itch.io

Very impressive implementation. The variety of rooms and the fact that they fit together so neatly is really cool, the nightmare that must have been QAing for softlocks hurts my head (and while I personally never ran into a softlock, I do appreciate that the main menu has an option to reset). I think it's a cool blend of theme and mechanics, the time limit wouldn't make a lot of sense on a static map that I can just memorize and rush through, but paired with the procedural map it makes for a really cool concept, so good job there. Using deaths to reduce your timer was a nice touch as well.

Some areas where I struggled:

- The jump is easy to control which is nice, but not having variable jump height (that I could tell) can be finicky when trying to dodge some of the more complex spinning blade arrangements or navigate through some tight passages with vertically moving enemies.

- Similarly for the diamonds, they're fun to use, but they could also propel you into saw blades pretty easily (looking at both of these comments, it might also be that there are just some saw blade configurations that don't feel particularly good). There was one time that I diamond jumped into a new room and the momentum carried me straight into a saw blade on the next screen.

- Small nit pick, but I kinda wish there were health drops or something. I guess the HP Upgrades kind of counted in this regard, but things got kind of nerve-wracking the deeper into a dungeon you got without any real means of refilling health. And if you'd already collected HP upgrades in that part of the dungeon and are rerunning through it, there's no real way to heal up. I think it's an interesting challenge to balance, because on the one hand that added pressure paired with the time limit (which was very forgiving) forces you to "get good", but it could still be overly stressful (a quick thought, maybe each time you respawn there are "shadow copies" of HP upgrades you've already collected. they just refill one health on touch. this way there's still that tension of limited health refills, but if you remember where some of the HP Upgrades were on a given map, you can make short and potentially risky detours to try to heal yourself a bit).

... that ended up being a lot of text, sorry. But yeah, I played through the game three times and collected the totem twice (although the third time I kept getting lost and so died on purpose to see what would happen). The game felt good to play, was mostly intuitive with good text prompts and explanations, the sound effect on destroying blocks was particularly satisfying. And again, the implementation is top-notch, I still can't believe you built a procedural map generator that can generate looping Metroidvania maps. Great job!

Great, thanks for your feedback! There's some stuff in here that I definitely want to fix. It's strange that you got trapped in an enemy cause you get iframes and collision between the player and the enemy should be turned off. If you still remember where it happened, can you let me know so I can check it out (was it in the laser area? my money's on it being in the laser area...). In terms of getting hit by things and falling off platforms, I'm gonna go back and implement some of Mega Man 11's logic, basically if you're standing far enough onto a platform and get knocked back, you'll stop at the edge of said platform. Cheap attacks I can agree with too, there are some off screen enemies that shoot people a frustrating amount. I'll have to do some camera math on that later. I've never really looked into performance - it's probably running too many physics checks at any given moment which is a system I want to go back and clean up later anyway, so it's good to know that I have reason to do that. :D

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing and for the feedback! It's super weird that you didn't get music in  the game, there is different music for each zone. Someone else reported this bug in an older version of the game but I thought I had fixed it. Damn.

Oh, I mean I think it's good that the hit box was tall enough to hit the bats while standing below them, just maybe some more wind lines or something above the kick animation to indicate the full range of your attack.

Cool game. The dynamic between small and normal size was pretty cool, I really enjoyed the feeling of launching myself up while small and then shifting mid-air and spin kicking my way across an entire room - the mid-air shift gave me Ant-Man vibes in a very fun way. I also really liked the animation on the spin kick, I grinned the first time I saw it, it's so simple but feels flashy and powerful. The music is creepy as hell and really sets the vibe for an abandoned manor, and the checkpoint spacing felt pretty forgiving (although by the end I had so much health I don't know if I could have even died).

Areas where I struggled -

- The hit box on the kick feels way taller than the animation suggests which always left me feeling nervous when fighting those pesky crows (I was pretty sure I'd hit them, but not entirely sure). 

- The knockback was enough that for the weaker enemies I could spam kick and generally be okay, but for enemies with more health the knockback didn't feel like enough cause they'd just charge through it and body you, so combat against later game enemies became a bit tedious as I'd have to jump in and jump out - something like a roll for the player (for added variety) or a brief pause after each knockback on an enemy might help with this.

