itch.io

I played solo, with a controller.

The gameplay looks like it has potential, but it seems that I can only access the first level? With only one tomato and wind every so often.

I think the wind works well enough personally, the little bit of delay before it  actually takes effect is enough to more or less nullify it. Combined with other events though, it could become a challenge to deal with (I mean that positively). However I could not test that as there was only wind. The stars to collect do add quite a bit of challenge though.

I do not currently see a use for spinning the platform, but it might help if there are multiple fruits to protect.

I don't think this level alone is enough for me to assess whether this could hold for 20 levels. Getting all 10 stars on this level did not look engaging enough for me to try it, after the 30 seconds mark I almost dropped the tomato just to see what the next level would be like. The screenshots and gifs do look interesting though!

The puzzles are fun to figure out! The core mechanics of the game are great and I'm sure you could make many levels out of those. I think it has just the right amount of mind-bending while still not having too much to think about ("there are only so many possible moves I could do, this can't be that difficult"). The levels not being too busy is a good thing. There were definitely a few "aha" moments in there.

The controls are a bit hard to grasp and while I do see the effort you made to make them clearer I think the game still needs a bit more, notably with the vertical shift mechanic. I think all the controls being always on-screen  with a visual indication of what they will do would be the best. Thankfully, the undo being always available makes this a relatively minor issue.

While I was stuck on one of the levels, I encountered what I think is a bug or half-implemented mechanic allowing me to walk on a box when it's on the side of a white block. At first I thought this was the solution, but as soon as I started shifting it started to break, with the box and the cat moving to impossible floating positions. (The actual solution involved falling through the edges of the screen which was quite clever). I'm sure you could make levels out of that mechanic though, once you fix it!

As a minor nitpick, I think the vertical shift takes just a bit too long and the sound is just a bit too annoying for an action you're sometimes meant to do several times in quick succession.

The base idea is very cool, but the process of solving a level is long and tiring.

One big issue I see is how finicky the platforming can be. In particular, the fact that you can affect the trajectory of past selves (with weight and collision) is, during the first level at least, only causing mistakes and errors. For example, it's very difficult to estimate how much I should be moving in a given direction and for how long since I don't know exactly how my trajectory will be affected in the future. This becomes even more of an issue if I need to go somewhere else to help another future self afterwards. This causes a lot of frustrating trial-and-error. I think you should not be able to change the trajectory of path selves except in very specific scenarios where the player has a lot of control over it and doesn't need to go back and forth to minmax it.

(Edit for clarification: I think it's less an issue of the platforming itself being bad, and rather that the kind of character controller parameters you're using are not well suited to precise, errorless movement that you will rely on with future selves.  Specifically, jump and fall speeds are too fast, I think)

Additionally, it feels like yellow sometimes just has to wait for some time because future selves have to move first, and once again it's very hard to estimate how long you should wait for and causes more trial-and-error. Maybe you could either avoid those kinds of puzzles entirely, or add a better way to estimate time passing (for example, a visible clock or timer, which each step of the solution taking roughly the same amount of time)

Still, I do think the idea has a lot of potential!

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

We hadn't noticed issues with the camera in playtests until now, but that may be because the previous map didn't need as much paying attention to your surroundings. It keeps its orientation relative to the locomotive, but that means that as the locomotive turns, the camera does too, which may be frustrating. I'm hesitant to completely remove that behavior though, maybe a toggle option in the hud would be best (even if it's not super elegant).

WASD and arrow controls are available, but we added them more as a fallback because we like having to actually pull the levers. We don't want players to default to the keyboard controls, so we don't show them, but obviously that's a super messy way of handling that. I also understand that it conflicts with the camera. Maybe a more clearly delimited camera-dragging area would work? Or maybe you're right and we should just let go of the lever controls. hm.

As for the beginning area, we hoped that the station would be eye-catching enough that it would be obvious as a first objective, but obviously that wasn't the case for you. I don't like being too direct  with instructions on what to do though, so I'll have to find a way to make that clearer.

Thanks again!

Ah, that's unfortunate. If you're on windows, there is an exe version you can download at the bottom of the page. 

It's not very obvious, but you have to actually grab and pull it with the mouse! However, the sound is a bit quiet. We are planning on fixing this extremely important feature in a 1.1 post-jam version.

Thank you!!! Seeing people try to go for the ending even when they're stuck really makes my day.

Oh, damn, that's the first time I'm seeing that. That's really unfortunate. If you were playing on web, there is a windows download available at the bottom of the page, that may work better if you're on windows

Thanks for the kind comments! Yeah the track color gradients was something I kinda randomly stumbled on during the first day, and immediately worked well as we kept adding colors. As the days of testing went by we kept randomly inventing new pride flags haha

Ah, sorry to hear that. I wasn't confident in building a Mac version that we couldn't test. The train should keep moving forward as long as the lever is not on pause (and stops at stations if not at max speed). Glad you liked the music, our composer spent a lot of time on it and was pushing hard for it to be very dynamic!

