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I had a lot of fun! I really love this visual style, and I think it matched very well with the SFX.

I would definitely enjoy playing more levels, facing new waves, or seeing a greater variety of attacks. I would certainly spend more time playing and having fun with it.

Congratulations on the work!

I thought it was amazing. I personally love games with this kind of mechanic, where repetition, precise timing, and movement are part of the challenge.

For a game jam project, I think it was very well developed. Maybe you already have familiarity with this type of mechanic, but the difficulty curve felt really balanced. Some sections almost felt like solving a puzzle while also needing good movement and timing. Congratulations on your work.

I had quite a hard time with the boss, haha, but I do not mean that in a negative way. I think part of what made me want to finish it was that the whole game already felt cohesive and challenging, so I could not really expect the boss fight to be any different.

With all respect, I would also like to mention one point: I feel that maybe it moved a little away from the theme, or maybe I simply did not fully understand this specific part. Where exactly does the idea of “being the boss” fit in? Either way, the story behind the game is very well crafted. In a way, I think many people here probably feel the same way, being watched and having a laser pointed at them, right? haha

It is one of the games I have enjoyed playing the most so far!

I had a lot of fun, without a doubt. For me, the voice acting was one of the strongest points of the game. It matched really well with the type of story, the art style, and the color palette. I also really liked how the same voice was used to characterize different characters, each with different references and personalities.

The facial expressions also stood out to me a lot. They were simple, but they conveyed each character’s feelings perfectly.

If you allow me to share one thought: I think the level itself could have had a bit more variation. There were two enemies with the same effect, or almost the same effect, at least I did not notice if they caused different damage. Maybe adding a small obstacle, still keeping the same simple style, could help break the cycle of just holding “D” until the end.

I thought the boss battle was great. It gives the feeling that it is a little difficult, because you need to repeat it a few times and understand the movement sequence. But then you realize the fight actually ends on the second life, and that is a huge relief, haha. The third life being finished through the scene was very clever, and it gives the player a nice little break.

Keep going with this creativity. I am sure many unique games will come from it.

At first, I did not fully understand what was happening, but one thing was clear: there was an enemy, and it was either him or me, haha.

I found the Golem’s assistance during the battle interesting. It would be nice to have some effects when the hand impacts the ground, and maybe the player character could also show some kind of damage or stun reaction.

I noticed a few polish points that could be really interesting, if they make sense for you. The weapon keeps shooting during the reload animation, and I think it would feel more immersive if shooting was locked during that moment. I also noticed that the right-click ability happens at the same time as the left-click shot. Maybe this is intentional, but if not, it could be nice to allow only one action at a time.

When I get too close to the enemy, almost touching it, it feels like the collision overlaps and the shots stop hitting. I imagine the idea is not really to get that close to the enemy, haha.

Other than that, I thought it was really good. The game gives a strong feeling of a dark universe and a sense of scale, as if we are just a small piece in the middle of everything. It almost feels like seeing colossi in the background, as if we could eventually reach them at any moment.

I also liked the physics and the feeling created by the aiming. About the movement, maybe the tilting to the left and right could be a bit more subtle outside combat, but during combat it feels amazing. It creates a frantic sense of pressure, with a difficult enemy that barely gives you any breathing room. It really activates that survival mode, haha. Poor mouse.

Congratulations on the work!

I found the game really fun. I noticed how simple art does not get in the way of the experience when the mechanics have an enjoyable concept behind them.

I felt a little confused about some of the effects that could be collected during the battle. Probably, after playing a few more runs, it would become easier to understand. If you think it makes sense, maybe it would be worth considering a short optional tutorial as the first battle, just showing the first cycle of the mechanics. :)

Congratulations on the work!

Thank you so much for the feedback, smlzin!

About the SFX, I believe I did not have enough time to better refine the volume and balance of each sound, so some of them may have felt disproportionate within the game. I’m not sure if that is exactly what you meant, but it is definitely something I will pay more attention to in the next fixes. There were also some visual effects, such as camera shakes and scenery objects reacting, that would have helped bring more drama to the scenes and maybe made the sounds feel more coherent with the impacts. Even so, I really need to refine and possibly replace some sound effects.

I’m very happy that you liked the Suitman’s death animation. The idea for him was to be more simple, especially because I’m not an artist, but that allowed me to create some animations and adjust them according to the gameplay needs, and that part was really fun.

About the sprite consistency, I agree with you. Some assets I used ended up serving more out of the need to finish the game than exactly matching the visual direction I would have liked to present. At some moments, it really felt like trying to put together a puzzle with pieces from different games, haha. But because of the short deadline, I chose to follow that path so I could finish the project.

Thank you again for the feedback. It helps me a lot to understand what I need to improve.

