itch.io

This is a neat idea, though a bit lacking to me. There seems to be no real downside to me just clicking the yoyo the second it touches the rope. I get a low amount of points, yes, but I'm still getting points. I'm not really incentivized to go lower as I'll get a high score just by clicking repeatedly. I think a way to get the player to engage more with the distance part is making a minimum distance that you have to go on the rope before you can score any points (Maybe about a third of the way down or so) and since you're already having to sink that low to get points, you may as well see how far you can go to get even more. Another option is having a timer for how long a round of scoring goes, making you have to make every throw count to really maximize your score.

Anyways, that's enough of me rambling. Those are just some ideas for thought. You did good here and this idea has some promise. Great work!

Honestly, pretty peak. The timing for the gold guys seems a little strict and sometimes inconsistent as it looks like I hit the same range but only sometimes get a successful score and I'm not entirely sure what I did wrong. Admittedly, I did click intense mode for half of my runs, so that could have an effect if there's a difference between the modes and just pressing start. It didn't seem like there was at present as all of them felt the same to me, so I don't know.

Still, I very much like the aesthetic here for the game. Simple little notable cubes that are the prime targets for my endless amounts of bullets as I work my way through this mixed crowd of colorful singers. The sounds are very satisfying  and the thumping rhythm in the back is very pleasant and makes me feel all the better when I land a shot in time with the beat. And speaking of on beat, I don't know if I can classify some of those bad singers as bad. They're just vibing, and when I get a cycle of good/bad/good/bad/good/bad singers going, that makes a really satisfying rhythm and beat to listen to. The good singers on their own can't even make that. The bad singers just need a chance to shine, man... before ultimately getting shot for not meeting our standards. I'm not one to slouch on my duties. It's also a strange feeling to have someone perform well and then immediately turn bad, forcing me to shoot them on sight, but thems the brakes sometimes. If you don't know how to follow up your high notes, you're outta this club, no mercy for anyone. Its a strict policy here and I need space for more good singers to add to my 50 point collection, bad singers ain't gonna cut it.

Anyways, I really do enjoy this little game. Its short, sweet, and pretty addictive to just get lost in the rhythm of it. Really great work you did here. I'd definitely come play again if more were to be done with it post jam.

This was an interesting idea for a game and neat way to take the theme. Some things I wanna bring up though is the death sound of the gnomes is a lot. It is rather loud and in your face even on low volume and it goes on for a while. A part of me thinks its meant to make you feel bad for doing what you're doing, but even with that in mind, it doesn't end up making me feel bad in a moral sense as much as I feel bad because my ears are growing tired of the sound. I also don't know if it was intentional or not for the player to lock up in place when they walk over a gnome and remain rooted to the spot until the gnome dies. Jumping into them seemed to allow me to bypass this, so I mostly just hopped around to get a move on. Last thing I wanna mention is I sometimes took damage from the bucket pouring gnomes despite their water not being anywhere near me. It seemed to happen specifically around a screen transition when this would happen, so I would just take damage without really feeling like I could do anything about it.

Outside of all that though, I thought it controlled pretty nice, everything felt responsive, I kinda like the aesthetic of the game, the player looked cool and all the gnomes stood out well no matter the environment so I was always able to tell where they were, which is good. I ended up overthrowing the king before it literally rained on my parade and brought my temporary rule to an end. So, all in all, pretty decent job. Hope I haven't come across too harsh here, the sound just did end up getting to me in the end. Good work!

I feel like most people have said what I'd wanna say, but I do just want to take a moment to say I'm really really impressed with all the sprite work done here. Its really solid and all of the animations look great. The boss is by far the coolest and most impressive of all the sprite work to me, and while I don't understand the hit box of the black hole attack, I won't deny that it is a fantastic visual and just makes them seem all that more powerful than they already are. I love the sfx of the players sword swing as well. For the first few screens I was just swinging my sword around for fun cause I liked the noise until I had to actually stop and learn combat, and even then, it was fun to just dash back and forth across the enemy, doing a quick jab to hear the noise, and repeating until I was victorious. So all in all, really great work here! Great job on making it!

Not a super lot to sink my teeth into here unfortunately, so I don't really have much to say. The art of the area did look pretty interesting and I find the squirrel to be really adorable, so honestly, it was time well spent on those animations.