I love half-life 2

That's lovely to hear! This is our first time making a project of this scale together, especially in such a short timeframe, so the positive response has been very encouraging!

Thanks a lot for playing and giving feedback!

I think our level designer made sure that the game could not softlock, but it may appear so at first for this guy. While he is effectively locked in that zone, you can just leave him there and grab him again once you've found everyone else! I am  taking notes in case we do a post-jam version though.

We are tired my dude. We are so tired. But it was all worth it

Merci pour les retours !

Le commentaire concernant un éventuel journal est revenu plusieurs fois, et en rétrospective je me demande pourquoi je n'y ai pas pensé plutôt. Je garderai ça en tête pour la prochaine fois !

Un des trucs que j'aimerais explorer à l'avenir est la notion d'"outils", c'est-à-dire des objets qui te permettent de collecter des informations ou de faire des choses en plus, tout en s'intégrant naturellement au reste de ton arsenal, de telle sorte à ce que tu les utilises par réflexe/curiosité plutôt que parce que le jeu te l'a dit. J'ai essayé de faire ça ici avec les scanners radio et  thermique qui te donnent des informations supplémentaires sur tout mais c'est à toi de trier si cette information est utile ou non, et à toi de penser à check.

De ce que j'ai vu dans les playtests ça marche un peu, mais j'aimerais pousser encore  plus dans cette direction.

Hello, what is the difference between this version and the steam version?

I definitely agree lol. Balancing was atrocious in the later stages because I had to manually set up every value depending on the size of the object, relative size of the player etc. So we chose to have the game be too easy rather than too hard; If we ever remake the game from the ground up I would  use normalized values scaled up at runtime instead. Thanks for the kind comment!

The presentation is absolutely immaculate, and I love this interpretation of the theme (our game is actually quite similar concept-wise!), I would have liked a bit more variety in the gameplay though.

I'm honestly astonished you managed to make all that in 4 days. The puzzles are right up my alley and even if it's clearly based on The Witnes, it incorporates the theme well and has very unique puzzles. Possibly my favorite game of the jam so far!

I got to 64% cleaning. I love the idea, and the music fits perfectly! The controls feel appropriately soapy, my only issue is that I didn't find a way to reliably get out of the bathtub so I just kept trying until it worked somehow. But otherwise it's exactly as I expected!

Ah, that might be an issue with the limits of the map. The game zooms out so much that at the end it becomes really easy to reach a position limit set by godot, and if you do everything just breaks, so you should avoid going in the same direction for too long. Thanks for playing the game, I hope that moment wasn't too much of a bummer!

I love the early 3D vibe this game commits to both with the visuals, gameplay and music. It also feels good to play, but holy moly the difficulty ramps up quickly! I have a hard time mapping my path by taking into account the upper lanes.

I would love to squeeze so much polish in such a short timeframe!

Nothing to say that hasn't already been said really, I just had a lot of fun!

The idea is simple, but the game is very polished considering the short timeframe!

I love the soomth aniamtions, the screenshake, the hits feel impactful, the controls feel responsive. The menu looks nice with the animated title and button sounds.

The artstyle is cute and consistent, the enemies are pretty unique too, I got surprised quite a few times!

I do think the boss could have been made a bit more interesting because once you've killed the smaller butterflies in one go the big one just has a lot of HP and one heavily telegraphed attack. Maybe give it a more complicated attack once all butterflies have been killed. Then again, with only one hit point, the game can be quite difficult as is already.

I really like the concept, but I have a hard time coming up with a solution to go past the first few obstacles!

It's also difficult to control once your vehicle isn't upright anymore, though that may be intentional.

Nice little "speedrun" platformer! It is minimal, but it's also fully functional.

You could improve it by giving the player more control over their jumps (for instance, having the jump be smaller with a shorter button press) and also giving some leeway with the jumps (there are several times where I couldn't jump because I just fell for a 1-pixel height gap).

I love the idea of scaling up over time and seeing things around you get smaller! (In part because we had the same idea).

As other people have said, turning feels way too slow and laborious, deciding to go somewhere and then getting there takes way too much time. I did not get very far but frow hat I have seen, getting 1000 food may be way too much and the game will become very repetitive quickly.

It is unfortunate that you couldn't get the building mechanic to work, it seemed really interesting! Maybe something to look forward to in an update after the jam has ended, or as a submission to the post-jam jam?

Stacking things up is fun!
However I am not sure how much attention I should pay to the numbers on the left. The goals here are not very clear.

Stacking things up is fun!
However I am not sure how much attention I should pay to the numbers on the left. The goals here are not very clear.

Hey, thanks for the kind comment! 

To get that look we render the game at 640x360 and then upscale the image with nearest neighbor. You can do that simply by setting the window size in the project settings and setting the resize behavior to "viewport". After that, it's mostly a matter of artstyle, we chose a simple artstyle because Arkatein is new to blender and it lens itself well to the pixelated look.

