itch.io

I think this could use a bit more nuance in the writing and a more clear goal for the player. I'm being introduced to one character, have to make some choices for them, so it feels as though it's about their mental state, but then the focus seems to shift to the friend character's troubles. I'm not sure what I'm trying to do here and that makes me feel like a spectator following this story from a distance, rather than as the main character within the story.

Might also be good to consider who this game is for. Is it to make people more aware of what depression, relational abuse, etc. look like? Then the friend character should perhaps not be so blatant about it, but instead give small hints to the player that could easily missed in a day-to-day setting but can mean so much. Is it to talk about how difficult it is to get out of these situations? Then the build-up could do with being much slower. Just some thoughts while playing this.

Well that was a wild ride. I'm very uncertain about how to play the minigames, lol,  it's a shame your guide broke. But something about this did make me want to keep on playing and exploring. The style's fun, especially the walking animation, and the weirdness of it is just the right kind.

This feels like a fun, crazy type of game being held back by clunky controls on the car. I'm not sure if the "push once to rotate by X degrees" turning of the car is an intentional design choice or a technical limitation, but I don't see it working for what this game could be. I'd love this to be hilariously frantic, where I drive like a maniac through the city, hit half the people, and maybe get one or two to their destination, and have a blast doing all that, but that needs some really tight controls and good physics to get it right. The artwork, music and general vibe of the game & narrative are really fun though, so does there's definitely something here worth working on further.

I love artsy games and I enjoy the premise here of writing out a poem by finding the missing words. I like that the length of the poem amounts to the number of steps the player can take. But I do feel that this could use a few more design iterations to get the most out of it.

See, I caught myself neither looking at the poem appearing at the top nor the words under my feet (clever as it is to show the amount of steps that way). I simply started looking for shiny things, clicked the word, then went on looking for the next shiny thing. It wasn't about the poem any longer, and that's a shame. While I don't have any concrete suggestions, I do think you could (for this game or future games) consider different ways to intertwine the poem more directly with the player's actions and goal, meaning the thing I'm going to be focused on/looking at. I remember a game (also on Itch.io) that does something like this that might be worth a play for inspiration.

Also, I would've liked to get to read the final poem at the end.

Sound design was beautiful and the technology used here to capture the forest is really fascinating, though admittedly it borders slightly on being a bit dizzying to move through, but not so much it deterred me from playing it to the end.

I feel like this entry is a case of "lots of ideas, not enough time to get them all into the game." (Mind you, that's most of my jam entries too, lmao). The premise is interesting but I wasn't entirely sure if I was playing it correctly, and I think I 'won' but was a bit unsure of that too. I was exploring it more than really playing it. But there's an interesting concept here that could become a cool game if explored further.

Some smaller things: the hit boxes on items are quite large, making me feel like I'm walking into invisible walls, and I think a highlighting feature could help clarify if items are interactable. Also, I think I found a bug — timer went down to zero (after 3 or 4 loops) and didn't restart that time, just stayed on zero.

Fun play on the theme. The style & music are great, I like the little gags like the banana slip and the walk animation is fun (though the walk feels a tad too slow for my liking). Also, that's a really clever way to do a tutorial, with the keys disappearing.

Definitely needs a bit more guidance/tutorial (but so does mine, thus is the curse of game jam games) but the music building up and the amount of juice is great.

I think this looks intriguing, but I just don't know what I'm actually supposed to do. I can't get past the second time god without the day restarting. I can't tell if I'm doing something wrong, but it's not like there are many things I can try. Game could use a bit more clarification/tutorial. I do like the premise of feeding these time gods to keep time flowing, and the music & style were nice.

For sure, and both game-styles have their merits. In this case though, imo, I think it would benefit from a bit more leniency, because a big aspect of the game's fun lies in watching the evolution of the world, and rewatching the same evolution just to get back to where you left off isn't super fun (to me, anyway).

