itch.io

Loved the game! Frankly, with a few more levels, I think it could already be decently successful on Steam as is. The puzzles were cool and rewarding to solve and the new mechanics being introduced were refreshing and really helped keep everything engaging!

It took me embarrassingly long to realize that the stars would get greyed out on places I couldn't place them and that I didn't have to place them on the circles along the circumference XD.

The art style hit just right and bgm was nice. Sound controls give you some extra points too!

Amazing work!

Good small game. I really liked the art style (the mascot is absolutely great) and the way the game was presented.

The little puzzle segments are nice and clock quite forgiving.

My main complaint is that it was too short. I think adding some variation in the puzzles and clock time would already be enough to solve it. Like, if you pieces you needed on the first puzzle were different each time, the path on the line one changed and the button/lever sequence on the last one too. Make it slightly harder as the levels go on (and maybe decrease the timer a little each time) and you could expand this into at least 4 to 6 levels easily, even without brand new puzzles.

All in all, great work! Really cool first jam game!

Loved your take here. The narration, art style and iterative level really sell the idea of a dev struggling to get an idea out and is quite fun to witness! The paper starting to tear and addition of coffee stains were also a really nice touch! Really creative, great presentation and quite fun!

The only thin I would like to point out is that the left wall doesn't stop you from falling into the void in some levels (funnily enough, not in all levels...).

Excellent short little game! The entire vibe and coziness was very on point. I really like how the you can see the house improving after the mc starts picking up his hobbies again as well as the way they slowly start adapting to their new reality and the questions of "how did I let it get to this state?" or "why did I ever stop?". Really helps to sell the feeling of someone who got too absorbed on their work to the point of ignoring all the other aspects of their life.

I also like that the painting actually changes depending on what you select, that was a nice touch.

The art is absolutely beautiful and the music hits just right for what the game is trying to portray! Excellent work!

Thank you!

Yeah, after uploading I noticed that I forgot to place the barrier on some points of the map (namely below). I have a version in the works with this already solved.

As for the game becoming slower, the problem is actually the enemy spawning. I have a counter to prevent too many enemies from spawning at the same time, but it gets desynchronized with the actual amount on the map. Couple that with the fact the enemies refresh the pathfinding every 0.1 second and the result is what you saw. Thankfully, I already found solutions to this. The synchronization problem just required me to move the code to decrease the counter (it was right before "queue_free()" and I moved it to inside "_notification" on "NOTIFICATION_PREDELETE") and I changed the pathfinding refreshing to get less common the farther the enemy is from the player (up to once every 2 seconds).

Thank you! This is actually the first time I attempt to make animations (and art in general), so it means a lot that you liked it! :)

Thanks for the feedback!

Thank you! Aiming with the mouse is a good idea. I will implement it!

Actually, I am despawning the bullets (they have a 5 second timer to despawn). The problem is actually the enemy spawning. I have a counter to prevent too many enemies from spawning at the same time, but it gets desynchronized with the actual amount of enemies on the map. Couple that with the fact the enemies refresh the pathfinding every 0.1 second and the result is what you saw. Thankfully, I already found solutions to this. The synchronization problem just required me to move the code to decrease the counter (it was right before "queue_free()" and I moved it to inside "_notification" on "NOTIFICATION_PREDELETE") and I changed the pathfinding refreshing to get less common the farther the enemy is from the player (up to once every 2 seconds).

Thanks for the feedback!

Thank you! I will!

Thank you! Yeah, it needs some work. I think the suggestion other people made about letting the mouse be used for shooting is good solution to that. I am already working on a score system (it kinda works already, but increases the score a little too fast for my liking).

Thanks for the feedback!

Okay, first off, I am sorry. I feel like I didn't do a proper review of your game. I didn't even know there were other floors.

It seems that there is a bug where, sometimes, when it is time to go to another floor (aka, when the doors and item are supposed to appear), nothing happens instead. I was unlucky enough to get that on my first time clearing the first floor, so I just assumed that was the end of the game. Upon reading your reply, I realized something was off and went back (had the bug a couple more times on random floors too, but it seems to only happen sometimes without much preference for any specific floor).

As for the comboing, you are right, I did undervalue it. Taking your reply into account, I tried to use it more and rely more on the recovery times and timing to get around. It was a lot better. I think the main reason I didn't do it the first time around is because it didn't feel reliable when I was getting started. Far too often it just ended up being a trade of blows instead of me being able to deal damage and escape, specially against the half circle attack guy and the stab guy. A bit more of practice and understanding of the enemies did fix it though.

That said, I still feel like the half circle guy attacks you just a tad bit too fast when it manages to get close (I am mostly talking when there are 2 or more of them clumped up here). I say this because I noticed that this enemy in specific was the main (albeit no the only one) reason getting caught in a clump was basically death and that I had to rely on pure hit and run tactics against big clumps. The way it is now, their attacks pretty much lock you inside the clump (because they knock you back a bit and come really fast) and deal far too much damage in far too little time in that situation (like, you get hit once, the hit slows you down and suddenly that is enough for the same enemy to hit you 2 more times or just lock you inside the clump for the time being). Sometimes you get lucky and manage to land a half circle attack of your own to escape, but it is never guaranteed that it will work and it will certainly have cost you A LOT OF HEALTH before you escape. As such, I have two suggestions of how to balance it: Either reducing the base speed of attack so they don't lock you in or deal massive damage so easy and fast or giving the player some invincibility frames. Now, I kinda feel like the second one doesn't mesh too well with the current vibe of the game, so my first suggestion is my favorite.