Gameplay wise, walking is a little bit slow. As a squirrel, I feel like I'd be a little faster, but maybe because of my crippling debt from losing all of my life savings is weighing heavily on my conscience, thus slowing me down to make me stop and think about what I just threw away and what I've done with my life up until this point as I slowly pad my little paws across the floor of this dark, dreary, and abandoned hole. Was my hubris my own undoing? Or was fate truly just so cruel to me? Perhaps I have earned this dread in my chase for glory and nuts... Maybe I wasn't squirrely enough to deserve such riches, such fame, such praise... Perhaps I was blinded by my greed, consumed by my gluttony for nuts, and cast aside by my own pride in some vain attempt to feel whole. And as I fall deeper and deeper into the blue abyss below, shrinking further and further in on myself until I am not but a simple atom in the grand cosmos of squirrel existence, I am left to ponder these thoughts and really ask myself... "Was I every truly a squirrel?" as I blip out of reality, never to be seen or heard from again, my squirrel family never knowing quite what became of me in that dark, dreary hole, where the dreams of squirrels go to perish, and all of life itself loses its meaning as you become one with the cosmos once more, as you were always meant to be. Not but a mere atom in the brief blip of your squirrely life.

Anyways, cute game! Great work!

Bit of a rough experience for me, though half of that is likely because it didn't run the best with my laptop. It wasn't too unplayable, but the glitching effects and other particles definitely did a number, even when turned down or even completely off. I think its neat in concept, but hard for me to judge fairly as I can't tell what is the typical game jank of a jam game vs potential performance issues holding things back. I also just flat out never got any sound despite doing every trick I was told to try and fix it. I don't know what was going on there. At the very least though, I applaud you for making a 3D game for this. From my experience, trying to make anything play nice in a 3D space is quite the hurdle to get over, and the fact that you've managed this and put in what seems to be a good bit of polish (my performance aside, talking strictly in all the animations and little details and the surprisingly expansive settings in the pause menu) and thought into everything is quite impressive. You certainly got my respect for making this. Great work!

Happy to hear you enjoyed it! We are hoping to try and do a little more with this game after Jam submissions are over, so if you wanna come swinging by again later to see how its changed when that time comes, we'd appreciate it.

Thank you for the feedback despite your struggles with the game! I do hope on trying to make a more interactive tutorial to better explain things instead of just dumping a bunch of information on the player later after the Jam ratings are over as we are hoping to clean some things up a bit with this game once all is said and done and add in some stuff we might've over looked.

Glad to hear you enjoyed it despite the difficulty! I may have went a bit overboard in having the beginning be as rough as it is in my rush to get our game put together and shipped out before the deadline. We are hoping to do a little more with this after the Jam to clean it up a little and add in some things we overlooked or fix any wonky bugs still lingering. I'll definitely try to reel in my mountainous climb I'm putting the player through as well so its not so rough in the beginning.

No worries, like I said, I'm happy to still give it a shot despite the circumstances as I don't want anyone's work to be overlooked if I can help it.

Though a file may be missing, I still want to leave my feedback here since I did request said file so I could play it and give this game a fair shake and rating despite the slip up. And I gotta say, for it being your first game, it's a pretty interesting idea. The concept of spinning around to avoid lasers while building charge to then take out said enemies is cool, though it is a little rough around the edges.

Enemies can pile up fast and shoot pretty quickly, making it pretty much impossible to dodge them if one too many pile up because you didn't keep up well enough, leading to unavoidable damage that could tip off some players. I think maybe putting a limit on how many enemies are on screen at once, or turning it into a more pattern based system where you can more easily control what arrangements appear and how they fire could help in alleviating that impossible feeling. Also, in the pattern system, you could have it be that your move forward each time you clear a pattern of enemies or just rack up a score as you move along through the varying patterns. But that's just me throwing out ideas to think about, so just take them with a grain of salt.

Anyways though, considering it is your first game, I am impressed with it. It's a cool idea, it was very fun to just spin around and shoot at my enemies with the boost, the music, while a little repetitive, felt very fitting to the whole vibe of the game, the graphics were pretty nice and I didn't think anything got too lost in the chaos, save for the laser beams which could maybe be a little bigger and more present, but it isn't too bad. All and all, this was a fairly solid entry and I quite enjoyed my time with it. It didn't feel like it overstayed its welcome and I was eager to always give it another shot when I died as it didn't take too much time to get back to where I was. If you continue down this journey of gamedev, I hope you're able to walk away from this experience stronger than before and having learned something fun and interesting in the process. It ain't easy making and releasing a game, especially in such a short time frame, so I applaud you for seeing it through and doing your best regardless. Great work!

