itch.io

fun game!  I liked it well enough in the core levels, but it really shined in the difficult levels.  I'm one of those stubborn people who sees difficult levels and can't let it go, so I kept at it until I beat all the difficult ones (whew).  you tuned this nicely by showing only the path of the eye until it hits the player (not after) and only for a moment.  i also liked that it required both thought/strategy and quick movements of the player.  nice!

Nice! I played this to the end and defeated the final boss (which was my favorite part of the game -- I thought the way you structured it was creative).  I enjoyed the NES vibes here, from the chiptune to the injury-bounce to the change-up in colors of the tileset in successive rounds.  I liked that you created many different styles of enemies, too.  I was an avid coin-collector in the opening stanzas, but after a while it didn't feel like it advanced my journey, so I laid off a bit -- perhaps that's why I didn't get a full % in the final calculation (or maybe there were secret areas...).  

Some feedback that I hope is helpful:  I thought the arrow could be a bit more quickly responsive to the push of the button, as I spent a lot of time trying to hit the shoot button as soon as I pressed jump so that it would fire when I was still in the air.  I also thought "coyote time" on the platform jumps could help the feel.

Nice work!

Love the graphic profile and palette, and the bounce to all the movements -- it feels very visually polished.   The mechanics are nicely responsive and make it fun to move around in the world you've created.  Nice!

I played it until the final (?) round, where I pushed on the button with the trophy symbol and "???" below, and it caused my browser (iOS/Firefox) to crash (I tried this twice, same result both times).  Some other feedback that I hope is helpful: when I started, the map launched me with the second stage selected.  I pushed left to go to the first stage and completed it.  It then sent me back to the map with the third stage selected.  I pushed left to do the second stage, completed it, it sent me to the fourth stage on the map, etc. etc., so perhaps a stage variable needs to be decremented by 1?

Would be fun to play more -- nice work on this!

I had fun playing this, I enjoyed the art, the music was fitting, and it I liked the signs enough to risk my hide repeatedly trying to read them and then run for it. Some kind of achievement for score levels would be nice to keep us climbing!  As others have noted, I'd add an instruction about the double-jump somewhere.  Nice work!

I played this to the end and it's a fun game with a presentation that engages you easily.  Controls are nicely intuitive and everything ran smoothly.  Feels like you have an architecture on which you could add any number of additional items/rules for new challenges, too -- nice!

Nice work! I played this to the finish, great artwork (love the Metroid vibes on the bubble platforms), great music, and the item mechanics and puzzles worked smoothly and were fun to beat. There was a good amount of gameplay, too.

It's also an unusual game in that the principal challenge of the game (and cause of almost all my deaths) was overcoming the momentum in the character controller.  Small movements can be done under perfect control, but pushing a direction for a bit longer gives you a long continuation of momentum after you let up on the direction key -- longer than what I typically see in platformers.  Jumps have to be hit "flat", so that you're not pushing in any direction on or before landing.  I could see that this could frustrate some of your players, as it's not what platformer players are used to, but perhaps that's just a convention and not a reason to change (after all, over time I adjusted to it and it made the game more challenging, and challenge is good).  In any case, I thought I would mention it in case that's helpful feedback!

Nice work!!

Fun game, nice work!  Beautiful and creative artwork, as I have seen before from Jaylus's games, and very impressive for the short amount of time you had.   The puzzles ramped up nicely in difficulty and it feels like there's room for many puzzles with the mechanics you made.   Nice!

[These comments are on the prototype:] Fwiw, I played in the browser and found that placement of cards was very responsive *if* I moved my cursor away after dragging and dropping (dragging and releasing the left-click on a valid spot would not turn the card into an icon until I moved the position of the mouse again).  The game also crashed my browser (both Firefox and Safari) and created warnings about the amount of memory being used.  I realize you warned me about reliability of the web build, so that's on me, but I mention this in case it's useful feedback.

Again, great game, nice job!

Excellent game!  I played this to the end and really enjoyed it.  The narrative and flow is very polished -- one of the very few jam games I've played on Itch with voice acting.  The voiceover, use of color, and timed enemies did a good job making the experience feel urgent. The bucket-related mechanics -- particularly that you need to land and recall it for other mechanics to work -- was a creative touch that added a lot to the platforming and puzzle aspects.  You have great artwork across many phases and the narrative gave me some Forgotten Anne vibes. 

Some of my points of feedback have been amply covered by your jam comments.  Unlike others, though, I got stuck right at the beginning of the game, the first use of the bucket.  I figured something was wrong with the keying that was preventing me from jumping or somehow using the bucket to propel myself upward, and I exited the game.  I figured out the solution (after restarting) by luck -- I never saw the key part of that solution until it was (accidentally) solved.  After that, I never had a stuck moment.

