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The team has just informed me that though it works in editor, the build version garden puzzle has a bug that may keep it from starting. Sorry about that.

The team has just informed me that though it works in editor, the build version garden puzzle has a bug may keep it from starting. Sorry about that.

First, thank you for taking the time to give us in-depth, constructive criticism! This was our first point and click, so weren’t always sure how to accomplish things smoothly, but your feedback gives a good idea of where to focus and improve.

I agree the inventory vs the backtracking needs some more balancing. I like your idea of events based on known item locations and I will pass this idea back to our designer. After play testing a bit I feel like being able to drop off more items in an interactable spot would allow the player to have more control as well. I sometimes chose to carry items then had to go back upstairs just to clear some space, I think more drop off could help too.

The key to the plant room puzzle is there are several empty tables that will hold 3 fallen items. Each table needs 3 different items to be counted as sorted.

I will pass on your compliments to the artist and designer!

That’s fair, I think we could use some clearer hints and indicators on why things are reacting to the player the way they do.

There are several empty tables that will hold 3 fallen items. Each table needs 3 different items to be counted as sorted.

Thanks for the feedback!

The error is cut off on the screen, but what I can read says "Devtools Network tab to debug." The game won't run for me, but let me know if you patch it and I'll come back to play!

It was really tough to keep track of how to aim the player, especially when the arm catches on collision, but the game is really fun to play and the humor helps ease some of that frustration. Really enjoyed the sound effects and how the music starts pretty calm before getting dancy for the fights.

I think this has been my favorite game to play in the jam so far! Played through all the levels and really enjoyed thinking through the puzzles. The game lends to pretty clear mechanics for the player to interact with. Nice Job!

There were a few bugs like the blue panel key not falling, or unclear effects like interaction prompts still there after the puzzle pieces were completed, but I really liked this jam game. The color pallet, the sound, the inability to die all look relaxing, like a really nice slice of an indie game. 

The sound effects and lighting were really nice. Nice presentation of the game and fairly understandable level design. I had fun racing the clock trying to get the key.

My biggest obstacles were trying to climb the stairs and restarting the level. I couldn't finish the level because every time I got to the key the force of detaching a limb threw me into the lava.

Game art was nice and cohesive, I liked the style and thought everything visually communicated pretty well. The music is somewhat suspenseful which I think goes well with the tough gameplay.  Although I had trouble deciding if an incoming dessert was alien food or space debris since everything so far had been chickens or metal junk. lol

The game was a bit difficult for me. I found the difficulty was due mainly to two things: having to stay at the same pace as the earth (hindered by various things) and being handed lot of controls/info at once. If expanded further, it would benefit from teaching a few concepts at a time in mini levels, because the game looks to be a nice combinations of mechanics but starts pretty tough for an intro.

Nice art I really liked the main menu drawing and player character, nice presentation, and cute music. I feel like this was a pretty creative interpretation of the theme. And I feel like this would be nice idea to expand into a larger game.

I did encounter a bug that would not let me progress past level 2, the end tunnel would just loop me back to the beginning tunnel. The spikes were fairly easy to see in large groups, but the smaller sets were much harder to see. For a last element of polish I would like it to take a little longer to die, it reloads the level almost instantly which makes it hard tell what caused the death. It was personally a little difficult to remember the space was not the jump control.

Requested Music Critique: (Asked my music friend what he thought) The baseline is pleasing and nice in the main menu, but the high pitch and high volume of the lead is a little grating and makes it hard to hear the baseline. In the main game the music was similarly nice to the main menu music, but without the lead sound interfering. (Speaker was a standard tv)

Pros: 

A lovely job on presentation. The art is cute and cohesive, the music fits well, and the tutorial/gameplay is fairly intuitive. Loved the snappy little dialogue windows. Really good polish. Would have loved to have the final interaction be all collected cats in a conga as an animation or as free roam in a room.

