely liked

the character design.

I am however, horrible at typing games, so i kept getting hit because i was too 

distracted trying to type out the words, and ended up dying because i was unable to 

type fast enough to disable the shadow boss shingy’s bombs.

But yeah, good job on the game.

Not much to say about the art since… there isn’t really any.

There are also no instructions, so playing the game was… a guessing game.

The music was fine… for the two minutes it lasted, then since it didn't loop, i had to play in silence, with the only noise being some raspy noise when i moved the character, which sounded like a skateboard in movement? Unclear on that.

The floor texture moving was a little confusing and made me feel like things were moving when they were standing standstill, so it made platforming a little hard.

Unless i somehow missed anything, the entire game is an empty gray field with a giant anemone with flailing arms, and a sphere that teleports me to the cylinder zone, a place with a couple of platforms and a bunch of pillars with stripes.

I saw nothing to do, there were a couple of impossible to reach platforms, but i did not see either a way to get there nor a reason to actually do it.

It’s… I guess it technically counts as a game? But it definitely did not count as a metroidvania.

The controls feel very intuitive, despite the lack of dialog i understood what i was supposed to do most of the time, which is a real positive feeling for me, feeling like i am in control of the character is one of the most important things for a videogame.

It took me a couple of attempts to understand that i was supposed to hide the key inside my cube form so it didn’t disappear, but after i did t i it felt like a real smart puzzle.

After advancing for a while and solving a couple of more puzzles, i reached the room with no way to go through, and since there was some odd colored squares bellow that black square that i didn’t know what to do, i immediately tried to groundpound on it to find the solution, just to be absorbed by the black square and learn those things were teleported, that was a great feeling moment, that made me open my mouth and say “Ooooh!!!” out loud, im ever increasingly surprised at the level of “Show, don’t tell” that this game features, where im constantly being taught things without being treated like im dumb.

However, my only gripe so far is that the teleporter  where there is spikes bellow is a little too tall, so it took me a couple of attempts to manage to get back into the teleporter.

…Hold on, spikes? I just learnt that i can break through blocks with the groundpound even if there is spikes on top, there is no way i can… or could i? Writing about my gripe about the teleporter made me think about it, so i tested it out and… Boom! I was right! There is a path to follow in there!

After advancing for a little longer, i managed to reach the new part, where red turns back to blue, and i really wish there was a way to look at the full map, because even in teleporters, i could only look around to the closest maps in the teleporter, not at the whole thing, which feels like something i wanted to do considering the intention is for me to explore and backtrack.

After finding absolutely nothing, i went back to the room, thinking about what to do, i can’t break the floor on this room, so there was nothing do do here.

Wait, can’t i? I felt like i didn’t get enough height to do it, but looking at it, there was a space with a solo block that i could break, so i spent a while trying to get it, and at the end i did indeed managed to do it.

However i would say this was a badly designed room, because i kept hitting the floor, and thus not being able to get enough height to groundpound, this doesn’t feel like extremely precise movement was an intended feature of this game, so i will have to put that as a negative on the overall game.

Advancing more and more, i found a new teleporter, that it was out of reach because i broke the blocks, so i could not touch it, but i could touch the checkpoint, so if i died, i managed to activate it, it took me a while of exploring to go back and think “Why was this a thing? What did i learn from this?”, after another roam through the map, i went back and looked at it, what i was missing? There is the place, the color of the blocks didn’t seem to explain much to me, is there something else? Just a grave, some spikes, some grav- wait, a grave? On the room where im supposed to die? Are the background objects intended for me to learn what each thing means everywhere? Yes! The Spikes meant i had to groundpound there, and the graves meant i had to die to reset the ground! Thanks to that information, i could backtrack to the place i didn’t know how to break the floor, die and BOOM! The broken floor was back, perfect for me to advance to a new zone!

Following through, the next zone was some puzzles that used this new learnt mechanic to make me break blocks, get the checkpoint, die and respawn on the checkpoints with the blocks back in place, real good use of learnt mechanics on there.

After reaching the end of that zone, i found the 6th teleporter, and i go back to the start, thinking i have finally finished the game (i didn’t) and thanks to a slip of my fingers, i learnt about a new mechanic that im pretty certain i wasn’t supposed to learn yet, so i will mention it when we reach that part, but i did manage to find a little secret thanks to this, tho.

No, the game wasn’t over, so i went back to the last teleport and looked at the room, what was this trying to teach me? There is nothing that stands out on the room, just a jump to get into the teleporter, a little too tall… Ah, i know what this is trying to teach me, the inertia from groundpound is saved between teleports! This was something i already noticed before, but i didn’t see any place to use it, so i looked through the teleporters that i already had unlocked and there i found one with breakable floor! To the next zone i went, purple time it is!

