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Cute game. I look forward to seeing where you take it!

I love the art style for this game. Seriously this may be my favorite looking game from the jam.

That said, I apologize since I typically have a personal rule to finish all games from the jam if I can, but honestly I just can't reasonably finish this one. I really don't like how it feels to control.

The the character's movement doesn't feel quite right. This game has small platforms and tight jumps you need to make, but you the character also has forward momentum when you release the forward button. Floaty/loose platformer controllers can work if you build the levels around them, but if you want movement that feels like donkey kong, you can't be asking me to hop onto one tile wide pillars. Personally, I favor games that 0 out horizontal momentum the moment I release the forward key, but either is an acceptable response. The controls must match the level design and vice versa

Also, the grappling hook just doesn't feel right. I never felt like I was successfully able to swing anywhere, aiming it is difficult, and in a lot of cases I make a shot only for it to stretch me just below the lip of the platform I was aiming for and dunk me in the lava. I'm sure there's something I'm missing, but it's unintuitive and the game (naturally because it's a game jam game, this is fine) doesn't have any info in it explaining it to me. Based on the info I'm given, I don't have any idea how to use this thing effectively

Sorry this one's so negative, I just found this one really frustrating to test. That said, I've made far worse games than this myself, so don't feel too bad.  I can't wait to see what you do next, particularly with those art skills. Seriously, this game is really nice looking

You ever get that feeling of deja vu? This game reminds me distinctly of my last project with the flipping mechanic :P 

I love the spritework in this game! Great work on that

Double jumping to invert gravity feels "off" for lack of a better word. I'd recommend either migrating gravity flipping to a separate button, or doing it VVVVV style where the player can't jump, they can only flip gravity

If you choose to keep the jump, consider migrating it to a separate button as well. Pressing S to jump when on the ceiling also just feels wrong

I like where you're going with it, can't wait to see what it turns into!

Congrats on finishing the jam!

Just FYI, the term endless runner refers to something else. This game would be referred to as a multidirectional shooter (or, since that term isn't super well known, more likely an "asteroids clone"). Game works well for what it's trying to do. The little goat creature made me chuckle. I like the art.

Not a huge fan of asteroids myself just because I don't really like the floaty movement, but that's a staple of the genre and this is a competent version of that. 

Good luck with the next one!

Congrats on finishing the jam!

I like infinite runners. I found the pressing down to increase downward momentum a little clunky. Maybe make it so the longer you hold jump the higher you go, then it increases gravity when you release the button?

Also, those jumps where you have to jump and then slide midair feel super unintuitive. People don't actually slide in the air, and while that doesn't matter since this is a video game, it does make realizing what you're supposed to do/instinctively knowing at speed unintuitive

Level design wise, you may want to write an algorithm to ensure you aren't spawning impossible layouts instead of just straight randomization. I had a few cases that were absolutely impossible to dodge

The art for this game is really nice looking. Only thing I would note is I struggled sometimes separating the foreground from the background. Had several cases where I crashed because I didn't realize something was an obstacle. I would recommend making the color choices for the foreground markedly distinct from the background, either by using a different color entirely or by using a substantial value/saturation gap

The music was pretty good!

Oh yeah, one more thing: the ui. Just a quick note, if I navigate your menus with the mouse, don't make me swap to the keyboard for some interactions and vice versa. I should be able to only use one input method for the whole thing. (Your credits requires you to push escape to exit it, which the rest of the UI doesn't do)

Honestly, I'm finding it pretty remarkable how polished this prototype is given how little time there was to make it. Your overall presentation is really solid. You could easily clean up the rough edges on this game and have something that feels complete

Good luck to you on your future games!

Well, it may not be finished, but you've still gotten further with Godot 3d than I have. I expect a Steam release by Christmas.

I like it! Reminds me a lot of one finger death punch. A couple "notes" (music joke, get it?) 

1. While I can pick up the beat from the music, it takes a little more effort for this game than with other games I've played. Rhythm games like this typically do better with an extremely distinct separation of beats. See Crypt of the Necrodancer for an example: 

2. The beat counter you have works fine for a prototype, but if you want to improve the player's ability to read the beat, consider adding a visual cue that gives lead up. Again we can reference necrodancer for this (I've played more rhythm games than this I swear it just has good examples :P)

3. Having the player only do partial damage when they get "ok and good" hits feels terrible. Make it so the hit either connects or it doesn't, and rankings can be for points if anything. It just doesn't feel good to play with, and the game would be significantly improved without it.