- I never felt too lost and I think there are actually two paths to the ending (?) which is good in case you miss or forget about one of them, but the lack of a map or any sort of context for the size of the manor can be daunting at times.

Overall pretty satisfying game. Short, sweet, a fun power set - the glide is super fun to use, the kick is hilarious to me in a good way (especially while you glide across a room), and the shrinking and growing mechanic had a cool trade-off and felt like it was utilized well for the amount of time it appeared. I think there's a lot of potential for more development on these mechanics. Great job!

This was a fun little adventure. The map was big but fairly intuitive, the save points were obvious, power-up usage was clear, and I really liked the light/dark effect you had going on at the bottom level. The vines dangling around after being cut was a nice touch too, and the enemies being burned by light sound effect was surprisingly satisfying.

Some areas where I struggled:

- I won't mention the stickiness of the wall climb cause everyone else already has, but I found the wall jumping itself to also be a bit awkward. It took me awhile to get used to just pressing jump while touching a wall, I'm used to there being directional input as well. It also didn't always feel consistent, especially after getting double jump.

- The murderous falls at the beginning felt kind of punishing. I get why they're there, but I'm told that I'm supposed to descend and the first few holes I try to go down just kill me on landing. Some sort of indication or warning that these are danger holes would have felt better.

- A bit of a nitpick, but having villager dialog remain on the screen even after you've moved away or changed screens was a little annoying. I'd consider either having the dialog box auto-close if you get a certain distance away (and maybe have some sort of indication that there's more that the villager was going to say) or just stop the player from moving while speaking to a villager (and don't place any enemies nearby). This was particularly jarring in the final room where I was trying to talk to a villager while avoiding a slew of bats (I didn't know the light would kill them instantly yet).

But overall it was a short and sweet adventure. Running through the game felt good for the most part and I never got super lost. Enemies were dangerous but not too difficult, and there were a few touches that surprised and delighted (the vines, the light in the darkness). Good job!

Pretty quick and to the point. I liked the simplicity, and the ground slam was super satisfying to use. Visual cues for dodging attacks were clear, the opening moments taught you how to use the movement/ability options well, and the floor counter gives a sense of progression.

Where I struggled:

- I played on PC so I can't speak much to the mobile-ness of the game, but I would have preferred slightly bigger movements / effects. The attack sprite could be more exaggerated (and more easily visible on a phone screen) and the dodge distance could be increased to really sell its efficacy - there were several times where I started on one side of an enemy and dodged through it but was still basically touching the enemy sprite, so I was unclear if I'd get hit by its attack or not.

That's more or less it, again I liked how simple it was to pick up and play and how satisfying leaping down and killing things felt. Clean up the combat a bit, give some more power-ups, and it could be a pretty engaging time-killer. Good job!

This was so good, very minimalist but also super engaging. Bouncing the ball for extra height felt so good, and smashing into things - the slow down, the screen shake, the sfx - was super satisfying. I've always loved the idea of a one room Metroidvania, and using the theme so cleverly like this somehow allowed you to make a 4-in-1 room Metroidvania. Also I'm sure it's been said, but just the best Katamari vibes from this particular mechanic.

Areas where I struggled:

- the orbs to eat could be hard to see against some of the lighter backgrounds (low value contrast)

- minor nitpick, but the usage of dice pips felt super cool and playful, but I wish the four dot blocks used a standard four pip layout to more easily differentiate their shape from a three dot block.

- Not so much a struggle as a bug, I shot myself up to the top to get the final dot to eat to get to the final growth  level, but from here I was able to roll off the edge of the screen which effectively ends the game. Just a collider or something at the edges of the screen will solve it.

But yeah, this was fantastic. Felt great to play, looked great with simple art but some really cool lighting and visual effects to supplement it, and just an overall simplicity that I really enjoyed. Great job!

