itch.io

Very interesting concept. 

The starting tutorial text goes away really fast, and there is little tutorial on your actual goal. But it is not that hard to understand after some tries. The grid map could be larger.

I really felt like I had hurry to the next pocket of air. The sound and visuals helped to carry that weight!

Some feedbacks I feel can help the project: 

It gets old quickly. To mitigate this, you could add some branching paths on the map. So the player have an extra layer of strategy instead of simple memorization and execution. With this, some new rooms could be added too, like a room with an extra treasure, a room with some kind of upgrade, a room with a monster that require some extra thing to do, etc.

Sometimes there is a very long section without air pockets in which you end up fighting the input delay/cooldown and the transition animations, which didn't felt so good. This could be mitigated with a clearer feedback of when you can input, and if you are still holding the direction when the input can be read, the input is validated. It could also be a balancing issue. Maybe add some extra logic to the map generation to avoid longer passages without any air pockets.

But I really liked the concept, the aesthetics and the emotion dynamic It generated. Great work!

Thanks!

Thanks a lot! Yeah, I tried to make the least amount of tutorial possible very intentionally, was part of the goal :) haha so glad you got that and enjoyed this aspect and had fun playing it!

Greeaat game. Super cute, responsive and smart. I ended up not finishing because, and the only 'complaint' I have, is that some levels started to get a bit long and complex, and this didn't mean they became more fun. In puzzles, it's usually more valuable to have novelty and new 'aha' moments to think about than in the order of stuff, number of steps, etc. So I think the levels that had the same camera size as the starting ones were the most fun! Smart mechanics and interactions.

One small thing I would improve is the feedback of the mask effect, both on you and when you burn it. It's so quick it's hard to read. When I got the bunny mask for the first time I was dying repeatedly to the fire without understanding what was going on. Another feedback I would emphasize is the number of moves. Maybe make them flash when they reach sub-3, and when they get to 0, it tweens on scale and call for attention a lot before the in-world effects.

But aside from these tiny complaint and feedbacks, very good game and strong entry! Maybe I'll come back to try and finish after rating other projects. Congratulations to the team! o/

You're welcome! It looks like you were aware of some of the game's problems. I guess you should just focus on something simpler in the system design side of things. As it is very hard to predict how all the systems will behave before creating them, you kinda risk a lot by discovering it late in the jam period. As I said, it's a cool idea but the core is too complex and layered, creating too many game design problems you didn't have time to solve

Haha, sou brasileiro sim! Caramba, eu sei do ThornDuck da época da Game Jaaj. Eu fui um dos ganhadores da Game Jaaj na época. 

Vixi, o twitter do meu estúdio tá meio às traças haha, não posto muita coisa.

Valeu! Que bom que curtiu o jogo! :) Foi uma loucura pra terminar, foi um escopo bem grande pra 3 dias, mas deu tudo certo

Cool looking game. Unfortunately, the game itself lacks some punch. I mostly played without using any mask and went quite far, I think (I didn't finish). As you have many cards to choose from, you can get quite close to 21 and win the round. Some times I used life to get more cards and the life loss is really cheap. So I just started paying for cards and summing up 20 or 21. Became just a game of math...

The visuals and the aesthetic are cool. With some tweaks to the mechanics and rebalancing some resources the game could get quite fun. Maybe some enemies limit the amount of cards you can play per round, others will automatically halve one card on the table. They should do stuff to make you strategize around that.

Very beautiful, very polished! Great game!

The only complaint I have is that the mask is specially small, so many levels require tapping a move direction and then tapping the mask movement repeatedly to avoid falling and it can get a bit tiring and finicky. Also, there were too many levels that are almost the same, with only slightly different layout, with no different mechanics or something different to think about. I think there should be more mechanics with different interactions with the mask, like an enemy that appears in the blue world as asleep but wake up in the yellow world so you have to manipulate its movement. Something that need some time inside the mask to change its state, some element that always exists in both worlds so you have to make it fall by making a hole under it with your mask, etc.

Just some minor feedbacks and ideas. Well done! Great entry. Congratulations o/

Thanks! :)

Thanks! Just played yours and left a comment too o/ thanks for the kind words

Very cool and polished!

I had no idea that there was only 1 unit and the others was mask so I spent some good time trying to place masks on empty tiles :(

After I figured that out. I had no idea what each mask does, so I kinda placed them at random trying to figure it out... To no success. The masks need explanation or they need much clearer feedback on what they do and how they change the unit or the surrounding units, to the ones that have area effects. I ended up not beating the game because of that, I failed some times and gave up.

