jeez, you're too clever :p. thanks for noticing. actually, maybe i could make a puzzle out of this cheese. but i already implemented my idea for an extra orb...
thank you! and no, there are no invisible or breakable walls. you just have to explore thoroughly. there is a sign though, in a more conspicuous secret path, that gives a hint to where one of the other ones are located. good luck!
there used to be an enemy under the rightmost ice block, but you killed it. hm.. now that i think about it, i should probably add an extra fire orb you can collect, so you have some leeway in which puzzles you choose to do.
AAAAUUUHFUIHFIAUDHAHUDFthanks for the feedback! really appreciate it. sorry about the crash. i did push a fix but i guess i was too late. (the bug was incorrect capitalization in the file name.) I will fix that puzzle cheese as well. my extra hint for the intended solution of that puzzle: think about the hint on the sign and a Newton's cradle. it's a cool puzzle imo, but i know it's hard.
an obvious answer would be godot. anyway, unrelated:
1. please don't make ai-generated asset packs without clearly disclosing the fact that they are ai-generated. while you came up with the idea, you did not make the actual asset, so it's like taking other people's work and then claiming it as your own, which is an action which i need not explain the immorality of. especially since generative AI "generates" images by doing a bunch of fancy statistical analysis between your prompt and a training database of millions of images and artwork stolen from the internet without permission.
2. don't submit asset packs to game jams. that is clearly not a game.
my playthrough was this: i spent 12 minutes doing random movement until the door opened for a reason i was unable to figure out until i had the revelation that the symbols were not the "untranslated" version of the text you see on each note, and instead probably meant something else; i noticed that the weird black shape on the note that says "CRESCENT = SLIDE" looked a lot like the sprite of the player sliding. then took a few mins of experiments/tests and analyzing the symbols to figure out what TRIANGLE might mean, and a bit of how these symbols map to actions chronologically. i will say i felt very clever during this time period, which is a good thing--although i still thought the game was too cryptic.
then i got the sixth note and spent the next ~20 mins trying to parse what the note was trying to say. after doing my best attempt of executing what i think the note was saying, i heard a door open sound. i excitedly walked up to where that last door was only to see it was closed. okay, maybe it's the door i saw back at the start of the level. walked all the way back there, reactivating each door that automatically closed. the door was, again, closed. executed the combo again to hear a door open sound--still closed. then i gave up.
my suggestion: reword the note that says "this door listens to motion" (or something along the lines of that) to instead say, "this door listens to a specific sequence of movement" (or something along the lines of that). additionally, make a few puzzles at the start that are much simpler, and also have some notes that do not have annotations on them.
but also i still have no idea what to do for that sixth note
My highscore in EVIL mode is 7/9. i played with keymap:arrow and control:std, as the game originally was. I really wonder if anyone can manage to beat me. God EVIL mode is so stressful.
I do strongly wish an audio cue played when you successfully completed a loop. a lot of the times when i collected something the block was off-screen, so I couldn't see it disappear.
i realized it was too slow because i just mindlessly went to round 8 without placing down anything and realized i was barely paying attention. and i don't know your skill level or any results in regards to difficulty from any playtesting you might have done. which is why i figured to trust my intuition more. i think the only problem is that i increased it too much. probably would need to lower the max speed by 0.05 u/s per round. i know that doesn't seem like a lot but im certain it's pretty noticeable. the current is 0.31 u/s/round iirc.
Also i have no idea what the average skill level of the game jam rater is so i just thought my assumption that they were at the skill level where they can beat it after about 3 game-overs was fair. that they would, in that time, memorize the layout of the map enough (i don't think it's particularly large) in order to avoid the spikes or cover them up with the bridge, and figure out a route they can make that makes it easier to play through. maybe im wrong and 3 game overs is too much. actually it might be now that i think about it because its probably an overestimate of people's patience and too optimistic that they'd actually enjoy the game. ugh i don't know is it? i don't want to make the game easy but i also don't know how difficult something really is until i observe someone else playing it.
also we don't actually know how long it took for the players to beat the game, or if they even did in the first place; they just say it's difficult or point out some jankiness in the controls. which is fair but that would also be useful data.
or i guess it's simply that strudel is trying to get the artifact and macey is the guardian of it. that's possibly what ordonine was going for when he drew the background and the artifact.
i think the lives system and your proposed health bar are mechanically the same. the difference is that with your proposed system, the game doesn't soft-reset when you get caught and instead the player can continue as normal. considering the idea, it would make the game more immersive, and also probably less punishing since you're not forced back to the start. I think this is a good idea. thanks for the suggestion!
(Also, Did You Know? the lives system was added last minute. in response to me observing the difficulty of the game during playtesting. it was very close to being significantly harder :p. thank god we added that.)
