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Thank you so much! I just played your game too and thought it was really cute. Creative controls too!

Very cute and creative idea! I loved your visuals and your sound design. I did find the actual gameplay a little difficult and aimless, so maybe some more hints on how to get started would be helpful. But for a Jam this is pretty well polished!

Thanks for playing our game!

Thanks for playing! I tried yours too and I liked how the snake moved in response to the mouse position.

The snake is interesting to control, I feel like it has the potential for a lot of player expression. With a little more of a tutorial to help guide the player I think this concept could lend itself to lots of additional layers!

Thank you for your encouragement! I played your game too, and I thought it was super polished. Well done!

Great job! I had so much fun playing your game! I feel like you nailed the balance, and the variety of enemies and powerups was super creative. I had fun building my hand and just letting the beads rip across the three tracks. The music was also a real banger.

Thank you for playing! I played your game as well and really enjoyed the arcade-y combat. Cheers to a successful Game Jam!

Gotta say, I loved the boomerang weapon! I wish I had infinite of them, it was so satisfying to bonk an enemy and have it return to my hand very quickly. The edges of the screen looping fit your combat mechanics really well too. I think with a little more time to tune more weapons you could make this a really fun "get the highscore" arcade game. My only constructive feedback is some of the heavier/slower weapons weren't as fun to play with as the lighter/faster ones, so I always discarded them.

Wow, your kind words really mean a lot to me! Particularly coming from one of the developers of my favorite game so far this Jam!

You caught us! The main secret to succeeding with our game is definitely "draw bigger circles!" Sometimes it feels like a cheat code, haha. So we definitely didn't nail the balance of the game, but on the other hand, it seems like many of our players didn't discover this trick, so we probably could have telegraphed it more, maybe through more careful design of the first boss.

You must have fought Nullframe "Neon Oblivion" as your final boss! He was designed by one of my co-developers, and he is easily my favorite boss in the game. I'm glad you got him as your random selection. Great idea to take his Corruption spawning ability and add smaller versions of that to the other bosses, that will help balance the "draw bigger circles" strategy.

Thanks again for taking the time to play our game and share your detailed feedback. It really made my day! Lots of respect for you and your teammates.

Thank you! We actually really struggled to theme this game, which is unusual for our group. The synthwave aesthetic really didn't come together until Saturday, but we entertained western and even biological theming as well at different points.

Totally hear you on the mobile game port! One of my co-developers lamented that we didn't prioritize any time to look into connecting our input system to register touchscreen touches, but it's definitely something for us to look into post-Jam.

Well said! Thanks for playing. =)

Thank you for your kind words! It means a lot to me coming from one of the developers of Our House.

One of our primary inspirations was actually the Pokemon Ranger series of games on the DS, which has you capturing and subduing pokemon by wrapping repeated loops around them using the stylus!

It took me a really long time to complete my first loop. I died so many times at those pendulums, and when I finally made it past them I ran off the cliff where the track splits and narrows -- I almost gave up right there. But I'm glad that I didn't, because once I had previous versions of myself to mess with I started to have a lot of fun! It became a game just to figure out how to knock my old selves off of the track without wrecking my time or going off the track myself. I was thoroughly entertained when I noticed my purple self was consistently knocking out my green self for me, and slowing down in the process! This is the foundation of a very fun concept, I think you should keep on developing it. =)

Cheers!

Awesome work on this, I love a good arcade-y "get the high score" game. I was also inspired to make an arcade-y game for this Jam. I like the number of different targets you put in this game and the decisions it forces you to make. "Do I go after the golden sprint for the extra points, or do I veer off course for that can of gas? Is driving in the grass worth it?" The boost mechanic was fun, and it was a really smart decision to let the player bank multiple of those. And the temptation to run off road to get those is high, because they give you invulnerability when you need to blast through some obstacles. Overall, very well thought out gameplay! Cheers!

I really enjoyed your retro aesthetic (I was also inspired by retro stylings, but in a totally different way). Fun twist on the murder mystery genre, and I like your take on the time loop! I find it more unique than most of the other time looping games, so great job!

