itch.io

This was cool, I liked the atmosphere and storytelling. I wish there was a little bit more to progressing than just finding the portal in most of the levels, but overall it was a nice experience.  It's a shame you don't have a web build, I almost missed this game.

I love the art style and and vibes! And the idea is pretty cool and unique. 

As some others have mentioned, it is pretty easy to find a winning strategy and then it's just doing the same thing on repeat, so for now it does get a bit boring after a bit. It would be cool to play a version of this game which is a bit more balanced (pun intended) towards progressively scaling difficulty, perhaps with a bigger variety of pickups, frequency of the bombs going down, more unpredicatble objects, etc. 
Lots of ways you could expand this. But this would really make a great casual mobile game you can pull out and fumble with!

Great job, loved it!

Hey nice job!

I liked the minimal but nice looking aesthetics and the main gameplay and controls were snappy and satisfying. I wish there was some audio though and some feedback to what is happening. at the moment there is no indication to when you're getting hit. Also I was a bit confused what the scythe was, I assumed it was like a close range attack which was this spawning box, but i tried upgrading it a bunch but didn't really see any difference. 

Good job though :)

This was spooky and atmospheric, i liked it. I also liked how you've used the  game page to add to the ambiance of the game.

That's pretty funny, It reminds me of this really old shockwave game "gorillaz final drive" with the elevated highway. I wish there was some sound though. 

Good job :)

Ayyyyy, this is really cool!

It ended up being a bit short but i loved the atmosphere and i liked that there was a bit of a narrative going on.  The bugs actually had interesting variety to them, I especially liked the rotating one and the super glitchy kaleidoscope looking ones. I also like the weird pixelart but lit and post processed look, it all tied together nicely.  The menu was super cool too. Overall ofc it was just a platformer but it's cool what you've made 3 days and you made a nice cohesive package. I hope more people find this, it's great. It's always really tough to have people try your game if you don't have a web build, so I can definitely recommend on making sure you can get a web build out there next time ;) 
Great job!

Very cool, nicely polished! the art style is really consistent and tidy! This one is super fun to see because we made a similar idea but we've both made different key choices, so it's cool to see how different choices have affected the gameplay and design. 

For me personally, I really enjoyed the gameplay, though I feel like the start can be a bit of a slog. the fire rate and movement speed are pretty slow initially and upgrades to those increment pretty gradually, so it becomes much more methodical rather than run and gun. But this is more a matter of taste than anything else. The combinations of errors were pretty interesting overall and you had a decent variety. There were a good amount of monkey's paw type things where i really had to decide if the glitch is worth it for me, which is pretty neat. 

Overall great job!

Nice art and banging jams! Initially i didn't get a feel for the dash mechanic but eventually it clicked. Would be nice to have some more levels. Good job though :)

That sure was unwieldly!

First of all, banger cover image, i love it. it's fun, the weird controls turned it almost more into a puzzle game. I also liked the warbly car sounds. Great Job!

Cool! I really liked the moment i first figured out i can walk on the UI.
I just wish there were some checkpoints, having to do the first levels again when i die is kinda discouraging.

Whaaaow, this is the coolest looking thing. I really love the visual style and the sound design. It's so atmospheric! 

I enjoyed the gameplay, though I do wish there was a bit more to it, once you get used to the timing dealing with the boxes becomes relatively samey. Perhaps one idea could behaving some time pressure (outside of the unholy hand when you have too many boxes)  but then also more guidance to finding the enemies. So that you are forced to move less cautiously, but also don't get lost as easily. on the later levels i spent a lot of time just retreading my path trying to find the last boxes. I really like the dragging of the sword and how that affects the angle of the attack, would be interesting to play with that idea more somehow. 

Also i'm curious, what did the pickups do? I couldn't really figure that out. 

Anyways, overall amazing job, i think this is, at least to me, the coolest looking game on this jam :) The gameplay is also solid, just could use some more elaboration. 

Cool artstyle and sound! I liked how the driving sound kinda mixed with the music to make this freaky funky soundtrack. The glitching was fun, though I didn't fully understand what was going on haha, eventually just going full on boost and living with the glitches seemed to work the best for me. 

Great Job!

Lovely idea, I hate it!

Overall it was quite fun in that ragebait-y way and i ended up trying it for way too long. i ended up giving up in the apartment roof level, i got to the wooden piers a handful of times but didn't manage to tie it all together. 

few bits of feedback: 

1. The game reaaaly begs for some sound effects, doesn't need much, but something other than that track on loop would have been nice. A crash sound, maybe a sound for the pedals, a sound for the keys changing. This to me honestly was the biggest issue. 