Like I mentioned before, check out one finger death punch if you haven't already! Very similar in premise, there might be something there you could take from it if you choose to continue this!

Congrats on finishing the jam! I know I mostly critiqued with this comment so I'll reiterate: I enjoyed this game quite a bit! Rhythm games are great and the world needs more of them, so get on it!

Honestly, while it isn’t the deepest thing in the world, I wish it didn’t self sabotage like that. It would have been a pretty fun little game otherwise.

This game reminds me of a game I made years ago: https://thepenguininquisition.itch.io/slime-defender. Funny how we both ended up making "defend the pylon" type games. Must just be a common choice for game jams or something

I'm not really sure the charge mechanic really adds anything. I just kept my back to the pylon the whole time and never ran out of ammo. I ended up having to let myself die after 10ish minutes because the enemies were never in any danger of hurting me. That said, running around in circles is a bit monotonous. A minimap or some such to show me where enemies are coming from would be appreciated (then you could spawn enemies faster too, to help with the difficulty).

All that said, this seems like a pretty polished jam game (audio stutters aside :P). Well done!

This game is a fever dream. I approve

lol, the art style reminds me of photo dojo on the ds. Nice work :P

I think this game has a bug where the cannons get progressively faster every time you restart, lol. Might be intentional? It definitely did cause me to lose my sanity

The cannon sound gets a bit repetitive after a bit. I would consider looking into randomizing the pitch:

Also, the broken cannons are honestly just not fun. They feel too random, which hurts the experience. Had fun with the game overall though. Thanks!

Honestly, I feel like the theme kinda hurts this game. Only having one health point doesn't really make the game feel better or create a unique experience, it just generates frustration (which is a trend I've noticed with several games I've played). The focus on dodging enemy projectiles that are thrown at you from off screen (if you're focusing on the platforming) kinda kills this game for me. Either the obstacles need to come from the direction the player is intended to run towards, or the perspective needs to be third person so the player has adequate awareness of what's happening. Otherwise it feels like running blind and praying you don't get hit

Honestly though, during the moments when I didn't get hit I was having fun. The environment is charming, and the platforming felt pretty good. The pencil pushers just got in the way for me is all :P

Thanks for the game!

Gives me rabbit and steel vibes. Well done!

I really like this one, at least partially because I love bullet hells. It has a couple pain points that stopped me from finishing it unfortunately:

- The max bullet speed needs to be tamped way down. A few of those bullet patterns are shooting fast enough that they appear to flicker across the screen before instantly ending my run

- Having to restart the entire game every time you get hit really kills the pacing. Restarting the boss you're on? A bit frustrating, but I'm cool with a bullet hell being hard. Having to repeat content you've already cleared? Infuriating

- This is more of a suggestion, but a cool idea for a direction to take this would be to make it so hitting the bullet emitters has them fire a shrapnel projectile that damages the boss once. I found myself often getting tunnel visioned for the boss to the point that I'd let the screen fill up with way too much stuff, and this change would make it harder to fall into that trap

- The boss hitboxes are kinda small. Makes hitting them a bit of a chore. 

Now, I have those thoughts, but I want to stress again that I burned 30 minutes just playing and having fun with this game. I like the music quite a bit, and honestly once I finish trying the other games from the jam I'll probably end up grinding this out more. (and since it's python, maybe adding a checkpoint system myself because it really annoys me and the game is effectively open source,  lol). Great job with this one. Thanks for the game

I really like the art style for this one! You guys did a great job on the aesthetic. Unfortunately once I finished the first puzzle, I couldn't figure out how to outrun the slime to safely reach anywhere else in the level. Also, the slime was spamming sound effects which was a bit grating.

Congrats on finishing the jam!

I actually have a drone I fly as one of my other hobbies, so this was right up my street. You captured the feeling of flying a drone pretty well. I could see this concept being used to flesh out a walking simulator really easily. Well done!