This was really fun, but man did it get a little tiring on my fingers. Admittedly, I probably didn't need to try and mash so hard to try and get bullets flying out like I'm a minigun, but I was trying to get things out of my way as quick as possible before they were out of my rotation. Something I wanna note though, I think the idea of losing rotation along the journey is fine, but I would've liked a way to also boost it back up as well instead of only having the start being able to do that, like maybe taking out obstacles could at least boost you back up to the max you set at the beginning.

Anyways, outside of that, this was a great time. The music was lively and kept me invigorated to keep pressing on, nothing felt too long or like it overstayed its welcome, everything felt snappy and reliable, all the sfx were satisfying and pleasing to hear, and the visuals, while very simple, conveyed what they needed to effectively and didn't get lost anywhere in the scene. All in all, this experimental game was a nice fun and enjoyable experience. Great work!

This was a nice enjoyable little experience. The difficulty does ramp up a little fast and can be a bit rough since the first power up doesn't come until the music does its first loop, but it ain't too bad. Running around blowing stuff is pretty fun regardless, so I didn't mind too much playing for about a minute minimum each time. Everything looks well put together and blends well, all the sound effects are very cartoonish and satisfying, the music is very energetic and just really adds to the old school aesthetic, and it really is that kind of game where you wanna sit down with a little console in your hand in a nice comfy chair to try and rack up a bigger score as you wind down for the night. Honestly, really good work here. I quite enjoyed this game.

Heyo, I can see that there's a problem here with missing files. While you can't upload them to the page at this time, I'm more than happy to still try out your game if you'd like. There's a link to my twitter on my page that you can use to DM me the rest of the files or if you have discord and wanna go through that, you can reach me @gadzythepixelator.

Heyo, I see there's a problem here, so I wanna open an invitation. You may have forgotten the .pck file for your submission, but I don't want that to be the reason your first game doesn't get some kind of feedback. If you got a discord, feel free to DM me the .pck file @gadzythepixelator or even go through Twitter if you'd prefer, there's a link to my account on my page. I'm more than happy to give your game a try regardless of if it was properly submitted or not.

This is a cool idea, though I'm kinda struggling a bit with it. This could be a skill issue, but I'm finding it hard to do the circles to speed up without accidently sending myself flying around the arena, and with the camera moving the way it does, I end up getting a bit disorientated and losing myself as my opponent takes the opportunity to beat me up while I'm a bit helpless. It's also hard to tell if I'm doing/taking damage. Cause like, in my first attempt, the first gyro took a good few hits before going down, but on my second they went done in like one, and then on my third it went back to taking a few good hits despite not really doing much different between rounds two and three, and the second gyro just... They hurt and it gets hard for me to keep up properly cause I just don't know how badly I'm hurting before its too late. I'm unclear as to what I'm doing wrong sometimes, honestly.

Outside of that though, I like the look and vibe of this game, the sound effects were pretty satisfying and I liked the music. It really kinda sold this ancient ruins aesthetic pretty well, which is good. So, despite anything I say, good work on making this despite the heat. I definitely got the intended experience as its pretty toasty in my own room right now as well.

This was neat, though I would've personally liked a few more puzzles before reaching the end of this demo. Still though, I enjoyed my time with this. Animations were nice and fluid, I really dig the voxel aesthetic, the music caught me a bit off guard at first with its volume, but once I got it turned down, it fit in pretty nicely and I was vibing with it. The dialogue and cutscenes were pretty charming, I liked how I just came packing heat without hesitation (its a very serious job fixing pipes), and I think that combat system has potential. All and all, good work on making this. It was a fun time.

Much like Silver, I was unsure how getting the pizza worked. I did get about 20, but it seemed a bit random on how you got it. The most consistent way that seemed to work was hugging the wall and letting it crash into you.  Anyways, I do kinda wish there was more here as I don't really have much to sink my teeth into. I get pizza, but that's it. I don't have a goal or an objective given to me outside of setting myself a goal on how much to collect personally, and once I reach that, I run out of ideas. Still, making and releasing a game ain't easy, so good work on making this and joining into the jam.

