itch.io

thanks, perhaps next time 😉

Can softlock yourself by buying only cauldrons at the start :D

yep, I know, didn't manage to polish all the stuff in time

Hello.

There is this game jam https://itch.io/jam/core-mechanics-challenge-2025-summer which is not shown in the jam calendar for unknown reason. I also mailed the support (ticket 300474), but still got no answer after more than a week, so I decided to try and write here. The jam itself was published more than a week, maybe two, ago.

I think this game jam has pretty unique and interesting idea and that's a pity it is not shown publicly. And more of that, you can't even find it via search.

Host of this jam had similar issue with their previous game jam.

So the question is, why this game jam is not publicly available, although it is well decorated and unique and more than enough time for its review has passed?

Спасибо, что поиграл).

Да, этот баг уже в последний момент заметили, но не успели поправить, но да, срабатывает только в первый раз, т.е. если не пытаться вернуться обратно в первом прохождении, то всё ок должно быть.

Thank you very much for playing and the review!

Thank you for playing! 

On 3rd level you need to make it so platform with cube stuck on the top-right level part. Then you can jump there from the most right platform and take the cube.

Thanks :D
Interesting, didn't happen to me, perhaps some rare case.

Based on the jam description, you can "get to the objective", so I think "'forever' running" was more about that your character can't stop moving, but it still can reach a goal. So I think it's fine.

Yeah, it can be hard to remember all best practices, when they also can be scattered in different places in godot docs or just internet overall, so I decided to make some kind of inner docs for it.

Nice idea :)
Got to 348 points

Cool game :)

Leaderboard should show only your PB I think, otherwise 1 player can fully fill it.

And there is a bug, that if on death you go to the main menu and then back to the game, then you will respawn and your score and level won't reset.

Thank you! My teammate went hard on these :D

Good game, simple concept , but engaging at the same time. My main issues were:

- 2nd boss - you can't really predict, where they will shoot, so that's more of your HP check, not skill;

- 3rd boss - well, I guess you already know;

- Purple wall - I would make it disappear far more faster. Like I even managed to kill 3rd boss somewhat early, but then died just because I had to wait for passage to open and then shredder killed me. So yeah, Like I think death on boss because of dps check is more fair, than waiting some wall to disappear, which you can't really affect directly. So that's "I died because I didn't have enough damage" vs "I died because this purple wall disappear for far too long".

Good work, gameplay is pretty engaging that I even managed to beat it. (my time 4:56)

Controls felt a bit clunky, but maybe it is because of super small second jump. 

Also in rock climbing area https://ibb.co/zHBW827g top rock doesn't have a collision, so when you try to jump on it, you fall down.

Also you should disable itch.io fullscreen button, if you have unity one. Since itch.io button doesn't work properly and overlaps the unity button.

Good work, one of the best games I've seen so far here. Though I must say I'm not big fan of constant white flashes. Also would be nice to see checkpoints, like for example on that green thingy after first 2 encounters, cuz I found 3rd one pretty hard and died several times there, cuz of which had to redo first 2 encounters several times.

Nice attack-jump mechanic. I would say purple thing platform looks a bit deceptive, like its top part looks clear and safe, but you actually die if you get there without attacking the purple thing. Also seems like attack doesn't have a CD, so you can just spam it. Sadly didn't manage to test the hook, because at the end of level 1 I got a crash (Web). Also sometimes game was freezing at some random moments.

Thank you! Do you mean that game window was too small?

Yeah, small white crosshair was initially for gamepad support, but didn't manage it implement it in time. So basically you can just look where your mouse cursor is :)

Interesting theme implementation, keeps you in tension, but not too much at the same time.

There was a bug for me, that after I died I had to restart the game, because couldn't confirm any options picked on death screen. Also game could have some kind of tutorial, because at first it wasn't obvious you could use dash as third jump, so at first  it was unobvious how to get to certain places.

Interesting concept, I wish vehicle would move faster, because it can take some time going back and forth.

Issue-wise, left mouse click didn't work for me, like I guess it is supposed to launch a bomb, but it was just spawning some black arrow. Also I would remove camera drag I think, because couldn't really clearly see the right side of the screen, because camera was offsetted to the left. Also you can skip the boss and go straight to the end.

Not bad, sad that there is only one level, would be more interesting to speedrun it on a larger and  more complicated level.

Also sliding felt a bit too OP, like it gives you more speed from what I've seen, so basically running is useless and you should spam sliding whenever possible.

