itch.io

Thanks so much! I appreciate you trying out the game and your feedback!

The title screen and opening text rocks, as does the general vibe! North's design and animation rules and the sound design is quite nice. We stan a fixed jump arc and the slow movement isn't the worst ( and is interesting! ), but I'll echo the sentiment that one false move is quite punishing. And I'm not sure what function the health provides when everything send you back to the bell anyway. 

Some potential ideas: North is a sturdy friend and moves as such, but when it lands it slides a bit, often into the water. Just sticking the landing would really help, it sometimes feels like you successfully judged the fixed jump arc, but then you slide into a reset. I feel like enemy projectiles should just chip away at you, and this would give you more opportunities to get good at blocking. Dealing with the failure of missing a jump is a little more tricky, I don't necessarily have a great solution. Maybe just speeding up the overall player movement would be enough. 

I got the attack upgrade and explored quite a bit, but it's late for me and I need a pause. Will revisit tomorrow. But I really hope you continue working on this project, I think it has a ton of potential, cheers!

Awesome concept!! Honestly a little spooky from the get go, which is not a bad thing. And something you could lean more into in the future if you wanted to. The positional audio as you approach the machines is a nice touch. Great atmosphere in general, and music!!

For what it's worth I did get stuck in the exact same place as WaveParadigm, so I'm thankful I read that comment thread. The difference in height between the two conveyor belts is so minimal, that it felt strange that I could just jump on the first but then not the second. And then the machine in between them seemingly being an invisible wall didn't help, when it also seemed like a reasonable height object to jump onto, and also kinda blocked the jump from the first belt to the second.

Anyway, that's a hiccup in an otherwise very cool experience. I'm now exploring the 3rd arcade machine, which is a cool vibe shift, I appreciate the different perspectives of each game. Not sure where to go but I'll try to utilize the compass. It's very late right now for me, so I need to pause and I'll try again tomorrow. Really nice work!!

Very pretty entry, very pretty ending!! I think you nailed the theme with the minimalist visuals / audio and only 2 actions buttons. 

The minimalist environments were a little rough to navigate, mainly in the opening area. All the white surfaces kind of blend together, particular in one room where you need to make a sprinting jump over a gap in a bridge, and it's very hard to tell where the gap begins, so it's easy to just run clean off. I was afraid I was going to get lost, but there seem to be multiple paths leading to each upgrade, so it was never much of an issue.

I appreciate having full air control when jumping, but it did make the character feel a little weightless. This might match with the general ethereal vibe, but it maybe wasn't the most satisfying for me. A little bit of inertia / momentum when jumping may have felt better to me. And like a few other folks have mentioned, the wall run is cool but a little too easy to abuse and just bypass platforming challenges completely. 

I like the idea of the infections, but cleansing them didn't really seem to do anything? They provide a neat visual contrast, but I'm not sure what their function was besides flavor. And more than once, I would still get hit by something invisible even after destroying them, I don't know if there were still colliders hanging around that didn't get deactivated.

The ending was really pretty and surprising as I tried to use the final ability. Good job and I hope you keep working on the game!

Gotcha, thanks for replying! I was concerned many players didn't realize you can avoid the basic pot enemies attack by just backing up a little bit when they wind up, no need to jump. Or if they did, still maybe not the most enjoyable room design. I should have done something to tutorialize that, or just not limited the rooms to be quite as tight,  at least for the jam. Okay thanks!

Very cool, looking forward to it!!

Hit credits, cool entry! For reference, my playtime was 1h20m, found Wood then Gyro, then got pretty lost lol. But found my way eventually. 

First of all, the music is fantastic, the Vault theme goes absolutely crazy. I was literally hooping and hollering when the guitar solo came in. Looks like Cammy does a lot of custom Doom music, so this makes sense. The sound design is really great in general, and all the marble noises of the different materials go along way to selling each "character". And I'm never going to complain about an N64ish aesthetic.

