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Aww, thank you a lot for your generous review! It really means a lot coming from you, since your game is also a strong contender for the top spot from me!

Rust is probably also my favorite boss purely in terms of how the entire boss fight plays out, along with Pearl. The "Metroidvania" is optional and missable, but you can use the secondary weapon to backtrack and challenge another boss if you choose so (I guess it's subjective whether that counts or not). Music and the ability to change keybinds is something I would definitely like to add in a future update!

You can toggle fullscreen with the F key! I could swear I put the option in the pause menu too, but I guess I forgot since I never used it much myself!

Saved this game for last and wasn't disappointed! Definitely some of the best controls and combat in the gamejam. The movement was super snappy and responsive, and the wall jump worked really well! I only wish using left/right click for attacks was an option, and I feel like the hover could have shared the keybind with the jump, too.

I loved the designs and animation of the player, and the magical girl transformation sequence was adorable! The enemies were neat too, with the flower being my favorite. The graphics in general were gorgeous, although it was occasionally hard to tell the difference between the background and the foreground, especially in the forest areas. That said, the level design in general was very solid, even if a bit heavy on the deadly spikes! (The generous checkpoints were definitely very welcome there.)

The story was... okay? Being a fairly straightforward post-apocalyptic sci-fi robot rebellion thing, I honestly feel like the lore logs were a bit redundant, and leaving it all up to interpretation might have served the game better. There also seemed to be no way to skip or get out of the credits after clicking the option in the main menu, so I ended up force-quitting the game since the background art looked like spoilers. That said, the antagonist being revealed to be an ape was an interesting twist!

The final escape sequence was pretty cool, though I was really itching for an actual boss fight against the ape in the end! I was also a bit disappointed that my save seemed to be gone after beating the game, as I wanted to explore around some more. Though, it's obvious that within the limitations of a gamejam, you did far more than most could have hoped to. Overall, great job!

Cool little game! I loved the design of the protagonist and the whole idea of playing as a ghost. (She actually reminded me of a sea angel, not sure if intended or not!)

The level backgrounds were gorgeous, and overall the underwater atmosphere was great, though the solid black tile edges looked a bit out of place sometimes. The music kicking in late and the transition from dark to light were a neat touch, too!

The movement felt sufficiently underwater-y, and I liked the amount of jump distance you could get. The dash ability is a cool concept, and chaining big leaps together felt satisfying! However, the hitboxes for launching in each specific direction were pretty small, and it was easy to send yourself downwards or in the wrong direction. Some of the runbacks after falling down were pretty long, and having to change rooms in order to respawn enemies to dash off of was a bit annoying at times, too. I think the dash ability might work better if it could only send you up, not down, and perhaps was based on player facing rather than position. The wall climbing ability looked really cool and worked well, though the recovery on the flight ability felt a bit long, and flight in general kinda felt like just a more cumbersome double jump.

Dealing with enemies was a bit hard due to the small hitboxes making it hard to hit anything without getting hit, and after a while, I resorted to avoiding enemies when possible. Also, the dash sometimes seemed to go through enemies without harming them. On the other hand, it looked like the enemy movement was based on the center of its body, but only the head did damage. Meaning that once the enemy was on top of you, it'd just get stuck there spinning back and forth and not being able to hit you.

The reused witch at the end was pretty funny! I'd love to see what an actual boss might look like with this kind of movement and combat mechanics, though. Overall, very nice job!

Ahhhh, thank you so much for your kind review, it really made my day/night! And once again, huge congrats for being the first person (at least among people who contacted me) to beat all 6 bosses! (I was seriously giving up hope that anyone would do it before the vote is over!)

Fixing the softlocks will definitely be my highest priority after the vote, and I would also like to add some more background decorations and visual storytelling that just barely didn't make it into the gamejam version. It might all take some time because I've also set out to play and review every game in the gamejam, so I haven't managed to get any work done aside from that... I'm down to only 2 games left, though!

Music is something that I'd definitely love to add to my game, but it's also something that will probably happen some time further down the line. In all honesty, music is probably my weakest suit, and at this point I'm considering commissioning an actual musician to take care of it. I think the game deserves something better than what I could make myself!

As for new content... I don't think I will be adding any more bosses, because I need to save some ideas for my future projects!😉

However, I've been meaning to tweak the Python arena and fight a bit, since the crates in the room were a last moment addition that really messed with the flow of the fight. And being a boss that spends some time off-screen towards the end of the fight, he feels a bit tankier than intended.

I would also like to increase the variety of ??????'s attacks a bit, to reduce some of the repetition in the fight. Unity might learn a new trick or two as well.😉 I'd like the alternative ending to be a bit more unique compared to the normal one, too.

The secret primary/secondary combo attack will definitely be getting an improvement, too!

Aww, that was way too short, I really wanted to keep playing! It definitely looked like there were gonna be additional paths to explore with a double/high jump ability, too. Also, Windows complained about a firewall when launching the game for some reason.

The graphics and music were gorgeous, and the character movement both on land and in water was some of the best I've experienced in the gamejam. Also, was that the Lego crystal piece as the wall crystal decoration? If so, that's a really funny little easter egg, haha!

The combat was nice as well, although the super short range of the melee made it a bit hard to hit enemies before taking damage, especially against the bats. (Also, bats underwater?,..) Also, it'd have been really nice to be able to attack while crouching on land, since all enemies except the boss were shorter than the player.