I like that moving too far away makes the world too cold, and thought the opposite would happen if I got too close, but instead I just crash into the world and die. Wouldn't it make sense if getting too close doesn't insta-kill the player, but instead slowly kills the world (or pushes back its evolution, perhaps) by burning away the life you crash into? You kill your progress that way but do get to keep going, rather than the harsh "You died, go back to start" type of ending. Anyway, just thinking out loud here.

Cute art and fun music. I like the use of boomerangs as your weapon, and the added difficulty by having to dodge them yourself as well. Would be fun to be able to pick up more boomerangs as you went along, both having more weapons to use and more projectiles to dodge.

Can't believe I played this for as long as I did, lol. The beginning is brutal, but it does get satisfying when you build out your carts and gets to a 4-5 star rating. I do think this game would work better as an idle game, with the rollercoaster running automatically, as clicking it doesn't add much. The 8-loop made me chuckle, that looks mental.

Took me a round to figure out what I was doing, but that was fun. I was wondering at first why I couldn't slow down -- but it's fun that the very point is to build velocity in order to crash out and escape. Feels fun to play & replay, it's very satisfying to get a row of coins in one go.

Props for making all the assets yourself. I liked the music & sound effects, very retro.

I really like the concept of how changing the present doesn't affect the past, but it does vice versa. That's clever and can make for great puzzle design. I will say that it's important to remember the enjoyment should lie in figuring out the puzzle more than merely executing it, because figuring out I had to move the three boxes in a certain order to platform-jump over the gaps was fun, but because of the amount of boxes the execution became just a bit tedious. I also like how you can in fact off yourself by moving into walls, adds another thing to consider.

If you should consider working on this more, it might be fun to integrate more environmental design that explains and hints at what would decay or otherwise disappear over time, like, idk, a hot environment where a river runs dry, plants decay, etc. Right now, because nothing about the environment tells me what will be different in the other timeframes, it's more trial & error. There's lots more puzzle potential here!

Another thing, this one may be purely me, but the constant zooming in and out did start to give me a little bit of nausea. Just putting that out there.

Anyway, fun concept. Clean art and good audio. I also like the animations on the character, the jump looks a little 'stretchy' which I thought was fun.

So the trick is to bounce the boulder around like an indestructible all-powerful circus seal. I think that's how it goes in the Greek tragedy too.

Funny game, do wish you could see your progress up the mountain better, like how Getting Over It visualizes this with its background themes and random objects. Though I suppose it's part of the Sisyphus experience to have no clue how far along you are.

Fun concept with nice art and beautiful colors. Watching the world evolve is great and really sparks curiosity. I love the game title too, it stood out to me. Controls felt good and were easy enough to figure out. Do wish it wasn't instant death personally, but that's just a personal preference.

I had no inspiration for this game jam. Enjoy this nonsense game full of slaps, wheels and possibly bugs.

First impression: strong OG Pokémon vibes, which is great. Cool that it's playable on a Gameboy. This has a good style and it seems there's quite a bit to explore. Here's my feedback after playing for about half an hour.

Text: I wouldn't move the text box up and down for each new line of text, only at the start and end of dialog. It's a bit easier on the eyes that way. The amount of text shown at a time is also not a lot, which makes it harder to read a full sentence, I think the font could be smaller so sentences aren't broken up into three or four parts. It could also help to only start a new sentence at the top (meaning, don't make the last of those three visible lines the start of a new sentence).

Tutorial: it's a lot of text. I'd much prefer a sort of trial run as a tutorial, the kind where I do immediately get to play the game but the game takes me through the steps by highlighting the right elements. The arrows you use do this just fine, but the text still makes it feel too much like reading a manual right now. Try to limit the text down to the absolute bare necessities. A line like "You can talk to this NPC over there" could easily be cut, because the arrow hovering over the NPC already tells me where to go. Something like the save station that "clones your DNA" is really funny and clever, but an animation could explain this too instead of stating it through text. Basically, try using visuals as much as possible to show/explain things.