Great work!  This is a very complete game, executed with the challenge of a large team and a short deadline!

I played this to the end and had so much fun with it!  Excellent game, such smooth mechanics, very satisfying weapon options/responsiveness.  Your account is full of great games!

It's a hard game!  Got to level 21...

Very cool game, I had a lot of fun playing this!  I've never played Wii Tanks, so you're the original as far as my experience goes.  Love the hand drawn art, the mechanics all worked smoothly, and the dynamic music was a nice touch.  The introduction of different tank abilities was rolled out nicely, and the difficulty level is great (after several plays, level 19 is my best).  The tanks' differing AI was also really well done.  This game felt very polished -- it's very impressive work for only one month. Thanks also for sharing the background on its development.

Feedback-wise, the only thing I felt myself wanting was an indicator of which side of the tank is the front -- these controls are difficult to master (I've seen them in racing games as well), so it's easy to get turned around.

Awesome work!

I love the art in this game, concept looks to be a fun one, and the music is nice, too.  The balloons are very cool and the shooting/damage functionality worked well.  When I first loaded in Firefox it took an exceptionally long time to load (all Godot games take some time, but this was more than usual), and when I pushed "start" at the start screen, it crashed my browser.  I then tried it in Safari, and it loaded more quickly and I played to about the fifth wave or so, and then it crashed that browser, so that's as far as I got.  It's not a problem I've ever had in Itch, that I can remember.

Gameplay-wise, for what my brief experience is worth, after each round I hit the plus buttons to try to buy stuff but I wasn't amassing any of the balls that appear to act as currency, so I never saw the tetris-block functionality, canons, etc.  Perhaps I just didn't make it far enough.  Not much feedback, but I hope it could be helpful!

Nice job with this!  The platforming mechanics are smooth and fun, and the color-dipping to change abilities was creative.  The puzzles all worked well, I encountered no bugs in the mechanics/puzzles, and I completed the game.  Your size-of-character-to-world ratio worked very well, and you also provided many boards to play in this game, which is great.  The music and art are also nice -- are they your original art/music?

Some feedback I hope is helpful:  1. the UI could use some adjustments, most notably the square in the upper right showing what each character-color signifies.  In various parts of the game, this box covered up terrain, the key, my player (when I walked under it), and if I recall correctly, the door, so that was a problem.  The two colors are straightforward, so I think you can delete that box entirely, and just tell the player what the colors are on the first board in which they appear.  (In fact, before the color-dipping appeared, that box confused me).  There were also some apparent artifacts on some boards that were confusing because they did nothing -- e.g., a purple character (I thought I'd be able to switch to it or something), a white symbol that looks like a volume icon, etc.  These look like things you were testing and forgot to delete.  And finally, the instruction texts early in the game were in different font sizes from board to board (making them uniform will give a cleaner appearance) and sometimes the white text blended with the white background.

2.  Challenge level is always going to depend on your user, I know, but fwiw I thought you could significantly ramp up the challenge as the game progressed to make it more fun.  I thought both the platforming (I only died 2-3 times total, I think) and puzzles would be improved with more difficulty.

I hope this is helpful, great work!!

I finally, finally beat it.  You did an awesome job in designing the platforming/puzzles on this game, which took some figuring out (particularly as it progressed).  Ultimately, mastering the platforming skills and nailing the timing with precision was the core challenge, however -- and it was very challenging.  In a good way!  I spent a lot of time on this game (more than the upper estimate), and my hat is off to you for creating a game with this much playtime.   You introduced the skills with very good pacing, and with great variety.  Allowing the change in key bindings was very helpful (I went with QWER for the non-jump buttons).  You made the player really practice the platforming to get it just right, and hitting long sequences felt very satisfying when I finally got them.  Great job!

Some feedback I hope is helpful:  the tradeoff to focusing on level design/mechanics and outsourcing the art is that it does give off an outsourced-art look.  The art styles and pixel sizes differ between different sprites, the character carries a sword she doesn't use, and it doesn't convey too much of a sense of place/character.  This made the experience one in abstract platforming for me, but you did the platforming very, very well, so it ultimately succeeded and was very fun.

In terms of mechanics, there was something with in-air dash-jump sequences that seemed a little unreliable to me (where the jump didn't happen) in crunch time, and I couldn't quite pinpoint why.  My suspicion was that perhaps (1) the dash mechanic pauses one's ability to jump for a short time (not the full extent of dash, something shorter), and/or (2) when one is too close to a floor or wall in the dash, some kind of ground-check code freezes the jump.   There were a few stages where I wondered why my jumps weren't working.

