itch.io

it took me more than 6 minutes to unlock bow

huh, i really didn't expect it would take so long. unlocking the bow is when the tutorial ends haha

good point though, i definitely should've worked more on the pacing

maybe i missed those hints entirely, but levels with a lot of branches or tendrils-looking structures were especially confusing on where to go

no linux build D:

i love the art style and it's very juicy!  though it could use some subtle screenshake

i can't actually type commands, sadge

i think the default aiming mode should be mouse, the arcade mode constantly misses because it doesn't shoot ahead of the enemies

you also shouldn't make the players manually pick the tutorial, because most don't (i sure didn't, which is why i played my first playthrough without parrying at all haha). and wall of text tutorials usually don't work great, they're hard to remember and interactive tutorials are much better at teaching 

the ui is a bit confusing, i had no idea where my health was until i did a couple of runs

it's pretty unclear when you hit the parry and when you miss, the little knockback makes it look like you did get hit

the difficulty is also pretty brutal, the player's projectiles are small and don't travel that fast, you only heal 1 health per round which is way too little, and the first boss is already pretty difficult. i'm not a fan of its telegraphing, i feel like it would be clearer if the laser attack did a little pulse once it's fully charged up and only then actually attacked, the attack where they circle you and shoot one-by-one is nearly impossible to dodge/parry - they stay locked on to you way too well to dodge them by moving and they shoot way too frequently to dodge them by parrying

for being such a core mechanic, the parry is very unforgiving. it would be nice to have some grace, so if you parry a couple of frames too late it still counts, as well as the hurtbox increasing while you're parrying so you can parry attacks further than you would get hit

i also kept forgetting that i had my ultimate ability, it'd be nice to have some sort of indicator

funnily enough, i got the furthest in my very first playthrough where i had no idea you could even parry - i got to the second phase of the second boss, while on the next ones i couldn't even beat the first boss (because of that circling attack, it's just way too hard D:)

tl;dr: it's great and the polish is amazing, but please playtest your game more

the art looks amazing! the noise shader is very interesting, though it's kinda weird that it doesn't affect the player even a little bit

i wouldn't recommend you start off with a wall of text though, maybe split it up into multiple dialogue bits. i've got a few nitpicks about the wall though: 1. possessive it is its, not it's,  2. you get 1 bit of colour information, not 2

it'd be nice if the camera didn't keep the player strictly centered, it could look ahead by a bit to make it feel more lively

it's weird that when you stand on the charge cell thingies you get charged constantly even at full charge

maybe add a warning when you press R to teleport to the start

the shadows let you see a little bit through closed doors which is kinda weird

a bit strange that you keep your items when you die, wouldn't you lose them?

you can also just camp outside the turrets' range to hit attack them, it would make more sense if they locked onto you once you hit them if they have line of sight

it would also be nice if the map was less linear, though i can see how that's out of scope for a jam game

i liked it a lot! the story is pretty intriguing and it looks amazing

it's pretty cute, i like it!

though i'd recommend you start people off with the tutorial for their first playthrough instead of letting them play right away and making them search for a tutorial button

it'd also be nice to have more feedback when you hit the enemies, like some particles, a ding sfx, etc; also the screenshake when you use your lightning is delayed

compared to the sound effects, the music is very loud, you should aim to make the default settings sound pretty balanced between them

it feels a little clunky sometimes because while your lightning is recharging you can't do anything useful, so you're just stuck there watching them walk by. same thing with when you need to chase enemies against strong wind, once they've passed you can't really do much at all

it would be nice to have a game over screen that shows your score and some stats like playtime, how many enemies you missed and killed, etc

i would also like to see some sort of bonus for killing multiple enemies in a single shot, for getting multiple lightning powerups and stuff like that

got a final score of 112

you really nerd sniped me with this one!

i love the artstyle, it's super cute and you're explaining it pretty well, though i think it might be helpful to include decimal analogies, e.g. in decimal each digit increases by 10x, which is why there are 10 digits (0-9), while in binary it increases by 2x, which is why we only need 0 and 1

in the binary practice section i got the same numbers, like 1111, or even just 1 repeatedly a few times in a row, which might make it seem like it's broken, i also got that occasionally in the levels but not as often

i couldn't buy a drink the first time for some reason? even though i had enough

it's nice for education, but it does get pretty repetitive as a game, if you want to expand on this, i think it could be cool to do more programming related binary things, like boolean logic, bitwise operations, etc. maybe even encodings like ASCII or UTF-8 (though don't make people remember the codepoints haha)

the art is cute, and i like the music! but i have a few nitpicks

you might wanna turn on "fullscreen button" in the itch.io settings, this can be done even after submission - playing it in a small window isn't very nice

the movement feels a bit slow, and is especially slow when the other fork is climbing a long ladder and you have to wait for it

the theme interpretation is interesting, but i'd like to see the shock actually be a more central part of the gameplay rather than just implied

i like the puzzle design! the long ladder lever is pretty interesting, although it's not clear what the buttons do, i'd suggest you add some sort of indicator for that

it was also a bit confusing to me how the fork moved? i thought it just copied your moves, but apparently it looks like it doesn't? does it pathfind to you somehow?

