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I really didn't enjoy the game when I first played it but I took a day to gather my thoughts and separate personal preferences from constructive critique and gave it another play. Still didn't like it, but that's besides the point, I hope my perspective is at least something useful because the game does clearly show some strong proficiencies from you, the developer.

So first off, I don't think the mechanic you chose is a particularly load bearing one. QTEs have their place in game design but it doesn't particularly feel like it gels with the multi-use focus of the jam; the visuals in the background are practically ancillary to what the player does or does not do, the player doesn't use the mechanic in multiple ways, Jerry does. So it does fit the criteria to the letter, but it doesn't lend itself to impact on the gameplay that the player can appreciate.

I don't tend to like pure reaction tests anyways, but I recognize it's a perfectly valid mode of play. But I did find myself frustrated with instances where I'd click the button in the window of time where it was up, Jerry's animation was initiated, but he'd still die. And I don't mean the cases where you are supposed to NOT press the button (which, due credit, that is a clever enough spin on the very unconducive to spinning QTE mechanic). I mean he'd jump over a gap and bump his head on the lip on the way down, or a helicopter would rush and he he wouldn't clear it in time. I don't know if this 'true' reaction time frame is an intentional design decision or an emergent quirk, but either way it led me to quit the first time I played and still heavily detracted from my second due to dissonant player feedback.

The audio is fantastic, the ending track made it worthwhile reaching the end on my second play. I wish I could give more on this topic but its my own personal weak area so, I'm just out of my depth giving thoughtful feedback for it.

The visuals however I found to be a bit too overly busy to the game's detriment. They generally provide solid feedback and stylization, it's still quite good, but there are some considerations to note.

The color palette is nice but it blends together a bit too much for the particularities of the game, a complimentary scheme could've lent itself to better contrast.  In particular I found the clarity of the action button to be too variable based on whether it popped up on the lower half or upper half of the screen.

Jerry's animations are quite stiff, the flowing headband helps a lot to convey his movement so kudos to that,l but his form does little favors. A stickman-esque figure is perfectly fine, don't get me wrong on that regard, but it could still benefit from deliberately applying some animation principles.

All in all, I look forward to seeing more of your work even if this particular entry goes against my grain. You should be quite proud of it none-the-less!

EDIT: Also as a note, you REALLY should've made the credits accessible from the title screen instead of only at the end game, as per 8 Bits to Infinity rules. That kind of technicality can get one disqualified so you should probably at least contact Retro Indie Josh or something to make sure everything's copacetic, but you gotta keep an eye out for that kind of thing in the future.

Thanks for taking the time to play, rate, and comment!

Haha that intentionally is a valid strategy for getting through even if its not the best for score, for reference my personal best is 4337. Hope you had a good time none the less!

Its very impressive you two made so many distinct mini-games, such an anthology is quite the undertaking for a game jam!

I really love the audio, great work on that front. The graphics are nice too, they all look like they fit together well, though naturally with the split-focus nature of the game no one graphical aspect was too impressive.

Some nitpicks:

-Its odd the tutorial is exited by pressing the x key when the rest of the game is entirely mouse driven, to be honest I didn't even see the small instruction at the top left of the Tutorial panel instructing how to close it and I just intuitively tried to click off the screen, and ended up clicking the Play Button while the tutorial panel was still up which was momentarily jarring.

-I was wondering why I had trouble going left sometimes but it turns out its because my mouse was off the game's screen. Which, fair enough, that's reasonable, but a wider aspect ratio could help alleviate the issue so the knob isn't quite so close to the left edge of the screen.

-I experienced a glitch on the circular 'pong' game where the ball didn't bounce off the edge of the paddle; it registered as two hits but kept moving out of bounds undeterred

-The ski game seemed to come and go REALLY fast compared to the rest, I lost the first time with nary registering what was going on and likewise won the second entirely by accident of having the knob right where it needed to be at the start.

https://itch.io/jam/vimjam3/rate/1705977

Thank you very much for the feedback!

