I really want to thank-you for the inciteful feedback. To give the full backstory from the programming perspective, I chose not to let players press both because it would have required another sprite and our artist was already behind with the time we could dedicate to the jam. I also assumed no one would want to do that.
To get technical: When not touching a planet, the player experiences an acceleration force relative to the distance from each plant just how gravity works, "slow down" applies a force relative to the current velocity like moving through a fluid and "increase gravity" is actually a constant force to the target planet (so technically not how gravity works, but is intuitive to players because we spend our lives at ground level). The 3 forces all being relative to different things creates a decent that is just as confusing to control if you can do both (theoretically) and perfect play would never press both.
In retrospect, that was a mistake. I didn't test that assumption and took away the freedom from the player. Will learn for next time.
We definitely needed more stages that could be solved by going high and using gravity increase to ground pound, it seems the most enjoyable aspect of the game. Appreciate the feedback on controls.
The chaining of skills is really well done and brilliant game design. It started to become a bit of a skill check as it got closer to the end. I'm sure you could fix that up if you made it a full game.
This game felt so beautiful, like an interactive painting. Sometimes I wanted the game to get out of the way, let me draw/paint, and stay in the beautiful zone you created.
It is a cool concept and fun to drive. Something like birds flying or asteroids falling from the sky that you can physically see change in space when you pass the Chronotrail would be really cool.
The game made me feel real cosy at first, which was good and wanted more of. I did feel a little narrative dissonance because of the number of customers and the work required to create each sushi started to build stress in me. I wasn't sure which feeling the game wanted me to feel, and confused me on the narrative. I appreciated my time with the game!
The narrative scope immediately feels huge and gives an air of grandeur, which is cool. My best feedback would be to make the map on the bottom left more obvious. Our artist didn't spot it in the first 5 minutes.
If we ever do a future version, I will probably do a mechanic that lets you smash some planets into pieces ... so you can watch gravity pull it back together.... and SMASH IT AGAIN!!
We really appreciate the feedback highlighting where we need work. This was our first gamejam and programmed for 1080p, but then ran into resizing difficulty when creating the html5 version. It resulted in a viewport 1/4 of the size. I hope people who want to see how the graphics were intended to look check out the download, but will take it as a lesson for next time.
Was a bit self-conscious about the lack of content and made the final boss a damage sponge. It also takes way too long for the boss to grow so big they eclipse the mini sun(one of the difficulty rubber bands in the game). I'm hoping people enjoy the demonstration of what the mechanics can be at their limits.
We (just ZY really) use Adobe Illustrator and a drawing tablet. If we ever get the confidence to make a dev blog, we will have to post a video of ZY drawing process (just too self-conscious right now).