Separately, it felt to me at times that pushing a direction and dash at the same time (if the direction was opposite of the way the character was initially facing) resulted in a dash going the unintended direction; perhaps the code could give a touch more forgiveness if there is some slight disparity in whether dash or direction was pressed first?  Ultimately I adjusted to this by staggering my direction push and dash push.

And finally, the colliders on the spikes sometimes felt a bit oversized -- e.g., where one jumps alongside a wall that has spikes on top, one is "hit" by the spikes when one is beside them.  Similarly, the colliders felt like they reached up quite high above the spikes.

One last bit of feedback, for whatever it's worth, is that the platforming sequence shown in the image below was far and away the hardest  and most time-consuming for me.   I'm sure a large portion of my time playing this game was on that one sequence.  It was a very cool sequence, though.

Sorry for writing a book, but I appreciate the feedback I get from players, and I felt like the high quality of this game and the long time I spent on it deserved a fuller comment.  Awesome work!

Wow, excellent game!  I played to the finish and had fun playing.  The gameplay is very smooth and professional, and the firing and targeting mechanism is clever and fun to use.  The sound effects and various rumble/shake effects -- not just with the screen shake, but also the way it jostles the character in the boss battle -- were all really well done.   I only successfully used the shop once (I couldn't read the Japanese, so I was a little unsure how to use it), but I did buy/use the missile.  Great work!

This game was fun and felt like the start of something great.  I like the art style, the relatively small character, the recoil effect, and the hostage release concept.  I never did find any secrets, sadly :).

I thought I was softlocked on the second board: when I tried to activate the final blue screen (alongside my hostage), nothing happened.  I started the game over, but the second time around I ended up in the same situation, kept trying the blue screen, and one of the times it activated and gave me the portal to the boss.  I wondered if perhaps the hostage needs to be right on top of the blue screen, too?  Making that mechanism less exacting would probably have solved my confusion.

But that experience made me expect that part of the puzzle here was going to be finding a different path out, taking into account a non-jumping character who follows you.  E.g., the hostage might need to be led in one way, and then the player might need to shift to a different path to then guide the character in an opposite direction, down an elevator, etc., avoiding harm to the hostage all the while -- it feels like a puzzle-rich concept that you could really develop.

Nice work!

Nice -- impressive work for 24 hours!  I like the red/blue in your palette (it pops) and the mechanics worked well from start to finish.  The unconventional Q/D/Z on the left and L/P on the right took some getting used to, but it worked!  Nice!

Nice!  I played this one to the end, the mechanics worked smoothly and intuitively, and I enjoyed the art style and sound effects.  I saw after playing that you were one of the creators of Detective Paws, which I remember from a jam -- small world :).

Good news: the sound works just fine for me on iOS/Firefox.  Nice job on this, love that you made it as a gift -- I played it to the end.  Dash color effects were my favorite :).

Very cool game!  I played this to the end and had fun playing.  The interaction between the two candle styles was very creative and you made some clever puzzles out of it.  The music also does a great job of communicating when you're out of range of the light.  

If you develop the idea further, or do a post-jam update, consider adding a Reset key that would function like dying.  I got softlocked twice when I got stuck between a platform from the white dimension and wall from the dark one (image below) and had to start the game over. 

All around great game!

...and I had to come back to  beat all the bosses/endings, and I found the secret ending (it took me a while!) as well.  Fun game!

Wow, what a cool game!  I played to one of the endings so far, and the bosses are so well designed, the artwork and palette are wonderful, the mechanics are smooth and have very satisfying visual/audio feedback.   I love this level of challenge.  I hadn't read all your instructions until after I finished, but dashing through attacks came intuitively from your design.  An all-around excellent game!  Thank  you!

I played this to the end and enjoyed it -- nice job!!  It's an impressively expansive map for the time you had, which meant I spent more time with this game.  The metroidvania sequencing is nicely done. It had some nice challenges, the heart-drops were nicely tuned, and I thought the checkpoints were well spaced.  The look and behavior of the floating flower bubbles was creative and it was something different.  My absolute favorite element here was the look of the upgraded sword (the smear frame) -- it was a welcome surprise that made me smile.  

In terms of (hopefully helpful) feedback, I think adding invincibility after taking a hit (to avoid having the player get stuck in damage-loops) would be the change that would give you the biggest reward for your time.  I know you've heard it, but sometimes it's nice to hear opinions from different players.