2.one of the more frustrating things for me was when the new keys would spawn out of the screen, so i couldn't actually see the keys. that killed a fair few runs for me. 

3. i think the instant death when touching obstacles/trashbins is maybe a  bit too harsh, having some sort of min velocity component to the collision i think would feel a lot better. 

I agree with the other commenters on maybe limiting key combinations to one side of the keyboard, I think it would make it a bit more accessible while still keeping the ragebaity difficulty. i have big hands so it's not as much of a problem for me as i could almost span my hand between the left arrow and 1 keys. 

But overall a really fun concept and it had me sucked in for a bit even though i felt like i don't want to keep playing haha. Great Job!

Also, really nice looking itch page !

This is a cool idea and overall well excecuted. The difficulty was a little bit on the tough side,  i think mainly because you would lose progress if you die but you would not regain the hearts for incorrect guesses.
I will say I actually really like when the bugs are less obvious (like, something causing the player to dash and then the dashing causing another bug), those were the interesting ones to figure out, but me kinda sucking at the combat got in the way of that a little bit. 
Also, a funny idea, maybe you could have it so that when you report a bug incorrectly, your report could cause the opposite to happen. my first thought was something like reporting that projectiles are not shooting if you move left or something, causing the devs to overcorrect and now you shoot an extra projectile when you move left. 

Great Job!

Thanks for hopping on stream, as we mentioned, really cool levels of polish and some fun bold choices. The level progression could have used a bit more love, but overall an impressive amount of content and polish you folks managed to put together. :)

Thanks Quinten!

Was really nice to have you play and give feedback :) Also, I appreciate the legendary hackermode to get the game running in the circumstances. I'll definitely hop by the stream before the jam ends 🌟

Cool concept! I've played Before your eyes as well, it's cool to see another take on that idea. Really great job for your first gamejam! the blog post was a cool read as well.  Sadly I didn't have a webcam, but to simulate the experience my partner was watching my eyes and pressing B when i blinked hehe. 

I could see taking it in a slightly horrory direction being very interesting, since then then you can really play with what gets seen, missed and when a blink might get you in trouble, etc. 

Great job overall!

Cool art, and fun concept. It did seem like the rounds did not progress for me, not sure if that's an issue on my end. Every round it would say Round:1 and i quickly became overpowered. Great job however :)

I love this sort of simulation toy / emergent simulation stuff! (i'm also working on similar personal projects) Really cool and fun to watch, i wish there were a few more parameters to noodle with or more types of tasks, but this is really neat, great job!

Great job, love the cute artstyle. Overall a pretty solid platformer, if a bit rage-y. The gravity mechanic reminded me of VVVVVV. Good amount of polish for a gamejam game!

I did feel like theme interation wise, the bugs kinda didn't feel buggy enough. like, my initial expectation was that i'll be able to walk through all walls or that gravity would be off and I would float and would have to use the inertia to navigate. Same with the stability, eventually I just get zapped, but nothing particularly buggy happened. The actual mechanics are not bad at all, Just didn't necessarily feel buggy or errory. 
Also, the gravity flipping mechanic felt a little bit unintuitive, I feel like the way the inertia buildup worked just didn't really jam with my brain (specifically in that boss escape level where you have to float in the middle) like, the first flip it kinda accelerates suddenly, and then it is sort of smooth/maybe some inertia gets carried over, idk. hard to say, probably it's just skill issue hehe. 

but to bring the example of VVVVVV, IIRC that game didn't carry any inertia over to the gravity flip, so while it was challenging it felt very consistent. Might be worth experimenting with. 

Nitpicks aside though, great job :)

Thanks for the lovely review. There's definitely a lot of quake/quake2 influence :) I wrote the sky shader pretty much as a direct knockoff of the sky in quake 1 :)

I think the solid visuals look cool, but ye, maybe adding some shapes/variety or as mentioned before, the drop shadow, will help. I think for me the fov was the biggest blocker though since I was always just barely misjudging the edges and overshooting.

