I'm the guy who made that suggestion. I'm delighted by the amount of ideas people have thrown out about it--I think staying more or less within the confines of the genre, or needling at the boundaries (a little--but not so much that it wouldn't fit the jam, as Falcon mentioned above) is probably about what I was thinking of. The other interpretation I would have would be to go 100% unserious or even a bit trolly with the game, but as this isn't a trollgame jam, I'm hesitant to publicly recommend that interpretation :)

I definitely get what you mean--I'm not currently thinking that'll be happening for this game, but if you hadn't seen, we did make a full "image" map (mostly for fun) if you want one, and it should be available for download on the main page. Alas, it's not perfect, so if you want any help finding stuff, I'm happy help.

Hey all, This is pretty solid stuff. Keep it up if you're so inclined--the full version would probably be worth $ to me, and maybe some other folks too!

I liked the central focus on archery--interesting to see how many different mobility-abilities and soft-gates you can get out of variations on just that one weapon.

Enjoyment and presentation took some hits for me for how dark things were and the grappler (and archery in general) feeling a bit finnicky, but this is a pretty solid entry overall.

This game looks and plays pretty well!

I'm wary of piling on because I know others have also noted this, but coyote time should not be a requirement to make jumps that early--to be clear, I've made harder-than-intended platforming myself, so I know how it goes!

I wasn't sure where to go after getting the unspecified weapon upgrade in the mines, which is about where my journey came to an end.

The broom powerup and its uses world-design-wise were pretty excellent.

Seems like a good start, but it wasn't clear when I was making progress or not. Some more conveyance on that score would be helpful this early in the game. I got as far as getting to a house and having a scissor-girl follow me, which appeared to be a dead-end, and that's when I stopped playing. (It wasn't clear to me if she was intended to be an enemy or if she was supposed to be an ally, but she didn't follow me out of the room she was in.)

It's a shame this one isn't complete--I really enjoyed my time with it and would love to see it so!

Pretty good design and presentation. As you probably know from my stream I had a couple of gripes regarding how easy it is to get combo'ed by certain enemies, but it wasn't too hard nonetheless after a few goes at the main boss and actually going and beating all the intended bosses. Besides that, it might be worth funneling the player towards those otherwise skip-able bosses. I don't really have a lot of other hard notes. This is a solid entry and contender for first IMO.

Fail-state wasn't implemented.

The enemies were ... a lot, or at least, probably would have been if we'd gotten the failure state implemented.

Glad to hear you approve of our choice of mobility abilities, and thanks for your feedback!

Correct, I see it too and I made the sprite. Sorry!

Thanks for your feedback!

DW, uploads are disabled for the jam duration, but we'll get you taken care of special.

Thanks for the feedback! We'll be looking into some alternate control schemes for a future update; if you know of any in particular that have worked for your setup please feel free to let us know so we can put it on our list for consideration.

Hey, it's quite alright--every bit of feedback still helps. Maybe something we can still look at telegraphing better. Thanks for getting back to us!

(I'll note that I haven't run the Linux build myself, so if that's the one you mean I'll probably need to reach out you or to another tester with something Unix-based to ask)

You don't happen to know if anything else weird happened with that bug, do you? Was it on web or desktop? I ask because I was unable to replicate the problem. When you got locked in, were you able to converse with grandma and get it unlocked?

Oh man, that sounds like a horrid bug. I'll have to put investigating it on the list for 1.0 fixes and features. Thanks for the heads up.

Enemies were more frustrating than fun to fight mostly--but it's hard not to admire just, the absolute commitment to the "bit."

There'll be a map eventually...

You have a pretty decent base for a platformer here. Maybe a bit linear for a metroidvania but it has almost a Jill of the Jungle esque map going on and there are ideas you could use to make something more open-ended and I appreciated the effort towards making different area types stand out. At the same time, there's room for improvement on programming--jumps are a bit janky here and there and in one area one can even be practically thrown into an enemy. This could be a basis for something cool with a bit more TLC.

This is a vaguely exploratory prototype platformer. It checks some basic boxes but there aren't really any additional things to do except jump around at present. Presentation is competent, but it will need some more TLC on all fronts before it gets past its current stage. Still, this is a solid start--the controls are responsive and the mobility you do start with is enough to get you around the prototype area.

This appears to be a demo for a short action-platformer in a vein similar to MegaMan. What's there isn't bad, but what appeared to me to be intentional glitchiness of the first stage is a bit disorienting off the bat, perhaps more than the author intended. It still gets pretty good presentation marks, though beyond having some platforming it feels more like something in-between classic MegaMan and a visual novel in its genre.

This game was near-perfect on enjoyment. It's not the most impressive game in the jam per se, but it gets high marks for everything but genre--even there the dancing-based progress and nonlinear interconnected world (albeit a small world) is going to get it some points. Also, it didn't break.

