itch.io

4s across the board except 5 on quality. This is v well done.

Buyer's Remorse was my favorite.

I initially thought the first track was two tracks, that might be on me though.

4s across except quality at 5. Kudos for small tracks that feel connected and unified! Close Your Eyes was my favorite

5s all around except impression was a 4

Kudos for the unique interpretation of the theme--stepping into the animal's world and making an imaginary story out of that is excellent.

How did you write so much in a week?!

There's a lot to like here. For me the standout tracks are the boss tunes, which have great breakbeat-action energy. And the ambient stuff isn't bad either. I would humbly suggest looking for things that might be trimmable from some of the ambient pieces in particular; as it is it feels almost like I'm watching a longplay of the game but can only hear the music, but that sort of cuts both ways; when things feel slow they may feel slower than intended, but I think the overall effect is positive.

The thematic correlation felt a bit weak to me but the actual dreamt-up project you put it to was excellently conceived, and I found it creative and very well-produced overall.

Impression/Composition: 4
Theme: 3
Creativity/Quality: 5

Favorite track: Sewer Boss, Chaotic Stage (#18)

OK this one was basically 5s all around with a 4 on impression. GG.

Concept is a creative use of theme and the music captures it really well. A tip of the hat for keeping your titles on-brand as well. If I booted up a 3d game matching your description (I get Wind Waker-y vibes myself) and heard this soundtrack it would not disappoint.

Favorite track here was probably FLOW.

This is really solid overall. Creativity got bumped up for doing something I don't hear often, if at all, basically a dubstep waltz. Few if any complaints on any score, just a couple little details and a maybe a spot of distortion that sounded unintentional here or there. Sounds like the theme and definitely has some JRPG vibes. The only note I'd have concretely is to melody, which is that the first couple of notes put me in mind of Chrono Trigger's map ("Wind Scene"), which was not the same vibe. But I don't know what exactly is to be done about that, it's not like I have any better ideas how you'd start.*

Anyway really solid. Mostly wish you'd done a bit more of this imaginary world!

Impression 4/5

Creativity 5/5

Composition 4/5

Quality 4/5

Correlation 5/5

* To be clear I'm fairly certain after the fact I had the same problem in at least one part of my own work, but I mostly just wanted to acknowledge that, since this post is about your work.

This is pretty solid all-around. I would maybe revisit the composition on Division and look a bit more at mixing (not that I am necessarily one to talk). But incredibly good use of theme and this one deserves to stand out for making such effective use of synth pop to start with. Fells very cyberpunk.

Net Stroll was pretty excellent.

Impression 4
Creativity 4
Composition 4
Quality 3.5->4
Correlation to theme 5

Impression 4/5
Creativity 4/5
Composition 5/5
Quality 5/5
Theme correlation 4/5

This definitely feels like it belongs in a 16-to-32-bit action-RPG of some kind. the Excalibur track was pretty in particular and the tracks all fit their purpose. Maybe feels a mite 'stock' but definitely understands the assignment IMO. Good show all around.

[edit:] favorite track: Dark Places Are Scary

The piano is SO GOOD. Everything feels fresh.

Impression 5/5
Creativity 4/5
Composition 5/5
Quality 5/5
Theme 3/5

There is a nonzero chance this playlist ends up in my life outside of jam ratings.

Impression 4/5. I did not get bored.

Creativity 4/5: I never know what to do about creativity. It's phrased in such stark terms of "different-ness" but this feels creative.

Composition: 4/5

Quality 5/5: Very few if any complaints as to mixing.

Correlation to theme 5/5: Good interpretation, making the mundane 'magical.'

OH! And I think you had also already told me on Discord what I missed as well, thanks for that. Honestly the game was quality enough that that one bit couldn't do much to bring it down.

Enjoyment 4/5: Short but sweet. The boss run at the end was a little annoying but doable.

Execution: 3/5: These jump physics though, they are a bit janky.

Sensory: 4/5: Gets the job done. The visuals bring this up from a 3 to a 4.

Metroidvania: 5/5: There were a lot of mobility abilities.

Theme Relevance Classic: 4/5: Pretty classic over here, right down to the excuse plot.

Disclaimer: I may end up mentally comparing this to your awesome Omega Protocol in MVM 20.

