itch.io

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Yeah I haven't seen any of those kinds of graphical issues so maybe it was some kind of weird browser issue. As far as the platforms go there's definitely some inconsistency. I think over the course of development I decided on having the ones that slide into gaps stopping at the end of their path, but I left a few earlier ones with the bouncing behavior, so they end up inconsistent.. And then, as far as the rotating platforms, they're just straight up buggy and have some things that need to be fixed. I think most janky behavior I've seen should be a simple fix (it's a change I already applied to other objects but forgot to apply to the rotating platforms as well), so that should hopefully be mostly gone in a postjam update.

The core movement works really well, but a few of the abilities could be inconsistent to activate - the period where you're considered "rolling" after a dodge really needs to be a bit longer as the timing for both of the abilities that chain out of that felt awkwardly tight, and the wall run seemed to just... randomly refuse to work at times. It felt really good when it was working, but some walls just refused to work with it for reasons that I could not for the life of me figure out.

Ranged combat generally felt pretty good, especially after getting the time slow ability, but the dodge roll honestly felt kind of useless as one - the fact that it couldn't dodge melee attacks (and even seemed to instantly trigger them when I tried!) meant that getting into melee range or getting backed into a corner basically felt like suicide, so I ended up resorting to pure run and gun tactics and jumping over shots, which was fun enough most of the time but left the melee attack and stun system feeling totally worthless.

Exploration wise there were many many times where I could not for the life of me figure out where I needed to go to progress and ended up wandering around in circles. The signs pointing you towards new abilities help with this at first but after gaining a few of them the ones for the abilities you already have start to just confuse things. The samey architecture all throughout the game often makes it hard to tell exactly where you are or where you haven't already been. A map screen also would've been really helpful for figuring out where I hadn't already been, but I think critical paths also just need to be a little more prominent, as often it felt like most of the prominent blocked paths I actually remembered only led to small optional upgrades. I was not able to complete the game due to these issues - I got quite a few abilities but could not find anywhere to use the wall run to progress.

Aesthetically the game looks great - the environment really sells the gritty and drab atmosphere and the player is very well designed and animated. I also really liked the sound design in this - I have no idea what the person who said the jump sounds like jet booster was talking about, it reads like a metallic spring type of effect to me and suits the general vibe of the player really well, although I think it could stand to be a bit deeper to fit better with the player's other sounds. In general though I think the heavy metallic sound effects on the player really added some personality and helped add a lot to the player's design - it gives the sense of them being heavily armored or perhaps some sort of robot, which isn't easy to sell from the visuals alone.

I did have one very odd issue which is that the game window seemed to force itself onto the top layer by default? It meant I had to minimize the game every time I wanted to tab out or it would keep displaying on top of the other window. I don't think I've had a game do that before, I'm not sure what would be causing it.

Overall this game was a lot of fun when it was at its best, and I think I put more time into it than any other game this jam - it's just a shame how much of that time was spent running in circles through the same few rooms unable to progress.

Wandered around for a while but I couldn't find any abilities, or much of any way to progress at all. The core movement mostly felt fine, but the wall run hardly felt like a wall run and mostly just launched me off into the distance whenever I tried to use it. There was one bit in the forest that looked like it was built around a normal wall run that would actually cling to the wall properly which I was not able to complete, and the thing at the end of the sequence looked fairly important, so maybe that was the key to progression I was missing? I wasn't able to find anywhere to properly enter the brown or blue areas, but I might've just not searched around enough. The map kind of felt way too large to search effectively and had a lot of empty dead space, especially at ground level - I feel like a smaller, more densely populated map would've been a better way to go, as it feels like there probably wasn't enough time to fully populate or refine the current map.

Visually I had similar issues to Dreamnoid,  the protagonist model was pleasant enough but the fog banding was often really disorienting. Audially most of the sound effects were fine enough but the glide sound effect seemed a bit oddly delayed - the big poof felt like it was playing about half a second after the parachute had already been pulled out, I think the sound needs to be moved up a bit. The music was kind of a mixed bag, it all sounded pleasant enough at first and I think the initial track stayed that way mostly, but the forest theme got really really grating after a while.