The duration of being unable to move while shooting underwater also felt a bit long, considering that there shouldn't have been anything to get stuck on! Nothing too major, but it just felt a bit jarring during the boss fight. That said, the boss fight itself was pretty cool and had a nice amount of difficulty for a first boss!

Overall, really fun game, I'd love to see more of it! Great job!

Very nice and cute game!

The design and portrait for the protagonist is gorgeous, and the level's got a great city atmosphere going on (with suitably catchy music). However, the jagged walls on some of the "tunnel" areas look pretty unfinished and jank, and I got stuck in the starting area for an embarrassing amount of time before looking at comments and finding out I had to jump on the roof. The houses around the starting zone definitely looked like mere background elements to me, so I think making the walkable roofs stick out more would definitely help! That said, I never got stuck for too long after that, and it was a lot of fun to explore around overall.

This game's probably got my favorite implementation of melee combat in the gamejam so far! The combo looks great and hits have just the right amount of "oomph." That said, none of the regular enemies seemed particularly threatening, and I think the game could definitely have benefited from having some ranged or shielding enemies, or really just anything that requires you to stop and think for a second, because you kinda just mash your way through everything. On the other hand, the bosses were pretty cool, although the second one seemed much easier than the first one!

The basic movement feels very nice and snappy, although I wasn't a huge fan of either of the abilities. I do see and appreciate the effort to have a more "unique" set of powerups, but the toaster is basically just a double jump in disguise that's harder and less versatile to use, and the roomba feels awkward as well due to the minimum throw distance. I think both abilities could benefit from spawning directly under the player instead, as well as not costing mana.

I quite enjoyed the dialogue and the little bits of 4th wall breakage! The ending was funny but also I feel bad for them... I do hope they're not gonna end up stuck there forever! (I at least put them back at Tricia's workshop before quitting!)

Overall, great job!

Ok first of all, huge congratulations, you're the first person I know of that beat the final boss!

Second of all, sadly that's a bug that I didn't catch before the deadline, where the "fakeout" projectile wall doesn't actually despawn when it should have. You're supposed to jump into the orb to trigger the alternative ending (which right now is just the normal ending with one changed line, so you didn't really miss out on much). I will be fixing that and some other bugs as soon as the voting period is over and I can update again!

Big apologies for the issue, and thank you so much for your kind words and putting so much time into my buggy and unfinished game, it really means the world to me!

Pretty neat game! I don't know anything about card games, but I clicked on some funny animals and won somehow!

I actually wished there'd been more of the card game compared to the VN, since it worked well and seemed fun. It'd have been cool if the other magical girls introduced new cards, too, or if there were new mechanics for having two characters on your side of the field. Since, as far as I could tell, it was essentially just the same battle and the same deck three times (other than one of the cards being gold and having buffed stats).

That said, the artwork for the characters and cards was very nice! The story and villain were fairly generic for a magical girl setting, but I guess that was probably the goal here. Though, I have to admit I started clicking through the dialogue after a while. On the other hand, having voice acting in a gamejam is always impressive!

Overall, good job!

Interesting demo! The main character model was really cool and well-animated, and I'd love to play a full action RPG with her. However, she didn't really feel like she was part of the same world as everything else in the game.

Combat felt super slidey and not very impactful. For one, the animation showed the character standing in place while attacking, yet every attack sent you lunging forward, to the point I think attacking was the fastest means of movement. The "Serious Sam-lite" horde gameplay is a neat concept, but kinda held back by the enemies very obviously spawning above you (and lagging the game). It also didn't seem like the basic traffic cone enemies were capable of damaging me at all.

I'm almost sure the cars around the starting room weren't there when I first loaded into the game, and only showed up after dying once. It was awkward to interact with the levers due to lacking a visual on/off state, and I ended up accidentally closing the door back a few times.

The escalating "ping pong" mechanic of the boss was a cool touch, though not very well-communicated to the player (I basically guessed that was the objective after several minutes of getting nowhere against the boss), and made harder by the aforementioned attack slide forcing me to back up after every successful hit. In general, sliding off the arena was by far the biggest threat of the boss fight and the entire game. The shopkeeper was cute, though!

Overall, the gameplay definitely needs a lot of polish, but the protagonist looks awesome. Nice job!

Really fun and adorable little game! Loved the art style and the design of the main character, and how the use of red helped interactable things stand out. The music was really nice and cheerful, too! The movement and shooting were a bit on the slow-paced side, but I think it worked out in favor of the game's lighthearted tone.

One thing that bothered me a bit was that sometimes you'd end up standing on a ledge up in the sky and it wouldn't become clear where you were supposed to go until a moving platform kindly showed up a few seconds later. At some point, I started expecting the moving platform to show up, and ended up waiting for a while on a ledge that was indeed just a dead end! Far from a major issue of course, but maybe giving the moving platforms visible SMW-style tracks could help?

The abilities were fairly standard for a Metroidvania, but the dialogue for obtaining them was really fun! In general, I really enjoyed the writing and sense of humor, it was definitely my favorite aspect of the game. The boss battle was very cool, and the little bit of alternative text for no-hitting the first phase was a nice touch!

The ending cutscene was amazing as well. Froggy is indeed the Coolest! Overall, had a lot of fun with this one, great job!