Very cool theming, I could feel the 80s. :D I know it's certainly Tron inspired, but I almost felt like Pac Man running around this maze eating all those dots. The run animation looks good, I love the little after trail when he jumps, and the game just controls really nicely. Sound effects, death animation, barriers disappearing all felt right. I also really liked some of the more creative hazard rooms, you got a lot of variety out of moving blocks. 

Some areas where I struggled:

- the world is huge and there are a lot of things to collect / doors to open. A map, an item tracker, or both would have been really helpful. It was kind of hard to stay motivated when I didn't have a strong sense of the scale of the world.

-  Kind of a minor nitpick, but the hit boxes felt pretty unforgiving. I died a lot just cause of impatience and near grazes. The spawn points were pretty forgiving though so it wasn't a big deal.

- I was never super certain how the low gravity beam was supposed to work, its physics could feel inconsistent at times and the giant room was kind of hard to navigate without any very defining characteristics on each level, some floor numbers carved into the circuit board or something might have helped. Also I think I ran into a bug in this room, if you jump into the gravity beam while holding the Climb button, you'll travel upwards for awhile based on your character's velocity when they entered the beam.

But yeah, all around a very cool entry, I'm super into the aesthetic and just running around the world felt really good. You also nailed the lonely, oppressive atmosphere with the ominous background track. Good job!

Hey, thanks for the feedback! I also don't like getting out of the bottom right corner, I want to revisit that area and clean up the layout some to make it a bit more enjoyable to backtrack through. You didn't have to use the mouse, I assigned shoot to a number of keys on the keyboard (f and k I believe). I don't normally play on a keyboard so I don't really know what the standard is for attack. Someone suggested I some slight hashing to the tilesets so I'll probably go and try that to improve visual clarity.

The teleporters were linked to their area's sub-generator, so turning off a sub-generator would disable its teleporter. It wasn't until I had everything laid out and was playtesting already that it occurred to me to put the teleporters closer to the end of of each zone so you could use it to get in and then the backtracking only occurs when you're trying to get out of a zone, but alas, there wasn't enough time for iteration in that regard.

Thanks for playing!

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that I loved the character design, especially Zyke. I'm a sucker for ridiculously oversized swords. But yeah, they were all distinct and had their own identities which is really important for a mechanic like this.

This was a cool demo, the character switching is a fun mechanic and it was used well to explore the world. The art style has a lot of charm and while I see that other people have been commenting on the music, I like the general vibe it has going for it, it was a very relaxing playthrough. I liked that each character had a very different function and using Zyke's parry attack was particularly satisfying. I also think it's awesome that you have the game detecting if a controller or keyboard is being used - it's a small quality of life thing, but I really like it.

Some areas where I struggled:

- I had to put the game down once cause I couldn't figure out what to do after I got Layla, even when I came back a second time I only accidentally switched characters (I was trying to go back through the door to my house to see if that would trigger anything, so I pushed "up" and there she was). After switching it took me awhile to switch back to Zyke, the distinction between up and tapping the right control stick was pretty strange to me, I would have preferred to just have all the characters be tied to the d-pad (I was playing on controller).

- The first boss was a very cool concept, but it was pretty hard to figure out and felt a bit inconsistent at times. I definitely liked that each character had their own role in the fight, but these would be my suggestions for improvement: 

a. give a bigger timing window on the tail swing windup, it was pretty stressful edging just ahead of the boss, especially when I wasn't even sure if I was supposed to try to parry such a fast attack. A roar or visual queue that it's about to swing could be helpful too. 

b. For the parry, I found myself whiffing half of the counter attacks, so the first time I even parried successfully the salamandar just ran straight into me and I wasn't sure if I was doing it right.

c. For the arrow phase, I think it's cool that you have to strategically plant yourself in front of the salamandar, but the rate at which fireballs came out was inconsistent and frustrating at times. It felt like playing chicken with the salamandar. Some of the times I'd jump down off the platform he was charging at and as soon as I did that's when it'd queue up a fireball.

Again, really cool concept for a fight and good utilization of characters, just some areas that can be polished to make it a more enjoyable fight.