I was honestly blown away by your game! This is my first 25/25 I've awarded to a game in this Jam! Congratulations, you built something really great and I hope you're really proud of it! I have never been so motivated to play one of these games all the way to the end. Your production value feels much greater than what I'd expect for a 96 hour build. The narrative cutscenes are full of color (literally and figuratively), and the puzzle gameplay was innovative and thoughtful. I love that you had a false ending too, to let the people that wanted a shorter experience bow out and to let the people that wanted to see your more advanced mechanics get what they wanted too. Very clever game design. I reached your second ending, and that last puzzle almost stumped me. I had a very satisfying "eureka!" moment when I realized I needed to not move the first yellow house all the way to the left as my first move.

You inspired me with this game! I haven't dreamed of making something so ambitious in both gameplay and art/narrative for one of these games before, but now I want to at next year's Jam. Thank you! If you can set aside the time, I'd greatly appreciate your feedback on my comparatively more modest game.

Cheers, and congrats on an amazing game!

Hey, thanks so much for playing our game and sharing your thoughts! We had a lot of fun theming it around the synthwave aesthetic on the final night of the game, it's really validating to hear that you liked it. I'm glad you caught the extra margin of error we built into the looping, that was a late addition from one of my teammates but definitely makes the game more fun to play.

Geez, I'm sorry about your wrist! An earlier commentor suggested adding click-to-start and click-to-finish instead of click-and-hold to our loop drawing, and I think that would be a really helpful addition to address the mechanical strain of our game.

I love the narrative and the effort you put into explaining the game up front to make it easier for players to learn! Much appreciated. I did find myself staring at the top right corner more than the main game scene, so I do think it struggles with that classic "minimap" game problem a little, but it was still fun to try to get all of my marinara back and get that 100% sauce coverage.

This game is so good! Great job, and cheers on your first GMTK Game Jam! This year was also my first jam where I tried to simplify and just build something fun, so your development story really resonates with me personally. I'd love if you tried out my game too and shared your feedback with me!

I particularly like how you expressed the loop theme by unlocking more disasters on each play through. It's funny to think that the "disasters" are the fun part of the game and that we as players want to unlock them! I found the pacing of the disasters expertly tuned to keep me moving and keep me engaged. My only point of feedback is I wish I could jump through the roof of the carts. Sometimes I missed a jump because I clonked my head and fell into the lava. But even that wasn't so bad because in the beginning at least it meant I just got to unlock more disasters!

Seriously, great job! Cheers!

Thanks for playing our game! Yeah, we spent a long time fine tuning the difficulty of the game to try to make it accessible to a wide audience. If you ever rolled the Ghost Line power-up I definitely recommend taking that one! It's practically a cheat code built right into the game.

I love your classic Pokemon inspired aesthetic! I had a lot of fun exploring the house and clicking on everything to see all of the text that you wrote into the game. Of course I was left wanting so much more when I saw where it ended... You should definitely keep working on this game, I'm confident there's an audience for it! The idea makes me think of classic Pokemon meets The Legend of Zelda: the Minish Cap.

Thank you for your kind words and for playing our game! I played your game too, it has a ton of potential, I hope you keep building on it.

Very interesting concept! We were also thinking about theming our game around viruses and bacteria at first before settling on our 80s aesthetic. I think you have the core of a cool game idea; I'm actually surprised that this is the first programming-type loop game I've played so far this Jam. I think the main thing a more fully fleshed out version of this game would benefit from is a tightly scoped tutorial section to walk you through some of the decisions you would make in choosing which upgrades to buy and which actions to choose to put into your loop. I got through level 10 with just an Attack and a Defend action repeating quickly in my loop and a bunch of the visible upgrades unlocked, but I think this has a ton of potential!

That's very cool, I didn't realize there were more than eight torches on the map! Very nice game design. =) 

Wow, thank you so much for your detailed feedback, I really love it! I hear you about hand fatigue. One of the first risks we called out while brainstorming this concept we dubbed "the claw" by forcing you to hold the click for long periods. Just a single click to initiate a line would have been a good idea to experiment with.