Enjoyment 3.5/5: Bumping this to 4. Movement felt pretty good! But the hitboxes really hurt this, see in particular one below.

Execution: 3/5: Three notes here: One, there are a lot of stretches where there's really not much of anything happening in a given room.

Two, please rethink your camera angles. Sometimes the camera got moving too slowly for the good of the player.

Three, please make sure the spike and other hitboxes are more generous to the player.

The epitome of the latter two things was: Underwater + spikes + camera angles issues was not a fun combination.

Bosses were pretty serviceable for a game jam though.

Sensory 3/5: The 3d art is neat, but a bit minimal. The music is probably the sensory highlight here. 

Metroidvania: 3/5: Not really much in the way of ability progression that I could see. I liked the 'turn off the lights' puzzle in one area though. Felt a bit more like nonlinear Megaman, which might sound picky, my apologies.

Relevance to Theme: 5/5: High relevance. You're literally constantly running out of time.

Enjoyment 3.5/5: I enjoyed what I enjoyed but I really didn't enjoy the other parts. The platforming was a mixture for me; there were a lot of really good ideas but I also ended up very frustrated by some of the platforming rooms and respawn point choices. It might have been a bit too 'fast' for me generally.

Execution: 4/5: This is a game with a lot of cool concepts but it seems like a lot of design choices were more frustrating than necessary, and in at least one spot, made the platforming unnecessarily difficult (grapple bug.) Sadly this category is often linked to enjoyment in very real ways, hence the score of that admittedly more subjective category being lower. On a purely design level I would rethink your use of respawn points.

Sensory 3.5/5: Visually this is great. Audibly it worked alright. I am bumping enjoyment up to 4 to account for the two .5 scores.

Metroidvania: 3/5: While you definitely get new mobility abilities, this game feels ultimately like it's more of a linear series of open-eneded areas rather than a single cohesive world. I realize doing a time-travel MV on the level of, say, Chrono Trigger (jRPG I know) or more relevantly TimeSpinner, would be a lot for 30 days.

Relevance to theme 5/5: You are literally time traveling to defeat your past lives. Even by time travel standards I don't think it made any sense to me but this is about THEME RELEVANCE, not SENSE-MAKING, so it's a 5/5.

Enjoyment 4/5: Mostly enjoyable experience. Losing gold was a bit frustrating but besides that, no issue, and that's basically a convention at this point. Pacing was good.

Execution: 4/5: No noticeable flaws except a slight discrepancy on that sprite looking left into a tile. Maybe a few too many rooms, map could probably be a mite smaller without losing too much.

Sensory: 3/5: Graphics do the job here and are competent/unified. The old school aesthetic may ultimately hurt this one a bit, but it does still do the job. Textbox speed hurts the UX a bit, which for my purposes is going under this category.

Metroidvania: 5/5: Given the theme of Classic being present here, I think it's fair to say that you seem to be going for almost a proto-Metroidvania or parallel-but-not-Igavania-or-Super-Metroid thing, and you nailed it. (That might just be me reading my own failed entry's goal into yours, though.)

Theme relevance: 5/5: For basically the same reason. In a world where classic consoles had different resolutions, mutatis mutandis, this could have been on one of those.

Enjoyment: 3.5/5. Enjoyed this one mostly. Except for that one room with the falling exploding things.

Execution: 4/5: Not perfect but pretty well-executed. I know there was a map planned, but I'm not inclined to be super-weird about its not being there, as I wouldn't have known otherwise. I always struggle a bit with large characters and having to dodge things, so maybe that goes to taste.

Sensory: 3.5/5. The characters are well-animated; the backgrounds and some tiles left more to be desired. Enemies were somewhat fitting. Music worked well and sound choice was good. (As this is the second category reaching 3.5, Enjoyment is getting bumped to 4.)

Metroidvania: 5/5. Does what the genre does on the tin. Even had some secrets.

Relevance to theme: 4/5. Leans well into classically Igavania convention.

Enjoyment 4/5: Thoroughly enjoyed my time with this. Only a small amount of exceptions, some of which is because I happened to miss a key exit that I never found again.

