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That's another problem with that ending, you actually did pick up all those cards. During the final growth spurt you smash most of the playable area of the level which causes you to pick up any cards you missed the first time. I actually didn't even think about that until after I posted the game.

Heh, that makes sense. It was fun being able to spawn a crazy spiral of swords but it did seem a bit odd.

What happened when it crashed? Did you grow very large and then see a giant card surrounded by smaller cards? That's just the ending but it's so raw and clumsy that you'd never know that it wasn't a weird glitch. One of many things that need cleanup to make this a real, playable game.

Was the timing enjoyable? Hmm. Personally I always prefer lower stress games over high stress games so I would probably prefer a version of this that focused on the exploration and logic puzzle elements and relaxed or completely removed the time pressure. But the timing didn't bother me as it is, especially since there is so little to explore in this version. If the mansion were larger and more immersive and NPCs more talkative I'd probably want to be left alone to explore the setting.

Yeah, the "whoah, shiny" stuff is what I mean.

Now I'm nerd sniped by chess-rocketry puns. I'm sorry to do this to you: The Goddard Defense, Gravity's Chessboard, Congreve's Gambit, Pawn To V-2

Or invoke Nabokov's book about chess and go with The Defense

Hmm. I agree that Chess Defense is a bit bland. Maybe something with Gambit? It's a real chess term and sounds kind of cool. Rocket Gambit? Or the classiest of all chess openings: The Fried Liver Attack Which already sounds much more like a video game than a chess concept.

Yeah, I wasn't able to play. It was completely unresponsive.

This is nice. With a bit more diversity in the situations it would be really fun and replayable. The timing was remarkably precise. I almost always got to the point where I had enough information to make a guess in the last 30 seconds or so.
I found the writing kind of rough. The hard boiled detective style is totally appropriate but it felt like it needed some polish. In particular the first couple of comments on the mansion from the detective were cute but after that it just seemed monotonous and whiny.

The escape key doesn't restart the game for me in the last screen, I had to quit and relaunch to get a new scenario.

This has a bunch of neat ideas in it.

Having the pattern of targetable tiles differentiate towers rather than strength or attack type is neat

 Also the forced move mechanic is very interesting, that was probably my favorite part. I can imagine an expanded version of this making that more strategic and that being really cool

I'll admit that I've been avoiding playing this one for a while because I found the title obnoxious.

The mechanism of unlocking existing buildings rather than creating them is interesting, I don't think I've ever seen that before.

Gameplay was frustrating before I had the two blacksmiths because I couldn't stop clicking long enough to even look at what was possible in the village. But after that it was a little dull.

To hold my interest I would need to be able to move on from the clicking mechanic pretty quickly to something else with more strategic depth like maybe tower building or making defensive units at a barracks or something.

Isn't experimentation the point of a game jam?

When I run the linux version (on Arch with an intel GPU) it shows me what I assume is a glitched splash screen and hangs using 100% of one CPU. Looks like this:

The premise is super cute and the upgrade/heal decisions are interesting. My biggest issue was the camera. The game started with my meeples completely out of view and no indication of what was going on. I tried clicking both of the main mouse buttons and hitting every key on the keyboard to get something to happen, finally I went back to the webpage and saw the note about the middle mouse button and that got me going. Even so there were times where I could barely get the square I wanted to into view so that it was clickable. And I definitely wanted to be able to zoom out for a broader view sometimes.

It was a weird thing. I knew what the number meant and most of the time I could plan out moves based on that but every once in a while it would flip back to the minesweeper default and I'd get confused for a moment. Brain stuff.

Yeah, I think I must have been confusing distance to nearest artifact with count of adjacent artifacts. There was a moment in this last playthrough where I looked at a tile that was next to both an exposed artifact and a location where I knew there was an unexposed artifact and I went "how is that possible?" But obviously it is except that my brain keeps trying to make the number be a count.

No, I take that back. None of the screenshots show the problem I think I saw. Now I don't trust my memory, let me see if I can get it to happen again.