Feedback:

Drones can fly sideways. The tank controls were really frustrating at several points. Consider using Q and E for lateral movement.

The laser section is a massive pain point. I had to retry the entire game twice due to failing right at the end. You need to either install checkpoints, or remove damage mechanics entirely. Replaying the entire game is just a massive pace killer

On a similar note: either allow the drone to regenerate health over time, or remove the health mechanic entirely. Making a small mistake early in the game and then having one less hit for the annoying bit later with no way to fix it apart from restarting felt bad

That's about all I've got. I like this one. Well done!

Whoops! I thought I had put extra platforms everywhere that needed it so you wouldn't get stuck repeating content. Looks like I missed a spot! Thanks for the feedback though. I'll probably work on this a bit more to add sound later. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out

I love the art for this one! This game looks great! The only thing I would really say is I didn't realize the second spell aimed at the mouse initially, so I couldn't figure out how to hit one of the switches for way too long.

This was your first game? I'm genuinely shocked. This is great! Well done

a-maze-ing! 

My only thought the entire time though was you should have let the maze rotate instead of jump.

Also, the 4 peg level was a mistake. 2 pegs is where the game peaks for the jumping concept imo. 4 is too much to track

Great job overall though!

Personally, I'm leaning towards really hungry, because I certainly don't feel immortal

Nice job on this one! The art looks really good. I do have one or two smaller pieces of feedback:

1. The character accelerates/decelerates just slowly enough to make them feel like they're on wheels. I would shorten the deceleration curve or turn them into a car

2. For the patrolling guards, a lot of them turn so fast on their patrols that I feel like I have absolutely no chance of clearing some areas first try. I would recommend either giving an option to show the guard's path, or slowing down their turning rate

Once again, well done! I like it :)

the cube is a normal tile. Every 2ish levels or so starting from level 5

Got a high score of 32. I love the art! Great job

Fun, chill little puzzle game. However, I keep encountering an issue where the player just can't move in the direction they need to sometimes. I get the sense the game is detecting the cube I'm trying to move to as filled and won't let me move towards it. Weirdest part is if I keep mashing buttons and failing the level eventually it corrects itself, but it's a real show stopper when it happens every very few levels. Had a great time with the bits I could play though, nice work!

Congrats on completing the jam!

Honestly, I wasn't able to get past level 1 in this one. This game is hard of nails, and a bit unfair in a few places. I really love the art you've got going on for your backgrounds! The foregrounds are nice too, but the backgrounds, wow. Those are on a different level. For the foreground, consider using thicker outlines on the art. I suspect it will look better if you pronounce it more

Regarding the game being unfair, I have a few notes:

- The pirate slimes only trigger when you're so close to them that if you aren't already in the process of jumping, you will get hit. This works fine if you're the one who programmed it, but for a player who doesn't know it's coming, they have no time to react

- The flying slimes can spawn 2 inches away from your face if you don't know what's coming. Consider disabling the spawner if the player is too close to it, or spawning the mobs faster

- When the player holds the jump button, make it so they don't jump again when they land. You have a height variable jump, so the player is going to hold the jump button the whole way through for big gaps. Making it so they auto jump again leads to a lot of platforming imprecision

- That level you took a screenshot of where the slime is at the top of the tower? I couldn't get past it. The slime hits you and knocks you back into the pit where you instantly die and have to restart the whole game every time

- The knockback from the pirate gun making the player walk backward for a full second (or close to it) feels super sluggish. Knockback should take almost no time and return control to the player almost immediately so they can try to recover

- Also, the knockback should be relative to the bullet's direction, not the player's. Had a few weird bugs from this where the player got knocked towards the enemy

Alright, that was a lot of feedback. But honestly, this game made me rage. Not much I can do about that :P 

I will say though, I was really getting into the platforming segments until that pirate slime ruined it. You did a great job with those!