Was disappointed the game just seems to softlock after beating the boss, I wanted to go back and find the last few upgrades :(

Most of the things I felt were missing are fairly minor polish additions that I don't necessarily expect to see in a jam game like control rebinding (mouse3 for the morph ball is an... odd choice and I would've probably liked to change it, though it wasn't a huge issue and I was still able to play through comfortably) or a map screen. I will say that having to check the jam page each time I got an ability was annoying and there should be control prompts in-game - I saw you said you ran out of time to do so "properly" but I don't think it would actually take as much time as you think - just a bit of text that pops up when you get the ability would've been sufficient.

Otherwise this is a very solid entry! It's nothing special to look at but it was a lot of fun to play - it feels really fun to control, very well done. It's also decently large and while I was worried the lack of map might make that a problem, the world was really well designed and I never found myself feeling lost - even with the very minimal visuals you did a good job of making each zone clearly distinct and guiding the player through the map effectively. Also really appreciated the amount of secrets and optional upgrades, it does a lot to cement the metroidvania feel and is something a lot of other jam entries fall a bit flat on.

I'm glad you liked the direction I went with the theme, but... I don't think the distinction you're seeing between minimalist and minimalistic actually exists? Minimalist as an adjective is a perfectly valid word, and I think what you're thinking of as "minimalistic" a lot of people (including the jam host, most likely!) would just describe as "minimalist". The word doesn't necessarily imply a person that is a minimalist.

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Yeah there's a few points that do just end up forcing you to wait around a bit. I think a little bit of that helps reinforce the minimalist tone, but some of them could probably be sped up a bit.

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I think I responded to most of the jank and conveyance issues during your stream so I won't repeat that here. As for the metroidvania point, I def agree that it's a bit lacking in exploration - I def feel like I largely designed this as a more linear game where you happen to gain abilities as you progress, so I don't think it's too surprising it came out lacking that sense of exploration, though I did also have to cut a couple branching paths for time which might've helped bump it up a little more if they made it in.

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Yeah, most of the game is very barebones visually. The very first room gives a bit of a sense of the visual style I originally envisioned, but I didn't have time to decorate any other rooms - just making the game actually playable got me down to the wire. I already have a few changes lined up for a post-jam patch so ideally I'd try to do a visuals pass and add some proper decorations alongside that, but its been hard to muster the effort for it.

The movement on this feels alright at first, but the jump feels a bit small and stiff, and the wall jump in particular kind of just... sucks. It takes painfully long to actually climb anything with it, and I nearly gave up on the level built around it because of how tediously long it took to get anywhere and how awkward dodging the enemies on the walls was with such low maneuverability (in the occasions where it even felt like they could be dodged, which seemed annoyingly inconsistent).

In general the levels feel way too large compared to the player and camera - there's a lot of big open empty spaces that are kind of boring to traverse and blind falls off massive cliffs that really didn't need to be blind. This isn't a huge issue at first when you have lots of movement abilities to make getting through the rooms faster and more interesting, but as you lose abilities it grows increasingly tedious to get through each area.

I think being totally linear and having each area focused around the ability you're about to lose kind of weakens the "reverse metroidvania" feel. There's no sense of exploration, and I don't feel like I'm being meaningfully restricted by the abilities I'm losing since each area is clearly themed around one and only one of the abilities - so it feels like a disjointed sequence of platforming challenges rather than an inverted metroidvania map.

Visually the game looks nice enough and is fitting to the theme. I did have one visual glitch where the screen would flash black very briefly during each screen transition, which was quite jarring. The music is pleasant and didn't wear too thin even with there only being one loop, so good job there.