You're welcome! I was playing at 6 in the morning and I think my review kinda came off as more negative than I intended, but I did really enjoy exploring around in the grimy retro 3D aesthetic. Also forgot to mention it, but the big room with the lava waterfall where you have to activate 4 valves was my favorite part of the level, it was definitely a neat "wow" moment when I climbed the platforms and looked down on it all!

Pretty cool game! The rusty aesthetic with splashes of green reminded me a lot of old FPS games (though in a third person perspective). I think little hints of plant life, for example around the green checkpoints and some other spots, could have helped offset the monotone coloring while reinforcing the "nature vs. rust" theme. The model and animation of the main character were cool (I really liked her civilian outfit), but her "nature" aspect wasn't immediately very obvious.

The level was a bit confusing at times due to many areas looking similar to each other, but the map definitely helped a lot. The music was very nice and eerie, especially the combat theme! Although I think the drums on the combat theme were a bit loud compared to the melody. Still, having a dynamic combat theme in the first place is a cool feature!

The movement was good enough for a simple 3D platformer, although attacks felt kinda awkward. It didn't seem like the hit sounds aligned with the animation, and the trail of the weapon seemed a lot bigger than the actual range of hitting enemies. Overall, fighting enemies unfortunately didn't feel very impactful or satisfying. Besides, having to transform every time you initiated combat, I do wish the transformation animation was a bit faster.

The enemies themselves looked cool, although the hitbox for the roach hurting you felt a bit big. The final boss being a mini-bullet hell was a neat finishing touch, though I do wish there was more of a warning before it initiates the huge omnidirectional attack. Still, very good job!

Cool game and concept! As someone who's never played a typing game before, I feel like I managed to kinda brute force my way farther into the game than I probably should have by just picking all the damage upgrades and healing when necessary. (I was playing on Normal, and got as far as the guy with 1000 health whose text was something like "Look upon my perfection..." before I finally got overrun.)

I think my biggest problem with the difficulty of the game was that I couldn't really tell when I was supposed to dodge until I got hit. The tutorial made it look like I just had to wait for the enemy to complete its speech bubble, but in the real run, some enemies could hit multiple times per sentence, others would fake me out by delaying a word or punctuation mark, and yet others typed so fast that I basically had to dodge as soon as I saw the dialog box. So, it basically felt like I had to memorize every attack pattern, and that's obviously pretty hard in a roguelite with permadeath.

(That said, it's definitely accurate in some way to actual soulslikes, where some enemies attack super fast while others will delay their hits and fake you out. I guess it's just much harder to react to those things when you're just reading text, as opposed to looking at what the enemy is actually doing.)

I feel like the gameplay loop might have worked better for me if the dodging part was more like an actual soulslike, a.k.a. you dodge based on the enemy's attack animation (of course, that would require having attack animations). You already have two different types of text to pay attention to (bombs and your attacks), so I feel like taking away a third one would be fair, and there's already precedent of dodging ranged attacks based on the animation rather than words.

Also, I think the player's attack text being at the bottom of the screen also made things harder, since the bombs and enemy attacks are near the top of the screen. In the videos I've seen of other typing games, the attack text is usually on top of the enemy itself, so perhaps that might help a bit! The attack text having typos and non-words for some of the later enemies also felt kinda cheap. That said, I'm again not really a typing game expert, so I dunno what kind of difficulty is standard for those games!

Either way, I got farther in the game than I had expected, and had fun doing so despite not really being into this kind of game! Good job!

Fun little game! The art style somehow did a great job combining the corporate setting with fantasy, and I liked how mundane and tired the protagonist and all the NPCs looked, as well as their dialogue. The transformation sequence was awesome, too!

The player controlled a bit differently from what I'm used to, with the tiny jump delay, but overall the movement and combat were fine, and it's not like there was that much jumping required. The ribbon physics were a fun feature, although latching on to fans felt a bit awkward (perhaps intentionally, as the animation makes it look more like an accident than something she did on purpose, in which case another great touch!).

It was really funny how you didn't really kill the gorgons, just knocked them down, and could continue to beat them up while they were down. The dragon boss was pretty cool and funny, too!

Overall, nice job!

Certainly a very "retro" game! I could 100% see myself playing something exactly like this in the computer lab back in elementary school. The only thing missing was some PC speaker beeps for jumping and shooting.

The graphics were definitely very accurate to the DOS era. I liked the enemy sprites, but I think the player could've been a bit bigger and more detailed to match the style of the enemies. It's not like you're dodging much in this game anyway!

Having only one hit point and no checkpoints was a little rough, especially since it was often hard to tell where to go without taking a blind jump and dying a couple times. Fortunately, the game was very short.

Overall, definitely very short and simple, even for a gamejam. Still, nice job!

Thank you for giving it a shot, and for your kind words!

The movement is definitely very subjective, in the sense that I tried to make something that would appeal to me personally. I wanted to embody the "magical girl" side of the gamejam by making the gameplay cartoonishly fast and exaggerated, and I 100% agree there isn't much room for precision as a result. As such, I tried to design boss encounters around the principle of "whatever you do, just don't stay still" (with the exception of Rust and the final boss, which were the reason why I added the slow walk option).

