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This game has a banging song brother! Fun and simple gameplay!

Loved it! That felt like a small but very polished game, I wouldn't have been surprised at all to see it in a mobile app store or pre-installed by Microsoft lol. I genuinely had a great time, and I think this is the first jam game I played all the way to the end.

The winning strategy for me was to just drop a temple on top of growth, slowly build domes as I came across them, and sit until I had enough gold to spam buildings for the easy win, but I had fun building some very cool synergies once I felt like I had it in the bag.

When I tried to play it "correctly", it really fought me and I couldn't even get close to beating it. Maybe giving the player 1 free Raze per turn might make it more practical? Or at least having the Hive demolish itself? Then again, I realize now that I never checked if ruined buildings count toward the goal. I kept trying to build a stable system, but maybe that wasn't the actual goal and I just needed to survive long enough to get a bunch of ruined buildings on the board.

Growth and Expand do not stack, which is probably a good thing from a balance perspective, but made me sad.

Incredible polish on the whole intro/tutorial sequence, and I was very impressed at the destruction mechanic in a gamejam. Very curious about that. 

I unfortunately couldn't really get far into the actual game, the worms were much faster than my character could dig, and none of my retries got me a map with an easy path up. The one time I got a card pull, I didn't have time to read the cards. I'd definitely implement a pause when the cards popup.

It was very performant for me, I have a decent PC though with a 3080 (less decent now than it was 5 years ago lol).

Thanks for the great game!

Very unique art style, and very polished for a gamejam timeframe. Sound effects, animations, an inventory/deckbuilding system. Thank you for the fun experience!

I only ran into one bug and it didn't break anything. If you highlight two squares with the centipede, but those squares don't make a valid configuration, the centipede returns to your inventory as a centipede, rather than a card.

Overall excellent for a jam, not sure if you're planning to carry this game on, but some feedback in case you do. I didn't quite get the addicting sensation that I normally do from deckbuilders, although probably for a lot of reasons you're already aware of and just didn't have time to implement. 

The biggest problem for me was that I had a hard time figuring out what my items were actually doing. To be fair, for the first few minutes I was clicking the button in the corner, which meant my character was facing the wrong direction. I started seeing effect icons after I started using the enter key. But still, I wasn't too sure if stun was doing anything, or what vulnerable did, or if bleeding was really working or not. Wasn't super clear if I was supposed to combo the hammer with the nails either, I saw the little pentagrams, and it just makes sense, but it didn't seem to do anything. I experimented a little with the eye, wondering if it really was just a dud, or if it could combo someway, but nothing seemed to happen there either.

Death should maybe be a little less punishing, or the first few encounters should be a little more randomized, I found myself not wanting to redo the first few encounters after dying. Maybe lose health or a life, rather than a hard restart? Or maybe it just needs balancing so death is less likely before you feel invested.

I'm 100% sure you would already plan to improve this for a full release, but I'll still mention it since it's something I noticed. It seemed like I got fixed cards every time, I didn't notice any randomness or rewards for performance. I thought maybe choosing the 25 health miniboss would give something cool, but I couldn't beat him.

Last thing, I can't call myself an expert on dark settings like this, but if you make a full game out of it, I'd recommend giving it a spot of light to contrast with the overall setting. (Like Clementine from Walking Dead, or the adorable little critter cards from Inscryption.)

Very fun, the atmosphere and tone were great and fit the art and sound perfectly.

Controls were a little finnicky, lots of deaths because I hit the key for just a fraction of a second too long. It was starting to get just a hair too repetitive toward the end, if you were to continue working on this game I'd suggest introducing a new mechanic right around the 4th level after the player feels like they've learned the jumping and all that.

The level design was perfect for the first handful of levels, I was taught new strategies exactly as I needed them and then those were later incorporated into later levels.

I found myself very invested, tried the farthest level (I could get to) quite a few times before giving up because I couldn't figure out the way forward.

Fun little platformer, it did the theme very well. The design was great, everything from the art to the sound to the gameplay felt very cohesive.