Nice game, I enjoyed it. I would only say that:

- 2nd boss, 2nd phase, fireball explosions. They have kinda loud sfx cuz they explode at the same time;

- "E" attack seemed a bit weak, because dps was similar to autoattacks and it didn't generate a lot of stun. At its laser-immune feature is kinda meh, because it is much more profitable to just get dodge counter attacks to stun the boss.

6. I forgot to mention, after peaceful fight with the old man I was just basically spamming Enter, so his encounter was always first in the list, maybe it will help to debug it.

12. No worries, same goes for my game :D, but we need to start somewhere.

Otherwise, no problem, was glad to help. Maybe, someday, you will show me your game again, when it is finished.🙂

So, I tried this game 2 times.

First time I didn't quite understand the mechanics from the tutorial, partly because their peculiar names. I managed to defeat one boss, but then was bored by counteless defeats by overall seeming randomness.

But somehow I wanted to give this game a second chance, I guess because I felt a bit bad, that I didn't try to enjoy it fully. And here is my feedback:

1. So, on second time I got how basic mechanics work, though some abbreveations weren't introduced, like DP, SP, 3DI (3DI thing meaning I've only got while was writting this review), so some mechanics were still a mystery; where bug with incorrect text for using GRR makes it even worse, like it should increase your flow by 10 and 3DI by 5, but instead game says that it increases your flow by 5 and 3DI by 0 after you've used it.

2. You can outheal your max hp https://ibb.co/PnB136S with resting for example, dunno if it is intended.

3. My first encounter was with "a friend" https://ibb.co/d4pCxcp6, but game counts it as a battle, which is kinda strange. Another moment, I would say it is a bit inconsistent, how we don't know the enemy encounter and mark it with "????", but we know for sure we will meet "a friend" on another path though we are going there for the first time. Shouldn't it be the same like with the enemies? So if after rewind I see the house there, now I know who lives there and know it is not an enemy and etc, but for the first time I can't know that. Then instead of "a friend" perhaps could use another words, like "a house", "a stranger" so player can make better decisions.

4. In some places Rectangle is mispelled https://ibb.co/dJjtW22D

5. So after house my next encounter was vampire driller, I've lost and strange things started to happen. On back home I got this message POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT  (dunno if it is actually counts as a spoiler, and if it is that heavy spoiler, I can remove link if you want), so like game decided, that I've actually completed the game, instead of losing a battle :D.

6. After the rewind everything was as usual, until I met him - the bald old guy. So I peacefully defeated him and after that my game was cursed. On next encounter I met him again, but after I charged my drill, encounter instantly abrupted and I got usual rest screen after battle. Then on next encounter I met him again and again and again, and each time I had the same battle skip; until I think I got to the last Inferno layer where, I'm assuming i've met one of the winged semi-final bosses, but again, instead of actual fighting after drill charging I got message, that I reached the center of the planet with tree. (I can send you screenshot if you want, I've though perhaps it is a bit too spoiler-ish to post it here). So after that, i'm assuming, instead of final boss battle I was able to just continue go deeper in Inferno as usual and all battles were like "I use drill charge" - "Battle instantly abrupts in the next screen and rest screen with rock is shown". So game was in general heavily broken, like also sometimes when I encountered some enemies, on their turn they turned in other bosses. And etc, so text and images were desynced, except candy-meetings and resting.

7. Vampire-driller iirc doesn't have any fight introduction, and some other fights don't have proper introduction as well. This felt a bit strange, like we just fight with everything we see without any purpose for it, except "friends". So would be nice to know what was the cause, since we don't fight with some brainless slimes, but with other humans (?). But dunno if it is somehow was explained in boss lore books (?), because I didn't manage to read them.

8. I would remove annoying spiral thing completely. Iirc it doesn't have any explanation lore-wise (like we don't ask the Keydrill about it after the first fight, so it could explain what this thing is and how it works; but just accept things as they are). And what is more importantly it adds many frustration with "lemme set your 2000 RPM to 500", which is happens quite often. And that's kind of random is kinda frustrating, because you can't really heal and you need to waste your turns to accumulate RPM again, so it is kinda a run killer, which you never wanna use.

9. Poison boss. Dunno if it is intended, but they can't kill you, because no matter the poison rate, poison damage depends on your current hp, so when I gave up and wanted to just die to him to reset the run, he dealt to me 0 damage, when I had 1 hp. And I couldn't kill him either, because my charging was super debuffed and was like 37 RPM for charge iirc. So it was kinda super troll fight, were we both couldn't kill each other. (well, in theory I guess I could win but it would take very long time because of low charging rate)

10. In general fights felt a bit too random-ish, like again, with poison boss I missed like 5 times in a row iirc and like I can't do anything with that, cuz I don't have some kind of accuracy buff. Or when you can block enemy attack, but suddenly another enemy attack becomes unblockable and you should've used dodge or parry, but you couldn't know that. Like yeah, for some bosses I think you can use some consistent strategy, but not for all, unless you learn all their attack patterns, which can be a bit time-consuming.