Fellow beyblade gamers... This was pretty fun and enjoyable. A part of me kinda wanted a bit more as I felt rounds were a little too short for my liking, but outside of that, this is really well polished and a great time. Am I maybe a little biased considering we did a similar thing for our game? Probably. What can I say? This simple little gameplay loop is just fun to hurl yourself around in and slam into your opponents all in an effort to stay spinning. It's a great time.

Anyways, to gush a bit, the variety of upgrades is great for replayability and a fun thing to mix and match with to see what works best with what, the sounds were very satisfying to hear when I slammed into my opponents or an object (I need to know your secrets... I tried my best for our game before just doing a goof instead), the art is really fluid and well done, I liked having the cosmetics so I could always have something to spend my money on if I wanted to, the music fits in so well with the whole aesthetic, and all in all this is just an amazing game. I'm real impressed with what you guys managed to make here. Great work!

This was a cute little game, though I did get a bit confused on what the ratio of spin to self confidence was. I'm not entirely sure on how all that correlates to one another. It's also a bit awkward having to stop spinning and then just... wait until she slowly comes to a dead stop before the upgrade screen pops up. I think if she stopped faster, or if you could go into the shop to get your next upgrades ready while you're waiting, it'd feel a little more fluid to me.

Anyways, I did enjoy this. It was simple, but fun. While the waiting was a bit much, it did spark me to start making a song with the background track. The verses sucked, but I got a halfway decent chorus in there, which was fun giving her a little personalized summer song. Shirley is going to be going places in Grade One with all that self confidence we made, I'm sure of it. She'll at least be more confident than I was, that's for sure. Great work on making this!

This is a cool concept, but I don't think it's quite the game for me. It's a bit of sensory overload to my brain. My mouse pointer was also fighting with the in game cursor? They didn't align and it was flickering between the two. Other than that though, this was a fun little experience to at least try. The art is really good, everything felt responsive from the little bit I played, and all the sound effects did help to try and keep me on top of what was important in the moment. The music was also nice, but it did get drowned out at times because of everything always making a noise. Still, I can see a lot of effort and work went into this, so I gotta give mad props to making this in a weeks time. It's kinda impressive. Great work!

Pretty fun game, here. I like the gameshow aspect and it didn't ever feel like was spending too long on things. I failed horribly on math at first since I'm a little sleepy, but I woke up enough one the second playthrough to get everything, only getting one time out right before I could click the answer. The boss fight at the end was surprising, but fun. Also, very grateful for the checkpoint at the boss stage. Would've been rough to have to do it all again. All and all, really solid and fun game here! Great work!

We got Beyblades and Candy - https://itch.io/jam/theveryseriousjuniperdevgamejam/rate/4704377

This is really really cool and fun, it's just unfortunate that I am not enough of a pro gamer to beat the game. It doesn't help that I don't really have a comfortable set up, either. Still, that's all on me and nothing to do with the game itself. Honestly, might just end up being one of my favorites by the end of all this. Everything is very very satisfying and really well put together. The jazzy calming music, the comforting visuals of night in this small section of town, the very pleasing and appealing sfx, the fluid nature of everything, that really clean animation of the contract burning, signaling your success, it's all wonderful and fits so well together! Honestly, really impressive work here! Great job on making this!

This was pretty fun. It definitely takes a second as others have said, but I do think this is a pretty cool idea. I think I would've like some spots to be able to avoid the meteors as I didn't see anything from what I could tell, so it is just a random timer that holds you back. Or maybe, to make it even more hectic, add in speed controls to increase or decrease how fast you're going to allow for even more maneuverability. Though, you might want to spread the controls out a bit for that one as having everything bunched up on one hand or cramming two hands together is a bit awkward. Still though, great work on making this! Its cool, simple, and pretty fun!

I don't think I'll be seeing the ground again. I've been like this since about x200. I am the best seedling the world has ever seen. Or maybe I've become an eldritch horror beyond seedling understanding. There is no god. Only number go up at like 1 frame every 5 seconds.

Anyways, this was pretty cool and fun to play. Super simple gameplay loop that makes it easy to just come back to and do a couple rounds to see how much better you can do. I really like it. Only real problem I had was depth perception. It was hard to tell what I could and couldn't hit/was on target to hit. Once you get some mass it gets easier (Especially thanks to the Katamari upgrade), but the start of the game was a bit hard to get a foothold in due to me struggling to hit things at first. All in all though, this was awesome! Great work on making this!

