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The music makes my ears bleed. The platforming is wonky and cumbersome. There are many bullshit jumping puzzles. I hate everything about this game so much. You have captured the essence of the rage platformer in microcosm--well done!

Thanks for the feedback. I think the roguelike sweet spot for me (Hades also does this) is a mix of random upgrades earned throughout a run and purchasable, persistent upgrades. The random upgrades keep runs varied and interesting, while the purchasable upgrades provide a sense of progress and further mix up gameplay. I think this game would definitely have been improved by adding a random upgrade element--will definitely keep that in mind the next time I have a chance to make a roguelike.

Thanks again.

Thank you, and thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing! I had someone else tell me the UI was a bit too busy and the font needed to be bigger. Obviously there's always a bit of a learning curve with a new game, but that could definitely be smoothed out with better UI design. Appreciate your time.

Interesting concept. Having worked on projects that require robust pathfinding solutions, I respect that you were able to complete this within a game jam timeframe. Pathfinding is no joke lol.

Biggest complaint I have is that there wasn't really anything preventing me from reaching the goal except for the time it took to draw the right cards. As far as I can tell from a single playthrough, the enemies don't really do anything except attack your hosts. One of them wandered past my unguarded infection site at one point but didn't pause to attack or otherwise hinder my expansion.

All said, this is definitely a place you could build from if you wanted to expand the game. Creating more hindrances to the parasite's expansion, allowing deck customization/some form of meta-progression, procedurally generated levels, etc. would all contribute to making the game feel fuller and more rewarding. 

Congratulations on completing the game jam and keep up the great work!

Thanks for your feedback and for taking the time to play.

Thanks for playing! I agree it definitely could've been clearer.

Thank you!

I don't like Stuart

I liked being dropped into the game not knowing what to do, but slowly piecing together the objective by just messing around. My specific path through the game helped to make this possible. My initial explorations took me from the amoeba pool to the cabin to, finally, the woodlice tree. When I tried using the research bench but was told I needed certain lengths of woodlice and amoebae to complete the next research tier, I made the connection that the missing ingredient must be in the other salient object in the world--the tree. 

I like it when games are structured in such a way that they give rise to situations where you make connections of this kind. It's essentially how puzzles function. While the game is ultimately a resource collection and "crafting" game, the early parts of it felt more puzzlish to me as I figured out what I was supposed to be doing, and that ended up being the most interesting part. There isn't much game here, but for that briefest of moments, there was something there.

Congrats on finishing the jam last minute!

I enjoyed my time with this. The enemy possession mechanics were interesting, and I liked that you could use them to approach problems in different ways. The flying enemies definitely trivialized the rest of the platforming... it probably would be a good balancing idea to put them on a timer. Voiceovers were adorable. Congratulations on completing your second GWJ, and great work!

By far my favorite submission so far. Excellent level design, simple but interesting mechanics that integrate the theme and a wildcard. Dash resets reminded me a bit of Celeste. Very nicely done. 

Scientist when spamming vials at me:

Scientist when possessed by me:

Love the alien animations. Possess mechanic seemed a bit buggy--my minions wouldn't always attack, and they didn't often (ever?) draw fire from enemies.  It's very VERY easy to get overwhelmed with enemies in this game, largely due to the fact that 1) enemies have collisions, and 2) you basically only have access to melee attacks. Biomass perks were a great addition (it would've been nice to have some icons in the corner or something showing which ones you'd collected).

Fantastic work for a jam game! 

Vibes are fantastic and gameplay is solid. I was able to beat the game by just defending a single satellite (it's difficult to defend all of them given how quickly AI drones spawn over a wide area). Love the music. Flying through the tutorial to get to the play area is awesome.

Sound effects broke for me on my second and third playthroughs. If I had to guess, some signals didn't get reconnected when a new instance of the level was loaded in.

Great work--3D no less!

Awesome concept. Controls were a bit of a pain--it would've been nice to have a slider to control aim sensitivity and for mouse movement to only control pitch and yaw, leaving roll to Q & E or some other pair of buttons (that's often how games with similar control schemes handle omnidirectional movement like this).