However, with Python, it's definitely easy to put yourself in an undodgeable situation! The best way I found to beat him was to avoid jumping at all unless needed, and slowly inch away to keep him as vertical as possible, while preventing him from spreading too much across the arena. That said, the crates around the room were a last moment addition that definitely messes with that strategy a lot, and definitely a poor decision on my end. The goal was to make the boss destroy the crates as he passes through them, but sadly I ran out of time to do that!

I know most folks probably won't ever come back to check out the game again after the gamejam, but I am planning to release an update as soon as voting is over, and hopefully work on making the game flow better without sacrificing the difficulty. Some improvements I've had in mind for Python were to lower the HP of crates and make them disappear instantly rather than having a "ghost" period where they still block you despite already being destroyed, giving the detached sections a "laser sight" indicator to show where they're about to launch, and potentially lowering the boss's HP a lot while giving him an additional attack phase to compensate.

I'm also planning to post a video of clearing the whole game some time around the voting end, so people who are curious about the rest of the bosses can get to see them too. Regardless, thanks again for checking it out in its unpolished state!

If the goal was to emulate the old school jank then I think the mission has definitely been accomplished! Personally, resetting all the way to the beginning of the game on death is kind of the cutoff point for when I'm willing to try and push through the challenge, but I can definitely see and appreciate the vision!

A bit hard to get into at first, but a very cool and unique game! The artwork and character designs are great, and I think the puppet animation fits the "old Internet" vibe well (it reminds me of old Flash games). I'm a big fan of the music, and I really liked the story and the "chatroom" style of writing too!

Movement and text definitely felt very slow, but if it's a technical issue then it obviously can't be helped with the gamejam constraints and all. It got a lot more bearable with the double jump and dash, but trying to reunite users without those upgrades is definitely a bad idea haha.

At first I was very confused because somehow, reuniting didn't work on my first playthrough and both users would just end up following me instead. It worked on my second attempt though, and I'm really glad I gave it another shot because all the conversations with the users were super fun and charming!

The final boss was a bit easy with all the upgrades (perhaps the fight itself is slowed down too?), but a cool fight regardless. Although, I was a bit sad that she just seemed to disappear, I was hoping that maybe we could "fix" her and actually make her work in the users' favor. All the users jumping up and cheering on you at the end and all the ending messages were super adorable, though!

Overall, the game definitely attempted to implement a lot of different gameplay mechanics and there is a bit of breakage, but I think this particular mix of play styles has a lot of potential, and I loved the chatroom aesthetic. Great job!

Neat little game! I really liked the sprites of the player and the other magical girls, and being able to see your friends while using abilities was a cool touch. The space background was gorgeous, although the wall tileset didn't really feel like it fit the atmosphere of everything else.

Both the player and the enemies felt a bit floaty, though perhaps that's fitting for the space(?) setting. The dash ability was a lot of fun, it's just a shame there wasn't really much room to make use of it. 

Using yarn to fight is a neat concept, but the forward momentum on the melee attack was a bit much, and getting the yarn ball to go where you wanted it to was a bit hard. However, getting big combos with the ball was fun when it happened! The time slow on every enemy kill seemed a bit excessive, perhaps it's something that could be reserved only for killing the last enemy on the current screen?

Overall, I think building more on the space setting could be neat if you're planning to continue this game, as well as perhaps exploring different ways the other magical girls could enter gameplay as minions/familiars. Regardless, good job!

A really solid and fun bite-sized Metroidvania! I loved the tiny art style and the design of the player and enemies. The player felt nice to control, and while the abilities were fairly basic, shooting enemies never got old. The red robe looked really cool, too!

I really appreciated the maps as well, they did a good job motivating me to explore and pick up everything while making sure I never got stuck. The final boss was simple and effective, although all the health drops from its projectiles made it kinda easy, and it was a bit hard to tell if I was even damaging it until it died. A bit more enemy variety could've been nice, too! Still, for a gamejam game, I think you did an outstanding job!

Great game but needs some polish! However, the graphics and animations look gorgeous, and I was a big fan of the music as well!

Took ~5 minutes of gameplay to reach the first savepoint, ~20 minutes to earn the right to save haha. I think the minigame is a funny idea, and a neat lore addition, but shouldn't have a time limit. Eventually I found a way to "cheese" it a bit: It doesn't penalize wrong buttons, so you can simply mash every button and hope you accidentally enter most of the correct combination. (Definitely had a far higher success rate that way than trying to do it legitimately.) But yeah, I think all it really takes to fix the minigame is remove the time limit.

Savepoint shenanigans aside, the game was certainly brutal! I think by far the hardest part was the long gauntlet of floating spike ball enemies and timed platforms before the second boss. I probably spent around an hour slowly inching ahead and waiting for the floating enemies to position themselves the right way so that I could destroy them with their own parried projectiles, but I eventually managed to get into a nice rhythm. I think it might help if parried projectiles re-aimed themselves and gained a bit of speed, to make hitting enemies back a bit easier! That said, the difficulty definitely took a nosedive once the charged attack and the dash made dealing with those sections much easier.

The snappy and accurate controls helped a lot, too, since at least I never felt like the player character was working against me! Blocking was a very welcome addition and a huge lifesaver. Parrying took some practice to get used to the right timing, but it was a cool feature as well, and one that you don't often see in gamejams. And I liked that enemies and even bosses seemed to go down fairly quickly as long as you managed to get a few swings in, the difficulty being more so in finding an opening than the size of their health bars.