Wow, thanks a lot for your comment!

As you have noted, sound effects and ambience have been a bit of an afterthought compared to the rest, we did spend some time on it but it was late in the jam.

Regarding difficulty, it is very heartening to hear that you want to stick with it despite being stuck! We have struggled a lot with tuning the hints and explanations on how to progress, there was one playtesting session where I had almost given up hope that this would work at all.

Thanks again, your comment means a lot to us!

I like the idea of using different folk tales around a single creature. Implementing so many different minigames must not have been easy.

The game is pretty fun, though having sa single health point feels a bit unforgiving.

• The running wolf minigame is pretty basic but it works well.
  
• The grandma clothing minigame isn't well suited to increasing difficulty, I feel, ans once you understand the concept it becomes very easy even if you have a very short time to see the image.
• The wolf in sheep clothing minigame needs more feedback for when exactly it starts checking your position and at what speed the sheep go. You could for example start with the sheep already moving and sho a small timer indicating that once it hits zero you have to be in the correct area.
• The pig minigame needs more feedback too. I understand that clicking and dragging is supposed to simulate the idea of blowing air, but it feels weird an an input method. Maybe dragging though the house would feel more intuitive than starting on the house.

All in all still a pretty impressive game considering the time limit and one that feels coherent despite the various minigames.

Whishing you the best on your gamedev journey!

I really like the graphics and atmosphere!

The game is hard, but it still feels pretty fair. The controls are complicated but not absurd, it doesn't feel like I completely lose control of the sub at any point.

I have to admit I didn't get very far on account of me not being very good, still I think it might deserve to dedicate some time to it to see the end.

Wishing you the best on your gamedev journey!

Great idea, I love it!

Each minigame feels fun in its own right for the twenty-or-so seconds before going to the next one. And each one is well polished!

I like the maze section too and the little messages popping up as we walk. Ne narration is well made in general, I like that the game starts with a question.

The first teleportation point was pretty obvious visually though. The only other small issue I have is that losing conditions aren't well signaled. Only way to know if you're going to lose is to try.

Wishing you the best on your gamedev journey!

Smashing things is fun! The animations are well made and I found it funny how you used the simplicity of the Godot logo to your advantage.

However, currently it seems that the best strategy is to use the fire magic constantly as it is much more effective than spamming the smash button. With the health regeneration, I was able to stay alive indefinitely just by moving my cursor all over the screen while holding RMB.

I think it would be great to have various enemies, needing more decision-making from the player on who to smash first, as currently, you just have to kill everything on sight.

Wishing you the best on your gamedev journey!

I really like that interpretation of the theme, and integrating the wildcards into it!

The platforming is quite clunky, especially with the moving platforms, but it was still enjoyable.

The forest is spooky, congratulations on that. Not being able to hear the goat and having to look back every once in a while to make sure it's following you is pretty unnerving.

I also like the music / background ambience a lot in general.

I think giving us more granular choices that can impact the journey differently would be great. But I understand that development time was limited.

One weird thing I noted is that the third run through of the forest was identical to the second, for me.

Wishing you the best on your gamedev journey!

I managed to get to wave 11. The gameplay is simple but actually pretty fun and engaging! It's easy at the beginning but the difficulty ramps up surprisingly fast. One or two more enemies throwing off the usual player strategies could work really well with this.

A minor nitpick: It took  a while for me to understand that the lighning bolt was a powerup! I thought it was just a bugged sprite leftover from one of my attacks at first. Making it look a bit different could help, especially since it's arguably the strongest powerup.

I like the monochromatic color palette.

However, the game is seemingly very hard! There are a lot of enemies, and they move quite fast, and the attack animation is pretty long, so you get submerged instantly. The only way I managed to survive was by exploiting what seems to be a bug: moving cancels the attack animation so you can attack again instantly. If that is intended, it should be made more clear I think!

Wishing you the best on your gamedev journey!

The visual effects are very well made, and combined with the sound effects and audio they sell the ambience really well!

I initially did not realize that I could interact with the car. A prompt appearing would be good in this kind of situation.

I also didn't manage to progress in the game. I feel like I'm in a completely boxed area and I can't go anywhere. I found the logs but I didn't know what to do there. If there is somewhere I can go or something I can do to continue, it would be great if the game could guide me more clearly towards that.

Wishing you the best with your gamedev journey!

The platforming works really well, I managed to walk around the level without missing jumps and without getting stuck anywhere which is great considering the layout is quite vertical.

Fighting seems difficult though. It's not very obvious when our character loses hp. A small animation, or camera shake, or visual effect would be helpful, as well as seeing clearly where the damage comes from. Sound effects would be great for that too!
Because the enemies seemingly attack instantly and without warning, taking damage seems to be unavoidable in order to get in range to hit them.

Wishing you the best on your gamedev journey!