You *nailed* the feel of the marble, I think it was the perfect amount of weight, momentum, acceleration, air control. It's a joy to control, and the hover of the Gyro is really excellent too. Unfortunately, I think a lot of that work was let down by the level design. Due to the game being a Metroidvania, the areas need to be traversable in multiple directions, which results in just a bunch of flat ground most of the time. It rarely takes advantage of the fact that you get to play as a marble. I was hoping for more slopes, ramps, maybe a halfpipe or some boost pads that accelerate you ( the boost jump things were fun! )

But honestly I think my main issue was just feeling like the entire game world needed scaled down like 33% percent or more. So much time is spent just rolling through flat space. And when you're not sure where to go, or you need to backtrack to find a barrel to switch to Lanky Kong, it does eat up a *lot* of time. It really took the wind out of my sails about 20 minutes in or so. And some water being Death and some being more level was a little confusing at first.

I generally liked the puzzles!  The couple ways you can interact with any body of water was an especially cool realization. And I think each marble definitely had charm. The ****SPOILER**SPOILER**** final marble being breakable is a funny detail. ****SPOILER**SPOILER**** And they look great and animate well. I think it was a great choice to give them facets, and not be fully round, so the player can visually see direction and acceleration on the character.

Overall great work! And I think a good use of the theme. If you want to keep working on this project, I think this can be a really solid full game!

This is a really solid entry! The star of the show is absolutely the central hook. The changing environments are very pretty, and I love the new elements hinting at where you should go next with your new ability. Signposting the save points is a nice touch as well. I also want to shout out the vertical boost you get when you room transition upwards, a small detail that makes a big difference.

Enemy and boss design were fun, very Hollow Knight (complimentary). The combat is decent, I like the healing, and I appreciate that enemies go from idle go aggro once they spot you. Hitting things feels alright, I think a tiny bit of player pushback and maybe a chunkier hit sound would help. Enemies can largely be ignored, which isn't necessarily a problem, that's true of many games, it just felt especially noticeable here. It usually felt safer to just jump / dash over them than try to engage, unless I needed health. The boss was enjoyable, though a few of  the attack telegraphs felt a little too similar. But nice range of attack that all requires a different method to avoid!

The world design loops back onto itself to lead you into the next area in a very smooth way, which sounds like a good thing, but in practice, lead to the game feeling somewhat linear. Combine that with my avoiding most enemies, and the game kinda ended up feeling like just a gauntlet of spike traps. And many of them were nicely designed! It just got a little exhausting.

The jump felt a little weird for me. You have a nice even upward movement and hangtime, but then you fall *so* sharply and quickly, it was hard to judge a lot of the precision platforming. This was made worse when you needed to shimmy into a correct position on the wall-grab foliage to prepare for a jump, but then you bonk your head on a block and fall so rapidly into spikes.  I think you spaced all the level geometry out really very, so none of the jumps every felt too demanding, I think the difficulty was tuned pretty well! It just *felt* harder than it needed to be because I felt very out of control making some of the jumps. I think slowing the fall speed, and probably the horizontal movement a bit would go a long way.

Again, I love the premise, but beyond that the game does feel very "standard" in terms of execution and abilities. And there's not much connection to the theme beyond the game having minimalist art initially.

I raised a lot of criticisms but it's only because I see a lot of potential in this project! I hope yall continue working on it, great job!!

Really cool entry!! Loved that it was basically one room, and nice you got two boss fights in there. I wish there was a little more to use the gravity switching for, because it was so well implemented! Although it was neat in the final fight. Audio was a little out of balance for me, but that's a small complaint. And I also really like how it starts zoomed in, and then reveals more and more, nice touch. Great job!!

Thanks for the detailed comments, I really appreciate it!! I'm happy to hear "pin-balling", that's the game feel goal I was going for ultimately, being a controlled pinball when there's many enemies, bouncing around in a fun way. Hopefully I can tweak and better flesh that out in the future. I agree the last combat has too much going, pretty messy, was running up against time at that point. The portrait is definitely just flavor here, but I have ideas for mechanical implications in the future. And I appreciate your comments on the palette and map structure! Thanks again for playing!!

Thanks for the detailed feedback, it's very helpful! I appreciate the notes about the movement tech, definitely something I wanna tweak. And yeah I probably spent too much time on polish / game feel instead of just finishing the damn game lol. Thanks for playing!