I was very impressed by how many bosses there were in the game, and their attack patterns! I couldn't quite figure out how to deal with the first boss's big flame wave attack, as it couldn't be blocked and seemed too tall to jump over. But since the boss's other attack were easily blockable, I eventually managed to wear him down. The second boss had some cool attacks as well, and honestly felt much easier than the first one. The Pong encounter was a lot of fun and a very welcome little bit of levity!

After getting the ranged attack and dash, getting back up and through the disappearing ice area was a relative breeze compared to everything before. I managed to reach the fourth (third?) boss, but sadly at that point I ran into the issue where despite using at least 2 different checkpoints on the way there, the game put me all the way back down near the Pong fight. The boss itself looked cool and not too unreasonable (I liked the wind attack), but unfortunately I was already too tired to climb through half the map every attempt, and decided to stop there for now.

Regardless, a very impressive game to have been made in a month! Great job!

A really solid prototype! The forest tiles and backgrounds look super lush and detailed, and the music was beautiful and soothing.

I loved the player sprite, and the animations were great, especially the hair flowing upwards while falling. I'm also a big fan of the sword attack animation, it looks really sharp, simple and snappy! Movement and combat are really nice and responsive as well.

I know it probably wasn't fully intentional, but I think the lack of story and context (with even the protagonist being faceless), coupled with the lush visuals, creates a really mysterious, almost mystical atmosphere. The way the protagonist looks and moves really helps her come across as the no-nonsense, outdoorsy type. I'd say the protagonist and the overall vibe remind me a lot of the old Zelda games!

Anyway, I beat up the giant fog and had fun jumping around and finding all the hidden pieces of wood. The hidden area where the tree leaves fade out to reveal the alcove was my favorite. Great job!

Pretty cool game! The character portraits were beautiful, and the music was quite serene and soothing. The voice acting was nice, although the tone of the writing was kinda all over the place, and the constant cracking of jokes made it hard to take any of the story seriously.

The player sprite looked like it was a different resolution and art style from everything else, but the sprite itself and the animation were very nice. It reminded me a bit of old school point and click adventure games for some reason.

The tileset looked a bit generic, and a lot of the areas felt a bit empty and unnecessary, especially since I was pretty much zooming past everything anyway as soon as I got the water pearl upgrade. I think the deep water areas were my favorite, since the darkness effect made the emptiness feel more ominous.

The movement was pretty nice and responsive, and the heavy focus on swimming sections was a cool twist on the Metroidvania genre! Entering and leaving water felt a bit awkward and abrupt, though I guess that's kind of inevitable without dedicated player animations for those things, which is obviously a tall order in a gamejam.

The combat was... functional, I guess? Truth be told, I didn't really bother fighting much of anything outside the scripted ambushes and the final boss. Most enemies were far too slow and predictable to ever hurt me anyway, and bats were kinda annoying to hit due to the player being unable to direct her swings upwards on land, so I just opted to leave them behind. Underwater combat was more interesting thanks to the directional swings, but it was still far easier to just swim past everything.

The final boss was a bit underwhelming, being basically just a regular enemy, but I guess that's gamejam limitations for you! (And hooray for nonbinary representation!)

Overall, the game's a bit rough around the edges and maybe somewhat overextended, but there are definitely signs of greatness in the character artwork and the snappy controls. Good job!

Neat demo! I really liked the sprite of the main character, reminded me a bit of zero suit Samus in Zero Mission. The level and the music were pretty good too.

The gun was fun to use, and there was a nice sense of progression with the damage upgrades. The use of "ammo" for double jump and dashing is an interesting idea, but in practice I think it was a kind of an annoyance.

Regardless, good job!

Great game in terms of presentation, and a truly unique Metroidvania to boot! Unfortunately, it's not really for me, as it heavily features two things I'm terrible with in video games: time trials and modifier keybinds. I do wish I could have beaten it, though!

It's a huge shame, because I think the mobility, sense of speed, and combat were almost perfect, and I'd have loved to see the other powerups. And honestly, I think I would have enjoyed the platforming challenges a lot if it hadn't been for the time constraint!

Sadly, the time trials eventually just sapped all of the joy out of the game for me, especially when I realized the reward was usually just another flip or grab, in other words: more time trials (and another keybind to keep track of). I'm not sure what's standard for this genre of game, but there certainly was a lot of keybinds compared to basically every other game in the gamejam...

I also had somewhat mixed feelings about the style mechanic. It was fun when you were zipping around doing cool stuff and ended up with tons of style to use on boosts or attacks, but there were also times where I basically had to jump and twirl around until I had enough to retry a challenge or deal with an enemy. I think perhaps it'd be nice if you spawned with a bit of style already, and the costs were a bit cheaper.

Sadly, I couldn't really try the game with a controller due to lacking a Y-inversion option. There was also a death pit near the entrance of the Tower (I think) where a kill plane was missing, leading you to get stuck down there if you fell. In the area of the Pit accessed from the Sea, I respawned on some broken fencing in such a way that my character kept continuously falling into the abyss until a game over.

That said, the models and animations were gorgeous, and the cutscene in the beginning was pretty cool (if surprisingly dark). The levels fit the playstyle very well, and had some nice visuals, with the Sea level being my favorite!

All in all, I think the time challenges would have been great as an optional feature. Like in Pseudoregalia, where they just unlock extra outfits but aren't required for progression, and you're free to come back to them later, when you're already good at the game. Still, I had a lot of fun skating and beating up enemies for a while. Very impressive job!

