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This is honestly one of my favorite narrative-driven games I’ve played in this jam! Our own game also explores themes of grief, loss, and the desire to rebuild connection afterward, so playing your project was genuinely inspiring for our team.

I could sense that it would be an emotional experience before starting, but I didn’t fully expect the themes of grief and connection to unfold so gradually and organically throughout the gameplay. I really appreciate how the mini-games and puzzle designs support the emotional experience of missing someone specific, that careful, tentative feeling of trying to understand them, of wanting them to be okay, of listening, observing, and gently reading their emotional state. All of this moves toward the realization that some things can be changed, while others cannot, shaped by time, memory, and lived experience, and through this process, we keep forming fragile, vulnerable connections with the person we’ve lost.

I’m an enthusiastic JRPG player, and I feel like this game carries that tradition of using detailed interactions and gentle prompts to slowly weave together a complete emotional story. You did this beautifully. 谢谢你做了这个游戏。

I think this is a very elegant piece that achieves a lot with very little. The visuals, sound design, and mechanics are all restrained but highly polished. Without strong creative direction behind it, this could have easily become a loud or overly busy game, but instead, it became a quietly engaging, immersive experience that clearly expresses a sense of loneliness and harmony at the same time. I really hope this game gets more ratings and attention!

A friend messaged me saying that if I like Rusty Lake, I absolutely have to try this, so here I am! 

While it clearly builds on some classic strengths of the point-and-click genre, the game goes further by fully absorbing and reflecting on the underlying logic, and thoughtfully weaving that into the theme as a social commentary. It combines a strong idea, a classic genre foundation, and a very polished, high-quality execution.

Well done! 美术好伟大
(and yes, I agree with my friend that this entry deserves a lot more attention.

Choosing the puppets and the spider as a premise is a distinctive creative decision on reinventing of non-traditional, challenging control games, and makes an imaginative and elegant take that almost effortlessly honors the theme. The art and music, combined with the game’s distinctive tone, give it a kind of casual elegance.

I even find the four-legged spider symbolically interesting and deep, as if it suggests that the two players are only small parts of a larger whole… 

This was an unexpectedly interactive and creative interpretation of the theme! Beyond the very characterful NPCs and some fun, collaboration-friendly prompts, the game offers a fresh perspective and a playful sandbox for people who enjoy creating. I even had a great time playing it solo before I realized that the person drawing with me in-game was neither an NPC nor an online player. Good job!

Dear That Game Jam community,
Our game bwd: the invisible companion is a heart-felt experience where players and NPCs cannot see the player character but can communicate and connect in some ways. As one of the developers I am actively leaving reviews and comments on other entries, especially those are download & play and naturally have fewer feedbck. I'd like to ask from those who are willing to help to do the same for us. Thank you!
 https://itch.io/jam/thatgamejam01/rate/4170450 

The game is full of old-school JRPG vibes, while also showing a strong level of polish and a distinctive atmosphere. It’s not usually the type of game I play, but I really appreciate how the story and characters interpret the theme in their own unique way. The playful narrative framing makes combats feel like more than just battles.

The gameplay is simple and clever with rich and very satisfying feedback. It’s a cute and juicy ADHD-simulator in the best way, and an excellent take on the theme witn a “cat paw flipping through the bag” scenario. You really pushed that idea to its full potential!

I did run into download errors at first, but I couldn’t stand seeing such a cute game with so few ratings, so I spent some time digging into it and figured it out. For anyone running into a similar issue, you can try checking:

Windows Security → Virus & threat protection → Protection history

毛茸茸游戏help毛茸茸游戏的击爪 !

Awww good job figuring out how to be an invisible puppy on your own!

We’d love to hear more thoughts on how we can improve onboarding, as we do intend for players to experience some difficulty while learning to act in their new form, but not feel frustrated or punished by it. Either way, the team really appreciates your feedback, love, and kind words!

Hi Chriangle, I’m glad to hear that you enjoyed the game even with some missing tutorial arcs! We planned more buildup before the moment when Goust destroys the grave, and your feedback is super helpful for us moving forward :D High five and wish you a good result!

Good work! The art style is beautiful, the mechanic performance is on point, and I think the learning curve of the controls, together with the level design built around them, creates a very interesting interpretation on the theme. Thank you for making this game!

This is pure, distilled joy. I genuinely hope more and more people can try this game and appreciate it the way I did.

The humor is culturally specific in the best way, the controls feel great, and it somehow manages to interpret the theme in a very strange and wonderful way that makes my head spin.

Congratulations on having done it again!

I really like this game. The mechanics are simple but very intuitive, and the feedback is especially well done. It took me a little while to fully understand that my goal was to create as many connections as possible within a limited time, but once that clicked, the experience became much clearer.

Putting aside any polish/time-limit feedback, I feel that the game’s interaction and progression form a very strong and thoughtful interpretation of the theme. Good job!

This is one of the most novel and organic interpretations of the theme I’ve seen so far! The art, sound design, and all the in-game elements work tightly together in service of the fun of core mechanics.

It’s also a funny coincidence that my own game is set on a grassland as well, but with a completely different vibe LOL.  Anway I found myself playing round after round without really noticing. Turns out managing the ecology on the grassland is not easy at all!

Thank you for taking your time with our goust and friendog : D The WonderLawn appreciates you!

Thank you! I like your game a lot as well, easily quirky and fun!

I really enjoyed the strange, quirky tone of this game. A lot of the small feedback details are done really well, for example, the sound of the pots breaking. I can imagine that developing and polishing the light and shadow platforming mechanics is not easy at all, but the final experience is fun and engaging. Good job!

Thank you so much for your kind words! That’s actually exactly what we were trying to explore, the how to make an invisible player controller feel good. I’m really glad that came through!

This game is full of imagination! The visual direction and character designs are especially fun and distinctive.  I share many of the same feelings as other reviewers.

The art style well supports the emotional atmosphere. The use of voiceover adds a lot of intimacy and weight to the experience. What stood out to me the most is how the UI interaction itself aligns so closely with the story’s core idea: the difficulty of speaking, the hesitation, and the emotional blockage. The text fills the screen, and you have to wait for the mom to finish speaking before you can click, even though in your mind, you already have so many responses. That interaction design itself is the experience, and it fits the emotional intent of the story very well.

This game expresses the jam theme that is about wanting to reach out, but not quite being able to in a delicate and thoughtful way.

Your game has a very distinctive art style, and the controls are also quite unique in a fun and interesting way. The feedback gives a charming Zen vibe. Since the levels are procedurally generated, the core gameplay loop feels small and tight, which I think works well for this type of experience. 

 A game with strong identity and potential. Great work!

I enjoy the narrative premise at the beginning a lot! It immediately made me feel like I wasn’t just playing any 2d platformer, but that there was something more going on, and it genuinely made me curious about where the story would go. The environment design and the music both serve this narrative well, and together they create a very nice overall atmosphere.

I also appreciate how the controls are introduced gradually through level design, following the needs of the tutorial and slowly building up in difficulty. One design moment that stood out to me was when I was surrounded by enemies and had to defeat them in order to escape, that felt very well aligned with the narrative context. 

The game's connection to jam theme is pretty unique. Within its own scope, the game experience itself feels coherent and self-contained. It's a rooted platformer experience. Thank you for making this game!