Execution 4/5: Almost perfect in many ways. Very few flaws. The map in particular should be reworked to give a lot more information about room shape, even generally. (In turn, this might have also helped enjoyment, a generally comorbid category.)

Sensory 5/5: Everything fits and nothing really fails to fit. Remarkably good use of small screen.

Metroidvania 5/5: Many mechanics, creative use of small changes.

Relevance to Theme: 2/5: I did not notice the stated thing happening. I would not have known the theme without being told.

This is one of my favorites to win so far, and both of those favorites to win are games that I would buy a polished take on if they showed up on Steam. Good on the dev.

Enjoyment 4/5: I won't have a recording of this one for you because frankly, I started it, and played way too long to get my organic reactions, and honestly played a bit too late. I've not beaten the final boss at this time but it's probably the closest I've come to simply not having fun, and I don't think it's unfun enough to affect my score more than whatever it contributed to that missing point.

Execution 4/5: Solid solid solid all around. Few if any bugs. Swimming could have been slightly better designed and in one place can be triggered before you have the ability.

Sensory: 4/5: The charm is greater than the sum of its parts. The audio in particular is really pleasing to the ear, and the visual, while not perfect and a little disjointed, still has a sense of purpose.

Metroidvania 5/5: All around goodness. Kudos for the swimming ability and its implementation, and for not relying merely on double-jump and dash, although those were well-executed. The world, with the possible exception of the end-game area, feels pretty well-connected.

Theme-relevance 3/5: It fits/incorporates the nurturing theme, but there's no big deal made of it.

This was pretty good. Made good use of theme. There were some design choices that were less than awesome for my own experience, but as the behavior was pretty consistent, I want to be clear that they don't seem to be flaws in execution, but they are things that hampered enjoyment.

Enjoyment: 3.5/5. I actually enjoyed this one a fair amount, but there were a lot of moments of what felt like cheap shots at least the first few times around, and some battle rooms that felt more frustrating that fun on balance.

Please in the future consider not making players face a wall to pull off a wall-jump. Probably a large portion of my frustration came from that.

Execution: 4/5. Very few if anything in the way of bugs. There was one puzzle that thankfully I was able to contact the dev about (thank you!) but without doing that I might not have gotten what I was doing wrong. Aside from that and a couple of places mechanical conveyance might have been better I think this was pretty well done. Also kudos for the time-pressure escape. Not only is it a classic

Sensory: 3.5/5. Pretty well put together and aesthetically consistent throughout. I wouldn't play it for the aesthetics, but they don't hurt the experience.

(Note: In my actual score, I'm rounding up on enjoyment and down on sensory since in my brain you probably have a better shot at winning the first category.)

Metroidvania: 5/5. Checks all the boxes, and kudos for basically making the dash and variations your centerpiece.

Theme 5/5: Good use of theme. Mechanically integrated. The story blurb on the page actually feels a bit like a distraction in comparison to the mechanical implementation.

Solid entry overall, a contender.

Enjoyment 3/5: What was there isn't bad. A sense of humor helped! Most of my nitpicks go to execution, though they definitely hampered the effect of fairly responsive controls.

Execution 2/5: Things frequently stop the player for no known reason, and the glider ability was never explained. I assume I explored everything after getting the gun and the pole-swing; in that case I take it the game is not complete. I managed to fall through at least a couple of surfaces I

Sensory 2/5: Sprite/scenery mismatch is a bit of a taste thing but it didn't work for me as a coherent aesthetic. The main sprite was decent. There was no sound.

Metroidvania: 4/5, ticks the boxes and a more complete title would have maybe gone higher. 1 of 4 points is for slightly unconventional mobility ability, though it probably hurt my enjoyment a bit just not knowing at first if I was missing an ability or falling through platforms.

Theme (Time) 3/5: I could maybe see some different time periods in the different areas, though I don't know that it was really made explicitly part of the story in-game.

The quick verdict is that despite some nitpicks, that I am incredibly likely to back this project when it launches and to encourage anyone of similar taste to do the same.

Apologies for micro-reviewing. The first one got lost somehow.

Enjoyment 4 - I liked almost everything. The 5% I didn't was the boss being a giant hit sponge.

Execution 4 - Pretty good overall, not much in the way of jank. One weird freeze that forced me to quit the game and retry the boss from scratch.