And here i see that the next puzzle was the exact thing i accidentally learnt a minute ago, when i groundpound, if i change back from square before touching the floor, instead of a groundpound i bounce real hard, basically making me obtain a high jump. However, instead of advancing here, i decided to go back to where i was before, i swear i saw a small hole while i was falling to the purple zone… and i found another teleporter! Was this intended or did i just skip progress accidentally? Can’t say right now, i guess i will learn after i continue.

However it was intended or not, i learn that if i transform into the last second, i parry the bullets, something to remember for the future, and while advancing through the assumed intended path, i also see a room that weirdly reminds me of the starting zone, two things for my mental checks to remember for the future.

And i see that i made a loop to where i thought i wasn’t supposed to be, it does indeed seem that i skipped a little bit of progress accidentally, whoops! No matter though, i decide to go to the starting zone and see if my assumptions are correct, and they were! one last teleporter found!

And it seemed like it was indeed the last teleporter! and at the starting zone, a weird glow appeared, instinct tells me that it’s the ending, so before interacting with it, i want to see what happens to the right, if i parry the bullet at the start… Ah, a map of the whole zone, just at the end, how cheeky!

My overall experience with this game was extremely positive, with the exception of the two specific complains i have put, my only other gripe with the game is that i wish there was a little more song variety.

Personal Score: 9/10, i would honestly consider this a full game that i might have bought on steam.

THIS NEEDS A PHOTOSENSITIVITY WARNING.

Barelly seconds after starting the game i got attacked by a very hard square grid that was honestly a little bit too much painful to my eyes, it was so grating that it soured my overall experience.

The new game button doesn’t really start you at the beggining, the progress was still saved when i closed the game to look at the options and clicked new game.

The character design is quite great, I greatly enjoy the looks of the protagonist, quite a memorable stylish form reminiscent of the Megaman games, I would however have preferred if the pixelation wasn’t as aggressive, combined with the square grid it gave me a little bit of mixel vibes.

The combat is really enjoyable, the character moves exactly the way i expected, i really had fun wacking at the enemies, of which there was enough variety to not bore me at any moment of my playthrough.

However at some points the enemies energy balls started going at me through walls, which felt a little off.

Which reminds me that my only complaint with the combat is the complete lack of feedback when getting hit, i only knew i was damaged because i was looking at my HP bar to see if it was lowering, otherwise it just felt like i was going through colored air spheres.

Addendum: After reaching the town zone with the trucks, some enemy attacks started dealing damage to me on a way i could notice, so im not sure if the start of the game was bugged or the earlier enemies just didn’t have feedback on their attacks.

In the first map change, i accidentally went back to the previous map and couldn’t continue back so i just fell to the void, after testing it a couple of more times, it seems the spawn point was accidentally put on the wrong side, so every time i went to save and heal myself, i just ended up having to fall into the eternal void.

The maps feel a little too big and long, im not sure if the intention was to make the character feel smaller compared to everything around, because sometimes i felt like i was walking and the map was expanding, giving me a sensation of not advancing at all, like when you are moving towards the big painting in Tiny Big Island of Mario 64. At this point i saw enough maps to notice that some where textured instead of having that square grid that kept watering my eyes, so i can only assume the square grid was there as some sort of “WIP untextured wall”, if that is the case i really REALLY recommend the use of a different one that doesn’t trigger a photosensitive warning.

The wallkick upgrade felt was the first moment in the game where i felt like i lost control of the character because it just felt inconsistent, sometimes when i tried to wallkick on a wall, instead of sending me forward it pushed me backwards, and when i tried doing multiple wallkicks in a row to reach some places, it made me bounce falling instead of jumping, which at first i thought there was a max number of wallkicks i could do in a row, but sometimes it happened after 2 kicks, and sometimes after 5. There is also a delay between dashes sometimes that had me just scrape against a wall unable to do a wallkick for like a second, resetting the climbing progress, it was a little of a bummer.

At this moment is when i left what i assumed is an ice cream shop (Which took me a while, because the zone change to leave outside leaves you very close to the zone change to enter, so i accidentally left and entered 3 times in a row, until i decided to be VERY careful and not touch the controller when i was moving zones)

That is also a negative point of the game, every time i went to a new zone, the new zone always had the camera pointing backwards, so a couple of times i got in a new place, just to walk forward immediately to where i was before.

At this point is when i couldn’t find where to go, so i just started roaming around the map, collecting all the the Atterials i could find, unable to find where to go, so i just decided to backtrack all the back to the start of the game, where i did find a zone that i didn’t see before, a giant room with platforming and a wall of electricity that zapped me every time i went through.

This zone is the greatest example of every part i disliked about the game, the square grid on the platforms (That was still hurting my eyes) made really hard to discern where the platforms ended, so more than once i just… accidentally walked until i fell. The times i managed to do that part, i found myself against a red pillar of which i had to do multiple wall jumps to reach a bridge with an Atterial on it, which was the biggest struggle i ever faced, since sometimes after 2 wall jumps the character just wall jumped DOWN instead of up, or sometimes after trying to wall jump instead of dashing forward i pressed dash too fast and the character decided to dash backwards instead.

