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Thanks to everyone who played my game and commented!

I won't be available to respond to comments for the remainder of the jam, so I hope everyone has a great weekend, and keep enjoying each others' games!

Nice execution! A mouse-only, physics-based wave defense seems tricky to pull off, but it was surprisingly intuitive to control. 

One thing that was a bit unclear was the mace changing color when the base takes damage: at first, I thought this meant my mace was sometimes vulnerable, and it was only later that I figured out what had happened. (Though that in itself could be an interesting idea.) 

Overall smashing the mace through enemies was intuitive and fun.

Superb design! You wove the theme through every mechanic and every moment of play - it felt like playing the essence of the theme itself!

Thank you! Hopefully it was challenging in a good way!

Glad you liked it! I've got some post-jam improvements to make using the cursor less fiddly - hopefully that will address the issue you experienced. Regarding your other comment about a lack of music:  I've been so focused on the mechanics I didn't think about audio, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I really like the interplay between sharing health with foes and rewarding aggressive play. While playing cautiously is (as other commenters said) fairly easy, playing to maximize score suddenly makes the game shine, as the defensive tools instead serve to maximize the number of possible foes to slay, and the time limit becomes the real enemy.

Fun take on the theme! Shared health is a great complement to a split-attention game, and I particularly liked the asymmetric round (one side dodging a bullet-hell while the other's on healing duty).

Thank you for the kind words!

Thank you for the feedback, and I'm glad you liked it!

Your confusion about the "Accept" button is completely understandable - I'll add a note to the game page to address that for now. Regarding turning off the world that contains the control panel - it was not intended, but I wasn't able to find a solution in time (the restart button was added last-minute as a workaround for it.) For where to bring the disk, I've got some ideas for some post-jam tweaks to make that a bit more clear. 

Thanks again!

Great use of the theme to play to the strengths of snake-based gameplay! Having the tongue always available to "recruit" more followers supports having a really fragile tail (I know I lost mine a lot), which helps keep early success from snowballing into overwhelming power. I particularly loved how short the tongue is: it always felt just a bit too short, which created a tension between using it for extra DPS/pickup a new "recruit", or playing it slower and safer.

I liked the inversion of the typical power-up mechanic: picking up souls and becoming weaker is surprisingly fun. The final segment didn't quite stick to that (I'd have loved to see it take away something else, like moving on the ground or something), but it was more challenging than any other area, so it still worked.

One thing that was surprising was that the first challenge (the double-jump) was a lot harder for me than any other. I think this was due to the jump being based on key release rather than key press: getting the second jump to trigger at the peak of the first meant I had to release the space and re-press it before the key had fully risen (otherwise the time between press+release was too long). 

Since your comments sound like you'll be continuing to develop this further, I wish you the best of luck with it!

Interesting take on the theme! I really liked the time limit being expressed through physical movement - it made the planning when and where to take a shot quite engaging.

Thank you! I agree, there's a lot of untapped potential in controlling how the worlds link up - if I develop the game further (post-jam) I'd love to do more with that.

Thank you, I'm glad you liked it! My favorite part of jamming is getting to explore weird designs - both as a creator and a player.  And I hear you on the bottom-left screen being wonky to use - I'd originally intended that to be a part of another puzzle, but when I ended up cutting the puzzle (was more frustrating than fun) I left the screen as-is (and it became another victim of the jam's time-limit.)

Thank you! It's a bit of a relief to hear that the pacing of the discovery worked so well for you: I didn't have time for any outside playtesting, so I was just going with my gut on it.

Regarding reaching the console: if the physics let you do it, then it's legit. (Though it sounds like I could probably telegraph that better in-game.)

Interesting take on the theme! Getting access to multiple green rooms seems particularly powerful, which is a nice way to incentivize joining them together (though, I suspect being able leap-frog the rooms for infinite travel was probably not intended.)

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad to hear you liked the balance of hazards: I'd considered adding more, so it's good to know that wasn't needed.

If you're considering changing it, I'd personally like to see the rocks damage the heart, rather than cause an instant game over. I feel like it would open up the possibility for some nice post-loss narratives like "if only I'd risked bringing them together two rocks ago, I could have survived hitting this one!"

