itch.io

Cute little game and an interesting use on the scale of the character! Thanks for the credit and glad you got further use out of the assets.

Sorry to hear that you have difficulties. For the sake of this game it likely wouldn't have hurt to also use the 'W' key for Jump since we weren't using it for anything else anyway and that would at least avoid forcing you to use your thumb.

For your personal play I'd recommend trying to use a controller if you haven't already. Having used both control setups for testing games I will say that controllers are usually a more ergonomic solution and easier on the hands.

Thanks for playing and the feedback!

I'm sorry the controls felt awkward for you. In an ideal world they'd be rebindable, but that's super rare for jam games with the limited time you have to make things. 

Could you list what your preferred buttons would be for the controls that would make things less "awkward" for you?

A nicely consistent experience with some nice design principles.

PROS:

• The layered 1-bit pixel art is a striking visual and a nicely mature visual design.
• The soundtrack is very catchy, fits the theme well, and blends in nicely with the experience.
• Puzzle design really comes into its own towards the end, with some very engaging sequences.

CRITIQUE:

• The colors chosen for the layered 1-bit definitely let each layer stand apart from the others, but might be too stark contrast for some viewers. My wife and kid were watching with me and mentioned their head heard during a couple parts from the visuals.
• It's not obvious and a little confusing at first that the unlocks aren't all available everywhere after they've been acquired once on any given level. Especially since the state of the conveyer speeds WAS persistent between levels.
• I managed to get into a bugged state where I froze the water as I was just touching the water. I ended up stuck in swim mode so I wasn't able to activate the freeze again to "get out" of the swim state. I was able to just reload from the world map to get reset properly so it wasn't too game-breaking.

Simple presentation, HUGE world, and some solid platforming.

PROS:

• There was obvious care put into most of the platforming challenges throughout the very large world.
• I love the hidden rooms and found my player behavior affected by them to try and seek them out.
• Teleporters are a very nice touch in recognition of how vast the traversal time is across everything.

CRITIQUE:

• It feels like there's potential input lag or dead presses sometimes on controller when attempting to dash and/or double-jump. I had several unfortunate spike deaths as a result.
• I had to put the game down about halfway through to take care of things. My 4-year-old picked up the controller and ran around a bunch, and then I had no idea where I needed to go next, lol. I'm not saying you need to prevent 4-year-old intervention, but even with a solid map setup I had trouble tracking the intended player path as I was going and had to backtrack at least a few times before figuring out where to go.
• You knew it would happen to someone, but I definitely ran back to the portal with 5 shards, but only 2490 scrap to my name so I had to wander a few screens over to get one last pickup before finishing. It's a little anti-climactic of an ending, but the real issue is that I didn't really know what the finish line was in terms of resources until I showed up short and giving more info along the way would have prevented that "feels bad" moment.

Gorgeous visuals and great game feel. Well done!

PROS:

• Environments, parallax, character animations, FX, etc all top notch on the presentation.
• Level design (and second boss fight) really enforced the usage of player skills after they were acquired.
• Cut-scenes were well presented for context to the story.

CRITIQUE:

• The far parallax layer (far off purple clouds) struck me as off. I think it's because it's slowly scrolling, but also adjusting to the player so when moving right the clouds hardly moved, but moving left they were moving faster than the "closer" parallax layer and that felt odd.
• There felt like some control input dead time after taking damage that really hindered recovering from falling onto the spikes in the spider dungeon while attempting to bounce between orbs. I understand the potential need for controller dead time during the i-frames, but might shorten it for the sake of allowing players to get out of the spikes a bit easier.
• Definitely a subjective judgement call on this one, but you might consider handling mana differently. Right now it's easy to just run out during platforming sections and some mana refill stations feel like they were dropped into odd spots to avoid having a player trap themselves. If mana were limited, but recharged itself slowly over time or mana was infinite, but you could only have two ethereal spears out at one time then you could still fulfill most of your use-cases for it right now without needing to squeeze in mana recharge stations. Just a thought.

A decent point-and-click shooter and an interesting attempt at mixing genres.

PROS:

• Controls were responsive and intuitive.
• Everything visually read well on the screen and there was never any confusion about where I was or what I needed to pay attention to.
• Intended path for the player is pretty well laid out so there wasn't much chance to get lost.