Sensory 4 - Music doesn't quite fit the vibe of the graphics for me, but it's not bad and it feels kinda awesome to use that grapple when that music is playing. If you made a game with either more fairytalish music or a more heist-movie visual tone I would be so in.

Metroidvania 3 - What's there isn't extensively based on movement upgrades, but the one movement upgrade you do get in the demo is really made to shine by the level design.

Enjoyment 4/5: Game was good but marred by some bugs. I played the unfixed version. After one too many of the freezes during the chase, I then tried to switch to the fixed, and that was when I learned there were no hard saves for this game. (I tried both EXEs, but as this is serving as my rationale for not finishing the game fully before rating, it seemed fair to mention and not to factor into this further.) 

The game plays well enough, though there are some decisions I might have made differently. Grappling through trapdoors feels great when it feels great and feels kinda awful when it doesn't. Grappling the regular hookable objects feels decent, grappling the greens feels great when you get it and passable otherwise.

Execution 3/5: Honestly it's mainly just all the bugs in the proper jam version doing this. I'm not sure grappling works consistently.

I don't know if being unable to hit things with the grapple sword after you've made contact is a bug or not.

Several areas should be looked over for an overabundance of frustrating or tricky obstacle placements.

Kudos on the first boss, and what I saw of the second.

Please do not make a crosshair an upgrade on anything the player aims. If anything, it should come with the aim-able upgrade, and removing that should be a "downgrade" item if you're doing an accessory system later. That said I thought the grappling was mostly intuitive enough I could've done without entirely in this game, at least, given I had a regular mouse cursor to look at.

Sensory 4/5: Game looks well enough, and the music is fairly fitting. Assuming based on the external assets only mentioning SFX that it's original music, kudos!

Metroidvania 5/5: This game had a lot of creative ideas about things that could subtly squeeze just a little more out of one movement mechanic. Honestly I thought it was pretty creative for jam-scope and I really thought it was embracing the spirit of the genre.

I gather you've already fixed a number of these things. I gave it a brief play (to the start of boss one) and noticed a couple things got introduced that weren't in the first game, though I trust a number of other issues were fixed.

In any case, though I'd initially hoped to finish the game on the fixed version, I don't know that it would be necessary to re-rate any factors based on a post-jam version that's as different as the dev-log implies. but I'm glad you took the time to make one anyway because I think this game needed a little more love and it's good to know it was gotten.

Overall a solid effort but a couple of particular design decisions and bugs brought down the overall experience for me. Please keep developing things, though. And as always, this is just my player XP as feedback. What you do with it, what solutions if any you think are exactly appropriate, are up to you.

Overall:

• I enjoyed this one.
• A lot of little nitpicks felt like enjoyment/execution things, so you'll see a lot of those listed in one or the other of those places.
• You have a lot of good building blocks in terms of ideas. It feels (in a good way) like some of what I've experienced of Soulsborne titles
• Some of the points below might seem contradictory or even lead to weird results if taken too seriously. In particular I want to recall as a fellow dev that as the critiquer of course, my job is mainly to tell you what I'm seeing and if I happen to provide a good suggestion or solution, that might be a lot of things but it's not the expected result
• I made a number of comments about speed and world size--I think I stick by the speed one, but just wanted to note that whatever you do I think will work as long as it solves the (to me) central issue of feeling like one is walking through a fair bit of empty space

Enjoyment 4/5

• Enjoyed my time with this overall
• Boss was pretty baller for a first boss
• Please make everything move like 30% faster, except maybe the spears

Execution 3/5:

• (Apologies here is where most of my design nitpicks are going)
• Actual fighting feels decent. Not sure the basic dudes really needed to take 3 hits
• Spear dudes feel more annoying than challenging, though to be fair I didn't do a great job of blocking them
• Not always clear on the intended LOS for the soldiers
• Quality of Life request: Start the player with a potion and have it refill automatically on re-spawn
• Ran across some visual glitching on the web, desktop seemed fine