Quite fun, I particularly like how the design emphasizes the character swapping over platforming prowess (good character control can fix nearly any mistake.) As a neat side-effect, during my playthrough my characters gradually got closer together over time, as I often needed the ghost close at hand to course-correct on many of the later puzzles.

Really charming aesthetic! One thing that I noticed is that the heart didn't seem to matter: it was always the obstacles that ended things, never staying apart itself.

Really fun game! I have a soft spot for games that let you control the rules of the world itself, and this game definitely delivered on that!

I had a couple thoughts about the new player experience:

1- I didn't see any description of the controls anywhere. That was a bit of a problem, as the "up" button only seems to do anything when you're linked (the first puzzle took me far too long to solve.)

2- The resolution on the Web GL version of the game seems to be a bit too low for the on-screen instructions. (I happened to hit full screen before starting, so it wasn't an issue for me, but I could see players getting a wrong impression from that.)

Overall, though, these were minor things compared to how fun the game was!

Interesting game, I don't often see adventure games' "pickup X and use it on Y" gameplay in a platformer like this. The first two rooms really leaned into that design, which I think made them work, but the jumps in the third one were a bit too high/tight, making some of the control challenges mentioned in the other comments stand out more.

Thanks! Being able to undo a toggle is a great idea - I'd wanted to put some kind of safety net on that screen, to avoid the situation you described. If I could make changes to it now, that would definitely be top of the list!

Thanks for the praise! The computer should open up a third screen - did that work for you? Or were you having trouble with interacting with the screen? (There's a moveable cursor on that screen, but, now that I look at it, it's a bit small/hard to see.)

Thanks, glad you liked it!

Thanks for the feedback! I'd wanted the game's difficulty to come from juggling so much at once - it's good to know that worked (though perhaps it worked a bit too well.)

Thank you for playing, and for the great feedback! I'm glad you liked the concept and the sound design - those are the two things I focused on so it's great to hear they are working.

I'm also very grateful to know about the approachability issues you raised. If you can believe it, the map actually used to be even bigger - I pared it down a couple times during development, but it sounds like I still haven't found the sweet spot for it yet. Regarding the controls, it looks like we're allowed to update the description, so I've tried to clarify them a bit on the game page.

Thanks again!

Interesting game. The idea of swapping your moveset is pretty unique, but I feel like it would make more sense if the double-jump and the dash used the same button: then the crystals would be controlling what action that one button does, rather than feeling like an arbitrary limitation.

I had a similar issue with the inconsistent double-jump until I realized pressing and holding the jump button would cause both the first and second jump to trigger. Maybe that can help you as well?

Fun game. Dragging the platform around reminded me a bit of Trine, but the constraint of only one platform that you have to bring with you made it play quite differently.

Great game - really infuriating (in a fun way!) It seems like it might be even more fun to spectate, have you given any thought to making exportable replays or gifs?

Have you found the river crossing? If not, I'd recommend looking for that first. Once you've crossed, looking in the woods should help you go in the right direction.

I haven't found anything mechanically similar (yet) but I have found one other game that shares a theme.

Single Sighted (mine) and One Pixel both use "only one pixel" specifically referring to the viewport size. Mechanically, however, they couldn't be further apart - mine is a simple exploration game while One Pixel is a precision platformer. I feel like 1x1 viewport as a theme could be diverse enough for a whole game jam itself.

Very interesting design - it's amazing how the tiny field of view makes mundane things like jumping over a gap into a real challenge. After struggling to orient players in my own game I'm really impressed that you were able to make a real-time precision platformer under those constraints. (The game I made also uses a 1x1 FoV, but the core mechanics are completely different.)

Is your browser set to allow third-party cookies? I've seen that error on other Unity games on itch, and it went away for me when I allowed third party cookies.

Game credits:

Design, code, and visuals by myself (mark@hedberggames)

Ending song, playtesting, QA, and emotional support by my wife

All sounds are sourced/derived from CC0 works on freesound.org

Have any thoughts? Feedback? Post it here!

Thank you, I'm glad you liked it!