I wanted a strict 4-way movement scheme and no analog control (such as a mouse) specifically to make it play and feel more evocative of arcade games like Dig-Dug or (while not technically an arcade game in origin) Bomberman, but one can chalk that up as a matter of taste and mine is perhaps outdated which is still something I should keep an open mind about as a developer.

The intention with the ax is to charge it up for stronger hits rather than spamming it, and one can move while charging their swing, but it was a behavior I noticed in Vimlark's stream of the game. Some in game direction to direct the player to try holding down the button does seem to be in-order

Thanks for taking the time to play and leave a comment, Lelula!

I wanted some pick-up-and-playness so I opted against a proper tutorial in lieu of level design I thought I was enough to ease the player into experimenting, but that may have been a mistake on my part for the experience of some players. I value the feedback!

There is a pop-up visual on the character when you have a valid interact action such as depositing logs into the kiln, but if it wasn't enough to communicate what I intended that is valuable to know. Also, the snow tiles become depressed snow (not ice) upon walking over them/ impacting with a log, but I will fully admit the tiles are the aspect of the visuals that I am least satisfied with and if you thought they were ice that tells me I needed to make it clearer they were not.

The original music is quite nice on its own merit but I don't think it always fits the situation at hand, could do with having a more frantic feel to it.

the collision with the fire seemed a bit off, by which I mean I thought jumping after hitting the wall underneath a fire would be safe enough but collides on the way up even though the fire doesnt visually extend past that vertical line.

Presentation's quite nice, though there were times where I'd keep restarting the level knowing what upgrades I needed and the wall was still falling down behind the character by the time I was ready which caused a tiny bit of frustration, particularly when coupled with the tight time frames of the later levels themselves where even if you have the proper upgrades figured out a mis-input will cause a loss.

The game's conceit is fun and I liked how drastic the movement granted by the enemies were. The timing seemed really finnicky with the 'wicks', which also as a note were not apparent to me initially as something to shoot. My first impression was that they were platforms.

The color palette did seem a bit overly much I found it hard to focus on my tiny little character. 

There's promise in this project, despite the lack of audio and bare UI.

It would be nice if the player character animated in response to the movement instead of simply rotating, but the flame effects are quite nice.

From a game-feel perspective, it felt like the extinguisher never reached as far as I thought it should based on how much it propelled the player character back. Also I instinctively avoided the fire for most of my time until I realized there was no actual penalty for getting into the thick of things.

First impression with the menu was quite nice I must say, really liked the diagetic implementation of it. Though it seemed that it started in the level select screen instead of the main menu?

Nice to see Lemmings-like gameplay, don't see that kind of game often, but there wasn't much of a spin on it and some of the forms felt unresponsive relative to the spawn rate. Some of that unresponsive-feeling could be chalked up to a lack of sound effects for the slimes themselves, but the animations could use some snappier timing as well. The slimes themselves are cute and the transformations are nice, but could benefit from applying some animation principles such as squash & stretch and follow-through.

The level editor is a nice little technical-show inclusion, though I did find it weird how it seemed I couldn't put objects on the main layer in front of background walls, and it would be nice if the game elements that really need collision to work such as the gems could only be selected while you're on the middle layer.

A pretty nice little game! I quite enjoyed the variety of enemies and power ups and it was generally pretty clear what was going on, was easy to slip into a flow state. The tutorial in the beginning was very nice with its bespoke art.

I will say I didn't find much use in the shielded dash, the one use case I thought it would be best suited for (the homing projectiles) it didn't help. The sun is too big to dash through one side of it to the other without getting hurt, and the meteors come in a little too fast to dash out of their way, but I can chalk that up to a skill issue on my end.

I do think there could be more feedback to when the player takes damage, it took me a few tries to realize that the sun and meteors could damage you. 

Also it seemed odd there was no timer or score for the player to reflect on when they got a game over. It felt missing giving the genre.

Really liked the backing music!