3. The long bridge puzzle was cool, and I liked the room that had the hidden wall clues, but I definitely only found the final switch because I missed a jump while backtracking. It was also kind of strange that I could find solutions to the puzzle before even finding the puzzle itself. I heard a noise when I threw the first switch and knew that something was going on so it's not all bad, but I think these kind of puzzles are more effective when you present the challenge and then make the player explore to find the answers - the first bridge puzzle to the right of the town was really good for this.

Oh, I also encountered a bug where the first time I died after saving after the first bridge crossing I respawned back at the very beginning of the game. Quitting out to the menu and continuing my game brought me back to the save point and I didn't encounter that bug again.

Overall I had a good time playing through the game. The switching characters concept is super cool and you've got some really good ideas in there. I'd like to see it or something similar to it developed further. Good job!

Awesome, I'm glad you had a good time and thanks for the in-depth feedback! I agree with everything written here! As for the final boss, that's a really cool idea about giving the final boss all of your missing powers (but my head hurts at the idea of adding wall slide to an enemy...). I'm working on adding the missing bosses and final missing area (the generator core was meant to be bigger) for a post-voting release though. Oh, and the teleporters being accessible from the beginning is purposeful and I don't mind if you abuse the hell out of them, there are a lot of routes through the game and I'm still trying to find the fastest one. :D

I definitely agree on enemies shooting from off-screen, and on the camera stuff. I have a camera controller set up that can adjust its distance from the player based on velocity but it was one of the last things I worked on and I wasn't able to find a balance that didn't give me motion sickness before release. I'm still trying to get it working because not having blind jumps is pretty important to me, and I also wanna get that nice burst of momentum feel when the player dashes.

I'm super glad you were still able to complete the game, I've since fixed that bug (I think) but I'm also glad it's not 100% reproducible in the wild somehow.  Anyway, thanks for taking the time to play my game!

Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback! I agree with the SFX, I usually don’t even implement sfx so I’m not super familiar with fine tuning them, but I think I have a better handle on it now and can add an option for Audio Effects volume in future releases.

I actually have a version if the player controller with a more varied moveset, but I kept it fairly limited here just cause I tried to link a specific type of movement to a different area and 3 areas was already a lot to design. Future games will definitely incorporate a more dynamic moveset though.

Cheers!

Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed it! I’ll be adding in the missing boss encounters and the actual final area once the jam has ended if you want to give it another playthrough. :)

I'm glad you're enjoying it! Good luck getting to the end (if you didn't see the note on my page, here is is as it will help you avoid a very disheartening progress blocker later on: IMPORTANT NOTE: If you make it to the point where you can start making choices, DO NOT choose the first option until it's your only choice remaining, otherwise you won't be able to progress later in the game. Sorry.).

Thanks for your feedback and for the quick test/feedback on the bugs before the deadline. Lots of good stuff in here.

I agree that losing the powers wasn't super fun, and I knew it as soon as I put in the first generator that took your powers away, but I was already committed at that point. And like you said, that's the beauty of game jams. I think because I gave the character Mega Man X's moveset to start with, it was kind of charming to me to end the game using Mega Man 2's power set (but as soon as the jam ended I went in and expanded his moveset cause I kind of really enjoy controlling him and wanted more things to do). 

Turrets, I really do need to change them to have a shorter range overall, the sniping is pretty annoying. The spinny guys I had the same thought, just never implemented it. I think I'll go back and do that. It's unfortunate about the music, each area has a distinct theme and I feel like they all get me in the mood for killing more enemies (though to be fair I didn't create any of the music, it all came from a creator namedJuhani Junkala who has a massive collection on opengameart).

I hear you about the magenta platform lines, I'm going to go in and change those to the intended darker gray. I'll see what I can do with some texture variation on the ground tiles, I did some early experimentation with different tile sets for the different zones but never found anything that didn't clash with the overall vibe, but I didn't realize that some of the ladder points were hard to distinguish so... I'll see what I can do!

So yeah, thanks for taking the time to finish the game and thanks for all the great feedback!

Can you stand on your spears?! I’m gonna have to give it another shot. Also I forgot to mention, I rarely used that spear attack just cause the visual made it look significantly weaker compared to my badass sword attack.