CRITIQUE:

• It would be nice to see any kind of upgrade to better incorporate some of the staples of the Metroidvania genre. Even something as simple as "now I fire double projectiles each shot" would check that box nicely.
• The player moves pretty fast and there are some rooms that have hazards/traps near the entrance so I definitely got shot a couple times right as I was entering a room because I didn't really have time to react before my ship was in the damage.
• Most of the room challenges turned into find the right spot and then pew-pew everything while sitting still. If some of the enemies had just a slight rotation rate on them that would negate the standing still aspect of that strategy and greatly increase player engagement in most of the rooms.

Several layers make a great presentation here. Definitely a project worth sticking wtih.

PROS:

• It's impressive how much level art layering is on display. I honestly couldn't really pinpoint a tileset for the levels.
• The boss fights felt unique and the ability to actually have pacifist runs is a nice touch.
• Watching the rate of progress on this it's very impressive how much you were able to accomplish with such limited time/resources.

CRITIQUE:

• Playing with controller I noticed some input lag on both the jump and attack actions.
• Slopes (very much like the game I worked on) had some odd affect on character movement. Much less egregious in your game, but definitely notable.
• Another controller issue was sliding to the sides a bit when attempting to either up-angle or down-angle my throws. Increasing the horizontal axis dead zone a bit could help players that play with control sticks mitigate this issue.

1) I used the map frequently, but didn't have a reference for what item I needed next or any clue for what room it might be in. I was able to navigate, just didn't feel like I had a  direction to follow.

2) The biggest example I can use is the dive-bomb birds. If I hit them during their drop and then only manage to hit them again after they've returned to their flight path then I don't get the knockout because they've regened health. It makes an awkward combat loop with them and it's confusing at first because I don't see the yellow bar actively refilling.

A unique take on the theme and probably the most elaborate boss fight I've seen in the jam entries I've played so far. Well done!

PROS:

• HUGE game world with lots to explore, different biomes, enemies, and challenges abound.
• Crafting system feels like a decent start to something much more involved that has a lot of potential.
• Character growth really felt powerful as the game progressed.

CRITIQUE:

• I got lost a LOT. The level design feels very open-ended right now and there's very little either explicitly or organically guiding me towards the next thing I need to get so it's really easy to "tread water" as a player and feel lost with no progress.
• Enemies recharge health over a short period of time and the visual feedback associated with that is very confusing. I'd recommend err'ing on the side of easy for players and just remove the health regen over time.
• The crafting somewhat falls apart after you've created the major items (other than the consumable bombs) so a system that made material collection still mean something after major items are created would give the collection more meaning.

Nice combination of mechanics and mood. A pleasure to play!

PROS:

• Ambiance is both relaxing and humbling between the tone of the music and the subtle dialog that makes you feel for the player character.
• Base spear mechanic opens up a lot of platforming opportunities that are definitely realized with what you've got.
• Several unique AI types to engage with that you've placed well to take advantage of the challenge they present. (The boss fights specifically were quite impressive)

CRITIQUE:

• I'm personally not a fan of forcing players to find all of you special items, but if you are going to force that issue before allowing progression then I'd advise marking the special items that players need on the map. I definitely started to feel the experience "get old" when I had to backtrack through every room a couple times in order to find the 2 pieces that I hadn't managed to collect yet.
• The boss fights were impressive, but they did get repetitive. If you want to have the same kind of boss for each of the powerup points then maybe just adjust the movements of each boss to better match the powerup that players will acquire ...
  • The bomb powerup boss could spawn exploding bombs along its path while it moves.
  • The dash boss could appear->wait a second->dash across the screen->disappear.
• Just based off of the fact that the spear spins as it's returning to the player, I think it would be cool if the spear dealt damage on the return path. It could set up some interesting combat challenges where you're required to boomerang the spear around walls to damage enemies in the expected path.

An excellent execution and a clean design.

PROS:

• There's a lot of character in both the player and the enemies even though their visual designs are super simplified.
• Controls, movement, and UX in general are a shining example of how well things can be done.
• The map screen alone is a testament to the scale of the crafted world that you've created.