I'm thrilled you noticed the Pokemon Rangers comparison, I was definitely expecting more people to pick up on that! We had tons of influences, but that one was probably our core most influence in designing this game. We did consider drawing other shapes or drawing really precise circles, but discovered that it subtracted from the game feel we were going for: one of frenetic energy and fast and loose loops.

The trick to getting long loop streaks is to draw bigger circles! Everyone starts off drawing loops that are too small, but once you give them room to breathe your multiplier starts to go up. We wanted that to be an "ah-ha" moment for the player, but it was probably too subtle and not telegraphed enough. That issue is actually what inspired our "Ghost Line" powerup, which lets your loops pass right through enemies for a few seconds. Great for looping fast and letting it rip.

So glad you liked the art vision! Thanks again for your detailed feedback, it's super appreciated.

P.S. I played your game and really enjoyed it!

I really liked your game! Very Outer Wilds with the different world events taking place at fixed time during the time loop. Your puzzles were fun and well defined. My only critique is I almost gave up at the very beginning because I couldn't push the box down the stairs to the lever that opened the door to the southern most torch. I thought it was a pressure plate because it looked very similar to the pressure plate I had already seen for the first torch on the right after you get out of the starting area. Right as I was about to give up I noticed it had a little brown something on it, and as I approached I noticed that was an interactable lever. I think removing the boxes in the southern area would clear up the confusion by helping differentiate that puzzle from the first pressure plate puzzle.

Your art vision and sound design were really peaceful and sweet. And the grappling hook and teleportation powers added great additional layers. I loved how you could use those persistent powers to retrieve the initial torches must faster on subsequent loops. Great touch.

Well done!

I found the acceleration on the player a touch too slow to start and too fast in the middle for the precise jumps, but nice implementation of the looping theme! I liked the puzzles you strung together.

Very high production value on this game, great job. I love the artistic style and the idea was very creative. Makes me think of Braid from back in the day!

This game is really cute! Short and sweet. Your puzzles were fun to think about, especially with that awesome ditty playing in the background.

I had so much fun playing your game! Short and sweet, with satisfying decisions to make and really strong visuals and sound design too. Great job, I'm surprised you don't have more ratings yet!

Wow, that first piano chord and the colors when I first booted this game! Some how it really hit me right in the feels. I love your artistic vision for this game, I can't believe you don't have more reviews yet! I like how you  made sure to spawn new obstacles when they were out of my field of view, that was a nice touch.

Your sound work is great! The sound effects are really crisp and satisfying. I do wish the camera was a little more zoomed out to help me see what is in front of me and behind me a bit more, but I understand that that is part of the game's balance so I'm sure it's a tough balance to strike! Good job.

This game is a lot of fun! We actually built quite similar mechanics; it's so fun to see where we made small different decisions and how those cascaded into different games. I really liked the later stages where I had a longer snake and more speed points. I found myself wishing I could pick up items to increase my survival rate to make up for small mistakes I made earlier in the game when my snake was smaller. Just so that I could have kept my run going for longer!

Thank you so much for the kind words! Unfortunately Windows wouldn't let me download your game as it thinks it contains a virus. Looks like you're getting phenomenal reviews though, so great work!

Thank you so much, I personally spent quite a bit of time tuning those two effects so it feels really nice to get called out for it! I played your game as well, and I think your core mechanic is very well tuned, good job!

The core play mechanic is very well tuned, I think you spent your time on the right focus areas! I also really appreciated how you had a well thought out tutorial for bringing the player up to speed on your game's main verbs. The art and music were thoughtful as well. I wish there was a bit more, but was is there is a quality experience!

Thanks for the kind words! I thought your game was super creative too!

I really enjoyed your game! The artistic and musical vision was strong, and the idea was super creative. I also really liked your narrative. Give poor Atlas a break! My only constructive note is that I found it really hard to think about what changes I would need to make for each failed attempt. I wonder if you could crunch the math out for the path the planet would take and show that to the user before they launch it. You obviously don't want to give the whole path away, but I imagine using an alpha gradient to reveal the initial part of the path could be great for helping the user think about where to aim.

Even without that I had fun though! I beat 10 of your levels and got stuck on the first laser level.

Thank you for playing our game!