Sensory 3/5

• Visuals do the job. Music isn't really noticeably complementary in a good way but isn't noticeable in a bad way either
• SFX were good, ambience a nice touch. More audio feedback when getting hit by enemies would be nice
• This could go under Enjoyment or Execution, but in terms of worldbuilding and enjoyment alike I think it would've done well to consider a game area of about 50% of the size of this one for your jam entry. I feel like I spent a lot of time...walking through areas that felt empty. Walking through relatively full, if smaller, places that once appeared to be inhabited might have helped the overall sensory experience. Right now it kind of feels like someone built some pre-fab apartments for the cult or whatever it is you're intruding on but nobody's really moved in yet
• You might have a slight conveyance issue on how the boss hands work, the first time, though I'm hard pressed to tell you what I think the alternative would be

Metroidvania 3/5:

• It doesn't really register much as one right now but I feel like even though it's only used once or twice, there's at least non-negligible effort made to give a mobility/area unlock ability here such that had the game expanded, its Metroidvanianess would have similarly done so

Yes--took a few tries, but among the rooms in this game it's basically "that one room."

I'm going to nitpick a lot because a lot of little things added up and affected the scores I gave, especially enjoyment, so before you read that I want you to know I legitimately enjoyed it and it's a favorite to place well for me so far. It's notable that all those little things didn't bother me much because the experience was otherwise so solid.

Enjoyment & Execution 4 - As they so often are they're tied together and suffer a little for it.

There's one room (alluded to by Zephyr below) that requires fairly noticeable coyote time use and I had to look up how to use the paralyze ability. Aside from that one room everything felt pretty fair, movement felt good, game was generally enjoyable. Kudos on 2 bosses and a chase scene.

Discretionary things that affected enjoyment: Spike pits are almost always a guaranteed kill, with notable backtracking. Spike ceilings aren't. I would recommend doing a respawn-at-last-solid-platform-or-so for pits and ceilings and making the jump that's giving people trouble in that one room a bit more vertically generous. I would also try to time the platforms a bit more casually since they feel a bit like a speedrun-or-suffer situation, or even a "train always leaves the station when you arrive" kind of deal in some rooms.

Sensory 5 - All-around visuals are solid, nothing to complain about there. I did have random sounds happening that sounded almost like the MegaZeux bomb noise and I had no clue what the intended trigger was there.

Metroidvania 4 - Pretty standard stuff in this regard. Solid Mini-vania. Should be getting more attention/ratings.

Checked this page about something controls and read comments; I had some trouble with this room as well. You have to be pretty good with coyote time. From what I can tell, it's the only room that's really like that though.

Pretty good all around. Honestly this one ended up at 5's except enjoyment which was a 4 mostly for smaller discretionary things, in combination with the arguably less pressing issue of difficulty hitting things that sometimes felt a bit artificial.

i agree with what others have said that crouch/jump is probably preferred for fall-through platforms.

But basically anything else is either a straight-up nitpick or goes to taste.

But honestly the graphics and atmosphere and world-building were pretty solid overall, and so was the game play, even though the jump was a bit fast for me. I liked that the revealed story had a twist or two beyond what one might have initially expected.

* Edit: There is a fall-through platform in one room I can't fall through and it seemed like this was probably to prevent a problematic sequence break. That's a bit of a nitpick but please don't do that :)

Nice. If you join the jam discord you'll find lots of fun distraction comradery there!

NP. Since I know I'm not missing a ton, I'll go ahead and leave an actual rating with reasoning on each category.

This one is 4's across the board except enjoyment which is a 3.

Enjoyment 3/5: It's not necessarily a technical thing I can put my finger on (I think it's related to how quick the jump feels) but it didn't quite nail it for me. A few extra quality of life tweaks would have gone a ways

Execution 4/5: Pretty solid overall. Not a lot of glitchiness. Respawn choice, at risk of harping on it a bit, deserves a mention here, though the map feels pretty good..

Sensory 4/5: A feast for the eyes, even with the main character seeming to be in a bit more of a draft state, and my ears didn't feel so bad about it either.

Metroidvania 4/5: Getting the job done so far from the Metroid side of the genre.

Stuck respawning after the boss with 3 health. Was this intentional and is there substantially more content after this point? Please advise--I may not feel I'm able to rate game fairly with present state of affairs or be up to replaying it unless I know what I'm replaying for.