If you have time, can I ask for more specifics about "tight rooms"? A few people have mentioned that, but I'm not sure what the specific difficulty is / an example. I know the final combat room is messy / overly hard, but I wanna know if other rooms are constraining players in a way that they can't avoid enemy attacks reasonably

I appreciate the feedback and thanks for playing!! 

Thanks for playing and the feedback!! Yeah wish I had left more time to tweak those abilities,  implementing the bump attacking actually ate a lot of time. And yes, 2 buttons would be wild lol! I definitely wanna try your game, thanks again

Thanks for playing and the feedback! Yeah the pressing jump again to stomp is a little unusual, especially without holding down, something I'll probably think about. And I agree the spikes need reworked a bit, both damage, and collision that another person mentioned. Thanks again!

That's fully my bad lol! I thought I tried it but obviously not, cheers!

Very solid start for your first 3D game! The character design is excellent and I liked a lot of what you were going for. The dash into long jump into wall slide is reliably very fun. 

I think I had a lot of similar issues to other folks, just some general 3D polish that I won't bother to repeat. My biggest issue was just the "wall state" and ledge grab not triggering consistently. This may be an issue with the level geometry, not sure. And a few more sound effect would have gone a long way: jump, land, wall grab, and wall sliding would have given some nice feedback to make everything feel better. Hope yall keep working on this!!

Thanks for your comments, I appreciate you taking the time! Yeah sensory and game feel was my biggest focus, glad you liked it. 

And yeah I have a small hitstop when you collect a gem, but I know it's a little silly when you grab a whole bunch of them lol, I left it in, but will probably fix that. That's a good note about the spikes! Will definitely change that. And I agree with your other notes too. Would *love* to have snuck a boss in, but ran out of time at the end just getting the levels finished. 

Thanks again for playing!

Thanks for playing and for the comments! Yeah I had more plans for the jewels, and I do want to tweak the wall jump. And I appreciate the note about those last few text boxes! I had run out of time and thought I would let the player know "okay you can stop here if you want", but I agree I could have easily put something more positive / celebratory. Thanks again!!

Thanks for playing and for the detailed feedback! I really appreciate it. 

Yeah I wish I had devoted more time / testing to the level design in general. The final room is a common sticking point. And that's a good note that no one else has made about coming back with the Feather, I should have made the enemy over the spikes one of the rock guys, or just had a shortcut like you said. And I'm beginning to regret the Cursed Sword lol, it double the damage of *everyone*, which I though might be a fun addition, but definitely should have tested it more. 

Will definitely tweak the wall jump too, I went back and forth on it a lot. Glad you liked the aesthetic and the crunchy sound! I wanted everything to feel old and nostalgic, but not trying to emulate a particular console. Thanks again

Really cool entry! Found a couple friends and the credits. I like the visor mechanics, simple but effective. My very part is just the atmosphere, and sound design / music, really great vibes. The visor toggle noise was especially nice.

Few small notes: for playing on gamepad, give the option for visor toggle on the bumpers, would be much easier to execute some of the platforming. Some background tiles were nearly as dark as the black foreground tiles, which made parsing where to go next pretty tough. And IMO if you switch visors and you freeze yourself in a block, I think it'd be nice if it just pushes you in *some* direction, like on top of the block if applicable. But I know that would be programmatically complicated since there's a lot of different block configurations / collision scenarios. 

Overall really great job! Hope yall continue working on it

Really great entry! Hit credits, but didn't find any secrets. A lot of solid puzzles and it's always fun to have "knowledge gates", feels very cool. And I think you did a great job with the theme by getting so much mileage out of "one" ability. I don't want to say too much and spoil anything.

Minor issues, the sound effects were so much louder than the music, that I could barely hear the music in order to have the SFX at a comfortable volume. And having to figure out both (?) hidden techniques so close to each other, was a lot of frustrating trial and error in a short span of time, maybe they could have been spaced out a little more. They were very cool though!

I think my biggest struggle is just the structure of the world / game. Each area is mainly a puzzle gauntlet, through which you gain some knowledge that can be used to access the next puzzle gauntlet. And there's not much reason to go back through those old areas. As a result, the game felt pretty linear. It did open up a tiny bit at the end to find the remaining blocks. And this is certainly not an easy fix while creating this style of minimalist puzzle game. But I just missed the sense of world and exploration you get in a "normal" metroidvania.