Very cool aesthetic, I really enjoyed the variety of backgrounds and the feel of the different areas (although space was... weird :P). The movement was very fluid and smooth and the jumping felt precise and controllable. The attack, once I got it, was satisfying and I liked that it was more of a stun than an actual attack, I wasn't incentivized to go around clearing out entire maps of enemies. I liked the abundant health pickups and the jumping puzzles later in the game (well, the devices that you'd have to whack and land on in the same jump). I also cracked up every time my cat got hit, and appreciate that there's a dedicated button to "meow".

Some feedback:

1. The world is big and I don't have a map (as far as I could tell). I eventually got my head wrapped around the central thoroughfare, but the space map was particularly disorienting and took me awhile to work my way through.

2. Similar to the above, I never really felt like I had any guidance, I was just kind of let loose in the world and had to guess where you wanted me to go. There was a fairly natural progression in the beginning of the game up to the first ability, but after that I was sort of just wandering around aimlessly until I found the next one.

3. It was unclear to me what the CDs were for, if they were necessary for progress or just a bonus collectible. I got to the end, so now I know, but having all these items scattered around and me not necessarily knowing where I was supposed to go at the same time just sort of had me worried that I needed to find X CDs and then take them somewhere or something. Probably a me problem, but it was there in the back of my mind.

Anyway, I enjoyed my time with the game. Good implementation, great aesthetic, and a cool usage of the theme. I'm happy I got to help the cat escape cyberspace!

This was a really solid combat system. The solid thunk when hitting enemies was very satisfying, and the coin explosion on death felt great. Movement was really smooth and it was pretty easy to navigate through the areas. I liked the atmosphere, although I'd kind of like to know why I'm going to slay the devil. :D Also the character and enemy designs were great - a particular highlight for me was when I heard the first wolf man cry out, I laughed out loud.

Some feedback:

1. I never really felt that Dead Cells-esque ballet of "dodge and attack", I felt like every time I tried to dodge through an enemy I just ended up taking damage anyway. The hit boxes on some of the monsters or their attacks felt a bit overly punishing as well (the demon general's giant sword hitting you while standing behind him or the shield guys stood out to me as very unforgiving).

2. I know other people have said it, but lack of a map. The game was very large and while the trek from campfire to campfire was fairly quick, I reached a point where I didn't really know where I should go next and had nothing to reference. I feel like I knew where I was supposed to go (it was after the double jump), but just couldn't get there. It also didn't help that I seem to have encountered a bug where the camera wouldn't scroll as far left as there was stage, so I couldn't see where I was going (it's in Hell directly across from the first entrance, there's a wolf man there).

3. I agree with what people said about gravity on the jump. I really liked the ridiculousness of the upward force, it felt appropriately over the top for the character as presented, but I'd like to feel some weight behind his descent. 

Anyway, as I said I really enjoyed the combat in this game, and as I'm writing this I just remembered you had a stat and shop system too! Very impressive implementation for a game jam (although auto--equipping the blessings would have been nice, I never figured out how to equip them). I'd enjoy more of combat like this, just a ridiculously weighty, screen-shakey smash fest. :D Great entry!

Oh, haha. I guess I kept reaching cherry blossom trees in between sections of taking damage. :D

Yeah, tweaking the difficulty for game jams is super tough cause you never know where people are coming from. I watched several different people playtest it and they all struggled with different parts, some thought it was too easy, and some thought it was too tough. I basically ended up trying to model the difficulty after Mega Man games, where it can feel pretty overwhelming and frenetic at first but you get used to it over time. If I were going to go back and adjust some things, I don't think I'd necessarily remove enemies shooting through walls because that ability has always been a staple of Mega Man games (depending on the enemy), but I would reduce the range at which enemies are willing to fire at you, cause I also did not enjoy it when an enemy from off-screen would shoot me.

Thanks for playing!

There's a checkpoint just after the first boss if you go left instead of right.

I'm glad that you enjoyed the bit you played, I tried to get a variety of enemy designs in there. The shield guy was fun to make (even though I never got the bullets to reflect in the proper direction when you shoot him from the left). The first boss fight is basically just an homage (read: direct ripoff) to a boss fight from Mega Man 3, otherwise I would have varied up its pattern a bit more. 