being able to just press down repeatedly in order to stall your moves kind of trivializes things, it could be much more interesting if you had to move each frame, without being able to keep a button pressed down

overall it's pretty nice!

thanks for the feedback!

the reason there isn't a lot of verticality is because the enemy ai breaks the moment you have more than 2 layers of platforms unless they're arranged very particularly haha

i haven't seen any ui scaling issues myself, but i'll look into it

i have had people say that it starts off a little slow, yeah, fair point

i love the art style and the fast paced gameplay! however

the jump is a bit hard to control, the minimum height when you tap jump is too high (but it feels like it's sometimes lower?)

checkpoints 3 and 4 are kind of a difficulty spike

another thing is dying at a checkpoint is pretty punishing because you lose all the momentum you built up and often get stuck in a death loop because of it, i'd suggest you go the trackmania route and have a little replay of how you got to the checkpoint and carry the momentum from that

if you go on a loop when you're fast enough you just can't stop and go all the way around it which doesn't feel great

i also didn't really find myself using the zap ability like at all, it just didn't really feel like it had a reason to be there for me (though it may totally just be a skill issue)

overall though, i think it's really nice!

the lighting looks very jittery for some reason

moving around is very floaty, and it looks like moving into a wall doesn't stop your momentum, so you have to first decelerate, then accelerate even if you were up against a wall, so you get sort of "stuck" whenever you run into a wall, which makes it feel especially unresponsive, and, while it does increase the challenge, it does so in a way that makes it feel worse to play, rather than actually being mechanically/cognitively challenging

i'm also not a fan of the level where an eye spawns right next to you, that barely gives you any time to react and is not a good way to add challenge to a level, it just makes it so you die an extra time before remembering to hold D when respawning

some levels are just about dying repeatedly while trying to figure out where the key is, that's not good puzzle game design - the player shouldn't have to figure out "what do i even do / where do i even go", but rather "how do i get there / do it?", like how to bait the eye to give you some space to go

that's not to say the game is bad though, i like the artstyle and i think having to manipulate the eye's ai like that is an interesting concept, but it could use some more polishing (and playtesting! very important)

it's an interesting concept, but
the embed is kinda screwed up
having a plain background with no environment makes it hard to see yourself moving when there aren't many enemies around you

it doesn't feel like there's a whole lot of challenge, the enemies are pretty easy to avoid even when you become larger, they're pretty slow and turn slowly enough that they can't catch up to you, while the cars (?) that drive by are pretty rare and their projectiles are slow enough to dodge easily - adding more and stronger enemy types would definitely help

overall, it's not bad though!

it's neat, i liked the goofy art style, but maybe it could use some polish like particles and stuff, also the circle positions were a bit odd sometimes, probably because it's just an infinitely thin raycast

it looks a bit weird how you just instantly teleport to the spot you bite, but i guess it sorta fits the style (but also the come back is smooth so idk what's going on there lol, pick one and stick to it)

also seems like the velocity around it isn't constant?

hi aotoeu

i like the polish, but i feel like the gameplay could use some more work, it was fun for a bit, but it'd be nice if you could do stuff like power up your cookie with one time expensive buffs or something instead of just placing obstacles, also it could be an interesting combo if you were able to use a conveyor to push your cookie away from a broken bridge, but because you can't place obstacles too close to it, you can't really do that, or if you could rotate the cannon's starting direction to propel yourself forward - stuff like that could improve the strategic part of it

(or maybe multiplayer :var:)

oh and also this happens when you lose right at the end (like if you have a void bridge very near the finish) 

i really liked this one!

however, it was pretty annoying to select specific tiles, i'd suggest it wait a little before starting to move the camera quickly

also you could add some more effects, like particles when you jump or collect a bomb or die or whatever (although idk if pico-8 has a particle system)

also  i sometimes found myself pressing x when i die and immediately starting the next game, so i can't see my high score - you could make it so i have to wait a few seconds to reset

other than that, and adding more content ofc, it's pretty cool!