I'd also cut the tutorial up into smaller sections and sprinkle them throughout the game itself. In Pokémon, you're not immediately told how to battle, gain XP, take on gym leaders, etc. after all. Firstly, you're simply told to visit Prof Oak, so the player gets to learn how to navigate the world and interact with NPCs. Then, you're taken through your first battle. At the first gym, an NPC tells you about those. Etc. I'd incorporate much smaller, gameplay-focused tutorials like that for your game as well. Make your tutorials as much as possible a part of the game itself.

Music: the ship music is great, I ended up enjoying that tune a lot. The shipyard tune on the other hand sounds too chaotic and random to play for that long, I'd probably prefer something more chill to listen to while I'm going around shops and talking to NPCs. The music in the area that had lots of greenery and tumbleweeds was okay, but also had a beat that felt a bit too random.

Lastly, some random additions: are you limited in color use? If not, giving each area its own distinct feel with color would make them stand out more from one another. Storywise, I felt a lack of motivation for paying my debt, because it didn't feel like my debt all that much. How about a short intro that has the player crash or otherwise cause something that causes a debt? Just a thought. The flying minigame had slightly jagged controls, sometimes shooting upwards at high speed, sometimes lagging a bit, but it was otherwise a welcome bit of variation in gameplay. The controls for walking and interacting are good. I liked the NPCs I came across and enjoy the ability to pick different crewmates as co-pilot.

Anyway, this ended up being an essay, hope you can use some of that feedback. Very promising game!

Thanks for your reply! I was debating on whether the rest mechanic should be introduced earlier and that really confirms it, so I'll be making that change. That's good feedback about the story / writing too, interesting to read how someone else interprets it. The theme should definitely be more "trauma is an invisible hurt" and the difficulties that causes, but certainly not "others are mean for not seeing it". I wrote this more from a "this is what this feels like" perspective without fully considering it made it unclear to others what they should 'do' with that. That gives me some new things to think about. Ending it in a question for people to ponder over could be very interesting. Thanks for the valuable feedback!

The difficulty of jumps was something I wondered about, so that's useful feedback.  Thanks for playing!

This looks incredibly polished. The look & feel is great as is the music. The controls feel good and natural, respawn on dying feels fair.

However, this could just be me, but something does make this game hard on my eyes. I think it's the speed, it's really quite high. To compare I looked at Hollow Knight, which has a good pacing to me, but looks almost sluggish compared to the speed in this game. I'd probably want to see it lowered a bit. Alternatively, zoom the camera out further.

Wall jumping can be cheesed a little by just spamming jump into the wall; maybe a short cooldown on jumping would prevent that, if that's a problem to you.

The part where you have to drop down and avoid spikes feels a little unfair, because I can't see what's coming. I would either want to be able to move the camera down a bit to look ahead, or have the platform I'm dropping down to be in sight. It made it too trial & error. It bugged me that this made me want to give up, because the game was otherwise fun and feels polished. I admit that because of that I haven't seen enough of the game to give any further advice, but I could see this (or a sequel) be a good Metroidvania-like game too, with a world that isn't linear but can be explored in various directions, and upgradeable powers/items that could take you further down the dungeon.

Some small nitpicks: you should hide the mouse cursor in-game. I also didn't care for the timer, I would add it as a separate option, not something that's standard.

The music and art so far are lovely and set a great mood. I like the character art especially and the doors as level selectors. The game play though I still find a bit confusing.

The tutorial feels too text-heavy; I would prefer to be doing more in order to learn the controls, rather than read about them at length. The downside of this is also that it names a bunch of things in text and I still don't know what to do, because it doesn't show them. I'd rather have the game do things like highlight a button I have to press, with perhaps a single sentence explaining what it does, so I can see the effect of those mechanics immediately and understand how to use them. I find myself just pressing things a bit too randomly instead.

A small nitpick is that the text moves a bit too slow. I know you can double-click to write it out instantly, but for the "talking" effect it could still be a little faster.