Thanks for playing!

I got very Master Blaster vibes from this game, so that was cool - a very good use of the Grow and Shrink theme. The atmosphere was great too, the black and white and only occasional sound effect gave the whole world a very unsettling vibe, and the intro did a good job of setting the treacherousness of the trench up.

Some things I struggled with

1. The speed and pace of play. I get that you're underwater and the speed of movement did a really good job of selling that atmosphere, but it just took forever to do anything or get anywhere, especially if you died and had to start over. I would have enjoyed a better balance between realism and speed.

2. Once you get the submarine, it's kind of hard to know what exactly the little guy is used for. I sent him outside the submarine to get some fish sometimes, but his gameplay didn't feel super differentiated aside from not having a weapon, and I would usually just sprint to the fish and then hit escape to go back to the sub. Giving him his own particular niche aside from being able to fit through one-tile gaps would help with this.

I admittedly didn't get super far in the time that I played (by the fourth time I died, I didn't have it in me to navigate through the cave system again), so I don't have a lot more feedback. I think if you were trying to sell a very oppressive, alien atmosphere that makes you feel super vulnerable, then you definitely succeeded at that. 

I did it! That was a very visually impressive game, I really dug the aesthetic. The music was relaxing and the space + nature aesthetic was an unusual but cool combination. The energy hook is definitely a cool movement concept, and the other movement mode you get was very satisfying to use, I'd say that part felt the most relaxing (until I slammed face first into some spikes...). I also liked that health regenerated over time, it made the game very forgiving and I wasn't afraid to explore. 

Some areas where I struggled

1. The energy hook is cool in design, but it's very hard to use. The key sequence you need to input to go in your desired destination never felt intuitive to me, and I found myself struggling a lot to climb higher or more complicated shafts.

2. The level was massive and there were only a few memorable landmarks. Having more ways to know where you are, where you've been and where you should potentially be going would be helpful (the most memorable landmark I saw was the path guarded by two obstacles).

Overall it's a good combination of movement mechanics that were fun to use together. Grappling into a big floaty glide was always very satisfying when I could pull it off, and the ending moment was very satisfying, very pretty. Great entry!

A very atmospheric game, the ominous dread was palpable. It had a very 1980s vibe to it which to me puts it pretty solidly in line with the 20XX theme. The intro scene also really helped set up the overall tone.  The alien art was off-putting in all the right ways, and I really liked some of the rooms that just had dead aliens in them, those rooms scared me the most. I also liked that it seems like the first boss has set a misdirection trap for you. The corelock mechanic on the gun was a really good method to get me to not spam shooting without being as stressful as a limited ammo system.

Some areas I struggled with,

1. It was hard to know where I was going or supposed to go. The game was pretty linear at first, but once I unlocked the dash ability I wasn't sure if I was supposed to continue down a certain path and begin exploring more. Because all of the rooms look more or less the same and because I didn't have access to a map (I think?), it was really hard to have a sense of direction.

2. Some of the enemies had a tendency to body me into a corner and do more multiple hits on me while I couldn't move out. Not really sure what the solution to this is, maybe let me move through the enemy for a moment after getting hit?

3. Unfortunately I ran into an issue where the game just crashed after going into one of the elevators / loading rooms. I'm not sure if I was even going the right way at that point, it was in the room with the smoking space ship.

Even though first-person shooters aren't really my genre of choice, I was pretty solidly sold on the atmosphere and just general creepy vibe of the area. Very nice job!

This game is bursting with charm. I love the cartoonish look and feel (and the cute real raccoon portrait on the wall) and the main character is just all around fun. The world's aesthetics felt good and alongside the music I just kinda relaxed as I played (until I ran into a swinging saw....). I like how snappy death felt, a very quick respawn and you can get right back into it, so there wasn't really a lot of pressure at all.

A few things stuck out to me though,

1. The hook is very fun but also pretty hard to use. I was using my controller to play at first and then had to switch to WASD to use the hook and I was never really able to get it to feel smooth or consistent. When I did get it in the right place and go some momentum behind it, that did feel really good though.