Had tons of fun with this one! The design and animation of the protagonist is absolutely adorable, and there's loads of wonderful detail put into small things like the hurt animation and the snake transformation sequence. I loved the voice-acted story segment and the game's overall sense of humor, too!

The background art for the level is gorgeous as well, although the main grass tileset looks a bit generic and the slopes are slightly misaligned with the regular tiles. I liked how the progression kept looping me into the main grassy area, but it was often a bit hard to tell where I needed to go each time due to everything looking so similar.

I really enjoyed the huge speed and massive jumps of the protagonist. I think the game nailed the exact right amount of acceleration and deceleration to make controlling the character a bit more challenging and interesting, without making it too slidey or hard to make precise jumps.

The generous checkpoints helped here, too! Some of the platforming towards the end was a bit more difficult with the sparser checkpoints, though fortunately, nothing took me more than a few minutes of attempts. However, I do feel like I managed to get through the long moving platform ride near the end only by sheer luck!

The abilities were maybe nothing too unexpected of a typical Metroidvania for the most part, but they all felt nice to use with the character's already great baseline mobility. The snake transformation was a great use of the theme, and I really liked how it combined traversal, stealth and evasion in one ability!

I do wish the player's attack was a bit bigger though. I guess the short range was probably part of the game gently nudging me towards preferring to avoid enemies instead (considering how many of them there were at the end). I just think it'd have been really funny to see the protagonist punching things with an even more cartoonishly oversized fist!

I only noticed a couple minor issues. In one spot, the camera got left behind and I had to go back and jump in a different spot to get it to follow. A few times, my character would fall through the ground when respawning at a checkpoint, and on one occasion I got stuck inside the wall and had to reload.

Overall, a really nice little game with one of the most fun-to-control protagonists I've had the pleasure of playing as in this gamejam! Great job!

I was looking forward to this one ever since I saw a gif of it on Discord, and I wasn't disappointed. Definitely a top 3 contender from me, and possibly a top 1 Metroidvania! If this was truly made in only 4 days, then incredible job!

I think this game is a perfect example of interesting and unique Metroidvania abilities that actually feel good to use, and aren't jank or one-trick ponies. They might not have all been equally powerful (the frilly shaft and star topper carried me through pretty much most of the game), which I think is fairly understandable and normal for a Metroidvania. But it really felt like every ability provided at least some sort of a situational advantage, even down to such small details like the platinum topper giving you a bit of extra range on your shots. When you finally do get the old reliable double jump, it truly feels more like the cherry on top, rather than a level design crutch!

That said, having such incredible mobility did lead to some progression issues. The sheer ease of sequence breaking is one thing (and I would argue a staple of classic Metroidvania), but the ease with which a player can softlock themselves is another. I think at least the final area should be guarded against early entry better, since I don't think it's possible to do without double jump, or at least really really hard. Perhaps at least the save point should be moved to a less immediately accessible location, so that a player can still attempt the area early if they want to, but at least they can't save themselves into a corner (as I did on my first run, forcing me to delete my save).

I think a big part of why it's so easy to get softlocked is that the intended path is often very unclear. For me, by far the biggest problem here was the lever after the throw ability. It just seemed like such a relatively inconspicuous piece of scenery that I assumed its entire purpose was to open the big trapdoor right next to it, and I had no idea it played such a massive role in opening up intended progression paths elsewhere throughout the level! If technically possible, perhaps a cutscene could play showing the other paths being opened, or even just a dialog text saying something like "A path opened somewhere else."

Of course, the real elephant in the room is the frilly shaft. Once you discover the upwards "bomb jump" spam, it's hard to go back. Ironically, the things that make it so prone to game-breakage are also the things that make it so fun! I'd say it's both the best weapon and best movement ability in the game by a long shot, so I can definitely understand an unwillingness to "fix" it. And honestly, I think it's fine the way it is, as long as the level protects the player somehow from the worst (save-ending) softlocks!

Other than that, I noticed only a few major bugs. The dialog box had some issues, such as being able to open the map while the box is active, and being able to press Up again to restart the whole dialog. It was also possible to get bubbles stuck in a wall, which caused so much audio distortion that at one point I think the music stopped completely.

I'm not even gonna talk much about movement, since such great abilities wouldn't have been possible without great movement (and vice versa). Nor am I gonna talk much about the presentation, because honestly I think it's just as perfect as almost everything else in the game. I love the "tiny" pixel art style to bits, the protagonist's design and different outfits are adorable (I see those Touhou fangames in the developer's profile, and I can definitely see the influences😉), all the hidden NPCs are lots of fun to find and talk to, and the music suits the mood perfectly.

All in all, I had tons of fun with this one! I think I managed to find everything and uncover the entire map, including the hidden developer cameo. Amazing job!

(Wait... is this actually a Touhou fangame in disguise???)

Quick and sweet! I'm not much of the speedrunning sort, but it was fun jumping around and hitting crystals. The movement felt fittingly snappy and responsive (not to throw any shade, but I do wish all of the Metroidvanias in this jam had movement this good...), though more feedback on hitting the crystals would have been nice. The design and animation on the main character is great (she looks very Touhou-core), and the music is suitably speedy as well. Loved the beginning cutscenes as well. Good job!