I think Story_Man got almost anything I'd want to say, so I'll just serve as a bit of an echo to their points here. I do kinda like the idea, but it was confusing at first and the prompt that tells you the controls comes way later after you've likely already figured out how everything works trying to navigate a top down space that you can't actually traverse. I think that should've just been at the front in the room you wake up in to prevent that kind of confusion.

The music was cool, if a bit loud and aggressive. I don't think it quite fit with the visuals, but I was liking the vibe it was giving. The spin implementation didn't really fit naturally with the game, I don't think. It kinda felt like it just had to be there cause, y'know. It was the theme. Still though, pretty cool concept here! I did enjoy it despite anything said here. Great work!

This was really cool and controlled really well... kinda. What I'm about to say might be more because of my potato laptop, so take it with a grain of salt and get more feedback on this specifically: The browser build, the one I played on, seems to be slow for me. It started out perfectly fine, but once I got a room or two in, I could notice it slowing down. And in some places, it even sped back up when there wasn't much going on like in a save room or in a room off in the corner, so it wasn't like a consistent slow down. Maybe it's something to do with the enemies? I also had originally played on Sunset, which seemed to somehow make it slower(?) and I got trapped after I got the spring platform and broke my first objective as the door leading out of the area wouldn't open. Like, at all.  I reloaded the room multiple times and nada. I was well and truly stuck in there. When I rebooted the game, I just left the settings alone and it didn't happen again, so I am unsure if it was Sunset specifically that caused it, or if it was a freak bug, or if maybe the slow-down issue had somethin to do with it. If this slow down issue isn't local to me or if maybe it's a quirk of the web build, it's worth looking into. If it is just me, then ya probably don't gotta worry about it too much.

Other than all of that, the 1-bit style is really really nice, everything stands out pretty well, sound effects are very satisfying and fit really well, the animations were nice and fluid, and all and all the entire presentation was great. Only thing I'd have to say about gameplay is I think the bosses may have just a tad bit too much health for my liking, though it's hard to give full judgment since the slow down was not helping in making them feel snappy or satisfying. Just kinda slow. Again, get some more input there if possible to see if others are experiencing it too in case I'm the odd one out. Still though, great work and really cool project you got here! I quite enjoyed it.

This was neat, if a little frustrating in the room just before getting the double jump. It could be a skill issue, but since you die in just one hit and the respawn is immediate, I'd sometimes end up back in the previous room since I had pressed back in an attempt to dodge an attack, only to die, respawn instantly, and get thrown back into the previous room all before my brain could register to let go. The projectiles also didn't reset on death, so sometimes I'd just get clipped as I respawned with little time to react. Outside of that, though, this was a fun little experience that I like the sorta 1-bit look of, though I will agree some music or sounds would be nice here just to fill it out a bit more. All and all, good work on making this!

I think the gameplay was interesting enough, and depending on where you ended/where you went to after picking up everything, you could have a different experience of the second half of the game, which was kinda cool. I unfortunately managed to knock myself out by testing out how the green power works. It seems building blocks towards one self can also trigger death if it's rapid enough. I think the music was a little repetitive for me, but outside of that, this was a nice small little experience. Good work on making it!

This was neat, but I think I personally would've preferred to have both weapons on hand at all times since the hammer is required to go anywhere, so you don't really get to use the sword unless it's given to you right before somewhere important, though that's not even my biggest gripe with the sword.

As far as I could tell you couldn't fall through platforms, so if you picked up the sword at the beginning and went straight up, you get stuck. Now, admittedly you have a way to respawn yourself at the start at any time so it's not a game breaking problem, it's just... maybe a little clunky in my eyes and makes a problem that doesn't fully feel like it needs to be there. The idea of getting trapped somewhere and unable to progress (even if it's only for a moment because you can respawn yourself) because you didn't have the right tool because you simply just didn't know what was to come is a little frustrating to me personally. For me in this instance, I'd rather run back to spawn myself to pick back up the hammer, even if it might be a bit tedious, because I'm at least doing something active rather than forcing a respawn because I'm stuck and unable to do literally anything (not even explore areas as I backtrack because I overlooked them originally, a part I actually quite like in my metroidvanias) simply because I decided to try out the sword. It honestly makes me not really want to use the sword because I don't know where else I'll get stuck if  I do, and anything the sword can do the hammer can as well so I may as well keep the hammer, so I have zero reason to pick up the tool that has the major downside of "I risk getting stuck if I'm not given a hammer back later".