2. The vertical climbing section with the hook was also pretty difficult. At first I had forgotten that I could even wall jump and just kept slamming my face into the wall with the hook trying to propel myself upwards, but I finally remembered wall jumping's a thing. Maybe some differentiation between what can be hooked / not hooked (for example, wooden beams can be hooked, walls can't) would help with enforcing how a given movement puzzle should be approached.

3. Minor nitpick and maybe it's just me, but the font was pretty hard to read at a glance. It definitely felt consistent with the cartoon-y tone, but every time my character said something I found myself having to stop and really focus on reading the text.

Overall very cool entry, I really like the hook as a core movement mechanic, it's really fun to use when it's working correctly, and the game's overall aesthetic really grabbed my attention. Good job!

This is a very hefty game, there's a lot of content here. There's also a lot of polish, everything just works - good feedback on player and enemy hits, enemies telegraph their moves, the time slow effect feels good, it's all great. The art of course is very solid, I love the look of the main character.

Some subjective thoughts (I'm giving you a lot here cause this game has a lot going on):

1. I was never really clear what exactly my goal or character motivation was, I was sort of just walking through this world without much purpose. 

2. Combat and movement through the world were too slow for my personal taste. The rhythm of combat, dodging and swinging, that all felt good, but getting to enemies and moving around the world felt on the slower side to me.

3. The area you need to use the double jump to go to didn't feel super well sign-posted. I had to look at the map for awhile before figuring it out. I wish there were something more memorable around there to give me that "a-ha!" moment.

4. I liked the first boss fight, but at first, I thought I had soft-locked myself and was missing the ability I needed to get over to him. I think teaching the player that there are some projectiles they can hit back when time is slowed could be useful before fighting this boss.

5. There were some places where enemy placement frustrated me, usually those dragon statues, but sometimes it was the goblins as well. There was a lot of ledge guarding going on, and the player character doesn't really have any tools to deal with it (as far as I could tell).

But yeah, overall this is a very solid entry. I think among game jams I've played this one felt the most like a game that's heading towards retail, so I hope you keep working on it!

Oh yeah, I also encountered that mine bug once.

Very cool concept fight. Very difficult concept fight! This boss has a pretty hefty move set and they're all animated beautifully, it was definitely a treat to look at. The attack was satisfying to use, the range and effect just felt good together. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to defeat the boss, he kept killing me in phase 2, so I put the game down for a bit, but I'll go back and try to kick his ass again later!

Some areas where I struggled

1. The feedback on the player being hit wasn't enough for me, I found that I kept checking my health bar in the upper corner to see if I'd been hit or not, and I was never quite certain what the enemy attack hitboxes were because of this.

2. I'm pretty sure I got the hang of avoiding the lightning bolts, but the player's very quick movement and acceleration speed made moving between the bolts a bit finicky which made this attack feel stressful each time even though I understood the mechanics.

3. I think a better telegraph on his long-range dash would have helped with the second phase. I think there might have been a screen shake when the dash started, but it didn't feel very consistent and so I never knew quite when to jump. This paired with not really understanding the attack hit boxes made this particular attack feel very punishing.

Anyway, I'm not one to shy away from a challenging boss fight, and at least the run back to him is short.:D I'll go back in later today and see if I can take him down, but if you have any tips or tricks, I'd love to hear them!

Glad you enjoyed it! My preferred order for upgrade removal ended up being wall jump, dash, then charge shot, but I think without the final boss fights being implemented charge shot is pretty reasonable to give up earlier. I definitely need to look up how to implement ladders in a better way, I think my solution was pretty hacky and it shows. 

I tried to make health drops from enemies pretty generous, it's just that I didn't get to fill up some of the later screens with enemies to drop the health, so the hazard damage starts to pile up (at least that's my experience). I do definitely wish I had had time to go through and tweak some of the difficulty / room layouts, but thus is the nature of game jams.

Thanks for playing!

