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I have to admit, I am not sure if I interpreted that correctly or if there even IS a correct interpretation.

I got the feeling something talked to me through the text. Something that loves me, but also seems a little jealous on my existance.

That enlightened a little thankfulness for my own existence in me. Thanks.

In other parts I got the feeling I was reading a love-letter from one person to another person which both were not me.

I found it a bit confusing, but enjoyed the beautiful language. You can do this really good. I especially liked the part white-on-black. I also appreciated the general artstyle of the text, your poetry is pleasing for the soul & the eye.

I would love to hear what went through your mind here, but could understand if you don't wanna talk about it in public

I liked your story.

Your worldbuilding is pretty cool. It reminded me of the anime "Frieren" at first, from its style & thematics. The best thing to me was your interpretation of magic. That basically every dream of someone is caused by magic.. or a perception of magic. This was also a good introduction to the sorcerer.

I think you can trust your audience a little more to connect the pieces. After that "Crub still thought about the question of the sorcerer", you take too much time (for my taste) to tell the reader "on-the-nose" that there is a sorcerer. You are obviously very talented in inventing fantastic & magical stuff. The images in this story are truly innovative. But for a short story, you take a little too much pride & time in describing your stuff. The description of only the sorcerers physical appearance (which IS awesome) took around a quarter of the whole story.

I liked the idea of the Giant's Pines, but the timing to introduce them couldn't have been worse: the hero just presented his problem of insecurity. The tension was growing. And then you introduced those Pines, which stabilize the whole world & give a feeling of security & orientation.

So: worldbuilding, magic & creativeness are your definite strengths. The story tells about inner conflict & bravery. Even teaches a little lesson, which is great. Please keep those skills. Get your understanding of atmosphere right, so you can build it up instead of breaking it. Restrict your pride a little (hard for me too). Then I can see unimaginable fantasy-stories come out of your fingers.

This is amazingly crafted.

The only thing I could criticise is that one scene, where Hazel actively pollutes the environment. Your protagonists shouldn't do such stuff, because people could learn from it. And after that, you introduce the outer world, where places & people get mentioned that really add absolutely nothing to the story. All that really matters is the snow, I guess.

Besides from that, this feels like a masterpiece to me.

It's kinda cozy, but not in a boring way. Gives me studio-ghibli-background-image-music-video-vibes. It shows an everyday scenario, which most of us can relate to. broken dreams, bad coping. I especially like all the small details you added to describe characters & their relation via the surroundings. the laptop-password, or which books lie around, how the room carries the combined style of a beautiful relationship. The characters, their actions & reactions felt incredible realistic.

I liked all the little references to nostalgic stuff.

Your building of a world, atmosphere, metaphors, characters, their relations & actions/reactions, handling of reader-emotions & your sense for dramaturgy are crazy impressive.

I think with its impersonal style & the lack of emotions, this text can be evolved to a social-critique pretty quick. It seemed to me your shown society cared more about talking & less about caring.

You could lean more into the mood of "Actually nobody cares" & could somewhere place the question if it is okay for Cooper, the society & the reader to feel so flat about such a tragic incident.

I like the story. You manage to trick expectations & surprise (owners name, Gavin's just blows up). Your writing style is easy-to-follow & greatly realistic. To me it felt like reading a newspaper.

But this has also downsides: I did not get emotionally invested, because the documentary-style did not manage to introduce characters properly to me, in a sense, that I really get to know them, learn their behaviour, get hints on their feelings or can learn something abot them. Or from them. All of that could be improved.

IF your intention was to create tension or questions for the reader: I did not have questions, because I didn't get emotionally involved enough.

But what you described masterfully was society: the act itself & the reaction to it felt very realistic & are a fantastic mirror of real human behavior in my opinion.

Nice! I am okay-ish in chess, but I hoped a true chess-guy might read the story & could picture the game :D

Thanks for your feedback, it means a lot to me. Guess I will have to finally read 1984 now..

Your writing style is really catchy, easy-to-follow & therefore entertaining.

The story had a grip on me & I could not stop reading, even though I disliked every single character for their personality.

Your style, worldbuilding, atmosphere & characters are really advanced & work great together, so I can only critizise on a high level:

Understand that your characters can be seen as Idols. Your characters feel real & fleshed out, but all of them are very superficial & kinda lost. None of them shows self-worth. They do not adapt, learn or teach me any kind of moral.

As an author you have the power to make them teachers to the reader. Let them have clever, grown-up responses to problems. Which give the reader a good, useful philosophy for his life.

I had a ton of fun reading your story. Your technique & style feel flawless to me. Get your characters to teach the reader something & your stories will be on another level.

You are really good in creating a specific mood & athmosphere.

I really liked the themes of warping, restarting reality, but of course it felt also confusing, which seemed intended.

I personally find it exhausting to follow a protagonist that is completely desperate & cynical. It does not help that I really don't learn WHY the protagonist is desperate.

I appreciated the unbroken will through struggle, but I could not find any reason for the protagonist to struggle..