11. Resting and candy-meetings scenes felt kinda repetative after some time. But dunno what really can be done here, like it was particularly annoying to skip candy-boy lines, because you always want to take candy, from what've understood, so you like have to manually skip them everytime.

12. Art looks cute, but style seemed to me a bit inconsistent, like if you compare candy boy and man with a big drill from your screenshots. But maybe I have that feeling cuz of a bit different dithering. Also perhaps fights could look more engaging with OMORI-like battle animations.

Overall, good job on your game; in addition to default art, music and game logic you, I assume, had to spend a lot of time on writing, which may be quite hard to polish, and you still managed to finish it to playable state. But there is still room to improvement. 🙂

Thank you!

Tutorial "video" things are just in-game animations made with AnimationPlayer (if you familiar with Godot).

Yeah, learning curve may be a bit steep at first.

Okay, I beat it in normal mode. So my issues were:

- I guess I missed from the tutorial, that the min speed = number of chips + 1;

- Spinner speed is considerably increased on Hearts. Which I would say is the one of the main things that can be confusing, because game teaches you only that speed depends on your chips and max speed indicator, but then game decides to increase speed limits just because of higher difficulty boss. So if on the first boss I was kinda fine being on the max speed, then from 2nd boss and onwards I have to spam speed decrease, which I didn't do when I first time played it. So perhaps spinner speed on first boss could be the same, like on second one, so you learn how to play properly from the beginning and on the easier boss:

- In general, I think Hearts is the hardest boss, because not only you have the spinner speed spike, but also you need to play carefully and wait until she places black slices (which I would say a bit boring, because you just sit in stop until she does that) and also has dangerous old maid cards, which also inforce you to use table flip skills, so like there is so many stuff you have to learn on this boss to be able to defeat it.

Other small issues I noticed:

- On first boss can't see the slice value behind the coin, when you are supposed to, from what I understood, make his low value slices yours. So you can't really calculate if it is worth to take the slice with the coin on it, cuz it can be like 5 damage slice and you can take big damage. But I guess that's a feature, because you can always flip the table;

- 3rd and 4th boss were way too easy compare to 2nd one. Cuz of slice modifiers you can basically defeat 3rd boss in a few hits, because there will be pretty many slices of your color. Similar goes to 4th boss, though he is a bit more tricky;

- UI for player's skills looks a bit confusing I think. For example, perhaps, it could be changed to something like this: https://ibb.co/LFSb7T5. So one thing is that table flip skills look more like table will just rotate in one direction on 1 slice and that was what I have initially thought in first playthrough but then eventually I got it in the second one. And then speed change skills seems to be a bit confusing imo, I would make so arrow would be in one place, but looked in different directions. Not a big deal, but I think it should be a bit easier for understanding.

Nevertheless, was quite a nice polished game.

P.S. Yeah, video tutorial is a bad idea, unless it is built-in game.

Solid game.

I would only say 2nd boss tail thing felt a bit unfair, because you can't predict where it will dig out, so if it digs out right under you, then you are garanteed to take damage.

Also boss transitions felt a bit too long, cuz tbh at first I was also thinking that maybe something was bugged or I have to do something specifically to proceed. Perhaps could slowly fill boss hp bar to full, while transition phase is happening, so player would know they didn't stuck and something is happening. As bonus, player will know for how long they need to survive till phase 2.

Also had WebGL out of memory error (Chrome), cuz of which had to restart the game, but when I tried to not use fullscreen it seems to fix itself.

Cool concept and implementation. My only concern was that markers for thingies of 2nd boss were showing incorrect direction, from what I've experienced. Like I tried to go to in the direction of marker position on the screen or direction, where marker's arrow was pointing, but both mislead me to the map border.

Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it 🙂

Thank you! 🙂

Game has some interesting vibes, which art style and music are creating and I kinda liked it.

I managed to beat the game and here is some feedback:

- It felt like character was moving too fast, so it was a bit hard to control it precisely, but maybe it is just me;

- First boss becomes a bit too extreme in the end in terms of spawning stuff;

- Second boss has cool new mechanics, but instead of increasing difficulty along the fight, like the first boss; they decreasing it. I mean like medusa heads are not parriable at the beginning, but in the end they are and you basically can just parry everything and boss quickly dies. Perhaps it should've been vice versa?