If I could invest more time in the project, I would unlock the masks gradually so I have a more cadenced learning of the mechanics and have simple tooltip over the masks so I can read their effects.

Aside from that, great project and great game!

Thaanks! Just played yours and gave some feedback. Very cool project!

Very well made game! 

I also got stuck on a red block and had to restart the game once :( but restarted the game and got the ending.

It would be helpful if there was a feedback when the hand grabbed the wall. A sound would help too. Another helpful feature would be some visual aid for easier differentiation of the right and left hand. Maybe the left hand

The level change when you get each mask is very cool too! But as you don't need to climb the same area, it doesn't make that huge of a difference, and maybe allowing the masks to be collected in any order would be more interesting

The low point for me was the theme, You kinda can swap for many other themes.

But overall, simple but cool game. Very well made.

E tu é brasileiro? Haha esse nome de estúdio só pode ser coisa de br

Good work. 

Sorry, I didn't finish. Will try to point out some stuff that I think annoyed me or prevented me from wanting to keep playing so that if you keep working on the game you can think about and improve. Some honest feedback time, that I think is really valuable.

The 'no air control' jump is fine for games with focus on precision platforming, but for a puzzle platformer like this, I think it only creates unwanted frustration. At least for me, unfortunately. You are trying to mix puzzle elements with precision platforming elements, which is really hard to do, because the experience these two genres creates are kinda opposite. In puzzle games, its hard to figure out what to do, but once you do, executing is easy. The fun is in finding out what to do and in what order. In precision platformers, its easy to figure out what to do, but executing is hard. The fun is in executing. When you mix the two, it is hard to tell if you messed up in the puzzle side (what to do) or the precision side (executing). I think the slide also enters in this feedback point, because sometimes there are big gaps in the level that you have to slide jump, instead of creating a platform, so there is an overlap of mechanics to this goal.

The HUD is really big, and stay in the front of some level texts. There is a level in which the text is exactly behind the mask ui, and if you try to walk forward to reveal the text, you fall into spikes. Also, it looks like the game is kind of puzzle based, but you give a lot of answers in the text I think, which kinda removes the 'aha moment' of the puzzle. If you give me an 'elevation mask' and gave me some room to test I would go "ooh, so it goes up automatically, maybe I'll try to make a platform under my feet" and then I would test this hypothesis, and have the cathartic moment of solving the mystery. But when you tell me the answer even before I tested it, you killed this thought process that makes puzzle games fun in the first place.

There are other minor issues, but I think these 2 were the points that came into my mind the most while playing. I hope I could help! To improve this game or as experience to next projects!

Good work! Congratulations on the game. Keep learning and improving :)

Also, the sound effects are really low volume

This is very cool! It's a bit rough around the edges and you need some time to understand what is going on and what is your objective.

First quality of life change I would do is to make the attack automatic if I hold the mouse button. As the attack cool down is quite high, it has bad feeling when you keep clicking but only like two attacks, from the 7 clicks actually attack. Or maybe make it attack automatically even if I don't click only requiring the mouse position for the attack direction. Or add more feedback making easier to understand the cool down, like an attack animation, a tiny bar or something like this. Felt a bit unresponsive.

Pause when I'm choosing the upgrade. As the game keep running, you have to rush the decision, which kinda ruins that window of relief while you make a mid-term choice. But maybe, more importantly, this feels like a shoehorned feature. Maybe with time you could find the direction the game is trying to go. This feature is usually more suited to games with 'a build focus'. Like: "oh, maybe this time I will be an ice guy", "now I'll be the poison guy". But I honestly think you should focus on the mask and resource management and that feeling of being the master of puppets for beating a single hard boss.

I died like 3 times to the boss's explosion. And that in itself is fine. The problem is that, when you die, the game ends immediately so it is hard to understand what killed you. I only understood that when I stayed away and saw that ring and then the explosion. On the first 3 times I had no clue what killed me.

In the end, I won with a really cheesy strategy, summoning melee guys right on the face of the boss, and hitting along then, running away when it wanted to explode, then repeat. The fact that you can corner the boss is also a problem, I think, because then melee ends up being very strong. If the boss had a teleport move I think it would promote more variety from the player. 

The enemy and mask variety is really cool, but maybe having less units with more variety of effects would make for a more fun and strategic experience. Like a unit that cures the boss, so when it spawns, it have a high priority for the player, because he doesn't want to lose his progress.