It is interesting that you mention making them bump into each other because, as it is, I noticed them doing something like that sometimes, but in a very buggy way. Sometimes, specially when I used the stab (hitting several of the clumped up enemies) followed by the ball attack, one or two of them would "teleport" a bit (more like what you would expect of a game stutter, except everything was running normally, except of these guys and only for that moment). Since they just sorta of teleported, it was more frustrating than anything else, but a properly implemented version of that sounds like it would be a really cool feature.

Another small suggestion is that, when you stop moving the character keeps looking towards the direction that you were looking before right? Well, that only works for up, down, left and right currently. I think it would be cool if it could also keep looking diagonally when you stop. This can be useful for comboing in a diagonal since, currently, you can only combo that way if you keep advancing towards the enemy non stop, which isn't always smart.

As for the highest floor I reached, the first time it was the first (for obvious reasons) but, for the second, it was the boss floor (you said it is the 11th floor, right? I forget to look at the number in game XD). Haven't defeated the boss yet though. Can't seen to figure out how to damage them without it becoming (again) a trade of blows. Probably a skill issue if I am being honest XD.

As for combos, I find that adding stab to the end of nearly all of them works really well, mostly because, after the first few attacks, the enemy tends to have been knocked back a bit, so a ranged attack works well and, unlike the ball attack, it can actually hit several enemies at once, which is useful to prevent getting attacked by a second enemy while you are finishing your first combo. I find that is specially true for the A combo.

For the B combo I find that the tow shortest range attacks don't make sense so I try never adding them here. This is because the attacks already on this combo are already long ranged, so it is likely the enemy won't even be close enough to be hit by a short ranged attack when you are using it.

The C combo felt the me most flexible for me, on the sense that nearly all the attacks could be added here and it would result in a decent final combination. My favorite to add here was the stab though (less than with combo A, but still) and, once again, it was for a matter of range. The C combo starts with a mid low ranged attack, so following it by a mid high ranged attack means there is a better chance of the enemy being in range to get hit.

The D combo is one where I didn't really like to add anything other the more dashs. For me, that was more the dash button than anything else (also, if you add 2 dashes here you can get a very nice boost of speed for some fights). Now, to be fair, dashing and hitting with the half circle is a good strategy, but, since the enemies don't seem to get hampered in anyway by the dash itself (only by the attack that follows it), it always felt too risky. Unless your timing is good for it, you get hit, likely before you even hit you opponent, Maybe I am missing something (again), but that didn't feel like the most useful place to put the extra extra on the combo.

Another thing I didn't like to do was add a dash to combos A, B or C. This was mostly because I would be accidentally dashing into enemies even more often than I already do and taking lots of damage. I am not that good at it, so changing directions immediately while keeping track of the combo attacks and enemies was a tad bit too much for me.

With all that said, I am actually increasing my rating of this game. I liked it before, but now, with the extra floors (they feel like extra floors to me okay XD), it is considerably better in pretty much all aspects. Congratulations! Your game is really good!

Really liked the art and the music was quite good too. I don't usually play rhythm games (partially because I am really bad at them), but this one was actually really nice!

The boons that you can buy after each successful music were a nice touch.

About the controls. As cool as holding the keyboard as a guitar sounds, sadly, my current setup simply doesn't allow for that (wire too short). WASD works, but is very clunky for a rhythm game since you have to alternate a finger for both W and S. Using F1 through F4 while having the keyboard in its normal position was what I ended up doing, but it meant my hand was pretty far on top of it so I would either let it fall on top of the keyboard (pressing a lot of keys, including Alt, which means I could accidentally do an Alt+F4 the moment I lost focus) or leave it a bit suspended the entire time, which tires the arm quite fast.

My suggestion is quite simple: Either change WASD for something like ASDF or give the player a third set of keys to work with, like UIOP or GHJK. Frankly, the ideal solution is to add custom keybinds so people can change it to suit their needs, but it is a game jam so a third set would do it well enough.

Great game though! I think you have the base for a good rhythm game here!

When I started the game it had a small scene but then I immediately got teleported somewhere and attacked to death with no controls responding and the screen going dark, only to have some text appear (that I can't read because the screen cuts off).

I wanted to put it here in case you didn't realize these problems. Maybe Shovel would accept you putting a link in the comments with a correction so the game is playable? I dunno, but it is worth a try.

From what little I saw, the art was really good though!

I think the only thing you can update during the jam is the itch page, not the game itself. You can add a warning on the page about the bug though, so people don't find out the hard way.

I will have a look at the links. Best of luck!