This is a pretty neat puzzle platformer. It's not really a Metroidvania in any significant structural sense but I gave it a couple points there for being a game where you use abilities you have to traverse the level anyway. It is nifty!

This is a super-solid entry. It hits every mark pretty well--suffered a bit on design/enjoyment especially from a couple of rooms in particular being rather frustrating, but besides that and a couple of generally too-tricky-for-basic enemies (in my opinion) there's not much to say that isn't positive. The simple art might not please everyone but it's pretty serviceable and the "juice" of squash and stretch is nice.

...Can you tell me how to close the teleport map and walk away? It seems like I get locked there...

Pretty smooth and pixelicious game. Atmosphere was generally good. The aesthetics were minimal but pretty good. This one is a contender for me for sure.

All in all I got way more invested than expected in the quest of NIGHT WALKER. Movement felt pretty good in this one. It didn't really hit the 'genre' for me as strongly but I think I would like to see your work on a more writing-heavy game because when it landed there, it landed pretty well. There were some elements of the audiovisual presentation that probably could've used more work.

Thanks so much!

Thanks for your kind words!

I totally forgot to mention this: The bosses were pretty awesome.

Please do! I should be clear that I enjoyed my time with this one!

Thank you for clarifying! Yes, for this purpose, upgrades are basically a subset of items that can be collected.

The presentation here is pretty charming and I (mostly) enjoyed myself. There is a stage near the mid-game that had a room I found unusually difficult to time and execute, and it was right after a rooms that was interesting the first one or two times but sort of became a bit of busy-work timing after that. I did not go for 100% collection, but if I were more in the retro direction I could see getting into that.

I still had quite a good time, a 4/5 good time too be clear, but:

• Crumbling platforms in my intuition are only supposed to crumble after you stood on them. These ones crumbled when being passed through, making at least one screen involving those platforms more difficult than you may have intended.
• The hitboxes for the cat and the projectiles in particular seemed smaller than the visuals would have one expect. To be clear, I think the hitboxes themselves were fine, but I wish the sprites had matched them a bit better.
• The timing of various platforms and movements required sometimes felt more random or even punishing. (I realize it's hard to get moving platforms right, especially when people have multiple opinions about these sorts of things and mine is probably on the picky side.) I will say at risk of contradicting this in a small way, that I liked the platform and projectile timing being consistent upon room re-entry every time.

The presentation is incredibly charming and the world is pretty well-designed. It doesn't do much as far as new mobility abilities, but it makes you learn the ones you start with pretty well. Good show overall, likely to be on the more difficult end, but there's plenty of folks like me who don't mind such things in themselves. With some post-jam improvements on design, I would probably pay actual money for this.

Thanks for your feedback! We have posted this list of item locations in case it's needed, though it will have spoilers naturally.

Apologies for getting so technical in the below.

The intended item/upgrade loss behavior is:

* If the player's health after hit is > 0, respawn at last soft checkpoint and lose nothing.
* If the player's health after hit is = 0, respawn at last save point and lose all items collected since the last save

Of course either of those is a respawn, but hopefully that helps explain what's supposed to happen "under the hood."

I will add that sadly, the first upload DID have a bug which caused some save weirdness similar to what you describe. I've since inserted failsafe code that I hope will keep it from happening in future versions.

If you're seeing behavior otherwise with version 0.9.7 ( and you're able and willing, please find me on the MVM Discord as kkairos and DM me your most recent save file, which should be under AppData/roaming/missingcatspleasehelp/savegame.sav or a similar folder for Windows.

Sorry for all that. Thanks again for your feedback and your kind words! As we look at a roadmap to 1.0 we will cherish your suggestions!

Also thanks for playing and for your kind words! I just wanted to let you know, in case you wanted it.

I've put up a spoiler-tastic location list here: Missing Cats Cat/Yarn Locations

The good things:

• Presentation generally on-point.
• World and character design were pretty solid overall.
• I enjoyed myself once I got going.
• I felt moved to go back for higher % completion--which I consider to be a good sign.

The one bad thing:

• So controller was encouraged, but my XB360 controller had some things mapped in places that were unintuitive for me and so far as I know there wasn't any instruction on where they were supposed to be mapped, so I'm not 100% sure whether I should assume a controller compatibility issue or not...In particular, clicking my left XB360 stick paused the game, which given the amount I moved it, caused...problems for a while. Once I adapted (as I hope is clear from the above) I found the game itself quite good.

The suggestions:

• It would be nice if firing upwards kept firing direction the way that left and right did.
• Let players know what the XB360 controls are supposed to be.

Spoiler warning (though that's what you're here for I guess, haha!):
Missing Cats and Yarn Locations

So there are XBox controls the game was tested with--I just didn't advertise them, possibly partly from forgetfulness. In any case here they are:

MOVE: Left Stick
PAUSE: Start
JUMP: A
DASH: X
INTERACT: B

I do not recommend using the D-pad on left. It doesn't seem to work very well at least at present.