CRITIQUE:

• I wish the map overlay was larger on the screen when it came up (played in fullscreen mode if that matters).
• I wanted to use some of my abilities off of the walls and think it could lead to some interesting level design options ...
  • Dash while on a wall directly dashing off of the wall could let you have vertical sections with timing windows.
  • Fireball while on a wall directly firing the projectile away from the wall could let you have wall-to-wall combat scenarios.
• The currency ran into the same issue we had with currency in our game: little value in acquiring it since it wasn't really used for anything. I know that it was likely due to time limits for the sake of the jam, but having some way to use the bones during the run to give players a choice about what to do with them would make that system more interesting.

About the pirate game:

If you were trapped in the boss room I'm sorry for the bug.

If you made it to the next room with the broken ship the intent was for players to go back through the map to salvage pieces and repair the broken ship. We definitely could have given more visible feedback to players about that intent, but it is possible to get the final ending if you're interested in going back and exploring. ;)

Clean pixel work and some nice character to the presentation, but I couldn't finish from frustrations.

PROS:

• The player character feels powerful and capable from the beginning even before any powerups.
• The audio is nicely mixed and the transition to the major combat felt smooth with a nice escalation of intensity.
• Things like the screen shake, particle poofs on door exits, and smooth camera movements relative to my aim are nice touches.

CRITIQUE:

• I died several times, but I only ever died in ways that felt "cheap" as a player.
  • I got shot several times by a random ranged guy that was off-screen and I didn't know he was there.
  • I ran into a ground guy as the screen was transitioning and the camera movement for the transition was slow enough that it hadn't caught up to my player character yet.
  • I exited the major combat pit to the right and forgot that there was a spike pit gap right out of that exit. I fell into that gap and died before the slow transition camera caught up to my character.
• I acquired the double-jump upgrade, but didn't even realize that I'd acquired it until I thought I'd gotten stuck in a pit and just started hitting the jump button in hopes that something might happen. It would be nice if the game had given some extra moment of feedback that I had acquired double jump when that actually occurred.
• I saw that you were working with a limited palette for the art, but a lot of the decorative elements spread around the floor stood out enough that I thought they were important. That's something that the player can get used to and learn, but finding ways to make the objects more subtle so that they turn into "background" lets players recognize that they're there without worrying about interacting with them.

Cute theme and cute characters to flesh it out. I enjoyed the world and getting into it.

PROS:

• The concept/character for the boss fight was great for the theme and was a great overall concept.
• Controls were responsive and let me navigate pretty easily.
• Dialog was fun and got to the point without dragging out exposition.

CRITIQUE:

• The character is a large part of the screen and can jump pretty high relative to their body height. This ended up causing the level design to require some jump gaps that were large enough to not fit both the jump start point and intended jump target on the screen at the same time and that can lead to a lot of "blind leap" moments.
• The timing and hit box for the player attack was difficult to read and made combat difficult to interact with. Enemies also had a lot of health so actually combating the snakes didn't end up practical most of the time and the boss took a lot longer than I'd expected. I only honestly beat it because I bugged out and ended up unable to die regardless of the amount of damage I took.
• The mechanics of the boss fight are actually pretty cool, but right now it feels like he's only able to take damage from one location and the RNG of the arms coming in from the side means that I can't have a guaranteed window of opportunity to take advantage of that weak spot. If players had more of a tell where the arms were about to pop out to let them decide to commit to the upper platform for that phase of boss attack and/or the ability to navigate off of the platform as the arm comes out towards them then the fight would feel more "fair" as a whole and less based on RNG.

Interesting hand-drawn art style, but a few things could be clarified to players.

PROS:

• Hand drawn characters are neat and give some cohesive charm.
• An ethereal player character is an interesting choice.
• Respawn was forgiving for whenever the player messed up.

CRITIQUE:

• It's not readily apparent what is and what isn't a platform to stand on for players. The platforms that you can stand on are blurred similar to the background and use the same color elements so I only accidentally figured out that I could stand on the tree branch leaves.
• There seems to be a gap between the two biomes right now that triggers respawn. The first time that happened I figured I needed to get a powerup or something to survive in the new biome so I was confused.
• The player sprite seems to be bigger than the plane that it's rendered on so you're getting some hard edges on the side of it where there appears to be more image. Expanding the plane that renders the character without expanding the collision box for it would help with those.

Cute pixel style, fun gunplay, and fast movement skills. I managed to bug out 3 different times without finishing the game, but definitely wanted to give it another go each time for the sake of seeing more.