Anyways, lots of feedback haha. I see potential, but maybe there is an 'direction' issue here too. What is the fantasy you are trying to create? Hope all these comments help! I really liked the project, and I feel like many players will struggle to understand and quit because of that, which is a shame.

Congratulations! o/

Nice simple game! Enough polish and feedback to understand the game. 

Here is something that I felt: I don't know  if there are weird shaped expected results if I keep playing, but even o hard, most of the answers ware rectangular, with square shapes for the tile choices. Maybe this limitation came from tech? Idk. For me, after seeing like 10 rectangular shaped answers, the fun was kinda over. For rectangular shapes being formed by squares, the possibility space is easier to manage, as you know for sure that the corner of the answer will also have a corner of the square on the pieces. So, from a design perspective, it ended up feeling more like 'grid check' work than like 'fun spatial reasoning'. Maybe I just didn't manage to get to more interesting levels? If that's the case, maybe more interesting levels should have come earlier?

That's my honest feeling from the game :) hope that helps, specially if you are willing to put a little more work into the project, I would think about this

Anyway. Congrats on the game! o/

Haha, okay! Good luck :)

The bad news is that I didn't implement any save system >< so if you wish to come back, you'll have to restart the game. I'm sorry :(

Hello! Thanks! If you still have the game open, if you kill yourself, you will get all masks on respawn. I should add this tip to the game page

Thanks!

Oh, nice, I get it then. Like: "Keep tapping to calibrate" and then I adjust things under the hood. You're absolutely right, this would be a great solution

Yeah, definitely more playtest would have helped! Thanks for pointing out the difficulty.

And good feedback on the 'dying randomly'. When they become empty of energy they die, it is part of the mechanics, but it lacks feedbacks at the moment. I still don't know how I'll solve this one. Maybe I can just remove it haha, let's see.

And good point on the manual callibration too, I might have to simplify the steps. I still don't get what you mean by 'automatic'. It is theoretically impossible to get the exact delay of a player's full PC setup. But there are some techniques like making this adjustment under the hood while the player is playing something, which is a good path, but requires a lot of work to get right too. It might be worth, though, if I keep working on the project. Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks a lot for playing and the time to give your constructive feedback!

Hi, thanks for the time and feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed the game overall!

The first version was actually FIFO, and I decided to change. I guess both FIFO and FILO lead to frustration, making me think there should be an extra verb you could do, like a second button to place the second on the line? I still don't have the answer. Many of the complaints talk about the lack of agency the core mechanic brings to a strategy game, which is usually not great. Thanks a lot for pointing that out! If I keep working on the game this will probably be the first aspect to try stuff and playtest.

Woow! Thanks for the kind words. So glad you enjoyed! <3

Wooow! Thats huge! I had no idea It did so well. Thanks for the effort! Will take a look at the rankings.

Hey Vhoyer. Just watched the video. Thanks for the valuable feedback

Yeah, the frustration of having to wait for the next loop is kind of a cursed problem that came from the core design. I did anticipate but did not find time to design a solution and implement. The three ghost lanes could be a great simplification! Also, I think the level itself could be easier, (including the energy economics, making the mic break by itself a less often event) I didn't have a lot of time for playtesting the difficulty :( maybe it is a good learning for the next jam already, reserving even more time to playtest (and maybe find someone else to work with could speed up the development as well haha)

Your video was really really valuable! Thanks a lot for the time and the effort o/

Wow, thanks a lot! I'm really happy you enjoyed! I too have not seen rhythm games with management elements, so I set out to make one - and I'm so glad you picked up the vision and liked it <3 Thanks for playing and for the compliments!

Thanks o/

Very good and hypnotizing haha. Simple but well executed, good work! Has great juiciness to it too. Great work!

The only complaint is that it starts to get kinda impossible to react to the note direction after a while, and when the direction changes is difficult to react too.

Other than that, great job!

I also made a rhythm game haha, you might like it too.

Nice simple idea, but it gets repetitive really fast. Maybe the game would improve like if all the notes were actually placed on beat and synced with the music, but for now it looks like you have a huge window to press.

It has good chill vibes. If you added more polish and incentivized the player to tap on beat the game has a cozy, relaxing game potential

Congrats on the project.

My biggest feedback for a game jam game is that it is not that creative. It is just recreating DDR or Guitar Hero. Which is fine for a small learning project.

But aside from that, It works great.