I see you've gotten a bunch of feedback about the tutorial already and I agree it can use some work in order to get into the game flow quicker and easier. But the game's general great vibe and promise of what's to come definitely invites you into wanting to play.

I think if the camera gets some updates this could be a good, fast-paced game, but I found the current camera impossible to work with. It's extremely responsive, I started off spending a good 10-20 seconds just moving it to a point behind my character so I could actually see where I was going. Does it need to be movable with the mouse at all? Can't it just follow the player automatically without me being able to move it around so much? I see a bunch of other people have commented on it as well, and I'm no 3D expert myself either, so I'll leave it at that.

These are really cool game mechanics, but the difficulty is pretty high right off the bat. There's a lot you have to learn to think about; planning your movement, not hitting the walls, not being hit by projectiles, going after and hitting enemies. It's a bit too much to start off on. The tutorial works great in teaching mechanics, but I think it needs some steps in between the tutorial and the actual game.

How about slowly introducing new hazards? It could start off without the walls killing you; just a quick and simple first level that serves as the tutorial. Next, a more complex level with an enemy that moves around. Next, the enemy shoots projectiles. Next, a level where the walls can kill you. Etc. I'm not sure that fits your theme of a Boss Rush anymore, though.

The controls do feel good and make moving around fun, and the feedback from audio and such feels good as well. The camera movement feels natural too.

That was very funny, I finished the whole game and had a good time doing so. Dialog made me laugh a couple of times.

I liked the sudden change in genre (the sudden Pokémon style battle against the weeds), made me laugh. I do wish to be able to see the HP of enemies I'm fighting as well, as I can't plan a strategy as well if I don't know how many hits an enemy will take. I also feel like I should use items immediately in battle (kind of like in Pokémon), not just when it's my turn, so I can heal before an attack hits me. The poison heal item ends up being pointless to use when a dandelion will just immediately re-poison you... how about poison protection for a few turns? Or alternatively, give the dandelion multiple attacks to choose from.

The bushes and dandelions were great enemies, but the clovers were more frustrating than fun. They don't really require much strategy, just keep attacking and hope for the best. I do like the idea of a luck factor, but think it should have a different effect; high crit rate perhaps?

Now for some language nitpicking. Couple of errors:
peacful => peaceful
like your's => like yours
tommorrow => tomorrow
"wander the forest" I think you can "wander a forest", but usually you say it like "wander through/in the forest".
"now that it is all calm" sounds a little unusual too, I think "now that all is calm" or "now that it's calm again" works better, or "now that peace has returned" or something.

Lastly, for a little polishing I think the game menu could use a quit game button.

All in all, very funny game!

Right now, the game's start is still pretty jarring. I'm a strong believer that a game should explain itself when playing it, either through an in-game tutorial or by giving the player time to figure out the controls for themselves at their own pace; like an easy, short first level to get to know the controls. Because now I just got thrown into the game and died immediately not yet knowing what to do, lol.

The art & music feel fitting for the futuristic sci-fi vibe this has and complement each other fine. I didn't find the music distracting at all, if anything I think these kind of games need a good soundtrack to hype up the player. I really like the amount of upgrades this game provides and coupled with the randomization gives it good replay value.

I did encounter what looks like a bug: when I got the upgrade screen the first time, I picked the Star Buddy, and then got another upgrade screen (or it reset, probably, as it also listed the Star Buddy power-up again). But the mouse disappeared and I heard the game music start up again, and without being able to do anything, I suddenly died and the game over screen appeared. Basically looks like the game resumed but I remained stuck in the upgrade screen. This didn't happen again when I replayed the game, but it's worth mentioning.

Love the name of this game, lol, as well as the general silly vibe. This really stands out between all the serious, darker entries with its goofy, funky atmosphere. Love the animations as well, with little details like the clouds that appear when jumping. Movement feels fun as well. The basics are there for a great game, but there's room for improvements (well, as for all game jam games).