PROS:

• The enemy designs were actually really well done and each nicely added to the mix of challenges for the game. Probably some of the best AI I've seen in the jam thus far.
• Mixes of enemies feel purposeful as well to make room encounters feel like a nicely crafted thing.
• Acquired movement skills/powerups felt impactful and were fun to use (especially slide = weeeeeeeeee).

CRITIQUE:

• Screen shake was probably a little too harsh. It's a grey area for sure, but there are some people that just can't play games with screen shake due to seizure potential and the amount you have right now made me initially question if my character was actually moving with each shot from the amount of camera adjustment that happened whenever I fired my gun.
• The characters are nicely outlined to separate them from the platforms/environment, but the environment as a whole feels very visually busy and detracts my focus a bit from the characters on screen. The background imagery isn't really a problem, but the platforms themselves have a lot of pixel noise that could probably be flattened to a single color for the purpose they serve and it would make looking at a room easier for a player to focus.
• The window of opportunity for counter-attack against some enemies feels small. Specifically the projectile shooter enemies (both single and gatling enemies) felt like I needed to be constantly either jumping or shooting in order to take advantage of the fact that I'd dodged a volley of bullets. It could be your intention that the game is difficult, but I bring it up since usually it's more advised to make jam games slightly easier for the sake of allowing players to get further into your game and consequently see more of what you made.

Some nice abilities and interesting challenges to throw at the player, but I ended up bugged out and couldn't finish.

PROS:

• The acquired powerups/skills are actually pretty cool and feel very impactful.
• The enemy designs each offer something new to the experience and their individual execution is done well.
• The overall experience felt very cohesive between the music, movement, and the visuals so it felt like a unified product.

CRITIQUE:

• The individual enemies are executed well, but they get spawned in such random and massive quantities that it just turns into an enemy spam often and I don't get to feel player agency dealing with the individual threats of any one enemy with so many in the room.
• The movement skills feel powerful, but some feel like they were made intentionally overpowered to counter the massive quantities of enemies. The sword as an example is basically a win button if you just spam it through the rooms. I'm not saying "make it feel bad", but if it completely negates enemy threat then it removes a big portion of things you've done well (enemy designs in this case) from the player's experience.
• I often ran quickly through rooms so it was easy for me to get lost about where I was in the overall map. Other than "I had just gotten the 'Q' skill" I couldn't tell you where anything was by the end of my experience.
• I bugged out after several deaths while attempting to return upwards after acquiring the 'Q' skill to grapple. I somehow ended up respawning before my body had finished dying or something and had multiple iterations of the player character moving and responding to my controls at once.

A couple interesting mechanics and a gag that does totally pay off in the end for a fun little experience.

PROS:

• Really like the Tetris block slotting of skills for equipment management. Obviously tough to balance within the scope of a jam, but definitely worth fleshing out further in this or other games you make.
• Level design was clean and intuitive and organically guided me towards the next powerup I needed (while also providing ample checkpoints for respawn).
• Controls were nicely simple even with new powerups accumulated so I always felt confident in my ability to use my equipment.

CRITIQUE:

• I wasn't fond of the "Attack" skill implementation. It forces a lot of waiting rather than pro-active action from players based on the constant motion. It would be nice to have more direct agency in the use of the attack.
• A couple rooms felt like "lots of enemies for the sake of lots of enemies". It's a bit nit-picky to say really, but when a room feels crowded it makes you question why so many of them were necessary.
• In these kind of platforming games it's not uncommon to have pits that will hurt/kill the player so falling off of the screen is often suspect for my intuition. I consequently usually have a player progress upward into a new screen before they ever need to fall downward into a new room to better solidify the idea that "going off the top/bottom of the screen won't necessarily kill you".

A solid beginning that has good fundamentals.

PROS:

• Did have a powerup that was necessary for completion of the game.
• Simple in nature, but didn't have any real bugs that I could tell.
• Inputs were very responsive for some tight jumping challenges.

CRITIQUE:

• The inputs actually felt a little too responsive since I'd just tap the movement button and often move far enough that I'd pass completely over a platform that I needed to stand on to make the next jump. Maybe either reducing the movement applied each frame from input or slightly increasing drag on the character would help prevent overshooting so easily.
• Adding some form of hazard to the experience would help increase the player's engagement. It doesn't need to be something as complicated as AI or something as punishing as a death pit, but just something as simple as a pinball bouncer that boops you in a direction that you don't want to fall would give you some more room to play with level design.
• It's ok to have a limited scope game to try and focus on really learning specific things, but it would be nice if the game was less linear than "go left to get powerup, then right to win". Adding some more verticality to the level design to limit the pathing of the player to only go towards the powerup while also showing jumps that they really want to make (and will be able to make once they acquire that powerup) would look more interesting and feel less linear.