P.S. I noticed the other levels were selectable from the menu after finishing this, but level 2 immediately had me annoyed with the pirate slimes again, so I'm gonna pass. Apologies

I quite liked this one! At some points I forgot to take notes and was just playing a game, which is always the mark of a good game. I particularly like how the platforming feels, and the use of lighting throughout the scene. Also, 10/10 save system. Had I needed to leave and come back, this game would have had me for sure

Also, great boss fight. Really well done. 10/10

I have a couple notes for future polish if you're interested:

- The sword should do knockback, whether to the player (think duck tales cane) or to the enemy. Right now fights feel weird because the weapon feels weightless, and it feels like you have no way to claim space against the enemies

- Firing the fireball resets the sword's cooldown. Why? I get they are both movement mechanics, but you should either not have the sword be a movement mechanic, or just account for them both being available in the design (I recommend not making that required, or even acknowledging it. Let the player feel like they're cheating)

- Reverting to the previous room every time you die feels a bit jarring because of the camera. I would either respawn the player at the beginning of the current room, or fade to black while moving the camera

- I didn't discover the upgrade menu until I was mid boss and paused to take notes. You should point the player towards it after they pick up 2 gems the first time. Not everyone pauses a game this short

- The sword currently works through walls. I'm sure this isn't intentional and is just a jam thing, but just wanted to note it down

- The boss only being vulnerable when the head is flaming left me confused as to how to hurt it at first. I would either introduce the hurtbox much earlier in the fight, or just make the head hurtable the entire time and increase the bosses health as needed

Alright, now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go play around some more with the best item in the game: the crown. I need that jewels upgrade

I loved this game. This art style is wonderful, and you've opted for a style where the puzzles are light, allowing for the focus to be on platforming, which I feel is the right choice.

I do have some small feedback if you want to keep fleshing this out:

This game is crying, SCREAMING even, for an undo button. The game is very inexact about placing your corpses by its very nature, and restarting the entire level every time you jump too high and place a platform you can't quite jump on is super frustrating. You can also replace the "you lose, restart the level" to "out of legacies, press undo" etc

One more thing: if K is the main "interact" button in the game, it should be able to go through the cutscenes as well. Took me too long to figure out I needed to press enter. The main menu and cutscenes should be processable if you press K, Space, or Enter

I would love to see this fleshed out further. If you don't choose to do that, I will look forward to whatever you make next instead. Great job!

I had planned to take an hour to play all the games in the jam, but I ended up spending an hour on your game instead! Before anything else, congrats on finishing your first jam! It's awesome that you managed to ship a completed product. I really can't wait to see what else you're going to make in the future. Also, I love the art style you guys have going on here! The end screen in particular looked pretty cool

As it is with most first time games, this one is a little bit rough, but that's ok! I have a small mountain of feedback to give you for this one, but I just want to take one more second to again note that it's awesome you finished this! I hope you take these notes as things to keep in mind for next time rather than finding them discouraging. We all have a first jam game somewhere, and the most powerful thing we get out of it is what we learned. Alright, without further ado:

Gameplay:

So, the web version didn't have the text block on the left fully expanded. Not your fault, but because of that I spent the first several minutes just running around the overworld very confused. Having said that, there's one thing I noticed about your overworld that's a common mistake for first time devs in the top down space: Do you notice how you made it so the entire sprite has collision both for the ghost, and for the other people, meaning you collide with their head/hair etc? When you're dealing with a top down camera, make it so their collision is only the space around their feet. This allows you to create the illusion that you can walk behind the NPCs. Similarly, if you make it so the ghost only has collision at the bottom, it means you can get right up in an NPC's face instead of bonking the top of your head against their shoes.

Now, you may be thinking this will cause sprites to look weird as they clip in and out of each other. That's where the Z-Index comes in. You can layer which sprites appear in front/behind others using code in your game engine. In the case of a top down game, if you make it so their z-layer is equal to -y coordinate, you'll make it so the higher up on the screen a sprite is, the further back it is. This allows you to make it so the sprites can go behind sprites and in front of them and the sprites will clip properly

Alright, now I'll talk about the minigames. First, I'm gonna level with you, this music was giving me a bit of a headache by the end. It's kind of grating after listening for a bit, and because some of these minigames took me a while to solve due to issues I'm about to talk about, I ended up overdosing on it heavily. That said, I adored the scrolling skull background. It gave me megaman battle network vibes, which is awesome. Alright, here's my notes on each individual minigame:

--Puzzle minigame: I personally think this game would be significantly better if you removed the money thoughts mechanic, and made it so every piece can snap to every tile piece. Solving a grid puzzle when you don't know the original picture can be fun, but when you constantly have to divert your attention it stops being fun and starts feeling annoying. Now, it may be that you want your player to feel annoyed like how the ghost feels towards their brother, but it's best to remember that video games are meant to be entertaining at the end of the day. If the player runs into a wall of frustration, they're just gonna go do something else. In the end, for this one I ended up just dragging the pieces around until they caught on the only tile they could snap to and moved on. 