Text ideally shouldn't auto-skip but wait for player input to move on, and hints no longer need to appear after the first time (they kind of kept blocking the view). Also, after being hit by something, where the game decided to place me seemed a bit random. It sometimes put me ahead in the game, letting me skip the obstacle I died on. I mean, I'll take the help, but it felt a bit cheat-y  x)

I too found a wall-bug accidentally: jumping into a wall pushed me through it, after which I could move inside of the walled area (but not get out of it).

I got stuck in the area with the mole; I didn't have the key for the door, and seemed like all I could do there was go in a circle back to the mole, with no way to progress.

All in all though, fun entry. Nice to see such variation in this jam.

I think a line like that would work well! It's simple and gives the player that instant feedback.

I'd be careful implementing something like a slower walk. The idea makes sense on paper but tends to annoy players in practice. But you could do a 'weaker' looking walk animation, perhaps. And don't underestimate how the gameplay itself makes the player feel; being unable to reach spots that seem within my reach already makes me feel weak, or having to avoid things that insta-kill because I have nothing to protect myself. And picking up abilities that now let me do those things already flips that feeling around, with or without a 'weaker' walking cycle.

The way I handled the text is: press Space once, it skips the dynamic typing process by writing out the full text, press Space again, it moves on to the next bit. It checks if the writing loop has finished, which happens either through naturally letting the text write out, or by pressing Space the first time. I can use the same button for both functions that way, and I wouldn't worry too much about people skipping text by accident, since these are common text mechanics in virtually all games.

Yeah, the interaction with the Slime feels better to me, because I'm the one who initiated it. Whereas a forced cut scene feels like having control stripped away, something that I prefer games avoid where they can.

Love the retro vibe that this has. Controls feel solid and the zoomed out camera gives a good view of the world around me. There is a lot going on in the world, in terms of visuals and enemies, that makes it feel alive, and I like immediately seeing things like a door that I know I'll unlock later.

I personally didn't feel a huge need for a story or clear goal right off the bat, the world itself invites you to play. A lot of older NES or MS-DOS games are like that; you just get yourself a controller and simply play, and that's fine. I did wish for more check points though, or health packs, or the ability to heal right away. I kept dying, and being taken back all the way to the start is hugely demotivating. It also looks like you're not given full health when you see the two greyed out hearts, I think it'd be better to hide those if those are meant to be upgrades for later, or just give the player full health.

Lastly, something I really loved was watching things in the world interact with each other. Seeing the caterpillar die and transform into one of the enemies, then attacking the thing that killed it, was a really cool detail.

Felt a bit confusing at first that I wasn't able to jump, wondered if I was just missing something, though at the same time I was able to progress and figured I'd just see where it'd take me. But it does feel a bit jarring as we're so used to jumping in games, and I wonder if a simple story-related reason for the inability to jump (and later learning to) would help with that (maybe the stereotypical ghost with ball & chain look lmao).

Shift + X for moving down platforms seemed a bit weird as a button choice, until ledges became a thing. Still, if you're not using the arrow down key for anything, maybe just pressing down would be more intuitive? Speaking of buttons, I'm not sure why the UI doesn't allow me to use spacebar (e.g. when moving through text), and why the button for skipping text is different from the button to proceed to the next sentence. That felt a bit unintuitive to me. On the other hand, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to remember all the controls for grabbing ledges, but those ended up feeling pretty intuitive.

The intro felt a bit long to me. That's partially because when playing a game, I generally prefer to be thrown into it immediately and get to run around, get a feel for the character and controls, etc. I'd prefer a cut scene to happen after I've done a bit of running around, preferably by running into that character myself. It just makes it feel more like I chose to start the cut scene, rather than this feeling of waiting around for the game to begin. But that could very well just be me.

These are all pretty nit-picky things, though. Generally, the game felt good to play and the challenges were fun and of the right difficulty. The checkpoints always felt fair and prevented any annoyances on dying. I quite liked the section from the first screenshot, with all the jumping from ledge to ledge.