Thanks for playing and the honest commentary!

Most of your critique has been brought up by various others and it's all valid.

The vertical screen transitions were brought up by another and I do see the pain of jumping up blindly into a new screen or the fast screen move as you drop. I'd like to adjust most screen layouts to allow slopes for vertical transitions (except for screens where a drop is supposed to feel abrupt like the cliff leap of faith). That goes with the assumption that we can get the slopes feeling better to make that a valid solution. 

Sorry for the game breakers. They've cropped up slowly the more people we have playing the game. Most of them are easy fixes, but they're also easy to miss until someone falls victim to them. 

Thanks again and we appreciate the kind words!

Thanks for playing and all the notes! 

"I felt betrayed", ye felt pirated yar har har har!! In seriousness though you're absolutely right. I attempted to slightly alter the enemies so that they were "grey" instead of "white", but changing the accent colors is surely the better adjustment.

There are at least a few bugs with the parrot interaction right now and collision with the player is part of some of that. They needed to collide based on the way we have you acquire the parrot, but a rework of that interaction would allow us to turn that collision off. 

You're quite right that there is more we could have done with the parrot mechanic. We did have more elaborate plans for the boss fight that would force you to hide the pirate while the parrot retrieved things for him in the combat, but had to cut that portion of the fight for scope reasons.

Thanks again and glad you had fun!

Actionable feedback and bug reports are always great even if there are some repeats. 

Didn't mean to sound like I was dismissing some of your feedback, just letting you know your voice was heard among the others.

Thanks for playing and the kind words! 

So sorry about the stuck bat, lol. You're probably constantly touching it in that spot so it doesn't have a new touch event to deal damage to you.

We did notice some issues with AI not detecting the player and it seems to work on some people's machines and not on others.

The slippery movement is truly the biggest thing we need to solve as it's been the most recurring feedback. 

Thanks again and glad you had fun!

Thanks for playing and the feedback!

We've heard about the sliding a lot so it definitely needed to be a higher priority. 

The vertical screen transition idea is an interesting one. We built the level screens to be pretty binary with the transitions so you're definitely in either one room or the other, but that got a little difficult with vertical transitions since we still wanted a limited jump height. We might explore slope transitions between vertical screens (at least some of the time) to allow players to more easily track the transition. 

Thanks again!

A cute world with lots of color and character, but I had trouble finishing.

PROS:

• Nice use of dialog to organically direct me towards the next place I'd need to go.
• Clear separation of biomes so that it's easy to identify which map I'm in just looking at the walls around me.
• Interesting use of game events to make significant changes to the game world.

CRITIQUE:

• 3D platformers greatly benefit from having some form of shadow directly underneath the player to give a point of reference on the ground so that I can tell at any given moment whether or not I've made the next jump or not. I'd personally even recommend setting the default camera position to be slightly further from the character so that it's easier to see both the character and that shadow reference at the same time.
• There's some severe verticality in the maps for this game. I understand that you're a mole attempting to find your way to the surface, but the drastic verticality often made it difficult to even see possible path options without severely turning my camera upward to look around.
• I definitely got lost when attempting to investigate the lava waterfall. I looped through each of the maps re-tracing my steps a few times, but ended up giving up before finishing. Probably related to the verticality critique above, but it's always best to try and make the "golden path" that I'm intended to follow blatantly obvious now that I've acquired the proper powerup.

A nicely scaled experience with some good design fundamentals.

PROS:

• Nicely forgiving hit boxes and timing for player attacks against the enemies. Definitely in the player's favor and makes me feel cooler than I am, lol.
• Nice use of looping level design to bring players back to the start after acquiring powers that open up other options.
• Enemies had some nice fluid movement to their pathing so they felt more natural and less robotic.