Really cool aesthetic and some neat ideas with the changeable shot speed and recoil based platforming, but I found the game just too finicky to get very far. A lot of it was just how damage was handled, having no feedback or iframes on hit often left me low on health from enemies without even realizing what had happened and the spikes working by just trapping you inside them while they slowly ate at your health was not fun. I also felt like the single screen idea was more detrimental than anything with the current implementation, it made it extra hard to tell what was going on since everything was so small on the screen and it never really gave me the feeling of "playing on the map" that you say you were going for. I feel like the game would've been much more playable zoomed in a little since I'd be able to get a lot more precision in my positioning just from being able to see a little clearer.

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Yeah the visuals for the abilities are very much unfinished. My original idea for the aura visuals was a sort of plasma ball effect, but I very much did not have time to spend on any complex visual effects so I ended up with this very very basic version of the concept. Maybe it would've been best to just leave it as a simple circle compared to its current state though... And then of course the click has no visuals at all, I'll probably add a little indication of where you've clicked in a postjam update to make it a little nicer to use

I am curious what you mean by thinking there were alternate routes, I'd hoped all the ability gates were clear enough to indicate you couldn't go through them until later and funnel you into that first puzzle, were there any that had particular issues?

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I did actually originally have those platforms just stop when they hit the player, but the way I initially implemented it lead to lots of issues with them stopping when they weren't supposed to in the big climb room with them, so I ended up just throwing out the mechanic and replacing it with killing the player when they get squished. Maybe I'll go back to that mechanic and see if I can get it to work a little more properly at some point.

The slow methodical movement here is really cool, but I gave up very quickly after getting the attack ability solely due to the platforming following it having no respawn points in it and constantly sending me all the way back to the bell to do the by then trivial but still tediously slow walk back to the actual challenge. Learning the right positioning to get through a sequence the first time is fun, going through the same motions again and again quickly turns it into a painful slog that I'm not willing to push through, and it seems like there's no way to get back out of that area without successfully completing that platforming, so I'm kind of forced to leave it there.

The game does look and sound really good, and again I do really like the core mechanics of this game, its just the levels need to be chopped up a little smaller to be palatable I think.

Decent game. I really really liked how the abilities play - the charge was really fun in particular, but the base movement was a little slippery for my taste. I feel like the death barrier could've been significantly higher too, it felt very tedious waiting to fall all the way down every time I fell off.

Pretty cool game. The timing on the jumps felt a bit too tight though, I think it could've used a little more airtime to give a little more leeway in the timing.

Hmm... Yeah, I've tried messing around for a bit to see if I could figure out what might cause that, but I'm not getting anything. I've ended up shrinking the platform hitbox slightly though, so if things somehow do manage to get misaligned they should be a little less likely to get stuck because of it.

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Although, I'm unsure what puzzle you were forgetting the mouse click for... you don't get the mouse click until nearly the end of the game, after all the puzzles with the balancing platforms. Using it to make the climb up those easier the second time around is def intended, but I don't think you were forgetting anything the first time around, you didn't have the ability at that point :p

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Yeah, there's def a few places the game could use a few more sound effects, and the ability pickups are def a big one - even the one sound they do have is a placeholder, that jingle was originally meant to just be for the clock shrines but I ran out of time to make another one for abilities. The creature chase was very nearly another awkwardly silent moment, I didn't add the sound effects for that until the last hour before the deadline.

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Imma be real, I wrote that review right before going to bed and was really tired and not thinking the clearest, thinking back more clearly I don't think the fog really contributed to the depth perception issue at all. I mentioned it because I was mostly trying to think in terms of the background being a very flat gray a lot of the time, but most of my issues with depth perception happened at more close to mid range where the fog wasn't really in effect.

actually going back into the game for a sec I think a big missing thing that would've helped way more with the depth issues is object shadows. A lot of my issues were more with telling where objects were laterally in a room, so I'd regularly undershoot bombs or have a hard time judging where exactly to place my antigrav beams.