It was fun, nice work!

Very fun game, really nicely done!  The character abilities were great and ran smoothly.  I liked how many different upgrades there were to find, and how you spaced them.  The behavior and variety of the enemies/bosses was excellent.  Once I had all the health and ability upgrades, I tried to double-jump, lead-suit, and brute force my way across the river, and saw a message like "Congratulations, you...without dying...", never saw it in full :).

Some hopefully helpful feedback as you develop further: I died once mid-air, and my body then fell into a gap that would transition you to a room below, and it softlocked.  I also got the same crashes in web upon entering the rooms toward the beginning that have been noted by others on Windows; that guy who walked away in there made me so curious, too.  

Awesome work!

Really great work on this game!  The wands were creative (bubble wand was great in particular) and each was nicely tuned to have advantages and disadvantages.  Enjoyed the pixel art and the sense of place you created with the towns -- that makes a big difference.  The flies were tough but I was craving difficulty (makes the games last longer and makes progression feel like a greater accomplishment), so I liked it.  Awesome variety of enemies.  The opening theme music was also great, I stopped and listened.

I had no lag issues, gameplay was smooth.  The only bug-type issue I experienced was that the boss who guards the bomb-wand went into the upper left corner and was stuck for a bit in a flip-out, and later moved into the lower right area and seemed to stop fighting. But not a huge issue in the grand scheme.

Great game!

Great!  This exhibitor list is excellent, I'm checking it out now, thanks again!

This was so interesting -- love what you guys are doing!  I once read about a rich culture of indie/hobbyist game developers in Japan, but as a non-Japanese speaker, I could never get far in accessing the games or info about them, and they seemed not to post often on Itch.  I got the impression that conference-type exhibitions were favored (?).  This zine was not only informative/interesting (doujin games, dev "circles" -- all new to me), it gave me some jumping off points for learning.  I've noticed more Japanese games on itch in recent months, which is a great development.  I'll keep an eye out for your streams and hopefully I'll have a chance to contribute to one of your future jams. Thanks for doing this!

Very cool, creative concept and fun to play -- awesome work!  The artwork is great and background prompts are effective.  The wrinkles you added along the way were also great and worked well.  Like another commenter, I found myself yearning for a keyboard button rather than a mouse-click, but it did work!

I completed all 15 of the main levels.  I died an average of 6.8 times per level on the first 14 levels, and then died 168 times on level 15. There is something that felt amiss on that jump in the lower right, right after getting the key and bouncing back to the left, that made me feel like double-jumping was disabled.  I even wondered if double-jumping doesn't work when you fall from a platform rather than jumping from it, but no.  I suspect it might be that the collider for the island spikes down there is a bit too large, such that the player clips it even when not hitting the spikes and the death animation begins when it feels like one should be able to click another jump. Just a guess. I hope that's helpful feedback.

Great work!

Very cool game, nice work!  It took some repeat plays to get the hang of it and quite a few to beat the last few bosses, but the struggle is part of the fun (if you're that type; I am).  I enjoyed the art and animation, the plane drop-off is a nice touch, music is great, and the mechanics worked well.  Most of all, it kept me playing!  My time was 0:54:40 -- who's going to beat it?!  :)

Feedback I hope is helpful:  There were some times that jumping off the ladders felt "sticky" (needed two presses of the button), and I believe it happened when the button guide would appear above my head while climbing -- I don't recall what causes that prompt, but I believe that was causing the stickiness.  On the fire-bomb boss (where quick lateral movement is key), I ended up taking hits when I couldn't quickly get off the ladder.

Fwiw, on the "x marks" boss, I had a hard time discerning how the catch was to happen.  The fact that the "X" key would show above my head when those bombs would 'lock on' to me and slowly approach/explode, made me believe I could still grab them at that point.  The ellipse and "X" icon guide you on the prior rounds, but on that round I eventually learned to survive by ignoring the guidance mechanism (I won't say exactly how I went about it, no spoilers).  Maybe that was intended -- maybe this was the point where you had to put on the blindfold and trust your training -- but I was confused for a while so I figured I'd mention it.

Awesome work, fun game!

I like these characters, and controlling them simultaneously with two hands was a good brain exercise.  The music that started when I got to the person with the bow is fantastic!

I'm not positive, but I think it was finding the red gate (I believe there was only one red gate in the game?  I don't want to describe it any further to avoid spoilers in the comments).   I wandered back and forth looking  for the next move for a while (I had forgotten that the game had a map, so perhaps that would have helped).  