The game is cool and the fact that every level is a different type of game really adds to the lore of it being someone trying to learn how to game dev.

The platformer section is the one that feels the most like a finished game, even if it is rough around the spots. Reminded me a bit of the old Flash platformers I played back in the day. I liked the different types of platforms. The hitbox for the spikes was a little counter intuitive (as in, it went a little higher than the sprite would indicate) and the movement was a little too sudden, but that did help make the game feel harder overall. It was a fun experience (if only a bit rage inducing).

The stealth section was fun, but perhaps a bit too easy. The art really came together on this one though. Other than the bits with the dev on their apartment, I would say it was the most charming art on the game. There was a little bug where enemies could get you across the wall that killed me a few times, but it was easy to work around it.

The FPS section was the clunkiest (and the game recognizes it XD). If the platform section had slightly too sudden movement, this one had painfully slow turning (while still being fast for easily aiming). There were also two game breaking bugs here as well. One was that you can just fall off the map by going left and the game just keeps going with you falling, effectively hard locking you. The other is that, if you play the FPS game before the others, the mouse will be forever locked to the center of the screen, meaning that, the next time you try to select a section/game to play, you can only select the stealth section so, if you didn't do the platforming one before it, you are soft locked.

All in all, I liked the game. It was fun and it did capture what a dev's first few games are probably going to be like. The fact that you did systems for all three types is also a feat considering it is a game jam.

Great work!

Really cool little interactive experience type of game! The art is really pretty, the music is really good and the general vibes of the game are incredibly cute and sweet! The little cutscenes are REALLY well made! The forest is just big enough to feel like you are lost in it/feel like there is a big unknown world out there, like a baby would feel the first time they go exploring. I needed the wholesomeness in my life, so thanks!

I did get some stutters (and I can see some people did as well), but nothing serious or too disruptive. I will say that I feel like that usually happened when I bleated and immediately started moving right/left as fast as I could, so it might be something about how the moving is processed in relation to the animation ending.

Game is good! Liked the way you implemented it! It is really hard!

Couple suggestions:

- Please, make a way to restart the game without having to move my hand away from the keyboard. Considering it auto starts on the first level, I was having to scramble to reposition my hands every time I needed to restart, which isn't ideal.

- The combat is good, but you had the some of the same problems I had in my game, namely the pathfinding getting stuck in corners and perhaps an over incentive of the player just running, attacking once and running again. It works and gives the player the feeling of struggle since you can't even stop or you will take damage, but at the same time it also locks the player into a repetitive and predictable playstyle (for me I mostly used the spear attack because it had the most range and, sometimes, the hadouken like one because it is a projectile, alongside the dash to evade the enemies, mostly ignoring the other attacks). Giving the player some breathing room just so they can try to use their whole arsenal is a good idea (albeit hard do effectively).

- Sometimes the enemies surround you and you are basically a goner. Again, it makes sense and contributes for the game feeling really challenging, but you might want to look into either making it harder for them to surround you completely or make a way that the player can effectively respond to being surrounded a possibly get away (if you want to keep the game really hard, I suggest the later and making it so the player can't use the solution too often/it costs the player something to do it/it is hard to pull off).

All in all, great game, specially for the short time we had!

Amazing puzzle game!

The idea is really creative and really well implemented. I was a little lost at first on how the game works, but, after some trial and error, I understood it and it became quite fun.

The music is great. Calm and doesn't get on your nerves even when you are wracking your brain over the puzzle and maybe a bit frustrated. I find that to be a great thing for a puzzle game to have.

The fact that you made working saves is also a great plus, specially for a game jam game.

My main suggestion is that the game could use a detailed tutorial on the beginning to let the player understand how the mechanic of looping moves and steps work.

All in all, great work!

Great game! Loved the vibe and it was really fun in a "The Stanley Parable" way. I like how you caught me pressing keys that you didn't account for (like ´ and ~ )   or the fact I didn't use the keyboard at first (and spawning an A button was great).

Two things I think would have been really good to have are if the narrator called you out when you press the "a" button on the first screen, but go out of your way to not press it during the layout section or when you refuse to press anything to start the "celebration" for a full minute.

Thank you! I really appreciate the feedback!

To be honest, there was a counter for enemies, but it wasn't working properly (hell, even the counter that is supposed to stop the game from spawning too many enemies at the same time isn't, hence why it becomes laggy after a while) and I was out of time so I couldn't fix it and deleted the code. I do think that would have been good though.

The feedback idea is a really good point. I will keep that in mind.

As for sound, my original idea was to have the game be responsive/follow sound and music (hence why it is called anxious rhythm). Attacks would need to happen in a rhythm and the colors of the level would change in sync with the music. That idea died when I realized I wasn't even gonna have time to get sound into it though.

All in all, my biggest problem here was time management (most of my time went into making the main characters sprites and animations when it should have gone into the game loop) and underestimating how much it would take to get even the basic mechanics to work.

I might go back to this project and try to implement my other ideas later, but I would likely start from scratch if I do, so I can make a consistent art style and avoid the mess I did on the code this time around.