Cons: Visibility issues- In level 2 It was hard to differentiate the shovels from the cat model based on size and shape. The snake enemy is pretty hard to see for visually impaired (friend looking over shoulder) because of how close the color is to the background. And in the last level it  was hard to see which cat model was mine at first since they were similar colors and swapped expected locations, perhaps a unique color on the player or a small indicator when starting could quickly fix this.

1. It's amazing how using a similar damage to speed ratio could have a more responsive feel, I'll try that out. I know a hold button can be difficulty for those with physical abilities so I might make it a toggle on/off or hold as an option.

2. I'm not sure bloom is the right things for blocky pixel art lol. But if it's really that easy to install and work with then I'll definitely experiment with it in future projects.

3. Yeah, I agree the enemy taking damage needs some feedback too.

4. I thought it was the UI anchors! You were right though, the mode was set to "constant pixel size", I swear if it's as simple as that one little setting! I'll start experimenting with it and see if that fixes that bug. Appreciate the tip there.

5. I still think the bullets are a little big since we intended for the prefab to save smaller. And I knew about reducing player hitboxes to get that close shave feel, but I didn't realize people reduce them 50% for bullet hells!

Thanks for the video and feedback, I'll be using those to guide my "remaster"!

Thank you for the feedback, and the ricocheting bullets were our artist/programmer, Tavera04's idea.

I'll run by our team the idea of attack boost vs health boost, we had planned ( and plan to in our "remaster") to add some different boss phases, a second mechanic, and some cannons in the rooms between.

I agree it definitely needs some juice, that's something I usually run out of time for. I don't consider game juice a "hot fix" update, so I won't update until after the voting session just to be fair. But  I would like to add some particles for sure, and I debated screen shake but was afraid it would be difficulty to track the already slightly erratic bullet patterns.

No problem, and honestly that bug is kind of amusing and as far as I can tell doesn't hurt the gameplay in anyway.

I've found that last minute caffeine rush to be my usual reaction to jam deadlines, even with a few years programming and several jams now lol. My team didn't really get a chance to play test before the deadline either except to see if it worked.

I never would have guessed that was a sprite ID checker, but that makes a lot of sense now that you've told me. I'm used to using Unity's tag system. I'm curious, is there a standard or common engine used for Pico-8 games?

It was really cool playing a 3D bullethell and the aesthetics are really cool! Nice patterns and bullet types. Conceptually easy to understand by the hypersensitivity of the mouse movement made this pretty difficult. 

You guys, this is an adorable first game! The art style is cute and colorful Pico-8. The music is a nice loop as well. Thought this was a creative interpretation on bullet hell/ including projectiles. Objective was easy to understand and play. Overall  a really nice little experience. Great job team!

Here is some feedback for some spots to improve on: Parts of the chef are white like the floor and make it a little hard to see all of the chef.

The player movement is jittery near walls, possibly a collision issue or style of movement code.

The corridors are pretty tight for the size of the character, you might consider adjusting the collision box of the player or making taller corridor entries.

There seems to be a skewed placement of the food spawner, so that it tends to the right (including outside the map).

There seems to be neither a consequence for doing things out of order nor a win state? This was made slightly confusing by the score counter at the top left which could increment or decrement random numbers based on picking up incorrect foods. 

Someone's been studying the animation principles! The hand draw art reminds me of really early classic cartoons, great animations, love the jump animation especially. The visuals make it pretty clear on objectives, enemies, and route. Would enjoy if a duck was there to help get through some of the tougher spots.

Cons: Didn't have any sound and I'm guessing it was supposed to based on the soundcloud credit.

The controls didn't seem to be listed everywhere, so I can only assume I used all the features (WASD and Space)

It bothered me just a little that collecting all the coins still caused the "Death" pop up before the next level. It confused me at first.