(unfortunately we didn't have time to do a second playtest, so i think the game is a bit too hard after i increased the speed of the mace after decreasing the number of rounds you have to play until you win. sorry about that.)
my headcanon is that macey and strudel were buddies or at the least acquantainces, and they went into some cave/mountain and some supernatural force or maybe some spell/curse/prophecy that caused macey to turn mad and evil. and make them enter some sort of time loop. strudel has to collect the artifact at the end of each loop to escape the spell.
about the difficulty: i didn't mean to make it too hard. i only meant to make it moderately difficult. like to where the average player would probably win on attempt 3-5.
i tweaked the speed of the mace for round 10 to the smallest speed where i was actually concerned that i was not going to make it without any level modifications. then i figured it would be easier because a couple of well-placed bombs, springs, and boosters should be enough for the average player to outrun macey at that speed. like not even anything that crazy, just blowing up like 4 walls and placing a couple springs and one or two boosters.
but then again i feel like every game i design is always unintentionally harder than it should be. anyway, thank you for sticking with it and commenting (and presumably rating)!
oh also about the slime: i do agree that a lot of "slime cache" areas do not reward the player with enough slime to make access to it worth it. (we kind of forgot to add more slime there. and by i guess by "we", i mean "i", because i'm the one who added more slime pickups to certain cache areas). but from my experience playing it, i think it's adequate enough to be able to build enough structures. i feel like i'm able to do a lot of level modifications after getting the hang of dodging macey on round <5 speed. or maybe i played the game way too much during development and i think the game is easier than it actually is.
also, i feel like restricting the player's slime count would probably help with replayability because . uh... the player would have to compromise a little bit. then maybe they want to try again so they can do better on the next playthrough. ..maybe that's fun? actually it sounded better in my head
i'm aware of the "wall-friction" issue - i couldn't figure out why it was happening. i have a feeling it has something to do with godot's physics even though i'm using a CharacterBody2D so i don't think it should have friction against walls? regardless i apologize for the issue.
EDIT: oh, it's because it ends the jump when you enter wall-slide. so of course you wouldn't be able to jump as high. im stupid .-.
as for the ability to walljump on a single wall, I kind of just assumed it would be bad for the game's design and tweaked the wall jump physics against it. perhaps we should reconsider in a post-jam update. (but i do feel like it would make springs less useful. (or, i guess they would still be useful when entered from a booster, (or when there isn't a wall to climb. (and the spring is faster than a wall-climb.. (should i even worry about this?)
anyway, i'm very thankful that you decided to play the game and even comment on it!
i'm sorry but this is way too laggy i cannot play this. its like at 3 fps. i tried disabling all the shaders but it didn't really help.
i think it might be the trees because it doesn't lag when i die. i presume that since the camera is looking down, the engine is able to cull almost the entirety of the map. but i'm not really sure.
god it's like just have a song that at least hints at the phrygian mode and have drums and my brain is like "wow this good." why is my brain so phrygian rotted. i blame percy roger smith.
kind of fun. Visuals are pretty good and polished, and also i kind of eat up this like style of minimalism sci-fi ambient music type stuff. But i do feel like it's a little too luck-based though. especially in the earlier levels. its balance leans way too much into attackers. i'm rarely ever concerned about if i have too much defense forces. only once or twice was i actually concerned about having too many defense -- and then for one of those instances died to attackers anyway 1 or 2 rounds after i suppose i overcorrected. the other instance i won anyway iirc. i think it should be more balanced in that regard. somehow. But yeah cool game.
the sixth level is way too hard i think. or maybe i'm just dumb.
I found this tool while trying to make a custom symbol font that'd work with the ProggyClean pixel font with Dear ImGui. The tool itself works well but when I tried exporting it and loading it in my ImGui program, it was very blurry and no amount of tweaking things in the tool itself and the exported font in FontForge fixed it. To be honest, I have very little idea on how to use FontForge. I also have little idea on what the units for em size ascent descent pixel size mean and not enough patience at the time to learn it. I was trying to make a 6x12 monospaced font. (well i think proggy clean is 6x12) How would i fix this?
I should note that I found another solution to my underlying problem, by registering custom glyph rects using imgui's font api and then blitting the raw pixels for the glyphs into the font atlas. but I would also like to know how to do this using a ttf font. Maybe it'll be useful in the feature.
i have one curiosity about the controls. why is it C to jump? in games i've played with a similar keyboard control layout it's always Z to jump. i know it's also bound to Z by default so really i don't have a problem but I'm just curious. is it like what's usually used in pico-8 games?
i think the idea is pretty cool, but the difficulty curve seems a bit uneven. i got a bit stumped on the level after the one that requires knowledge of what the dots below the flowers mean, simply because i just followed the second possible path to beat the level without understanding what the dots actually meant. also there are levels that require some thinking and then, in one instance, the next level is just you press down a single time to win. which was pretty funny but this is excusable for a game made in a mere 72 hrs