Anyway though, the hammer is very satisfying to use, so I'm happy about that. And despite my gripes with the sword, I did enjoy my time with this game. Music felt grand and a bit adventurous, which gave me a sense to go exploring the world to see what I could find and do to escape this colosseum. The skull boss was a bit much, but the Great Statue was a good bit of fun, so it evened out in the end. Everything felt fluid and nice, save for your slow walking speed, which I think may as well just get boosted up into your run speed as I was running around the whole time anyways since I don't know why I would wanna walk over run here. All in all, this was fairly solid and fun. Great work on making this and I hope my feedback isn't too harsh.

This was a fun little idea, though probably not a good idea to play while sleepy. (My brain kept trying to over engineer some of the puzzles since I only recently woke up.) Only thing I'd have to say about it is the music, while fitting, was maybe a little repetitive for me? It both did and didn't help me focus... I don't know. I'd get some more opinions about that from other people cause it might just be me with this one. Still though, this is a really solid idea you got here and I could see quite a few more puzzles coming out of what's already in the game. And for this to be your first game, it's rather impressive. Great work!

This was really neat and I kinda like the frantic energy of this game. It took me a second to realize why my character would sometimes bounce off walls and cause me to go back a screen because I didn't know I had to jump immediately during a camera transition in some places to keep the speed going. Turns out, once you get the bombbar going, you gotta really be aware of where and what you're doing movement wise, which is cool, but I think some of the map layouts don't really flow well with this control idea as it stands right now, mainly tying back up to my point about bouncing off a wall I didn't know was mere inches in front of me until it was too late. The camera also can get a little funky during transitions of seeming like it maybe hitches or doesn't quite reach where it's supposed to(?), but I'm sure with a little more refinement, this would be a really fun and frantic game to have a blast blazing through. All in all, cool concept and good bit of fun none the less! I always appreciate having an absurdly sized hammer to bonk things with. Great work!

I feel like a lot of the other people have said what I want to say, but I still just want to add that this was a lovely experience. I haven't finished it as the rooms are pretty big and it takes a second to explore around due to their size, but it is something I'm more than willing to come back to later to complete when I have more free time as I was really enjoying myself with this game.  (trying to play as many of the games submitted as possible, so I'm a bit limited on how long I can stay)

The art is really well done and very colorful, the sounds and music blend together nice and fit the visuals really well, and the controls are quite solid and reliable. It's very fun to make a carpet bomb of bubbles to send towards my enemies, especially the dropping ones. They can't get me if they can't even touch the floor first because of the bubble bed beneath them. All in all, really solid work and I look forward to coming back later to play some more. Great job on making this!

I'm sad, but not because of the game. It seems my potato laptop doesn't wanna play nice with it. It has a tendency to freeze either from too many particles or too many things happening in quick succession, I'm unsure what specifically is causing it. If I defeat an enemy, there's a high chance it'll freeze or even crash. Or sometimes if I pick up multiple things in a row, it'll freeze. That was how the first one happened and it went downhill from there. And even if it doesn't crash, well, it may as well be a crash as while it sounds like I'm still able to move and do things in the world, the screen itself remains completely frozen. I don't know if its a me specific thing or not or if lower specs tend to struggle as well, but all I know is that I really wish I could play more. This game looks really cool, the movement is so snappy and frantic that I just wanna zip around the world and explore in the little time I got before getting to the next generation, the music is really good and well done and very pleasing to my ears, and just basically everything about it seems like something I'd really enjoy if I could just get it to play nice with me for at least 20 minutes...  I did see a comment about how there are plans to do some bug fixing after the Jam, so I'll be keeping my eye on this to see if maybe I can play it at a later date when some updates are pushed as I do just genuinely want to play this game. It's so cool...

Made it back here and it seems like it's up and running now. Winterbraid already said most of what I'd say, so I'll just echo the points of the music was nice and fit the sort of vibe that I was getting from the character and enemy designs which were pretty interesting and looked fluid in their animations. Can definitely use some work, but what's here is interesting. Good on ya guys for making this.