CRITIQUE:

• The attack animation for the player feels very slow and lacks impact as a result. You could cut probably the first 2-3 frames of animation from it and it would feel way more responsive. If you feel that's too jarring of a change in the character's posture you can add a smear to frames to better sell the motion that would cause that posture change.
• There aren't that many buttons used by the game, but I did need to remind myself which buttons I'd discovered each time I found a new button explanation on the walls. It would be nice if there were just on-screen HUD prompts that had the buttons for each action always in front of me to see.
• The "dodge" movement skill feels instantaneous right now, which is a bit jarring so I never really used it for fear of accidentally dodging too far off of platforms. Having the character move over a brief period with some kind of trail feedback to better let players track the exact distance and get a better feel for how the movement actually works would really help with the presentation of that skill.

Thanks for playing and the feedback! 

I can see how the fast screen transition could be jarring for some people. We could toy with slowing it down slightly or doing a fade to black and back up on the next screen. It turns into a grey area though since slowing it down too much could bother some players that want to jump to the next thing as quickly as possible. Thanks again and I'm glad you had fun.

So sorry that happened to you. There are issues with the game if you fly the bird through the doors and leave the pirate behind and that last rum barrel can be an easy spot for that to happen. 

Thanks for playing and hope you had fun!

Thanks for playing and the feedback! The coins were only intended to act as a pirety health system by the original design, but giving them more purpose (and consequently more value to preserve) would be an awesome way to extend the system.

The input problem on attacking and bouncing on slopes would definitely be first priority in further dev and you're absolutely right there, but for the sake of having a "less broken" product for turn in we decided to punt on those for other priorities. 

Thanks again for playing!

Thanks for playing! The disappearing player is an odd bug that we hadn't encountered yet and sorry about the bouncy physics. We had intended to do some polish on handling slopes, but sadly had to cut that effort for other priorities (like a couple of game-breakers).

Thanks for playing and for the report! We found several issues with collision/physics after we started testing web builds instead of playing in-editor. We hadn't encountered ledge-grabbing through the world yet, but it's definitely worth looking into, lol.

A nice retro romp with an interesting visual presentation.

PROS:

• I don't much know why, but I love the player character animation. He's just so prancy and fancy, lol.
• The world is large and takes advantage of the full set of upgrade skills so you really feel the power curve and get to put it to practice as a player.
• Boss fights were well imagined and a nice change of pace from the regular platforming gameplay.

CRITIQUE:

• Enemies tend to hide just around corners where they're not in the "visibility cone" of the player and it's easy to feel cheap-shot when you're in a flow state going around corners and get bumped by a bug just waiting there.
• Quality of Life notes on the boss fights ...
  • Boss 1 (Missile Conveyers): There's a lot of RNG with the movement of the platforms that makes actually lining up hits feel too random and consequently there's a lot of just waiting for the thing to line up rather than the feeling of taking direct action against the boss.
  • Boss 2 (Spinning Blades): The boss moves very fast and consequently gets really punishing if they do run into you since you almost can't get out of the way before being chain-hit 5 times. If he just hit you once and then went through your collision it wouldn't be as much insult to injury. I also attempted to climb the platforms on the side to missile them after they had perched up top but was blocked by the platforms on the side, which made me sad-face a bit because I thought I'd figured something out.
  • Boss 3 (The Swarm): Not sure if this is officially a boss, but the music did change. It's very skippable if you just dash through them so I'm not sure if that's intentional or not.
• It was a bit easy to feel lost at a couple of points so some form of either regularly available mini-map on the HUD or even just landmarking some interesting visual pieces to let players learn the world layout better would help with that.

A cute little short hopping platformer.

PROS:

• Had a nice little variety of hazards to present different presentations of jumping challenge (stationary damage, projectile thrower, walking movement) so basic concepts are there.
• For hero pieces like the player character, ambient music, and background imagery it does a good job of setting a consistent tone.
• There were a couple different expressions of player jump action with the bounce pad addition to the platforms so that can add a lot of options to level design.

CRITIQUE:

• The camera feels super close to the player character so you see mostly them and not the platforms that they're trying to navigate. It's really easy to lose the platforms that are underneath you just by jumping because the camera is so close.
• The platforming is very linear and could benefit from some variance other than just jumping over a slightly different jump challenge. Even so much as having me jump up onto a platform that's to my left before continuing on to my right would give more variance to the "jump" action that the player is constantly doing.
• You've got some in-game instructions for how to handle the projectile thrower, but the instructions are over the top of that character (who is throwing the projectiles that I need to dodge). It's not bad to have that kind of instructions (especially for a jam game), but if you're going to use them it's nice to the player to put them in a location that the player can read them while not directly in danger of the hazard they're trying to give advice about.

