Suddenly had this game on my mind again all week and sat down to play through both v0.8.1 and v0.6.3! I had a good time! To my surprise they work very well on Fedora 43 Linux using the GE-Proton-25 compatibility layer. I did some tweaking with Steam Input to play through on gamepad, but once I got all that going it was pretty straightforward and every bit as much fun as I remember.
I was surprised by 8.1 though, it had enemy designs that I'm absolutely sure I had never seen before! I'm not sure when that version dropped or how I missed it!
Thanks for making this and thanks for sharing it. I know I talked a lot of big hopes and promises in the past and I don't know if/when I'll ever get around to making any new fanstuff, but I would like to play around with the characters and setting more in the future someday.
I found a handful of ending and a few variation routes to get to those endings. Overall a really neat and quick package with a mix of charm and dread! Very October!
Oh! Also there was an additional issue where during a longer session where I was switching across multiple gamepads, the stick input got bugged such that it acted as if the directions were being briefly/rapidly tapped.
(Not visible via the built in input display, but I'm holding the stick tilted.)
I think this is a Godot bug rather than an X-YZE bug because I've encountered the same behavior in Brotato, and likewise the only solution I have for it there is to close and relaunch the game.
I played the game entirely through the main Steam Big Picture gaming mode rather than desktop mode. I used Desktop mode exclusively for copying the files to the Steam Deck and adding it as a Non-Steam game.
It's possible to get the weird non-pausing behavior as early as the very first room of the game by rapidly rotating the stick and mashing start a lot. When this is happening, the pause sound can be heard, but the menu doesn't display / doesn't close.
The darkness thing might entirely a problem with my vision and my hardware setup. On my main monitor I could sorta see the layout of the ground if I stood up rather than sat down, but on my other monitors, it was almost entirely dark except the specifically lit areas and the ?snow?.
A photo, which probably doesn't help much: two.png On the top, the path I came from going downwards is still kinda visible. On the monitor I was seeing the screen from, that was pretty much all black.
Edit: I see there was already a version update that I missed that may have addressed the softlock and other issues. Downloading it now.
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I'm currently about 4.5 hours into the game and reached a level where everything is extremely dark and doesn't show well on my capture card. From there, I wasn't entirely sure what to do.
There also seems to be a soft bug where using the thumbstick to move on gamepad can occasionally cause the pause menu to bug out and not activate or fail to close when pressing the start button. This doesn't seem to happen with the dpad at all.
The Linux binary is contained in an additional zip file inside the main zip file and you'll have to extract both to run the game. From there you can either run the shell script or the binary directly. You may have to manually mark those files as executable.
It's still being worked on, but there's been some family emergencies and the game is currently getting late-game spoilery content worked on, so it'll probably be a bit before there's much new to show.
That's what I got from the updates in the emails and on the Kickstarter page. Which sounds about right for a game that's only got one main developer on it.
That said I admit I had no idea there was an itch demo at all, and I wonder if AyGee forgot as well, because I'd have thought they'ld have responded to some of these comments themselves. But given the life updates, they may just have been too busy helping with the heart problems.
You may want to fact check the details. The Kickstarter updates are public, and there were 5 updates in 2024 and two updates in 2025, and those updates include things like
> A close family member had a heart attack and heart surgery and has needed a lot of support since.
> Ongoing play-testing finding new critical game-breaking bugs.
> New sprites, including a preview of what looks like some kind of poledancing rhythm game.
> Most recent progress on the game has been late-game content and thus is all spoilers and would be awkward to share.
This is quite promising. A few parts where I was particularly annoyed with having to backtrack after some falls into water, or falls over tricky platforming sections that similarly required manually going back to the start. And I crushed myself on the second movable box by mistake. But generally zooming around at high speed felt nice in the spots where I was able to do so.
Took me about 10-15ish minutes (admittedly I was taking my time and eating lunch too). Compelling, relatable, evokes emotions, has lots more art than I expected, and kind of a dreamy atmospheric soundtrack that fits the moment.
And without getting too deep in the details, the scenario lines up surprisingly close with a special day visit I had last week.
Just tried this. Seems to play OK in Doom 2 and in FreeDoom2, though I was a little confused at first that the controller settings were hidden unless going into the full menu. Gamepad seems to work just fine after configuration, so I'm not sure why it wasn't in the menu??
Either way, thanks for making a cool WAD and keep doing what you do!
Seems to be a top down wave-based arena shooter with maybe some roguelite elements? I'm not entirely sure, I can't read any of the text. I like the music though, breakbeats are cool! I got about 3 waves in but my hands were getting tired so I went to switch to gamepad. But the gamepad seemed to do nothing so I just stopped there.
Also, I just played KilaFlow up through the first unlockable level. It's a pretty challenging game, but it's probably my favorite of everything I've played from SAGE 2023. Kila is a cutie and I'm wishing you the best!
Also, occasionally, on gamepad (Xbox 360 pad), tapping and releasing the guard button quickly leaves the character stuck in their guard position until the button and pressed and released again.
I don't know if it's intentional, but the swing bars in the third/last level of the main story and around level 3 of the Challenge mode are impossible to launch off of in any direction but down when using a gamepad. It makes it so that the only way to finish the main story is to exploit tricks like swapping characters to bypass floor warps, spamming attack to get between the bottom of the bar and the top of the angled bumpers. And it makes Challenge Mode seemingly impossible to complete.
I had a confusing and somewhat negative experience when I first started, but once I really understood how to play the game and especially after I was able to play the other modes, I started to really enjoy it a *lot*
Also it has balloons in it that can be interacted with. I love those.And the environment art is gorgeous