I was certain at this point that i missed a Double Jump powerup and i was hitting my face against a wall trying to skip progress, so i ended up exploring the rest of the map again, spoilers: no, that was the last thing left to do.

After around an hour of trying to do kaizo mario level platforming, i managed to reach the bridge, and continue progress, wall jumping something relatively easier (Which still almost made me fall, which i would have been the end of my play if it happened)

After that, i found myself into another platforming zone, which looked way easier to than the first zone, not that it didn’t made me fall anyways, although soon i learnt that it was an intended failure, because while trying to go back up, i saw there was a power up bellow, which was… a double jump.

At that point i almost screamed in anger at seeing this AFTER a zone that very much needed this double jump, this was the most baffling decision of the whole game, and something i can only attribute to masochism on the developer’s part. Ending things through, i managed to do the platforming the second time (which was not even a challenge now that i obtained the double jump, and thus i obtained the Boost, which… i assumed was the ending on everything on this game, since there was nowhere else to go.

I have nothing to say against the music on the game, every song was really nice, they captured the funny tech vibes i assume the game was going for.

The writing also was cool, the little bit of logs and dialog in the game was charming, i did not find any part of it annoying, and made me want to learn more about the setting.

Personal Score: 6/10, 7/10 before the platforming that i spent 1 hour suffering, which gave me light migraines and pain in my eyes.

The controllers took a while to get used to, i was using a Switch controller so i mostly had to remap them because jumping with A was not a natural feeling.

However even after the remapping, the choice to have the interact to be it’s own button instead of being tied to attack or jump was a little confused, i ended up attacking everything i tried to interact through the entire game and then remembering the interact button was somewhere else.

The signs being interactable seemed a little unnecessary, since the player doesn’t stop to read them, it just shows what it’s written bellow, it should have been an image that shows up when you get to close to it instead (It is, however, very funny that you can spam interact and the screen just feels with the text multiple times)

The map wasn’t that much useful to use at the end, since it didn’t show where i was, i didn’t really get much use of it, but it was a real nice looking one, that i will give it.

When i talked to the Frog and told me to whistle “Left, Down, Up twice”, i assumed they meant “Left, Down, Up, Up” and tried to do it to my confusion about the menu not disappearing, until the third attempt where i realized all songs were of six notes, and he actually meant “Left, Down, Up, Left, Down, Up”, as in, doing “Left, Down, Up” Twice. Not that it mattered because the song didn’t work either way.

The gameplay itself was honestly really bad, consisting of platforming and combat, both of them extremely janky and hard to control.

The platforming featured really stiff air movement that never made me feel like i was in control of my character while jumping, and the fact that sometimes the player was able to double jump (like when jumping on top of a mushroom, or floating on those random sci-fi looking updrafts) but most of the time not felt real confusing.

The combat was extremely infuriating, every time i attacked i felt like i was anchored to the floor, and also for some reason the character felt in slow motion when hitting the attack, that is to say, ONLY the character, because every enemy was extremely fast, or like the lantern, moved away for me and most of the time out of range of my attacks, not that attacking it would have helped because it kept hitting me on the little amounts of time i managed to catch up to it, on a way that that made me feel like the game was not designed for combat and it was just an extra tool, assumption that soon proved incorrect when i encountered the first boss, Suzaku, who immediately destroyed me, made me go back the beginning and made me never go back to that zone, since i had no tool to fight a flying enemy (if there is such a tool, i wouldn’t know, because i never found it)

After wandering aimlessly and not being able to find the song of the dead to open that one door (Which i wasn’t sure it existed, since as i stated before, Whistling did not work for me at all), i decided to follow what the sign told me to “””not””” do and wall jump on top of it, ending up with combat with ghost that i could never hit, so i assumed they weren’t to hit and instead i was to dash and dodge… Which confused me soon after i found the lenses of truth, that removed my ability to dodge, and thus made traveling the lost woods part of the map annoying, since i had to open the sigh, see where the arrow pointed, then start trying to dodge an invisible enemy, which was ironically probably the most enjoyable part of my whole playthrough.

After advancing for a while, i managed to obtain the mallet and find the Byakko boss, who i got to remove like a third of it’s HP before i got killed, which is when i decided to drop the game because i was just not having fun.

Overall a really good looking game that i did not enjoy at all, which is a shame because it was the exact same aesthetic that i find enjoyable.

On a last note, i was confused about why all those people on Shinto Priest clothing were calling themselves Shinobi, or why for some reason Byakko was a pig, instead of a White Tiger.

Personal Score: 3/10 (All points given for the graphics)