I managed to get the key on the timing level after a half dozen tries, but then died to hubris when I was trying to get over the jump pad. Couldn't get past it after another half dozen tries, it was just a little too strict, although I'm sure there's a more reliable strategy I didn't think of.

Very fun and addicting gameplay loop. Excellent blend of decision making and physics madness. It might not keep me entertained for hours, but I definitely got hooked and didn't want to stop. Got to level 14! Probably could have gone farther to get max non-heat spawning if I'd been more careful, even with the rods all the way down it's too late at that point.

For useful feedback, I would say Music would be an instant easy win. The retro sound effects were well done, but music makes a huge difference, especially if you want to keep people for a little while.

I was happily surprised at how well it performed in web with that many particles running around. No stutters at all. I can only image how nice it could look on desktop after you add a bit more juice to the graphics.

I actually was too engaged to check if there were more control options, but mouse controls are always awkward. WASD is preferred, with spacebar or enter to shoot. Gamepad is even better, but obviously not a priority in a gamejam.

It looks great, although weirdly I almost got motion sick from the first level? (Which isn't normally a thing for me.)

It was pretty fun, and decently intuitive, although I had to read the instructions to figure out the different pickups.

The ghosts didn't seem to do anything?

Jumping was very hard to aim, and it felt overly random whether or not a cube spawned close enough to find in a realistic timeframe. I think something about the graphics made it hard to learn the maze. Maybe needs some kind of landmark or minimap?

Overall an excellent game for a jam timeframe. The menu and configurability is always appreciated, and I know it takes a chunk of time. Although it seems like the creators who make menus ALSO make intuitive control schemes and good default settings. I didn't actually feel the need to change anything.

That was fun! Simple but addicting game loop, and I didn't run into a single bug. Ghost in the Shell has also given me a bias toward spider-like robots, so it was great to see them make an appearance here.

The decay part had a little room for improvement, I wasn't really sure what was happening with that unless I went to the repair station and it was hard to figure out the consequence of running out. I'm not 100% sure what killed me on either playthrough.

Control remaps would be nice, I don't love clicking to shoot, and being able to hold down the shoot button would be super helpful. Clicking fast is awkward.

It felt short, but that just means it was fun enough to make me want more! The final level was challenging but achievable, although it was very easy to get soft-locked if the random floor decay blocked the chokepoint for the key.

It looked a bit like a prototype, which is probably what it is and you were just limited on time, but I would say that you should definitely focus on some art polish to improve the experience, particularly for puzzle games like this. Music makes a huge difference too, even just a simple beat, with a pitch-shift during the card effects.

WASD is strongly preferred over arrow keys.

The pixel art and music came together nicely, it looks great. I have to echo some of the other folks and say that it was a it tough to figure out what I was supposed to do, even after reading the instructions on the webpage. Showing the recipes somewhere, maybe just making them visible while viewing inventory, would help.

It was tough to discover that I was supposed to press spacebar while inside the farm, stationary, and outside the view of the NPCs. The spell was too slow to cast before the NPC would circle around to me.

Overall, it was clear a lot of love went into it, and super impressive for the jam timeframe.

I really love the art and sound design, it's a great aesthetic. I think I see where you were going with the slowed time mechanic, and it's a cool concept. I wasn't able to progress past the second level though, it's too hard to get my hand from the mouse to the arrow keys fast enough to use the platform before it falls away.

Maybe if the objects fell a little slower after clicking start, or there was a countdown, or just allow the arrow keys to start the level without clicking.

The language barrier might have hurt in my case, I got the basic gist, but maybe there was an instruction I missed.

I'll download again and try some more if you DM me with tips on getting past that 2nd level!

Please note, Windows will produce a security warning when trying to run the game. This is because Secret Reality Studios does not yet have a Security Certificate at this time, so Microsoft doesn't know who we are:( and why you're running our game. We are working on it! The game is safe to play in it's current state.

An updated version of the game has been uploaded to address a couple of game-breaking bugs that would soft lock progress in some situations. Apologies to anyone who ran into those with the prior version.