you're welcome! i always try to be honest and give detailed feedback for jam games when i can, glad to hear you'll be continuing it!

hmm.. filling the drawn shapes with a polygon collider worked just fine for me so i doubt that's the problem

it's a fun game! got a score of 2285

however it could use some more polish, such as more feedback when an enemy gets hit, or you finish a loop

however, it felt a bit weird at times:

for one, the enemies could for some reason just go through the walls that the black marker was supposed to draw

two, a lot of the times it felt like my loop just disappeared and didn't deal any damage for some reason, i'm guessing it has something to do with how you're detecting loops, and i sometimes (like when a bit too close to the castle i guess?) couldn't draw the loop which felt very annoying

also having to move your mouse to switch between the marker and the pencil was kind of annoying, i'd say bind it to a hotkey

overall tho, i really liked it! it's a simple but fun game

ok so, on the itch page, the white bits around the border feel weird, but the rest is nice - plenty of gifs/screenshots and a long description

in game, the (menu) music feels a bit "noisy" (as in white noise), kinda weird

it also stops when you open the credits menu

the unstyled buttons also don't look that great, doesn't really fit the vibe

launching the game, the first thing i notice is that there's little to no acceleration and no physics interpolation, which amkes the movement "jittery" 

the jump feels very floaty in general, and, as you mentioned, adding coyote time (and jump buffering) would help the feel a lot

it also feels like the directional inputs are sort of.. delayed when you turn around, which makes the player feel kinda slippery, while also being able to start moving relatively quickly from a standstill which is kinda weird

ok now i get teleported to another level, where the camera is for some reason following me differently?

i'm not a huge fan of the level design, the boxes completely stop your momentum which feels pretty annoying and there are some small ledges you have to jump off of which, without coyote time, is really annoying to do

the jump sound also gets a bit annoying after a while

it's also kind of annoying that the breakable walls just stop your momentum instead of letting you breeze through them at high speed

the level design also feels frustrating and kind of unfair sometimes, especially when being sent back to a previous part, which becomes boring pretty quickly having to replay the same part over and over again, so, unless you want this to be a rage game, you should probably rethink that

however, i do think the idea has some potential - it's pretty fun to gain a lot of speed and just breeze through the level and the floaty, but controllable jumps add to that feel and i think you can make it really fun to play!

overall though, don't be discouraged, criticism just means you've got more room to improve!

the game crashes on web if you try to replay if after finishing lol, it works fine on the downloadable version

it's an interesting concept, but it has a lot of physics jank and very little content in general, also could use some more particles

i call this intended™

understandable lmao, the last day crunch is real
(i couldn't beat the boss)

i like how polished the game is and the interesting art style, but at times - especially at the boss - it feels pretty annoying

please, please, telegraph your boss attacks, it felt very chaotic and really hard to predict and dodge

the small shielded enemies also felt pretty annoying to deal with, especially in crowded spaces where the fire (?) boomerangs  hit the walls constantly and they curve so much it's hard to predict where they'll go

overall tho, i think the game is nice! but i think you should've focused more on the game design aspects and what you could do with the boomerang rather than desperately trying to make it a roguelike

it's a cool game! but i have some small nitpicks:

one, it'd be nice if the ui buttons had a more noticeable hover effect - that makes them feel more responsive

it'd also be nice if you could skip dialogue, as it was pretty slow

it'd also be a nice quality of life feature to allow you to change the conveyor direction while the food is going through the box thing, it's pretty annoying missing it by just a little

it could also use some more particle effects/general polish

overall, i enjoyed it tho! it looks great and the gameplay is interesting

the game was really fun! 

i like the art and it felt very polished

however it didn't feel like there was a whole lot of strategy to it and it relied a lot on luck

i'd also like to see some background music, even just a simple ambient track would probably improve the feel by a lot!

also, when you get to the 80 feed goal, it gets stuck at 0 days due and takes away your feed until you lose

overall, it's a great satisfying roguelike! my final score was 517 feed and 310 money produced

disconnected towers are supposed™ to have a darker tint but i probably messed something up

i like the game, and it's great for a first game but there are definitely a couple of things that  could be improved:

1. the difficulty is way too hard, it probably feels easy for the devs, but it's a lot harder for normal players. gmtk has an interesting  vid about difficulty balancing you can check out

2. the platforming controls could use some work, i can recommend you check out gmtk's vid on platformer controls

3. having 2 separate jump buttons (w and space) doesn't feel great and gets confusing quickly

4. swinging doesn't feel great because all the momentum you had at the start of the swing just disappears into nowhere at the end, making it very underwhelming to use