Decent entry. I collected three of the five key pieces and what I think are all the main abilities, but didn't feel up to scouring the map for the others. The visuals and level design are certainly minimalist, but maybe to a fault - there seem to be a lot of empty hub rooms and long confusingly windy hallways with no good landmarks to distinguish them, and it made navigation just really confusing. I also had trouble gauging the depth of objects, especially the enemies and my own projectiles, which I think was probably exacerbated by the visuals since all the perfectly flat walls and fog lead to a near complete lack of reference points to gauge depth from.

The actual upgrades themselves were fun enough, the concept of an antigravity field instead of a jump is cool, and the sticky bombs were pretty satisfying to use when I wasn't blowing myself up thanks to the aforementioned lack of depth perception. I found the stamina system for the skills to be mostly just an annoyance rather than a meaningful limitation, though.

Really solid game! The concept of a collection of mini-metroidvanias is really creative and each of the missions were pretty well designed and fun to complete.

My main gripe is with the camera behavior when moving downwards - it was really bad and would in some cases end up several tiles above the platform I was supposed to be jumping towards forcing a completely blind jump. A way to manually look down would've been much appreciated!

minor issue: the time at the end of each mission says "time left", but it seems to actually be tracking the time spent

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For the audio issue, I have to turn my volume way up to hear anything after the footsteps, and frankly it just seems like a normal part of the footstep sound - it sounds like it's some little bit of squeaking in the person's shoe or something. I'm a bit confused as to how that could be so jarring, so maybe the actual issue is something else that I'm not hearing?

Tried this for a bit but I could not figure out a single room. The only rooms that seemed at all approachable with just the gravity switch ability kept breaking due to objects clipping into each other or the walls. Reset room was often also really jank since depending on gravity direction you could easily end up just dropping right out of the room before you could register what was even happening.

Really good game, had a lot of fun and you managed to add a lot of depth to the auto-attacking combat, the HK-style pogos were a nice touch for that. Art was also really nice and successfully gave off a minimalist vibe even with the amount of detail present.

Like the first review I had some issues with enemies immediately ambushing me on room entry - the ravens in the final room in particular were a huge pain. That room in general was kind of disappointing and felt like just enemy spam, but considering its the last proper room of the game I think it's understandable to be petering out by that point.

I found a lot of the vertical platforming sections in the green area to be really frustrating - I think the camera was the biggest culprit here, it tends to lag behind the player when moving vertically which makes it hard to see where you're going, especially when moving downwards. There was also just some general finickiness with getting the hair grapple points to activate, I found them to be rather frustrating in general at various points - the slight slipperiness of the player doesn't really combine well with needing to get specifically her head to contact the points. I also wish the runes other than the final set were shown on the menu as well, I had a hard time keeping track of them. Also the menu button could use adding to the controls list, enter was pretty far down my list of keys to check so I didn't find the menu until a good ways in.

Otherwise this is a pretty straightforward and solidly executed metroidvania, I don't have a whole lot to say about it. Map is fairly large and varied for a jam entry, and the visuals are appealing although I don't really get much minimalist vibes from them even with the limited color scheme. The music did feel much more minimalist and I really enjoyed how it kept the same overall structure the whole time just with different instruments coming in and out for different areas, was very clever.

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I def agree that some of the timing esp later on was probably a bit too tight, I kind of lost the slower puzzle-y vibe a bit over the course of the game as I was rushing to just get some kind of level out to fill out the game - with more time for refinement there would've probably been more slower paced puzzle rooms, and a bit more leeway for the rooms that do require tight execution.

The bug with the block not fitting into its hole is a bit concerning, all the linear blocks are supposed to move on fixed paths and not be pushed by anything else so there shouldn't be any way for them to get misaligned like that. Do you remember which room and platform it was that happened with?

The unusual control scheme is interesting and I really want to give this a proper shot, but the enemies are just way too obnoxious as is. Just getting around normally is plenty difficult enough with the controls scheme, and being constantly knocked around by enemies that move faster than I do and are so tanky that they'd take significant time to kill even without having to finagle your positioning in order to even be facing the right direction to hit them is just. not fun. It feels impossible to make even the slightest dent in exploring this game without being killed in one or two hits and being sent all the way back to the start, and every time I think I've found a relatively easier passage it just leads directly into a dead end.