Good game, it was nice to see how it grew with each feedback stream.🙂

My main feedback would be (I was playing on web):

- 2nd boss fight felt a bit messy: like this https://ibb.co/qMHVVY9J, when some parts became invisible, but still tail somehow was moving with the main body; or this https://ibb.co/5hFLWhwF when boss had strange rotation angles and even was going in the hole he was coming from, dunno if it was a feature. :D Also perhaps boss shouldn't be able to target holes, which are next to each other, cuz then boss and player can't really interact with each other.

- 3rd boss fight. I would say it was kinda repetative and in some way similar to first boss fight. Like perhaps each sub-boss could have some more interesting mechanic, than just a bit changed shooting pattern.

Thank you for detailed explanation 🙂

Yea, I've got the spin speed mechanic, but it felt like even if I used spin speed ability, my speed was decreasing by 1, but then in a few seconds it was just maxed out again.

I'll give your game another try, now with considering info from your review.

Cool game, looks quite polished on all departments. Concept with throwing weapons, when each one has its own trajectory is also very nice. But there were 2 main issues for me, which were killing the fun:

1. You have 5 weapons. You have to configure each one separately. First boss moves relatively often and likes to throw 3 projectiles at you. Also weapons don't have too much durability, so you need swap them relatively often, and if your weapon type in your slot changes, you need to fix trajectory again. So all of it makes it so you need to fix all your weapons trajectories far too often, which is a bit too stressful for my taste to enjoy the game.

I think some QoL, for example: if you change trajectory of a weapon, then it changes trajectories of all weapons of such type - could greatly improve experience, because then you need to do less manual monotonous work and you have more time to actually enjoy the game.

2. It seemed like boss had too much hp. So first one has 1000 hp, axe iirc deals 12 damage, and I'm considering it has the highest dps, (but maybe i'm wrong), so I need to throw 83 axes at the boss, without considering, that I also need to kill their projectiles and constantly spend time on rolling weapons. Dunno if there are stronger weapons, which makes it is easier. (i've seen only stone, axe and popcorn)

So in general it felt like I need to spend too much time to kill even the first boss, but maybe it was skill issue on my side and I missed some mechanic. 🙂

Thank you for the review!

Yeah, perhaps I should have introduce some difficulty settings, but sadly didn't have too much time to do that. 

In general in this case it can be a bit hard to balance, because when you get how everything works, then 3 or even 2 lives can make it too easy. So I decided to leave only 1 live (and then don't need to make system for lives :D), which may not be the best strat for game jam.

For magnets, spinning direction depends on the angle you came in the magnet orbit. So you can change direction if you bounce off the wall into magnet orbit with the angle you need.

That was an interesting experience. I liked the tutorial as well, good introduction to the game, though perhaps it could have also teach you how to deal with boss attacks, because that's the only thing I didn't get right away.

But yeah, concept with 2 planets can be easily abused, for example I just set max speed for inner planet and then was just controlling outer planet speed to match with the inner one, so didn't need to switch orbits at all. Though yeah, after defeating the boss I didn't have too much of hp left, so if you would increase boss damage a bit more, you could get rid of this cheesy strat. 🙂

I was pressing random buttons and somehow managed to beat it.😎

But overall, nice art style and music. Movement system with different arenas was interesting too.

But game heavily lacks sfx, I think even if you wanted to make sfx yourself, you could still put some free open sfx to the game as a placeholder, otherwise there is not much satisfying impact when you bump yourself against the enemy or the arena.

Also as I said, at the beginning was a bit hard to get the controls and gameplay UI and how are you supposed to play properly. like what different meters mean and etc. Though yeah, eventually I got most of it.

Perhaps, though I think depends on what this story moment is. Like if it is some humorous moment - sure, why not.

I liked the boss's patterns, there are quite bunch of different attacks. I would add, that some attacks could have a bit better readabilitiy, like for example boss's close burst attack, which almost one shots you, so you would know when you should move away from the boss. Also iirc attack, with the balls rolling in a row, has some balls you can parry,  but it seemed like even if you parry it, side balls will still hit you, because your hitbox is big and you can't stay safely between 2 balls on sides. So like game baits you in the unwinnable situation. But maybe I should've position myself better.

Fun game!

Initially I haven't thought I could beat the game, because controls felt a bit weird and I didn't really get what the left mouse click do and how to use it properly, but when I get how to use the right mouse click it became not that hard and I managed to complete it. Though I would say sometimes it felt like boss showed their weak spot, even when they weren't in the drawn circle, but maybe it is just me.