I apologize, part of the misunderstanding was on my part. I missed the instructions when going from the submission page to the host page. However, when I had "no weapon" the countdown timer was green instead of white so it might actually be a bug somewhere. I just replayed and got the "ram touch weapon" and the counter was white this time.

Super creative theme interpretation, a nice balance of hindrance and boost with the sneeze! Nice polish and the tutorial was really smooth!

My  only criticism was the bullet, enemies, and player being all the same red color, might be just a little easier to track with different colors. The distinct shapes helped things stand out though

Well, I couldn't make it to the boss, but the enemy difficulty started off nice and slow to ease into so points for that! Didn't feel like the game was unfair anywhere I played, just felt like I wasn't skilled at the genre. Definitely a solid, traditional bullet hell style game, enjoyed the visuals and pumping music immediately told me what I was getting into. Also really great for a one man team!

Really fun twitch controls, had me laughing and frantically dodging! The weapon switching felt great and fits really well with theme. Visuals were simple but communicated pretty clearly, I like that the time color matched the power ups. Would love to see some health pickups and a level style system so I can keep playing longer.

Cons: The only visual I had trouble interpreting was the health, I initially thought it was the long bar at the bottom (though the bar doesn't seem to do anything?) but it was the three tiny dots above. would like those to be more visible.

And would like controls to be listed somewhere, though you did use standard controls so they weren't too difficult for me to figure out.

Ran into what I think was a bug, where the 10 second weapon was "no weapon". Could definitely see this becoming a defined feature in a difficult mode or level challenge though? 

I feel like a lot of thought went into this game. Your systems lend to a lot of minute to minute player strategy, cooldowns feel just about the right time to use them wisely, and using the enemies as a power resource feels great! Felt like you did a great job hitting both jams themes!

Felt that the tutorial had a little too much flavor text which made it harder to decipher between lore and mechanic at first. And that boss hits like a truck!

Bugs:

Amusingly an arrow sprite got stretched to 3x the size and I was walking around with a giant arrow in my foot

Art style and music are really great. The interpretation of bullet hell and projectile use was really creative! I really like the concept and wish it was a little easier to start playing. I think this is a gem of an idea especially for an arcade style game.

Difficulty level felt pretty high because of counterintuitive controls (ex right keys turn you left and having five directional points to keep track of) which made it pretty hard to ease into. It felt like the meteor waves came a bit quickly to start off and the tutorial was a bit of an info dump (ex a lot of text all at once to remember all the buttons). It's a bit hard to reach for left ctrl as well.

Bugs:

Frame rate slows to almost nothing when using spacebar at the same time as a side thruster.

Sometimes the game freezes and can't move forward when changing game modes (ex restart or start).

Tutorial text sometimes comes outside the screen.

Thanks for the feedback! I’ll be sure to pass on your compliments to our sound designer!

I’m  not sure what caused the menu glitch as it was working in editor but broke in the build when we posted. I suspect it’s due to UI anchors for the buttons.

I agree with you on the variety. We designed for more variety in the coding but ran into a couple glitches that prevented us from implementing more. Most interesting glitch was the boss would disappear from the game when it tried to shoot. With more time now, I’d like to add different shaped rooms so the ricochet feels different!

Thanks for the feedback! I think based on comments so far we’ll be adjusting the bullet size to give more room between bullets.

As for the rooms before the boss, the were initially created to hold tutorial prompts in the first spawn and then canons in the sequential rooms, but we had to pull the scope back to finish in time for the jam.

After the jam, we’re hoping to polish it up a bit and add a couple of the things we ran out of time for!

Really appreciate the feedback! The enemy projectiles were spawning a bit bigger than prefabs for some reason, but I didn’t take into account the increased difficulty. Also thanks for sharing your strategy, it helps me think through intended gameplay vs unintended work arounds.

I appreciate your help, thanks for hosting!

Return Of Robot Turtles by LoriTom (itch.io)

Couldn't get our game to build properly, then got timed out for the upload page