5. charging the jump feels pretty pointless, just slows you down

6. there's a ui bug which gives you ghost dashes (something to do with those grapply guys) 

7. having to aim pretty precisely at those grapple thingies with the mouse is pretty annoying

8. rebinding jump doesn't work

but overall, it's nice for a first game jam! great job, don't take the feedback too harshly, it's just something to take into account

i think it's nice, but i have a few critiques:

1. at the start, it 's way too slow, mining ores takes too long

2. the player's move speed is annoyingly slow, going anywhere feels like a crawl especially in a game where you need to move so much to find the connection points

3. the extender's range is too small, it's annoying having to chain them so much

4. not being able to actually see the connection range is annoying

5. night time doesn't feel like too much of a threat, the enemies are too weak and there are too few of them and the turrets are too strong

6. scanning mode doesn't really have any downsides, making it so there's no reason to not have it constantly enabled and scanning

7. when you have a lot of towers placed, it really starts to lag, i assume it's because you're checking for connections every frame (?)

8. (small one) the time left when you're outside of signal range has way too many decimals, 2 or 3 are enough (just doing time_left = snappedf(time_left, 0.01) is enough)

but overall, i still like it! it's a nice game

the ending is just a black screen that says "YOU WIN" anyway lmao

i liked it, but i have a few small gripes,

first, there wasn't really much of a challenge, as even if you got road that didn't fit, you could just place it somewhere since you usually have a lot of connections leading to nowhere and with rotation almost any road piece could fit anywhere you wanted

and second, an ingame tutorial would obviously be nice to have and also keybinds for the different road pieces so you don't have to keep moving your mouse to the bottom of the screen

but it's really cool for a first game! good job

i liked it, but i have some critiques:

first and foremost, it needs sound. without sound effects it just isn't as immersive as it could be

also, the player needs a walk cycle, it looks really weird when the player is just sliding around in the idle animation

during the bossfight, the screenshake was way too much with no option to turn it down and the shockwave attack happened too often so it felt unfair

as for the itch page, the background looks weird, it lacks screenshots and most of the styling just isn't changed

i like it! visuals are nice

it feels a bit weird how the connection is only shown when you place it, but not in the preview when you're hovering

not being able to cancel your choice and pick another one is annoying

sometimes the roads also had wrong descriptions

but it's cool i like it!

first impressions:
itch page is cool i like it
in the main menu, the textures and fonts look kinda blurry, the camera movement in the main menu also feels weird

for some reason when hovering on buttons in the pause menu the last letter just.. disappears?

also if you're not fullscreen (or i assume just not 16:9) the background on the pause menu has a gap on the side

the resume button is typically on the top and not the bottom too

gameplay:

sliding is fun :D

powering the radio towers felt a bit weird because the first few inputs didn't get recognized or there wasn't really an indication (like an animation or something) that you were stunned and couldn't move

an interact prompt would be nice because it's not obvious what you could interact with
the radio tower ui in the top right corner is really hard to see, it needs an outline or a panel behind it

the monsters felt like they weren't much of a threat, as they didn't actively attack you and the only way to get hurt was to ram directly into them

audio and visuals are nice

i'm really surprised that you didn't complain about juice cuz i really didn't have time to add any and there isn't even any screenshake

oh no my horrible connection code is getting to me D:

yea the freezes are a web thing, can't seem to fix them unfortunately

saying wsad instead of wasd is cursed

nice game! it was fun and i liked the artstyle

did some speedrunning too,  got 21 seconds

definitely needs a tutorial, a lot of people don't read the itch description

i was able to kickjump off a wall which felt unintentional

for some reason shooting the enemies in their body dealt more damage than the head which is kinda weird

i've also had the game crash a few times aswell

it felt like the best speedrun strat was to just ignore the enemies, which is a little weird for a game where you're "just a tool to kill the enemy"

in general tho, i liked the game!

played the windows build because who likes web builds

it was neat, the movement felt very unintuitive tho:

- whenever you moved into a wall/solid surface even at a slight angle, your momentum just completely stopped, which was incredibly frustrating

- the walljump would probably feel better if you got a slight kick upwards

- the slide was delayed by about a second whenever i tried to start it, which made the boss's 3rd phase very frustrating because of the beam attack

- being able to run up walls instead of sliding down them felt pretty unintuituve

the enemies' hurtboxes could've been bigger

whenever i got close to the boss, the screen shook like crazy, which, if it was even intentional, should be toned down by a lot

the boss was very frustrating in general - it was hard to get enough fingers while also having to not die from the insane amount of enemies and dodge the attacks of the boss