To be clear the game is really pretty and plays decently. But if I have any constructive criticism so far:

* Make the jump slightly floatier

* Never stick the player with a low-health re-spawn if you have an alternative. It just isn't fun. Normies (including me) will probably take enough damage in this one that you can probably just give them all their health back.

Enjoyment 4/5: Could have done with a little more explanation and a little less weirdness. I know that goes partly to taste, but that is sort of how it went for me.

Execution 4/5: I'm not 100% sure what was going on.

Sensory 4/5: Could do with better balances/more inclusions on sounds/music. The actual visual aesthetics were nicely consistent as far as they went though.

Metroidvania 4/5: There's a couple of mobility/attack upgrades but nothing life-changing or super-big genre-wise. Maybe a tad on the linear side.

Enjoyment 4/5: Hampered a bit by a couple frustrating sections. That last segment is LONG! But contrary to what I said on stream I think mostly fair.

Execution: 4/5: Hampered a bit by some crashes but mostly awesome. Maybe a bit of refinement on the area designs / elimination of unnecessary waiting would be nice.

Sensory: 4/5: Graphics are great, if a tad simple. Music is fitting.

Metroidvania 5/5: Props for using some very un-"Metroidvania"-y abilities as hard/soft gates for movement.

Honestly IDK if you're allowed to win your own jam, but if you are, this is a contender.

Enjoyment 4/5: This suffered for a couple of segments wherein a single missed fireball dodge sends you back several repetitive screens.

Execution 5/5: Technically excellent pretty much no notes.

Sensory 4/5: Good presentation/use of gameboy aesthetic overall

Metroidvania 4/5: This one is tough, because clearly the mobility abilities help, but there's not really much in the way of the exploration aspect and it feels a bit more puzzle-platformer. If we had decimals it would probably lose another .5 points.

Enjoyment 4/5: Enjoyed my time with this one. One puzzle might have been more frustrating than fun had I not had someone there to point out the (in retrospect obvious) solution to me.

Execution 4/5: Not necessarily absolutely stellar on level design but mostly solid all around, if a bit 'tight' as far as requirements for making jumps. i only seemed to have one walljump and it was unclear if this was intentional.

Sensory 4/5: Music and graphics get the job done here pretty pleasantly.

Metroidvania 5/5: Checking all the boxes or was set up to so far. Nothing super-clever but it's getting the job done genre-wise.

Enjoyment 4/5: Mostly had fun with a few frustrations here and there. Not always clear where to go and not always in a fun way :(, but movement generally felt good.

Execution 3/5: Some jank in the movement (not the controls properly speaking as far as I know) and well optimized generally. But it wasn't always clear what could or couldn't be phased through (e.g. I would have expected deadly spikes to be a "no" but this seems not to be true, at least not universally.) Wasn't always clear when bouncy pads would work and I'm still not entirely certain how they were meant to work.

UX needs a bit of work--I recommend less of a wait between dialog and choices where there are choices.

Sensory 4/5: Pretty fitting music/sound overall! Graphics were neat.

Metroidvania 5/5: central mobility ability (through time) was very crucial

Major points for the bubble wand. That one had some good uses, of the best type--a 'lock' I didn't even identify until I had the key, but then I almost immediately knew what it was. Brilliant!

Enjoyment: 4/5: Kept back from fullness by that knockback/ease of damage loop

Execution: 3/5: Similar, slightly jank movement and some of what seems to be unoptimized performance on occasion, but not too egregious.

Sensory: 4/5: All pleasant enough stuff. Pixels > music but nothing was bad.

Metroidvania: 5/5: By jam standards, definitely about as Metroidvania as it gets. Bonus points in my heart for doing so without the double-jump or wall-jump/climb.

I have to ask...how much health does this boss have?

Update: I beat the boss. Did you just--

Anyway, pretty fun game. Takes a few hits on enjoyment/execution mainly for the hitbox of the main character's basic attack being so small.

Could do with a bit more auditory feedback but the visual feedback piece was pretty OK.

But pretty fun besides that!

There appears to be a walljump or something required after the third scroll or so.

I cannot do that walljump for the life of me and also I don't know how to turn around--if there are instructions here that aren't in the game or that were in the game and I impatiently clicked past them please remind me. If there is no further information, I may be able to give a score, but I figured I should check before making a judgment.