This is a nice minesweeper-esque game. I was confused by how the distance the dowsing rod shows is measured. It seemed inconsistent. Even in the screenshots you have posted you can see cases where two tiles that are the same distance from the nearest artifact have different values.

This is really good and very polished. I normally hate tight platformers but I played way, way past my normal point of frustration on this one. I did finally burn out towards the end of the third level. Some more forgiving checkpoints would have gotten me to keep playing longer.

The fans are a super cute use of the assets and the stump-volcano monsters are creepy and visually effective.

I found that I was flapping the fans in the wrong direction a lot, especially while jumping where I'm trying to switch from air control in one direction to fanning in the other direction or downward. It's probably because my reflexes for this sort of thing aren't great but maybe there's something that could be done with the controls to ease that, I'm not sure.

The octopus wizard is very cute. It was distracting that the same help messages kept appearing over and over.

This is a great puzzle game. I gave up on level 9. I could get everything but the pyramid. I don't think I ever understood the rule for the rail road tracks. something about doing all the tiles in it's row or column but the exact reason some orders worked and some didn't never gelled for me. I thought I understood the pyramid rule after it's first appearance but then I couldn't make it trigger on 9 so I guess I didn't.

The tutorial section was well done, effective and clever and respectful of the player.

In terms of basic game play this is a pretty solid retro feeling platformer

The world felt too big and sparse to me. I spent a lot of time walking without anything interesting happening and then I'd be at a dead end and have to walk back. I think I would have enjoyed this more if about 60% of the empty area and places where it's just fairies drifting around were removed.

I reached an area in the lower left that is maybe supposed to be dark? It was unclear. I stepped through what seemed like it might be a gap in the wall leading to a new section but then fell instead and found a key in a lit area below. By jumping randomly in the dark I managed to get back up to the level above but I could never get out to the initial area or get further to the left past the candlesticks. And then a duck sat on my head? That may have killed me but the darkness was hiding my life meter so I couldn't really tell.

Thanks for playing. You are right that there is a lot of work to do on clarity, especially around the ending. You made it through all the content in this version though.

It seems like having a web build up is a good idea regardless. I know people have been playing the web version of my entry far more than the desktop versions and it seems like entries with web versions are getting more feedback in general.

Works great! I see text and everything. Plus, this time I played with the keyboard rather than the gamepad and that seemed to resolve the issues with strength and swinging. I was easily able to climb onto the undersides of platforms. Maybe I was just doing something dumb before.

I like that the character blinks, it's a small thing but it's charming. It seemed weird that the wobbly walking animation didn't seem to correlate with the direction I was going so when I started moving the sprite would often rock in the the opposite direction. I also found the fact that I kept so much momentum and had no air control made even simple jumps frustrating. I almost stopped playing in the middle because there was one jump where I repeatedly landed a full sprite's width from the edge and still slid off the platform before I could stop, and it wasn't even one of the slippery platforms.

Once I figured out what was going on this was pretty fun to play with. The core mechanic was interesting. It would be nice if it were a bit more forgiving in the beginning while you learn the system. Like the initial crystals stay for several bounces and it isn't until later that you start getting crystals that only last for one bounce.
Having the original sprite sheet as the backdrop is cute but I found it visually noisy and distracting.

This is very cute and visually effective. It wasn't clear to me why control was completely through the mouse buttons. That felt awkward compared to splitting it across mouse and keyboard. It took me several goes to figure out the reloading mechanic, I kept ending up with just one bullet in my gun and not knowing why. I think it's a good mechanic but a bit of a hint about it would have been nice, if there was something in the tutorial I missed it.

This is a pretty solid little shooter and a nice use of the sprites in 3D. The vivid color scheme is great.

I don't play a lot of FPSs so my expectations may be off but the mouse seemed much too sensitive. It was almost impossible for me to keep the gun pointed at anything, especially if I was moving at all.