A good start on the very basic stuff so good luck! Especially when working with new tech it's likely more ideal to really focus on one aspect of making a game per project. 

For example this jam could just be creating a basic player controller for a platforming world and then don't worry about UI hardly at all and just load players right into that platformer from the beginning. Then next project can be something completely UI based to give you significant focused practice on getting UI controls to interface with each other.

An interesting concept for a character and their associated mechanics.

PROS:

• Painting the background and manipulating the world at large is actually a super cool way to let players know where they've been and functionally tell their own story.
• Quick-swapping between paint types was easy and practical.
• The game didn't rush a lot of challenges at you early on to let you get better at controlling your character.

CRITIQUE:

• I definitely got lost within the level design. The checkpoint markers kind of help, but without having a clear goal of "go here" to associate with the map that they show I can't get too much info out of them.
• I found myself wanting an eraser very early on. That may be a later upgrade, but I didn't make it far enough to tell.
• There are a lot of doorways that are very blocked by enemies constantly throwing projectiles. This may be just to deter me from using them and force me to find other ways around, but I opened the door with the yellow paint that I'd just acquired and I could see a clear path around the enemy so I felt compelled to try that several times even though I'd take enough damage to die and respawn soon after passing the door.

A larger narrative than most to create a world with some interesting character.

PROS:

• Controls are very responsive and you feel agile as a result.
• The wide cast of characters seems like a good base for a larger scale game.
• Good integration of the powerups as they were acquired.

CRITIQUE:

• A lot of the environments are very dark and the character sprite uses black for the majority of the character. It was actually really hard to find myself on the screen most of the time until I got to the toy land environment where everything around me was significantly colorful and different from my character sprite.
• The character moves super fast. Especially with the camera being close to them so they take up a large portion of the screen. It makes reacting to things that you're running towards from off-screen really haphazard.
• Quality of life preference, but there should be a short delay before control switches from projectile to player character. I definitely ran myself into the damage pit in front of my character right after I'd flown the projectile over it to hit the intended target.

A large-scale game with a lot of exploration potential.

PROS:

• The world is very large with a lot of opportunities for players to use the movement skills they acquire.
• Visual health bar feedback from combat made the boss fight feel pretty good.
• Nice little variety of enemies in general to vary up the challenges.

CRITIQUE:

• A fair amount of control quality of life things I noticed ...
  • "Climb" should probably be a toggle rather than a hold to stay on the ladders.
  • Controller support for progressing dialog would be appreciated (I couldn't find a button on controller to progress the dialog anyway).
  • The camera is super shaky when riding wind currents and it probably doesn't need to be.
• Jump and fall movement is nicely responsive, but super fast for how close the camera is to the player. It would be a lot easier to track motion of the jumps if the jump arc took a little more time to play out rather than the very quick up-down motion you have right now.
• The background rock texture that's prevalent throughout the map is really busy and distracts from what's going on in the play space (which is my actions in the game). Something with less visual noise or even a flat solid color background would really help players focus on what they're doing rather than tons of visual variance all around the screen.

Cute aesthetic and challenging platforming, but I had to give up after enough deaths.

PROS:

• The platforming uses the movement skills well without always spelling out how you're supposed to solve each of the platforming puzzles.
• Enemy designs were nicely simple while also complimenting to the respective area where they were located.
• The "Self Destruct" failsafe is nice for letting players fail gracefully and try something different in a different run.

CRITIQUE:

• I was a bit tired while trying to play so not as good at reactions as I'd normally be, but the platforming on several sections is VERY TIGHT.  Reducing the player damage collision or adding something like "coyote time" for jumps would really help players feel cooler than they are and let them access more of your game as a result.
• The map is pretty large and you always start from the same location. I don't know if you've got an upgrade for dynamic spawn location, but especially after failing far from the original spawn the idea of trying again is daunting.
• There were some quality of life points where a trigger to load into a different area was just over a jump that I needed to make so I had to do a half-jump just to not level transition twice. Since it takes more time for that than just taking damage and getting put back on the last point of solid ground that turned into a big annoyance (especially the 7th time it caught me or so, lol).