Thank you so much for the feedback, Larry Perez!

I’m laughing here, but honestly out of joy, because yes, I had a lot of fun hiding some ancestral fires between trees, mountains, and small spaces in the level.

Unfortunately, I had an issue with the HUD in the final build: it became huge and went off-screen. The idea was to show an Ancestral Flames counter, something like “4/30”, along with a 3 minutes and 33 seconds timer, which would help suggest that there was a place to reach and encourage multiple runs through different paths. That short time limit was meant to show that the player probably would not be able to collect everything on the first attempt, encouraging repetition, learning the paths, and reinforcing the loop feeling. The 3:33 timer itself was also meant to strengthen this idea of something strange and cyclical.

About the bossfight, there is an algorithm in the Suitman that adjusts the difficulty when the twist happens. The more ancestral fires the player collects, and the less health they lose in the first part, the stronger the Suitman becomes in the final fight. So, the better the player performs at the beginning, the harder it becomes to face him as the Forest Protector, bringing a bit more dynamic variation to the fight instead of too much repetition.

I completely agree about the controls and hitboxes. I still need to improve that a lot, especially the movement polish, platforming feel, and combat. I will work on fixing the mechanics that had issues and also improve some ideas that were already on my board.

Thank you again for the feedback. I would be very happy to receive another opinion after future updates.

Thank you so much for the feedback, OwenBrandon! I’m really happy that you liked the idea and noticed its connection with the jam theme.

The intention was exactly to create that feeling of consequence: at the beginning, the player controls the Suitman invading the Ancestral Forest, collecting fires and defeating creatures along the way, but in the end realizes that he was the true villain. The better the player performs in the first part, the stronger the Suitman becomes in the final fight. If he reaches the end with low health and only a few ancestral fires, the bossfight becomes easier. If he reaches it with a lot of health and many fires, he becomes faster, more aggressive, and harder to defeat.

It is also important to mention that, in this fight, the one truly at risk is not exactly the Forest Protector, but the Ancestral Forest itself. The protector’s role is to stop the Suitman from stealing all of its ancestral energy. At the end, the ranking system calculates factors such as health lost during the level, number of fires collected, bossfight duration, and the remaining health of the forest, generating a score of up to 10 stars. However, since the menu Canvas ended up completely out of place because of a mistake on my part, it became practically impossible to properly use that experience and feel the motivation of beating your own achievements.

About the controls and movement, I completely agree. I still need to study acceleration, deceleration, character weight, and impact feel more deeply. The Suit’s hitbox was intentionally meant to be difficult, but the Forest Protector was supposed to have two additional powers: one that would cause confusion and make the Suitman slower or stunned for a few seconds, and another that would allow him to extinguish the fire on the tree and restore one stage of the tree’s health. That would have made the fight more dynamic and intense, with more possibilities.

About the visuals, thank you very much for pointing that out. I still have little experience with art, lighting, and visual direction, and I understand that some elements ended up not feeling very cohesive with each other. I want to improve on that, especially when it comes to connecting backgrounds, characters, effects, and atmosphere. I also agree that simple particles, such as impact effects on the mushrooms or effects on the ancestral fires, would help bring much more life to the game.

After the jam period, I intend to fix some of these points, especially the things that were already partially implemented but ended up not working correctly in the final build. Thank you again for such detailed feedback. It really helps me understand where to improve and continue growing in game development.

Thank you so much for the feedback, VertexEnthusiast!

Starting with your recommendation, I found Sharp Shore’s concept very interesting and fun, and seeing how they managed to deliver such great gameplay with a simplified but beautiful art style is truly inspiring. I really have very little experience in most areas of game development, but I carry a strong desire to keep learning. I appreciate you bringing this reflection, and I hope that in a future opportunity I can better connect the feelings between backgrounds, characters, effects, and sounds.

About the jumps, I noticed after submitting the game that it ended up having a triple jump. At some point during the final adjustments, I had a bug, and the fix probably caused this other issue. The correct behavior was supposed to be only two jumps, which would make the player aim and better control the height between platforms.

Unfortunately, the HUD also did not appear in the final build. I believe it was probably an issue with the Canvas configuration itself, because inside Unity everything was working correctly. I may have made a mistake with something like the scaling, or perhaps it happened during the build process itself, but that is something I should have tested before submitting. I worked on the game until around 8 AM and had to submit it by 9 AM, so after making the build and publishing it, there was no time left to fix these points, even though they were relatively simple adjustments. Next time, I will leave more time to make sure everything is working properly.

Once again, thank you very much for the feedback and suggestions. They really help me learn and improve for future projects.

Thank you so much for your feedback, Wibswaty! It really helps a lot.