-- Pipes minigame - I got super stuck on this one because there is a second, much shorter, valid solution that doesn't count as correct. Puzzles like these only work if you allow dynamic solving. It's pretty obvious you programmed a very specific game state to be the "correct" solution, rather than building in detection for a correct solution. I can get why, given it's a jam and you had time constraints, but puzzle games are at their best when they allow for multiple solutions, especially when the alternative solution is 100% correct by the rules of the game. Always build solution detection rather than hard code the "correct" solution

-- Twins game -- this one wasn't super remarkable in any regard. Kinda felt like an old school flash game, so props for that. Only thing is, just like with the puzzles I gave earlier, you should allow every letter to slot into every letter slot. Using the periods as a cheat to indicate the end of the word, and only allowing the letters to slot into the exact correct space kind of takes away from any puzzle solving there was to do there. Find a letter, drag it till it snaps, next

-- Ghost game -- this one I got so stuck on I nearly gave up and quit. Turns out, the only way to beat it is to click the button, then move the mouse way to the left and click the space bar to trigger the button again, because the ghost is offset way to the right relative to the ghost. Additionally, you don't have to start at the beginning of the maze. Move your mouse to the left of the exit and hit space to instantly clear the maze. I don't really have much to say on this one other than the bugs need to be fixed

-- Crushing Pills Minigame -- honestly, I don't have a lot to say on this one. Was just a straightforward "click the buttons before time runs out" affair. Lots of web game vibes here

One change I would have considered making if you had time would be to change the dialogue of the character after completing their minigame. That gives a better sense that the player is having an impact on the world around them. I'm guessing this was a time related issue though, which is completely fair. Food for thought

Alright, that's all the gameplay done, but remember how I mentioned that I spent the first several minutes wandering the overworld? Well, during that time I also took a moment to take a few notes on the writing as well. I'm gonna level with you, these people don't feel like people. They don't even feel like caricatures in a lot of cases. I don't say that to be unkind, but I recommend you continue practice writing dialogue after this. Maybe write some short stories etc and have people read them. Here's a few specific notes:

- The conversation between Mama/Papa (aka Gerald/Margaret) ends up feeling super stilted. I can tell you want them to be super detached/stilted which is fair and makes sense, but some of these things don't read like how anyone, even stuck up people, talk. Specifically, Mama refers to Gerald by name twice in two different sentences. It would be like me, every time I talk to you going, "Appel, congrats on finishing your first game" "Thanks Mist!" "You're welcome, Appel". See how weird that feels? The person opening the conversation might use the opposing person's name once, but the person responding will almost never use the opposing person's name unless it's the very beginning of a social interaction "Hi Appel!" "Hi Mist!" (we will not be using each other's names for the rest of the day except to maybe get the other's attention). 

- Here's an exact note I took while playing the game "Erin and Ellen give me boomer facebook meme vibes". I don't feel any reason to hate these people like the author clearly wants, because I can't find them believable enough to hate. They're just "40 year old mad at the youths caricatures numbers 256 and 257". I don't think using this stereotype here was a good idea. If I'm exacting revenge on people, I should be able to feel at least some level of dislike for them when I'm reading their dialogue, but here I just roll my eyes and move on

- Cousin Ian on the other hand is a much better written young person relative to Erin and Ellen. I still don't feel a reason to hate him, but the writing here doesn't make me cringe. He feels like a character. However, I do have one note: You know that joke on the internet where people note how you can tell if the writer was an only child by how they fail at writing sibling interactions? "Hey bro" "what's up, sis?" etc? I get the same vibes here. People don't refer to their cousins as "Cousin Harold". He's just "Harold". If you want to indicate they were cousins, call him "Cousin Ian" in the name card and nothing else

Ok. I feel like I've been a bit more negative than I intended, but honestly all of this feedback is what I really thought about the game. That said, please don't feel discouraged by this. The only reason I took 2 hours to play/write this is because I want to see you keep making games, and for those games to get better and better. Congrats again on finishing your first jam. I can't wait to play what you make next!