To better clarify, the stairs work exactly how I expected them to work. In fact, being able to jump off them is honestly quite nice as that wasn't the default back then. But the start isn't just small guys, there's also the bow ork on the bottom who'd get my ankles as I'm climbing and an ork throwing stones on the upper platform that would be ready to lob one straight at my head once I made it about halfway up the stairs. Those were really my gatekeepers when it came to getting to the shop. But, to be fair, I was also taking out the small guys at the start as they were pretty much free EXP and money, so that could have something to do with those orks always being ready to get me since I took a little too long each time I respawned. There was also the 3rd set of stairs which I couldn't get up as there was an ork right above it that just knocked me right back down for trying and they didn't wanna move at the time. I don't know if that was consistent as it was shortly after that where I started getting skill gapped on the first set of stairs, so I didn't get to go check. (Did some b-lining there to confirm and it doesn't seem to be consistent, but can happen if I take a little too long on the lower floor. Although, it also seemed like it had gotten stuck for me last time as I remember getting knocked down multiple times before they even considered moving, which didn't happen in my testing here. Got unlucky yesterday, it seems. It really was a horrible night for me to have a curse...)

I guess if the negative health is more a feature than a bug, then I'm more just not the biggest fan of the idea? Mainly because it can continue to rack up, like in my case of being bad at the game, to where it becomes a bit more of a money sink to restore your health to somewhere comfortable, which drains your resources in a way that adds a bit of insult to injury for me. It is fitting of the times, though, so it's like... hard to fully judge as it does kinda fit. I think restarting at low health (Maybe 5 to 10 could be a good number? Allows a hit or two before death, but still requires you to get potions) or having a limit on how low you can go in the negatives (Maybe about -10 to -15?) if you're wanting to keep that system in would be more how I'd approach it, though. At least, for a jam setting to account for skill differences.

At the end of the day though, most of this can be put into the category of... I was just bad at the game. My undoing could just be my greed, poor planning, and not wanting to restart if I didn't have to. I wanted to keep my gear without having to go back to zero as I was already restarting from the beginning anyways with negative health, which felt punishing enough without losing everything just to go get it all again because I had to restart. I still did very much enjoy my time regardless, so I hope that doesn't get lost in anything I've said here.

I think winterbraid says most of my points better, but some stuff I wanna bring up is the arial combat. On the one hand, I like swinging my sword in the air and I ended up having a jumping duel with the first boss until they fell, which was pretty fun. On the other hand, I think I liked it a little too much. In fact, I liked it so much, I figured out how to gain height and distance due to the animation slowing your gravity in mid air, allowing you to combo through the sky with ease. I'm pretty sure you needed the dash to get the medallion piece, but not me! A couple quick sword swings and it was mine in mere seconds upon arriving to the gardens. I still explored and got to the second boss, which was also pretty fun, but I didn't need the dash at that point. And to prove I was such a skilled swordsman, I didn't even use the dash where it was required of me to finish the demo. I only used me and my flying sword to cross the gap and climb up the staggered platforms to reach the end. This is why they hire me to solve their problems.

All and all, it was some good fun. I just happened to find a really easy exploit that ended up shaping the second half of my journey, which was fun in its own right, but I know that likely wasn't intended. Just figured I'd let you know for your game going forward. Good work on what you made here!

This was a nice little exploration type game. While there's a not a lot, the very open world is nice to just zoom around in once you get all the bike upgrades. It was also a nice little challenge to figure out how best to clear the water to get the boat upgrade, so I feel like I got my times worth out of this. All and all, it was pretty fun despite its drawbacks, even when I was a little confused at first since I didn't realize jumping was an upgrade I had to get. Great work on releasing this regardless! I enjoyed my time.

It really is a terrible night for a curse... While I can see why others are put off by the pausing, I do appreciate the reference to Castlevania none the less. At least there are no corners you need to sit and wait at in this game, to my knowledge. I wanted to persevere to the boss, but I got skill gapped on the stairs a couple times, and due to the negative health bug, I would sometimes struggle to just get back up the first set of stairs without dying in order to get some potions to keep my progress, which would then eat up my money, meaning I had to grind a bit to get some of it back for the sake of upgrades. The whole game screen also didn't fit on my screen, so I found myself scrolling up and down a fair bit just to read the text at the top and bottom since I was getting confused in the shop menus.

Still though, this is a neat game idea and I gotta give props for not making a game for just one jam, but for two. Working under two sets of restrictions does not sound like it'd be easy, so you got my respect there. Art was a nice throwback to the older NES style, the music was nice and bopping to keep me motivated despite my terrible skills, and everything stood out pretty well and didn't get too lost in the background. Great work on making this!