The movement and controls tutorial was planned to appear on the start screen, together with the menu icons, but I had some issues with the Canvas after making the build. It was a huge learning experience: test the build in advance and never leave the submission for the last minute.

Since the game was designed around a quick loop, my initial idea was for the player to learn the paths through repetition, improving their gameplay time and the amount of points collected with each new attempt. Because of that, I ended up not making that part as clear as I should have. But it is very important for me to understand that this was felt as something missing from the gameplay, whether in clarity, tutorialization, or polish. I will definitely pay close attention to this in future improvements.

About particles and visual feedback, I really did not have enough time to polish them. Also, some effects that worked inside Unity did not appear correctly in the final build. There were camera shakes with different intensities for fall damage, damage to the life trees, damage to the boss, and important moments during the fight. In the boss scene, there were also supposed to be pillars that deteriorated as the environment lost health and shook to reinforce the feeling of destruction, but this also ended up not working in the final build.

After the jam period, I intend to study what caused these issues and fix these points. Once again, thank you so much for your attention and feedback. It really helps me learn and grow in game development.

Hi, JustSomePikachu! First of all, thank you so much for the feedback and for pointing these things out. They are very valuable, and in this case, it is completely fair that these issues affect the evaluation.

This was the first game I started and actually managed to “finish,” and it was also the first time I went through many new steps, including making a build. It was a huge learning experience, bigger than anything any course or tutorial had given me so far. I honestly did not expect so many things to behave differently after the build.

Unfortunately, the Start screen, Victory screen, Game Over screen, and Ranking screen had their Canvas displaced, which made it much harder to see the small tutorial on the start menu and to navigate through the menus. The gameplay HUD also disappeared because of this screen size and Canvas displacement issue. It was supposed to show the 5 lives as little ties, the ancestral fire counter, something like 4/30, and the phase timer set to 3 minutes and 33 seconds, reinforcing the loop idea behind the name “FOLLOW suit Eternal.”

Your point about camera offset was excellent, thank you very much. Initially, I wanted the path to be not too intuitive, so the player would take risks, learn the level, and try to optimize each run. Some ancestral fires were hidden in secret paths or behind trees that the character could pass behind, unlike other trees where he walks in front of them, precisely to draw attention to that possibility.

About the final fight, one important detail: it is not exactly the Forest Protector who dies, but the Ancestral Forest. As the Suitman collects the flames of the Ancestral Force, he gains power and becomes stronger. The game does not have an easy, medium, or hard difficulty selection. The difficulty is built through the run itself: the more ancestral fires the player collects, and the less life they lose before reaching the Ancestral Tree, the stronger, faster, and slightly smarter the Suitman becomes during the boss fight. If the player has a more casual run, collects fewer fires, and loses more life, the final fight against him becomes easier.

The timer was added to prevent the player from exploring everything too comfortably. The idea was that, with each new attempt, the player would learn new paths and fire locations, allowing them to collect them faster. There is also a ranking system with up to 10 stars, calculated proportionally based on how much life the player lost during the first part of the level, how many ancestral fires were collected, how long it took to defeat the Suitman, and how much life the Ancestral Forest lost before victory. This system creates a first, second, and third place ranking, which resets when the game is closed and opened again.

About particles and damage feedback, I really did not have enough time to polish them as much as I wanted. Also, some effects that helped make the fight feel more impactful did not work correctly after the build. There was fall damage with camera shake proportional to the height of the fall, a shake when the Suitman destroyed the tree after the third hit, a softer shake when the Forest Protector hit the Suitman, and also a dramatic shake when entering the boss room, together with the music change and the Forest Protector standing still for a moment to create the feeling of a grand encounter.

I explained all of this because I am happy to share what I managed to build in such a short time and with limited experience. Since this is my first finished game, I feel very proud of it. I also learned that I need to reserve time to test the build after exporting the game, because several mechanics were working perfectly inside Unity, but did not behave the same way in the published version.

I joined the competition mainly for the adventure. At first, I clicked almost just to see how it worked, and suddenly I was already registered. From there, I started preparing for the jam, and it became a huge experience. I am really excited to join more in the future.

I will attach some images of the gameplay HUD and the boss scenario, where there were also pillars that would shake along with the camera to reinforce the feeling of impact and drama. After the evaluation period, I intend to fix these issues as soon as possible and finish some ideas, including a brief way to tell a bit of the lore at the beginning of the level.

Thank you very much TheRackood, I really intended to add some effects to the fight, which were abandoned while I was busy fixing the bugs lol, the idea was for the Forest Protector to be able to extinguish the fire in the trees, cutting the damage turn, and also an effect to grab the Suit Man in roots, to generate a quick stun and allow him to deal damage. This would require balancing the fight, but it would bring more important variations.