Ended up taking about 6 hours to fully clear. Thanks for the game!

Cool game! Reminds me a ton of steam world dig!

I FINISHED ALL THE LEVELS! THANK YOU FOR SHARING!

An unfrogettable experience. Thanks for sharing!

If you are interested in continuing to work on 2d platformers, I have a few resources/topics you might be interested in researching:

Learn how to make 2d platformer movement feel good:https://gmtk.itch.io/platformer-toolkit

Learn about coyote time: Coyote Time Blog

Learn to place limits on the camera bounds: here

It's awesome to see you upload a project here. I hope these resources can help you grow. Keep making cool stuff!

Thanks for the tip! I replayed it with that setting on and had a great time! This was a ton of fun. That last segment in level 10 was particularly cool

It was a bit frustrating having to swap from keyboard to mouse to hit the next level button. It would be a lot better if I could just control that with the keyboard as well.

Other than that though I loved it! Thanks for the game!

Hey! This game really has some great stuff going on here, and it's super obvious you put a ton of work into it. 

I'm having to quit just a few levels in unfortunately, because the camera is giving me a bit of a headache. The camera snaps super aggressively forward and back to the player depending on if you're moving forward or have come to a stop (and when you respawn as well). This is super useful as a way of showing the player the level ahead of course, but the movement is so fast in this game it kinda feels like I'm getting whiplash. Hopefully this is only a problem for me since I tend to be more sensitive to motion sickness problems in games, but hopefully you find this helpful on some level

Seriously though, this looks like an awesome game, and the controls seem super well polished. Congrats on the release!

Congrats on finishing your first game jam! It's awesome to see what you've made here. Don't worry about your game being a bit rough. The fact you were able to compile and upload it means you've already done better than my first jam! Also, did you create this art yourself? It looks good enough I can't tell if it's from a premade pack or not; if you did, that's awesome! Super well done.

If you're interested on things you could polish with this game you've made, I've got a recommendations for you:

1. People typically don't have as much momentum as your player character does here. You should consider shortening the time between the player pushing down the walk button and them reaching max speed, and how long it takes the player to come to a complete stop after releasing the movement key. The shorter those 2 times are, the less floaty your movement will feel

2. Speaking of floatiness, here's some resources if you're interested on how to design jumps that feel good. Mark Brown made an awesome interactive tutorial that can help you improve your platformer movement. I highly recommend it: https://gmtk.itch.io/platformer-toolkit

3. I actually kind of like how slow the sword is to swing. It makes the weapon feel heavier, and requires more planning before swinging at the coconut. I just wanted to point out here if you want the combat to feel snappy instead of heavy, you would just need to reduce the time between pressing the button and the weapon's attack hitbox coming out. That's all just a matter of taste though, not something you necessarily should change

4. I would recommend only using mouse inputs if you specifically need the pointer for something. Having all the buttons be on the keyboard makes it easier to play your game on a laptop, or once you're feeling up to it, a controller. As a follow up if you do change that, always make sure your UI only uses the inputs your game uses. So if you swap to a keyboard only setup, make sure the player isn't swapping to their mouse to hit UI prompts (or at least, make it optional)

I can't stress enough how awesome it is that you've managed to create something here. Good luck on your next game! I hope I get to see it

I love the level designs you've got here! Keep it up!

One small suggestion: Always have the UI inputs match the game inputs. This game only uses the keyboard, so I shouldn't need to swap to my mouse to use the UI.

This game kinda reminds me of an old game called McPixel I used to play. Not super similar mechanically, but the same general sense of humor. This game has some obvious jank to it, but it really is quite funny. A bit of polish and you'd have a great flash game. Well done!

This game is a fever dream. 10/10, would play again

My lawyers will be in touch

Something about the fish flopping sound effect had me laugh out loud. Well done