It would also be nice to have some health indication. By the time I reached the central building I'd basically decided I was invincible because hits didn't seem to do anything, but the bullets from the boss did finally kill me.

One of the few things that bothered me about the look and feel was the dark texture that was used in a few places, I noticed it on the ramps leading up to the main platform. It had a very fine texture that ended up looking noisy to me. Didn't feel like it matched the coarser more open textures elsewhere.

This is a great concept. I really like the capture and throw mechanic.

The texture tiles on the floor were very confusing. It took me several times playing before I realized that they weren't obstacles. It would be nice to have them be a different color, something to distinguish them from the walls.

I think, but I'm not completely sure, that I would have preferred a more arcade style movement for the ship rather than the more realistic style. At very least I'd like the ship to be a bit more agile. It felt very cumbersome and I don't think that added to the game.

It seemed odd to me that the rocks impacted the walls if they were floating around but could pass through the walls when I had them in the tractor beam. It would be nice to remove that inconsistency though it might require making the levels a bit less cramped. Similarly, I was expecting that the rocks in the tractor beam would block bullets and was surprised when they didn't.

Thanks. It's good to hear that people thought the climbing mechanic is interesting. I was unsure about it but it's so cute!

I'm glad you enjoyed the strangeness! The softlocks are a real problem in this version. If I continue working on it I'll have to spend a bunch of time figuring out how to design them away. The wide potion section is about where I started to seriously run out of time so it's particularly touchy.

The cards are in there because I panicked at the last minute about having some motivation for the player. So I added a generic collectable. In retrospect it was a mistake, I should have just focused on making the level explorable and let the lack of motivation be a post-jam issue.

Thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed the hair based climbing, it's something I almost dropped because it's so fiddly but it was too cute not to use.

Thanks!

This is great. Cute, fun puzzles with a clever design. Quite possibly the best puzzle entry I've played this jam.

When I ran it the first time there was something wrong with the controls. I could move with the arrow keys but AWSD did nothing. The arrow keys behaved differently too, they respected key repeats so I would continue moving if I held the key down. I almost gave up and assumed the game was just hopelessly broken until I read the comments and it was clear that it worked for other people. Reloading the tab fixed the issues and the controls worked as expected for the rest of my playthrough. I'm running it in Firefox.

The particles and lighting are pretty, though some of the transitions between lighting colors seemed rather abrupt. Like crossing over the edge of a tinted rectangle, which may very well be how it's implemented.

I'm not a fan of precise platformers so that colors my experience here. I felt that difficult jumps were out of place in the atmosphere of the game. I stopped playing after exploring everything I could find without getting the blue potion which I assume unlocked new content. But I found that sequence of jumps frustrating to the point where I wasn't willing to continue. I think some tweaks to the players movement could help there. The fact that the sprite sinks to the ground and then slowly rises after each jump is visually distracting, though I don't think it actually effects the next jump. Also, it felt like if I jumped right as I ran off the edge of the platform, in the place where I intuitively expect to get the longest jump, I instead got a very short jump. But if I jumped a few pixels earlier I did get a long jump. Maybe that's intentional but it felt wrong to me.

The only memory I got was the spider's and I'm not sure why. I passed it on the way in and heard it's monologue. Then when I came back later it's memory was there instead and I don't know what I did.

I liked the tone and I think I would enjoy exploring more of this world.

Thanks, I'm glad you liked the concept. I'm especially glad you liked the final growth sequence, that was one of the visual moments I was trying to create. The freeze you experienced was probably actually the end of the game after you collect the last, giant card. But as a player there's really no way that you would recognize it as an ending because it's so raw and abrupt, it just feels like the game glitching. One of many things that needs polish.

This does seem like it would lend itself well to procedural generation. I barely had people to play Zendo with either, though some of my friends were occasionally willing  I was the only one that actually liked it so it fell by the wayside.

Wine is a very strange environment and fonts are often a problem. That's why it's nicer to have a native build.