Neat demo! I loved the combination of real photos with simple 3D, I have a big soft spot for this kind of art style ("playing with JPGs"/drawing characters into real places). I think it just feels really nostalgic and uncanny in a good way.

I know the description said to stop after the "cute and cool" transition, but honestly I think the combat area wasn't too bad either. Pelvic thrusting around and beating up PNGs was really funny, and the... thing... you briefly see at the end looked pretty cool.

Still, I do agree that the first, "real world" section was much stronger visually, and honestly I'd love to see a whole game in that 2.5D style, combat and all. The kind of hack-and-slash combat that the second part of the demo hinted at is kinda a dime a dozen, and I'd say the first part's use of the real world felt much more unique and much more "unreal." The "unreal" segments (which I guess means the combat zones) could simply be represented by more edited/weirder photos.

That said, I do wish you could sprint in the real world, and some better indication of where the exits are would be nice (a lot of areas look like paths leading out of the photo).

Either way, good job!

Ok, so first of all, the combat music absolutely slapped. Definitely the best music I've heard in this gamejam so far, and a massive highlight of the game for me!

I'm not really familiar with this style of dungeon crawler, but walking around and fighting was pretty fun, if barebones. I think some kind of checkpoint/healing spot around the map would be a nice addition, so that you could play around with magic more freely without worrying about conserving SP for the boss.

The graphics were nice, especially the portraits for Aika and the angel. The initial "solar system" menu looked really cool, and I'd love to check out the greyed out options in the menu in the future!

Overall, good job!

Very cool VN! The story and writing were excellent, aside from a few minor punctuation mistakes. Loved the artwork of all the characters, and the blink animations are definitely a nice touch that helps make them feel more alive. 

The addition of minigames and RPG elements was definitely a neat evolution of the VN experience! The combat system was simple and nice, although it felt very RNG-dependent towards the end (sometimes I'd just miss every attack and get wrecked). Still, I mostly got by with just increasing health and physical attack, and restoring health when needed.

The game came with a bunch of quick- and autosaves already in the folder, remnants of testing I guess? Either way, the ending was quite sweet and I enjoyed this little adventure a lot!

Pretty cool demo! Loved the design and animation of the main character, and using a golem to fight is a cool idea - reminds me of the guardian souls in Aria of Sorrow. I think it would be cool if you could see the golem at all times, or maybe at least have it show up while the player is idle (like I think it was in Ender Lilies). Personally I just love having visible familiars/pets following my character around!

On that note, I think it's possible to softlock yourself in the very first room if you use all your magic before you get to the roots blocking your way, since I don't think it's possible to regain magic outside checkpoints. It could perhaps be resolved by letting you regain magic with the regular attack, as I initially assumed you would. Also, the placement of the first pair of dogs you encounter seems a bit unfair, as you fall directly in the middle of them before you can even see them!

I liked the jump arc, it felt really nice and snappy. A bit of a shame we didn't get to play around with the double jump more. I guess the big dormant robot was meant to be a boss that didn't make it in, but it looked very cool regardless. Good job!

Great game, and amazing theme and genre interpretation!

But I have to be honest, after probably over 3 hours of stumbling around and getting hounded by the (admittedly very cool looking) whale... when I found out I needed a second half of the pearl, I was very close to giving up. I did manage to find it in the end, though, and I recorded a little video guide for others who might be struggling! [SPOILERS] (Forgot to make it public, oops!)

The presentation is absolutely gorgeous. I adore the designs of the main character, the familiar, and the shopkeepers, and even the enemies were pretty cute too! It's really impressive how all the models, animation and sound work together to create the underwater setting, even down to details such as the protagonist's floating hair. The soundtrack is lovely too, especially the music in the dark zone and the big trippy ocean level with the yacht!

All the movement and combat looked and felt great as well, though I wish health pickups were a bit more common. I feel like in a game like this, it'd make sense to regain some health after picking up a certain number of shells. The magical girl transformation at the beginning of the level was adorable, but after a while I did wish I could skip it. I also noticed the cat familiar would often get stuck on obstacles and left behind.

On the other hand, the collectible outfits were a great touch! I managed to find all but 2, and my favorite by far was Potential, which I think might have been based on Madoka Kaname? Might be wrong, though!

It was immediately very unclear what to do in the first level (or should I say the overworld/hub area), and had I not read the description, I'd have assumed that was the entire game. The spiral water currents really looked like something I should've just been able to jump into and get launched by without any upgrades. I wandered around for probably around half an hour, and I did try to interact with the black boat a couple times before discovering by chance that I was meant to jump on it.

In general, it took a lot of trial and error to find out how to get the most out of my vertical and horizontal mobility. And even having a rough idea of what my character was capable of, it was very hard to tell whether I was making progress, going down an optional path, or sequence breaking. That first pearl half location in particular was something I had initially dismissed, since it felt like an optional challenge that'd have given me an outfit or a health upgrade.

The giant enemy chasing you for TAKING TOO LONG is a cool idea on paper, but in practice kinda feels like it's kicking you when you're already down. Since at that point you're probably already very lost and unsure where to go, or failing some platforming section for a very long time, and now you're also dealing with having to figure out how to get back to where you were.

The final boss was not what I had expected, and a wonderful conclusion of the game! The sudden change of camera was very confusing at first, but fortunately it didn't take long to get used to it. I liked the variety of attack patterns, although I think either I was a bit slow to beat the boss or it could do with a few less hit points, as towards the end it kept repeating the same attack (rapid teleports followed by a melee swing).