But this is a really good game, you could easily expand / polish it a bit and it's be ready for sale. Tremendous work!!

Thanks for playing and glad you found the sword :) Yeah I had planned to add a way to cancel the hyper dash but it didn't make it in for the game jam

Wow thank you so much!! I especially appreciate the  Sensory comments, I tried hard to make everything feel cohesive. Glad you enjoyed the game

Made it to the escape pod! I appreciate the atmosphere, and especially like the music and sound design. The jumping felt a little weird to me, with there being no hang time at the peak of the jump. But the platforming was still okay. The boss fight was a lot of fun, but wish it blew up or something at the end lol. And the escape sequence was exciting! Good work!

I finished the game and really enjoyed it! My very part was just the atmosphere, the surreal setting and character abilities, and overall vibe. The music did a lot of good work here too. And I really love the ole "drop you down a huge pit to start the game, then you can get back to some of those places later" opening. 

I didn't actually mind the aggressive traps and hazards (something I wish I had time to add to my game) , but I can see them not being everyone's cup of tea. I think they can be playful and kind of funny, provided you don't lose too much progress. 

I wish there was some kind of feedback when grabbing the pickups / runes, some visual and/or sound effect. Would have gone a long way to making that more rewarding. And similar issue when fighting the boss in the forest area, I wasn't even sure I was dealing damage until it died and the gates opened ( whereas the enemies have a hit flash). I'm sure this was all just from running up against the deadline though. 

Great job overall and hope yall continue working on it!

thanks so much!!

Thank you for checking out the game and your kind words!!

I appreciate it! And I agree with your feedback, the level design could use some work and another person mentioned the PC being a little slow

Thanks for playing, and I appreciate your feedback!!

I really appreciate it!! And yeah I wish I had tested the balance of the cursed sword more, I added it towards the end lol

Thank so much!!

Thanks for your feedback, I'll definitely continue work on the game! I'm glad to hear you found the inputs responsive, there's input buffering on both dash and jump. And yeah I had considered upping the move speed. 

I appreciate the feedback and thanks for the kind words! And I totally agree, I didn't budget enough time for level design, and that last room in particular is a bit of a mess. Thanks for playing!

Thanks for checking out the game and sharing your thoughts! Yeah I definitely want to rebalance the enemy encounters and general difficulty going forward

Thanks for playing and I appreciate the feedback! Yeah the level design was a little rushed, and I should have tested the cursed sword more lol

Really great entry! I like your use of the theme for the mechanics specifically, just the one ability. Nice atmosphere, a little eerie. Moving and jumping felt good to me, the precision platforming was difficult but manageable. And it was a good choice to have very frequent checkpoints ( though I guess you had to anyway to refresh your ability lol ). I wouldn't have minded a map, but I found my way eventually. Great work!

Really simple and solid idea for a puzzle game! Well executed. Liked the Time Cast ability, felt powerful and fun. The sound effects went a long way too, very nice. The seesaw platforms being able to squish the player was kinda funny, but maybe they should just reverse direction or stop instead lol. But anyway, great work!

Love all the character art, definitely the highlight. A solid, well-rounded metroidvania experience, nice that you got a boss fight in there too. Felt okay to control. If you were to add some form of feedback when the player's attack connects, either an impact sound effect, or the enemy flashes, or pushback, something like that, that would go a long way to making the combat feel  better. Hope yall work more on it!

Very cool atmosphere! I liked the robotic / clockwork character designs, combined with the negative space environments, felt very dreamlike. The basic movement felt okay, maybe a bit slippery? I wish I had more specific feedback on that, I'm not a 3D dev lol. But the ledge mantle was a nice addition and the abilities were neat. Good job!

I'm sure you had a lot more planned but this was a rad start! I enjoyed trying out the different weapons, and fire breath on the katana was cool. I wish there were impact sound effects when your weapons connected with an enemy, that would be a quick way to make the combat feel better and less floaty. Hope you keep working on it