This is hilarious lmao. really fun, at first i felt like there's no real incentive to go to the lower fps gears but on track 2 it really became useful to force sharper turns. Love it, great jank, great crashes, fun!

really cool idea, it took me a while to realize that i don't need to maintain my momentum and i can stop to build up momentum. initially i was going with surf/bhop logic of swerving left and right haha. one thing that was really frustrating is that imo the fov was too wide for it's own good. the only way i could reliably hit platforms was to use the crosshair since it was hard to gauge the perspective due to the distortion. having an fov slider would be great if you were to develop this further. maybe also adding a drop shadow for the player like the pickups had. Otherwise, cool idea, and i think something like bhop really fits the theme well since it's sort of the og if a bug becoming a feature :) also, sick jams, yo!  Probably could do better but did manage an 89 sec run.

Wow, really fun idea. though it really could have used some instructions hehe. I did manage to eat all the black pieces, but it seems i couldn't attack the white pieces and eventually got caught 🤔 

Nice art-style and cool sound effects!  The glitch effect is also pretty cool, the first time i triggered it really gave me that  "oh no the game is broken" vibe, the platforming was a bit on the tricky side though, and i'm not sure if fully intentionally. like,  I felt like i had to cheese the friction a bit to get up, like the wall climbing wasn't always triggering and what i ended up doing is holding into the wall so i stay stuck, then jump up in the opposite direction to get further up. but it might have just been me misunderstanding the controls. having some inertia with the jumps maybe would help with making the movement feel more intuitive. Great job overall though :)

Hey, great job on getting something working for the jam, i see you had less than a day to work on it!
It's an interesting concept with the spots, kind of reminds me of shooting drills, but more dynamic. 

what a zany idea, i love it. also respect for integrating the music api thingy! I made it just barely to a million horses, was afraid to push my poor laptop further :)  Great job!

Nice one, love the art style and the jams were great, the glitch effect looked really cool too, i like how it breaks the 1-bit-ness of the art style. The glitch mechanics were interesting and tough. As someone else mentioned here, the lives system felt like an unnecessary frustration.  Otherwise, great job!

Cute! also holy moly that pause menu is so ominous. Cool puzzles and nice hat, i wish it had a few more levels. Good job!

Very cool. I loved the charming artstyle and the narrator!

The confusion with trying to wrap your head around all the block effects is a lot of fun. I also loved the instant respawning, made the game feel much more streamlined. The visual effects and feel are really nice, though i do wish there was a bit more audio feedback (for boosts, and dying at least)

Great job!

Nice one, I like text based survival games, this reminds me of DUST a lot.  Cool atmospheric writing, though i wish i didn't have to scroll down to see the options every time. maybe could lay out the ui where the options are always visible? I'm not really sure how theme of the jam fits in though. 
Great job though, I will probably come back to this to try to get to day 100 :)

Thank you so much. If we see some interest after the jam, we just might :)

Yeah, I was aware of not needing to hold left, but holding left did slow down the slide which was helpful in being more accurate. 

Love the viiiibes. Very charming and cool. 

The music and announcer voice are really cool, gives me like a late 90's capcom vibe. 

the jazz guitar solo in the main track was really nice, did you play that in or midi sequence it? Also loved the big band brass vibes :)

I think the controls can use a bit of work. As of now, the wall jumping made me irrationally angry, sort of in the same way as some NES platformers do.  I think the main issue is how the movement controls affect the wall jump. 

If i'm on a wall on the left and want to jump right, i need to let go of the left arrow right as i jump, otherwise firefrog will start going left in the air.  if i press right before jumping  i'll come of the wall and will fail the wall jump.

Both of these make the wall jump require more precise input but in a way which doesn't feel really fluid. 

An idea to make it feel better could be having a slight delay before coming off the wall when you press right and also keeping the trajectory of the walljump until you get another KeyDown (so the left that was held at the start of the jump doesn't affect the jump trajectory until left or right is pressed again)

Maybe these could cause some other issues, so you'd have to play around with that but it could be a starting point. 

Great job though, the game is fun, even with the little bit of rage :)

Clever idea!
since the turning is linear if feels a bit unintuitive to control. You could try adding a bit of acceleration and inertia to the turning so it would be a smooth on-off thing.
Great job!

thanks, i was going to do it :)

Wow, this is really cool, i think one of the more interesting executions of scaling as a theme i've seen! (at least for puzzle games) 

and the art style is lovely!

This is simple, cute and funny!  And you made a rhythm game for a gamejam! Lovely and fun game, great job! you and your family seem really great! 🌟 

The amount of care and attention put into this was amazing! So wholesome! The art was great, the bass slapped, and whoooo the hell animates the gmtk logo in such an elaborate way. Awesome!

The adventures of coke elf and kangaroo kid will never be forgotten.