I pitty him, which means you got me emotionally involved - a good thing. I got the feeling the protagonist is a little too fixated. He is NOT searching value in himself or a value in the world. He seems to be driven by one goal & seems to despise everything else. He also doesn't seem to change. So I as a reader did not learn anything valuable  from him.

Overall: I as a reader miss a moral/lesson & meaningful relationships. But I like your general writing-style, ability to create mood & also the worldbuilding, even if it felt a bit chaotic.

I like the story. To me it's a discussion of 'tradition vs innovation' & how creativity & open-mindedness can change things pretty fast. The ending came like a slap to the face, which was cool!

I especially like that the story doesn't give a strong opinion on what would be 'the better' way.

Characters were introduced & foreshadowed really good. I had no problem keeping track of them, even if it were many characters for that number of words.

A word of critique: I found myself to be a little confused by the constructed world & situation, especially by the scenes where the protagonist looked at the sky. They felt out pf place & also out of character.

The protagonist himself was a little exhausting for me to read. He came across unsympathetic & negative, which I guess was intended. For me personally the story would have been more entertaining from the antagonists perspective.

But at the same time, I got the feeling that I followed the bad guy, which felt like an interesting switch of perspective. irregular ;)

If english is not my native language, can I write a Story & just run a translator over it?

I hope this would not mean disqualification.

Oh, thanks a lot!

Thanks a lot for the feedback.

The original plan was, to have the skulls spawn in clusters. That would have created a minesweeper-like effect, where you can think "Oh crap, I ran into a skull... now I have to find a way around the cluster", which would also be a solution to the "boring-straightline"-approach (or you choose to keep your straightline through the skulls)... but I didn't have the time to do this.

The idea of rethinking the path after failing is good, but didn't fit the theme of the jam, so I might implement it when the jam is over ;)

Thanks for playing.. and AWESOME run man! Im usually not that lucky..

The final goal is to reach the other kingdom, but of course you as a despot can do whatever you like. Considering the theme of the jam, I wanted to make a game where you don't have to feel any consequences. I also like that the design makes it possible to pretty much create your own difficulty.

So, nice run!

Oh damn, then I will have to think about some investments I did after playing this game D:

The renegade- or deserter-mechanic means someone is walking a way you didn't dictate and therefore is killed by you. Every time someone is killed (by you or the labyrinth), the way has to be found new and therefore resets.

I wanted to show this more clearly by shooting a projectile from the crown to the clicked field or even have small humans walk around the path and die, but like you said, time was short :D

The dark pieces represent grass and just do nothing. I implemented them because I found it to be unrealistic every step would be a win or fail.

I guess I will at least add these rules to my descriptions.

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

Since I know this can be an issue in Godot: did you add audio?

To answer your question: The concept was NOT compelling to me, since I felt I have no choice, which made it kinda pointless to have a degree of control in the scenes... ARE there ways to break the loop?

But, I REALLY enjoyed the concept, artstyle and theme as a kind of movie. You know, part of the definition of "Game" is, that you need to have a choice. So if you implement mechanics that really give the player a small chance of breaking or change the loop,I'd say it's worth finishing this project... IF you have a clear concept/story in mind.

Well done. Question: did you add audio? Would hate to give you a bad rating there (and I know it's an issue with godot sometimes)

If I could think of anything I would do different, I think I would speed up the movement a little, but besides from that: solid entry.

Great Level-design (good idea to restrict the number of rebirths), funny graphics (even a little animation). Pretty straightforward. Cool Demo

The visuals look nice. Cool that you took the time to create some animations.

I think you also fulfilled the theme really good.

One thing: the audio, especially the jump-sound is really annoying over time, since it is a thing you do very very often.

Besides from that: nice puzzle, nice graphics, Theme fulfilled really good. Solid entry! I also like the story. I want to see this icecube having a minigame-cameo in another game where some character just makes a drink :D

Cool idea. I was thinking of a similar thing, but ended up doing something completely different :D
The gameplay is really nice and kinda relaxing, which blends great with your awesome choice of background-music.

The jumping- sound you chose can get a little annoying, especially since the rest of the game is pretty chill. I think I would remove the jump-sound or make it VERY subtle and add a gong-like sound to the reset-mechanic instead.

I really enjoyed this!

I think it fits the theme pretty well, since I just started hammering down the red button & getting a score of 301 with that tactic.

If it was intended to create a  repetitive labour-environment, you did great. But the score-system & audio (which you used really good) are not enough for me to feel rewarded for such a task.. I feel this could be a good starting-point for a game. Like a Level 1. I see 2 ways where this game could be going from there:

It could become a reaction-based game, for which you would need to implement more complex tasks & maybe work on a better reward-system. Also you would need to shorten the time-limit since focusing that long is hard.

Or it could become a clicker, in which case you would need to implement stuff that you can buy for points... which than auto-generates more points, for which you can buy new stuff and so on.

I'd love to play that game, but I won't download it. Maybe it's possible for you to upload a browser-version?

I'd love to play that game, but I won't download it. Maybe it's possible for you to upload a browser-version?

I'd love to play that game, but I won't download it. Maybe it's possible for you to upload a browser-version?

Cool entry. Question: is this supposed to have sound?

