itch.io

Hey, thank you for hosting the jam and for playing my game!

Yeah, the intention was to make the game faster and faster until it becomes very difficult to keep up, and the player loses, similarly to Tetris. Maybe the game could communicate this better.

Nice score! :)

Thank you for playing my game and including it your video!

Thank you for playing! :)

The mazes are procedurally generated, I used the recursive backtracking algorithm. (Here's a good rundown for anyone interested: http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2010/12/27/maze-generation-recursive-backtracking)

It's quite an undertaking to attempt to make a Metroidvania game not just in a game jam but with such harsh restrictions. I'll be honest, I dropped the game soon after the tutorial (first chapter?). The mechanics were actually sort of interesting, and I enjoyed the puzzles in the linear section, but as soon as the world opened up my enjoyment dropped. I think there were two reasons for this.

1) I felt that the game's puzzle mechanics don't mix well with Metroidvania mechanics. It's less fun to explore the world when making a wrong move can make me fly in the wrong direction and making me have to spend time getting back. I suspect people will find this point very subjective but it did hurt my enjoyment of the game. I think I would have kept with the game longer if traversing the world would have been more conventional and the puzzle mechanics are contained to separate areas.

2) I feel that the graphics were too monotonous for a Metroidvania. It's really hard to navigate the world when it's hard to distinguish between areas. Now of course this also comes from the limitations of the jam. I don't think it's possible to create enough visual variety at such a low resolution to make an enjoyable Metroidvania. I did notice that you tried hard though; different backgrounds, different walls, etc. Unfortunately for my aged eyes it was just noise.

All in all, I couldn't see where to go, and it was hard to explore. (Or maybe I was impatient.)

The controls were a bit irritating at first but I was able to get used to them. It's really tough to come up with intuitive controls for a game like this because some people will find absolute directions more natural and others will prefer relative ones. If you want to go the extra mile you might consider adding the option to choose between the two.

The pixel font was hard to read. I think you could have afforded to for a higher resolution because usually there was some empty space next to the tutorial messages that you could have used.

Even though I didn't complete the game it's quite obvious that a lot of love went into it, possibly even too much! I think I would have enjoyed the game more if it was just a linear puzzle game with simpler graphics.

Thank you for reading, I hope you'll find my feedback useful and constructive!

Thank you for taking the time to play the game and leave a comment!

You can control the ball to a certain extent; it bounces at a different angle based on where it hits the paddle. I do agree though that in the jam release version it's mostly luck based. I've already adressed this for the next version.

The controls are intentionally janky. It's been a while since I came into contact with an oldschool Nokia, but I remember phone keyboards of that era to be mushy. I imagined that a designer of such a game might try to compensate with a control scheme like this. I personally like the way it feels.

The visuals in this are really cool. I don't think it's possible to pack more detail into 84x48 1bit pixel art while also keeping it comprehensible. The choppy movement is a nice touch too that helps sell the phone aesthetic.

Great job!

A small issue I noticed is that the text for the gardening pot description seems to be cut off.

Thank you very much for taking the time to play the game and leave a comment!

You are making a good point; the cherry/gem behavior should be more predictable. I'll try to address this in the next release. I'll also tune the graphics for the gems - they were meant to be gems, not coins, but I guess I dropped the ball (pun intended) on the pixel art. :)