I also made a rhythm game, so this one called for my attention.

Cheers o/

Great job! The starting cutscene is really charming and gets you into the setting.

It is actually a programming game under the hood haha. Here are some feedbacks that maybe could improve the game:

On the looping bar, there is a big red thing and some knobs on the right, but they did not react to input, It feels like the don't do anything and is just aesthetics? If so, It would be great to make them call for less attention (specially the big red thing). They could be more grayed out, for example, and all pushed to the far right.

On the programming game inspiration: one cool thing on grid based programming puzzles games is that once you figured out the solution, you can play in x4 speed to just see the result. But when you have to wait for a slow song for like 1 minute just watching and thinking about nothing is kind of a drag that put me off a bit. Usually the fun of a puzzle game is in figuring out the solution, less in the execution, and much less in just seeing the execution play out for a long time. I don't know exactly how you can solve this downtime as it uses the theme of a music looping. Maybe there is a slow puzzly sound when you are experimenting, but when the player gets the loop right (and the game indentifies it), change to a super energized rock song that goes faster and the player can feel the urge to flee from the guard. Maybe this could add some change of pace to the feelings of a level too, which could be great.

I hope these constructive feedbacks can help improve the game :)

I also made a rhythm/music game haha, so maybe you guys might like it too o/

Great work. Cheers <3

The game starts too slow! The idea is simple and it is a very positive thing, but it is purely a reactive game and not even a rhythm game.

Maybe there could be a chance for an arrow to change to a different direction, or maybe a an arrow could 'catch on fire' so you have to NOT press that arrow on that loop. These two things would already make the game more interesting.

Congrats on the project!

Good work! It reminds me of a game from a previous jam, but in that one you wasn't allowed to change the notes on the loop. Adding notes adds a second layer of strategy.

The one small feedback on the game design is: it looks like you can stick to a pattern you are comfortable with. For example, moving with shield for some beats on the first half of the bar, and then shooting for the other half. As shooting and moving on the same beat is very risky, you most likely will never do that once you learn it. So moving repeatedly and then shooting repeatedly seems to be a very very strong strategy, making the element of changing the music feel somewhat pointless sometimes once you catch this.

I don't know yet how you could make players feel pressured to change the beat. First of all, in this version you cannot remove notes from the bar, so there is that haha, but maybe the notes have a lifetime on the bar, so they vanish after like 8 bars. Then you can respawn notes on the field  in a similar duration cooldown. This would already allow player to change plans during the level. To pressure them to make this decision maybe add enemies that you need to throw a shield at then and then attack really quickly? Or some ideas in this direction could be the solution.

I really like the game, the polish, the execution. Really well done! 

I also made a rhythm game! Haha, I think you might like it.

Also, did you use an asset to play the sound with a short delay? Or just using the AudioSettings.dspTime and looking ahead like me? 

Great work! First thing that stood out for me was that the main menu is very polished and caused a good first impression.

I have two small feedbacks that align on the same problem: readability of the state of the game.

The first thing I was struggling to read fast was the direction of the player. The main bird is super small and it only turns in 8 directions. To aid in understanding the  direction there is a small red arrow, but It was a bit too small for me. There were several occasions I thought I was in some direction to accelerate and go to another. Maybe It could be a thinner sprite, but longer and more transparent, so you can understand at a glance even with your peripheral vision. Making the player bird stand out from the other birds would help as well

The second is more related to the visual language of the game objects. Maybe items the player can collect could blink white periodically so it stands out from the enemies. I bumped into enemies thinking they could be collectibles and vice-versa. Also, the score numbers are red, so they kinda look harmful, so maybe change to white or some other color?

I think these two small improvements would make the game a lot easier to play. I love luftrusers so the game caught my attention, and looping around stuff is a cool challenge for this controls scheme. 

Hope this feedback can help! Great job! o/ Cheers

Wow, that's so good to hear! <3 So glad you enjoyed! Send to your rhythm game lover friends o/ haha

Thanks a lot for the compliments! o/ I had a bit of experience making rhythm games beforehand, that helped a LOT

Thanks! Yeah, the soundtrack is amazing. Leonardo Lima is a legend haha

He also made the instrument sounds that are played on beat when a mic shouts out a note. They are then randomized and played at the right moment according to the lane

Thanks! I'm really glad you enjoyed! <3

Huuahsuahs yeah, it is being well received! I might work on more content on the future, who knows!

And I did not use magic, just a lot of coffee. Magic would be great though.