Maybe I'll try to give this another shot later, but right now I just feel no incentive to attempt pushing any further.

Incredibly creative application of the theme and a really fun game! I don't really have a lot of deeper thoughts on this, the sheer quantity of upgrades was very entertaining and fairly impressive, and the movement and exploration managed to be pretty deep and engaging even under the two button limitation. Just a really impressive entry overall.

Pretty fun little entry! The upgrades were clever and played off the clarity mechanic decently well. As far as said clarity mechanic itself, I found the revealing platforms bit to be pretty meh, but what I actually enjoyed the most about it was the slowdown effect when activating it. It was really helpful for gaining some extra precision in platforming and sold the idea of heavy focus a lot more. I think expanding on that could make for a really interesting mechanic.

As far as issues I had, the checkpoint sound was kind of grating especially when it would play repeatedly when moving through the room. I think maybe disabling the sound for already active checkpoints or just placing them in places you're less likely to repeatedly pass through would help with that. The lack of animation for enemies getting hurt or dying also made it kind of hard to tell when I was actually hitting them, especially when there were multiple enemies present and the sound cues got muddled together.

I also had a bug with the boss where the game didn't stop when the dialogue started, but it did take my control away - the boss just kept walking and attacking while the dialogue played, until he ended up pushing me out of the room. 

Overall though this was a decently solid entry, and def had some pretty interesting mechanics to explore!

Is there actually a game here? I see some cool art and concepts in the screenshots here, but actually playing the game it seems like none of that is present and it's just a very small prototype. Am I missing something or is that the entire game?

Yeah, sorry, I'm not having any success recreating it. If anything like it happens again, could you give a screenshot of what it looks like when it freezes?

As far as saving goes, you can manually save at any time by quitting to the menu - it'll place you back in the exact room you were in when you reload. I know it's a bit hacky to have to do that regularly, but doing it after major milestones should prevent any progress loss. I'll def make sure to fix upgrades not autosaving the game once the ratings period is over.

Shoot I completely forgot about autosave... I normally have the game autosave after each upgrade but I added the save system last minute this time and it slipped my mind to add that. Really sorry you had to start over, def not intended at all.

As for the initial freeze though, I can't recreate that at all. You should be perfectly able to jump and use the aura ability at the same time. Could you give some more details about what else was happening when it froze? Were the beast or platforms in range when you toggled the ability?

The definition used by this jam is based purely on ability gating - as long as the player gains abilities that unlock new areas, you're good as far as the official ruling is concerned. Several past winners have been 3d non-platformers, so its absolutely possible to do well in this jam with those, and one of the prizes this time around is even for 3d games specifically - so if you're leaning towards 3d, go for it!

Yes, you can start working on it now - you just run the risk of your initial work not lining up with the theme if you don't know what it is.

The rule is intentionally a bit odd since this is going to be one of the last instances of the jam and each of the final jams are planned to have a twist in the rules. This one's twist is that materials made early are allowed, but using third party assets is not.

best carpal tunnel simulator of 2025

combo not breaking when you missed keys gave it a nice strategy element of deciding how many hoops you could reasonably handle without breaking combo, really liked that element

fun little game! very curious what kind of potion would use an entire grand piano :p

took me a couple attempts to figure out what i was actually supposed to be doing but it was very satisfying once i did. really love the sound design, everything felt nice and impactful because of it

thank you for playing!

the reason the camera can get a bit awkward is because there isn't actually any real camera controller at all, it's just locked to the player position at all times... i tried copying over some camera code from a more standard platformer project to this but it turned out to suit this game really poorly and i didn't have time to make anything new for this game, so i resorted to just locking the camera a bit above the player as it worked better by comparison. but it does create a lot of difficulty with moving down especially, yeah. it probably could've been mitigated with more careful level design but the levels were largely done even more last minute so i didn't have time to put that kind of thought into them. improving the camera is probably the first thing i'll do if i come back to this because it really does need some lookahead for sure.