The physics worked good for me, which guaranteed an exciting gameplay.

In further development, you could try to speed up the camera with the ball. It's annoying in a reaction-game when you can't see your character anymore, just because it's too fast... but besides from that you did a really great job in the level-design.

Thanks. I just searched for some pixelart in the internet & pretty much copied it pixel by pixel, using a color-palette. Do you have any advice on making the controls/gameplay more obvious to a player?

I think at this point of development you can exploit the game pretty easily by just clicking the tiles on the wall :D

Thanks a lot for playing :)

Cool game. This is fitting the theme of the jam perfectly.

Since you already know about the clunky movement, I don't have much to say. I really liked the idea, the music... the.. worldbuilding? Solid game for the short dev-time. also very polished

Cool game. You rocked the theme of the jam. This is strangely really fun &  funny all the time.

Small optimization could be to add different types of bg-music. But it's a great game. Graphics are amazing.

Ok this is amazing, because it kind of teaches rl-skills, which is always a great thing which games do not enough (including mine).

I love the art-style & general theme.

For me as someone who never did trading-stuff, it was a little rocky to jump in, so maybe a tutorial would be good in further development (which you should do, this game is pretty unique).

The chosen bg-music is great. You could do easy improvements by also adding positive & negative audio-feedback to the trading-processes.

Overall: great game!

I figured out "the trick" after jumping the dragon like 10 times. This was a fun moment, where I realized how well you fitted the theme of the jam. Great job.

Advice I could give: instead of straightup LYING to the player (xD which is fine in this scenario), you could give advice on how to control the game. Somebody who never played a game won't be able to play yours.

And in my opinion that sound when defeating the dragon could be a little less modern, but it was rewarding.

An easy way to (further) improve the game could be a time-limit (which would also tell the player that jump-attack might not be the way).

Besides from that: great game! It was fun, it has a clever twist, the visuals are kinda cute, the audio is rewarding. The text you wrote s very sympathetic :)

Also thanks for giving credit to the tools you used... another audio-website for my collection ;)

Cool game.  It's obvious that you learned a lot about rewarding-systems.

An easy thing that would greatly improve your game (in my opinion) would be using a color-palette. I think your game is pretty dependent on colors.

The gameplay itself doesn't fit the theme of the jam, but is pretty fun. I found myself playing more often than I wanted :D

You nailed the use of audio with rewarding sounds & fitting bg-music! That's a thing I still need to improve for me. Overall, this is a great game considering the short dev-time

38.6m! I like the game. It's fun to play & I found myself replaying it quite often :D

Next time, try to find a creative solution instead of creating an apology. For me, it would have been perfectly fine to read a story at the start, that you are the biggest gigolo of the kingdom & now got kicked down a cliff. No cutscene needed.

I think you've done a good job with the pixelart & the character, but pixelart is not a fitting style for every game. Games with a lot of camera-movement (like this one) should better use smooth graphics like 3D, high-res png or svg.

You made an insanely good job in picking the right audio! Cool that you also gave credit, so I could add this website to my resources :)

This is insanely cool! I'd say Hotline-Miami with an awesome rebirth-mechanic!

You didn't fit the theme perfectly in my opinion, since one of the mechanics is to learn of past mistakes, but this is my only critique. The visuals are cool, the gameplay is SO FUN!! The audio rocks, the story is humorous . The mechanics work together pretty well & I feel it to be very rewarding that you can keep ahead of your past selves, since you directly see your skill-progress.

Great game, thanks to the team!

Ok, I'm obviously too dumb for your game & gave up pretty quickly, but it was fun as long as I played. I think it's an interesting puzzle game & I never played something like this before, so I would call it innovative :)

For future projects, you might want to check out a color-palette & download some cool music for your game.

Overall, I think you fitted the theme of the jam very well & created a fun game!

Really nice. I had a similar idea for my game, but did something completely different then :D You fit the theme of the jam really good. The game IS fun, but can get a bit repetetive. For my personal taste, the fun of smashing the block fades way before getting the sword. If you feel the same you might want to tune down the time you need to achieve the sword.

Also the game could be easily & greatly improved by adding a simple counter of how many hits a player already did.

But these are just some thoughts. It IS a cool game, has a well developed theme/story, nice & rewarding audio. It's greatly polished & I love the fact that the broken hammers keep lying around.

I'd love to play that game, but I won't download it. Maybe it's possible for you to upload a browser-version?

So cool you developed that skill to export a web-version so fastly! Thanks!

So, I like the game. Making a rogue-like for the theme of this jam was a good idea.

I think the theme of this game is very cute overall.

The randomly generated elements work fine together, the artstyle is nice & the music gives a cozy atmosphere.

Of course the enemies are not that big of a deal, but for that dev-time this is a very solid game! Well done

Love that game. Good job. I can imagine it was relatively complicated to do.

Maybe you might want to create a common theme or story behind this, if you plan on developing this further.

Really cool mechanics. Especially the wall-latches have a nice feel to them :)

Unfortunately I lack the skill to reach higher levels. But this was fun & the reanimation was a cool idea

This is addicting. I found my brain starting to really learn these strange symbols xD

Good job!