Fun game!  The progress based on abilities unfolds really nicely, and the background story added to the fun.  It was nice that there were some points where I had to puzzle over what to do -- it made figuring it out more fun.  I forgot that the map existed so I played to the end without it, but it worked out!  I enjoyed the different characters, too.

One small bug I encountered is that if I pull up the credits at the title screen, I can't get them back down (pushing X doesn't work, nor does clicking 'though' the credits window to start game, etc.), so I have to reload the page.

Nice work!

Really beautiful artwork and palette, very impressive stuff!  The mechanics of movement all worked well and were fun to use, and I proceeded to the finish without the need to read your guidance about what to do.  The enemies were creative and their behavior worked well.  The in-game instructions were clear, the UI is very smooth, and the character insets look great!  Very cool all around!

Feedback that I hope might be helpful:  I had a hard time figuring out which surfaces were solid and which were background art, as surfaces weren't set off from the background (as, e.g., by a special surface color or similar prompt).   Within a single tree, some of the flat tree-tops were solid and others weren't; some log-bridges were solid, others weren't, etc.  A visual cue to the player would be helpful for surfaces, and/or a more consistent pattern of which things are solid.  

The dash bar also seemed to be infinite for me; I suspect this was meant to drain somehow when you dash?  Because of the distinct color overlap of the green/blue orbs and the green/blue dash bar, I figured there would be a relationship of those...

I was never able to make it to the highest area of the first world.  I could see it up there, and it seemed like the hanging logs on the left were the way up, but I could never get it -- I'm curious, was there a way up?

Awesome work!!

Wow, what a truly outstanding game!!  I played to the finish, after playing that final boss many many times, and enjoyed it all -- beautiful artwork, killer NES music, great level of challenge, cool characters, fun UI elements, neat ending, love the MegaMan vibes.  Just an all-around beautiful and fun game.

If I had any feedback that might be useful, it would be that for me, the character felt a bit large relative to the size of gameplay screen, which led to, for example, not knowing which part of the dog should be under the ladder to be able to go up, or which part of me needed to land on a platform, etc.  A second thought is that an animation upon losing all "motivation" could be a nice addition.

What a great game, I'm looking forward to what you do next!

Nice art, functioned well, made me curious for what's next -- off to a good start!

Nice job!  The level/game design here is creative and works great -- having so many different characters occupying the space, designing their interdependence, controlling the options available for character-switching, etc., all while ensuring that it functions in whatever way players might go about the tasks -- that seems challenging,  but I played through to the end and it worked smoothly.  Nice!  I liked how you can sometimes see characters behind grates, too.  The spider enemies were also great, I like the animations.

The moving platforms did their job, though I noticed that when I landed on them (after their motion was turned on), I was stuck in the falling animation and couldn't move laterally.  When I've encountered this kind of thing in development, it has usually been because the player isn't detecting a "Ground" layer/tag; perhaps it's something like that?

I also encountered the scratch/static noise at the end of the Hymn sound effect that another player mentioned.  I think I've had that issue on sound effects when using .PlayOneShot(), if the loop box on the sound hasn't been unchecked.  Not sure if that's helpful feedback, but I thought I'd mention it in case it is.

Nice work!

It's the sophistication of the narrative and language, I think, with some darkness to it, which stood out to me in both games and made me mentally match them.  I don't see too many game jam games where the player is temporally shifted for portions of the narrative.  The style of game, sci-fi/space setting, pixel art style, and the reference to a sun-god right near the start -- those probably also prompted me to think of the Gnawing Hunger.  Other aspects differed, but those were the ones that made me look to see if you made both.

Great game, I played to the finish and enjoyed it!  I enjoyed the rich narrative, which was very nicely written, and the injections of humor (band poster especially :)).  I appreciated the style of discovery here, where items that can be engaged are not visually set off from background items, which enhances the feeling of exploration.  The game reminded me of The Gnawing Hunger -- I realized only after playing that you created that game as well. Your developed narratives stand out.  Nice!

Nice!  I had fun playing this and I played it to the finish.  I liked that I was a bit confused at first about how to interact with the world, and the backgrounds in each window made it fun to play the successive levels.  I also liked how, upon completion of a window, the player fell smoothly into the base of the next window.

On my first play, I did run into a softlock in the first window: I was standing on the bar where it says "jump up" and pressing the "interact" button while moving around (I thought this was perhaps going to be a rhythm challenge, so I was trying to start it), and the right-hand side went dark and I was locked in place (image below).  I could look left and right with the arrows, but couldn't move (felt like being "stuck in a wall").

Creative idea, nice work!