Thanks for your feedback, those are all very useful points 👍

Impressive how polished and complete this is. I love how much is interactable/slashable in the background. Good sound design and visuals, overall solid controls and camera, feels like playing a proper game. I agree with the other commenter that while the game systems (like alchemy, inventory, etc.) are cool, it is a bit of an information overload. Ideally it's spaced out a bit more over the first section of the game.

Some minor nitpicks: Looking up/down could be a little faster, the delay feels a bit too long. Jump feels a little weird too because of a slight delay, I have to hold the spacebar for longer than I expect and keep accidentally making just a little hop. Though I can see how holding the spacebar longer makes for a longer/higher jump, but I naturally expect a regular press to give me a regular jump.

Unity tip: you could consider using Platform Effector 2D on platforms, which makes it so that when you jump into a platform from below, you can pass through it (and don't annoyingly bounce into the 'ceiling'). Unless of course you specifically want to limit the player's ability to jump in places.

Keep walking to the right after the staircase. I'm guessing it's not clear enough that this is an entrance to another area? I'll take that into account moving forward.

In between all the little demos, this one really felt like playing a game. It feels well-rounded. The visuals are nice, lights and colors adding good atmosphere, and the music and sounds are good too. I really liked that the focus lied on exploration and puzzles. The section with the arrows that led to a chest with blue gems was tough as shit, but doably tough, and it felt great when I got gud and managed to do it. The controls are solid enough that a section like that feels fun (rather than just fighting against the controls). Difficulty was well-balanced. All in all, a really fun entry, and lots of potential for more. All 5s from me.

Also, nice unintentional trolling when I kept missing this jump up to a signpost and then finally getting there just to see "No entry yet" lmao.

Game has a great visual style. The controls feel good and the platforming was fun, with the minor gripe that falling sometimes results in tons of waiting around on enemies to move away, that leads more to frustration than a good challenge. There is a section where you have to double-jump and dash to the right to get higher up, and the last in this series was just a bit too far out of reach, which resulted in waiting and having to repeat a ton of stuff over and over. Difficult jumps are imo better made as a separate smaller section, so that redoing it after falling isn't as tedious. But overall, the difficulty feels balanced and the game feels fun to play.

The camera should be more ahead of the player, i.e. giving the player more space to see ahead. Vertically, the camera also cuts off just a bit too much, so that I can't tell if I'm jumping down to safety or to my death. Bit of polish there and some audio & enemy variation could really upgrade this to a great game.

Concept of using chess pieces and switching between them is really cool, had me immediately interested. The dash does feel a bit clumsy to use as is, because I can only use it in the air, so I'm just kinda hopping around back and forth trying to hit enemies. Unless you have a specific reason not to implement this, I do think it'd feel smoother if you could just dash while on the ground as well, so you can dash into enemies with more ease. I also couldn't tell at first I could even use the dash this way, so a little tutorial in-game (either in text, or something like having the player dash into an obstacle to teach him?) would be nice. I thought I could outsmart the enemies by moving up higher, not realizing they would follow me with ease x) That was pretty funny.

This is so polished! Great art style and audio, really good atmosphere right off the bat. In a potential future update, some voice acting (like reading the letter) would add to it even more. I thought the gravity felt a bit too hard, i.e. jumping and falling could feel a little smoother. The time switch mechanic is unique and adds a cool puzzle element to the genre. However, my one gripe was the insta-death -- like lightly running into spikes from the side, or touching a rat. I'd strongly prefer a health bar so it's not as unforgiving.

Thanks for checking it out! I think a lot of things are jitter-y still x) Camera and controls could still use plenty of TLC. It's all going to be looked at and updated as I continue working on it, so that too will be worked out eventually.

Thanks for checking it out!

Cool blend of horror and metroidvania and pretty fleshed out. Works pretty well too, hearing monsters creeping around the corners of a maze is successfully freaky. Controls feel good and even though there's lots of doors and corridors you're introduced to, it's not too overwhelming or unclear to know where to head to first.