 Congrats on your first game jam, especially going for a 3D game! 3D is no joke lol

Edit: My high score was 10.82 seconds. Pretty decent.

Having to balance between your health bars and the parasite's health bar is an interesting concept. The water deposits ended up feeling like the bonfires in a Souls game lol. There were a couple times where I was close to the brain but had to run back and was afraid my thirst meter would deplete before I could get back to my "bonfire" to replenish.

I was a bit confused about the win condition--at first I killed the host right away, but didn't immediately realize I'd lost. It would've helped to have a "you lose" screen or something to make this clear.

Great work, and congrats on finishing the jam.

Concept is a great take on the theme and a unique game idea.. Win condition appeared to be bugged for me, unless I simply failed to understand it. When I destroyed enough trees to deplete the anti parasite's health bar, it showed the anti parasite victory text. The only way I was able to win was to go directly for the anti parasite flower and consume it, which seems to be the easiest/quickest route to victory. Camera movement was a bit wonky, and sometimes horizontal movement seemed to get stuck. AI is indeed pretty inept. It would've given the game some more replay value to introduce difficulty levels, where each difficulty increases the speed at which the anti parasite plant expands.

Great work, and congrats on completing the game!

Really nice job! The transition into the sewers was a lovely twist, though I agree with another commenter that it's a bit hard to see. Loved the flickering lights. The super jump mechanics was great and well-used throughout. Game is a bit buggy, and I had one soft lock I had to reset for, so it would be nice to be able to skip the opening. Great that you had an option to turn off blood.

Great work! (googly worm eyes were great)

Screw that one train car in particular (you know the one). Nice work! Love that you jump on the horse's back after taking damage (and that it throws axes when you feed it an apple). Good luck with the last six months of your make-a-game-a-month challenge!

Sadly the high jumps didn't work most of the time, but great job with the game otherwise! I enjoyed that you couldn't just run and gun blindly through the levels but actually had to think about projectile patterns and manipulate them to your advantage.  :)

Thanks for the feedback!

I agree! Thank you so much :)

Thanks so much

Thank you!

Thanks for your feedback! Totally agree about the dialog. I definitely got annoyed having to go through dialog repeatedly when I was dying while testing the levels (especially the boss lol), but sadly we didn't get a chance to implement that. Thanks for playing :D

Thank you for the feedback, and thanks for playing!

I enjoyed my time with this--great work! The upgrade mechanics confused me initially because there isn't a ton of obvious feedback when you use the computer, and I definitely triggered sticky keys spamming shift :). Otherwise, solid submission and strong concept! The art is fantastic.

Game feels very complete and the concept is super strong and comes across well. Loved the art and general retro vibe. Great work!

Easily one of my favorite submissions. Excellent work and very polished!

Loved the premise, and the tutorial level was excellent. I had it crash on me on the third level but still enjoyed my time with it. Great work!

Thanks so much! I played Squire and absolutely loved the concept. Great job :)

Thanks for the feedback! Glad you enjoyed, and agreed about the controls. The aiming especially feels a little wonky to me on controller. Only so much you can do in 9 days :)

Thank you! Definitely not a solo endeavor.  Three of us did the bulk of the work with some support from a fourth. Check out the credits for more info. :)

Hey, I'm the main artist/composer/writer and one of the coders for this game. Thanks so much for y'all's constructive feedback and kind words. This was a blast to work on and I'm glad it came out as well as it did. Last day was definitely a crunch :D

Unfortunately we ran into a GitHub issue during our last merge that corrupted a couple rooms and the main scene, so we had to revert to a previous commit in order to submit the game in time. We lost a lot of dialog and a train whistle pull cord, which I'm quite disappointed about. After we submitted, I spent another few hours redoing the changes (along with a couple other tweaks and polish) and putting them together in a fan edit version. If any of y'all are interested in playing that version (not for judging/rating purposes of course--not trying to cheat :-) ), feel free to PM me (not sure if that's possible on itch) or shoot me an email at jesrinofongorvad@gmail.com with subject "Ouroboros Fan Edit". I'd be happy to send you a link to grab the .exe.

Thanks everyone for playing!

Enjoyed my experience with this--thanks!