I couldn't get enough of Tommy's little victory shred, I smiled every time he got excited about grabbing a power-up. The music really set the mood, from the quite ominous opening music to the more exciting exploration track and the rocking final boss track, great choices. :D I also really liked the map, it was relevant to the theme and once I figured it out it made exploring pretty straightforward. Enemy death animations and breaking the seals were all very satisfying. And don't get me started on that ending... looking forward to the next installment!

Some places where it could be improved,

1. as others have said, the jump is a bit floaty, but what bothered me more was having to fully commit to each very long jump, you couldn't do little hops. There were a few places where you had to climb some little steps and this made those areas a bit tedious.

2. it was never clear to me if I was breaking the game by using the dash move to jump in mid-air. As I progressed deeper into the game, I began to feel more and more like this was intentional, but the first few times I did it I couldn't help but feel like I was cheating.

3. The opening area is quite small but I looped through it quite a few times before I realized I was missing the exit leading to the first power-up. I ended up having to check the map to see that there was a door I had missed, which in itself isn't really a problem, but I think a bit more sign-posting that there's an exit there as you're running through that room (maybe some lead-up platforms or something) would have helped.

Anyway, I had a great time helping Tommy escape Hell, great work! Also my final stats were 5 deaths, 24 minutes.

That's awesome! I know exactly what you mean by the lower right area. I was very excited by the mechanical concepts in that area, but in execution, I don't think I succeeded. There are a lot of weird timings involved and I never had the time to sit down and math out both forward and backward paths through those rooms. I like your progression choices, they are different than my normal pathway through the game, but I'm now thinking that maybe I can find an even more optimal path.

Thanks for playing! I can't wait to go murder Death in Shred Quest 2.

Loved the art, it's very cool that you're using AI to help with quick game creation. The background switching mechanic was really cool, there's a lot of potential for puzzle-solving there. Floating and flying around felt super cool, and I like that its duration was indicated by the visual effect, very cool. Good work with the voice acting, too, it helped sell the experience. 

I unfortunately didn't get very far though, I wasn't able to solve the puzzle in the second room, I'm not sure if I was supposed to move that idol up to the upper barrier or if there was something else I was supposed to move, but either way I couldn't get it to work. :(

I'll probably go back again later and try some more though, the aesthetics and presentation are worth the asking price.

Very cool concept with switching between two worlds, if you keep working on the game you can definitely expand on this to make the interactions super interesting. I really liked the art style,  especially the background. It was all really pretty.

Some feedback:

- The character's animations all look super cool, but the attack wind-up ends up making the attack feel kind of unresponsive. I ended up jumping over most enemies rather than wait for the really long swing time. The hit box also felt pretty restrictive, if enemies were moving towards me I think the wind-up of the swing combined with the small hit box would make timing attacks pretty difficult.

A really good start, I hope you keep working on it!

This was very cute, short and sweet. I really liked the little character, its animations were quite charming. Even dying made me laugh when I just sort of exploded. I liked the second set of textures that you introduce in level 2, it's just a shame they didn't get a chance to get used more. In air controls felt very tight, it was easy to reposition myself while falling.

Some feedback:

- For platforming, try to implement jump buffering (pressing jump just before you land will still cause you to jump when you land) and coyote time (you can jump for a fraction of a second after moving off of a platform), these are pretty easy to do and make the controls feel way more responsive

- I liked the saw blade traps, but the ones that move along the ground could also use an indicator of their path (like the vertical ones), it was hard to know when they were going to turn around or if I was safe in my current position)

Overall I enjoyed my time in the game, great job!

Thanks for the feedback! I'm still working on the game and plan to submit it to another concurrently running gamejam after this one. I'm definitely gonna make the dash more prominent, and I'll try to make the thumbnail more eye-catching for that one too.

Thanks for the feedback! I am notoriously bad at adding sound effects to my projects, finding them is just so tedious =/ but you're right, the game needs them (and dramatic boss music). I had a chance to watch some people play through the game and EVERYONE struggles with the ladders, so you'll be happy to know their width has been increased by 50% :D

Oh yeah, I like the idea of an enemy dedicated to dropping fertilizer. I assumed the big walking laser guy would drop it and was kinda disappointed when it didn't.