Overall, one of the most polished and complete-looking games I've played in the gamejam, in terms of look and feel! But with so many cool-looking characters just kinda hanging out there, I think it definitely could have used some more dialogue to tell you what even is going on while subtly pointing the player in the right direction. Regardless, great job!

Great demo! I loved all the bubble mechanics and interactions, I could definitely see an ultra-hard platformer being built around these. (Or perhaps just a moderately hard one.)

I only wish bubble was its own keybind rather than a Shift-modifier. Otherwise, controls and movement were nice. Good job!

A short but sweet and effective prototype!

Loved the design of the main character, using your broom to fight was a great touch. I'm assuming the standing sprite was how the character was "supposed" to look, but honestly I love the simpler, Hornet-style poncho running animation even more. (I'm just a sucker for ponchos.) It was also really funny how she didn't even bother to look at enemies while shooting!

Moving around and fighting felt pretty good, although I wish the character was just a tad bit faster to match the running animation. The little puzzles with frozen enemies were fun, and I'm in love with the spell construction/combo idea. It absolutely has enormous potential that you could build a full game around!

The little cutscene after finding the final card was adorable, too! Overall, I had a great time with the game!

Pretty neat demo! I absolutely loved the designs of the three magical girls. Switching between them was fun, although I feel like Pearl Gold didn't really get much use other than opening doors.

Jumping was a bit hard to control due to the wall jump/cling activating even without pressing any directional inputs, as long as you were facing the wall, and also due to how far each tap of left/right sent you.

The boss was a simple but effective showcase of the character switching system. I had some trouble until I realized he only dealt damage while passing through the center of the room, so I could always just stay behind his head and never get hit. Getting reset all the way to the beginning on death was still a bit annoying, though.

Regardless, not a bad prototype at all!

Pretty neat game! The artwork for the characters and cutscenes was lovely, and I enjoyed the music as well. I'm gonna assume most of the level was placeholder, but the entrance area looked really nice and cozy!

I really liked how over-the-top jumping was, it definitely fit the magical girl theme. The dive attack was also cool, though I never really used it since there weren't any walking enemies. The enemies were a bit annoying to deal with since they could shoot me from any direction, while I could only shoot in eight directions. So in the end, I mostly just ran past everything. Though, being able to shoot down enemy bullets was a nice touch!

It took me a while to figure out that the big torch-looking things were checkpoints(?), and that I needed the last upgrade to open the yellow door that looked exactly like the other yellow door that I had just come through. I wish there was a way to make the text appear instantly without completely skipping it, as waiting for the entire text box of dialogue took a long time. Also, the English could use some proofreading!

I could definitely tell that a lot of the game didn't get finished in time, but I have to say the ending cutscenes were pretty hilarious! Overall, not a bad prototype!

Quite an ambitious project! It took me a while to get used to the game's idea of progression, as I was initially pretty disappointed that I kept losing my upgrades. However, I have to admit that getting my first "permanent" upgrade was a big game changer and made the initial frustration worth it!

The environments were definitely barebones, but I think in a way they nailed the early 90s 3D look, and the desolate atmosphere grew on me over time. The music was a big help there, especially the "epic" theme playing in the later part of the game! I quite enjoyed the dark visuals of the "peak" area, but the green of the "poison" areas made it a bit difficult to see where you were supposed to go, because everything kinda blended together into one green mass. It also wasn't really clear to me which areas were meant to represent the past, uncorrupted world, aside from the bright golden temple(?).

The enemies were annoying at first, but I eventually found them manageable, especially after I got into the habit of sucking them with the grapple. I actually found the buzzsaw enemies to be the easier of the bunch, as it was easy to outrun them or get them stuck on ledges. The flying insects were much more annoying to shoot down, and the golden variant seemed particularly persistent in chasing me down to the end of the earth if left alone. In general, I didn't get much use out of any of the alternate weapon modes beyond their special abilities. The electric shot would have been nice for the flying enemies, if it didn't run out of ammo so quickly.

Some of the platforming was pretty challenging, though I think it was less so due to the platforming itself and more due to the scarcity of checkpoints, limited breath duration in toxic pools, and the long runbacks from death/falling down.

It took me a good couple hours and a lot of frustration, but I finally managed to climb the peak and get the last permanent upgrade. I was so caught up in the moment, with the epic music suddenly turning into silence and the glorious overview of the level, that I thought the game was finished and almost quit right there!

Fortunately, I remembered the red keycard from hours ago and didn't miss out on the real ending of the game, according to which I had found 4/4 cores, 3/7 expansions, and it took me 2h 31min to get there. (It definitely felt like longer to me, maybe it didn't count the time lost due to deaths?)

As for criticism... I guess if the goal was to make a challenging FPS platformer, then most of the grievances I had throughout the game could probably be considered features. (And I'd definitely be a hypocrite for criticizing a game for its difficulty.) That said, 3D platformers (and especially FPS ones) have been and probably always will be controversial to some extent, and for that reason alone, I think the game could have benefited from a few more checkpoints, as well as more generous timing for underwater breath and the various electric pillar challenges.

Overall, a very substantial game that took some time to get into, but it was absolutely worth it for the atmosphere and the satisfaction of reaching the end!

Interesting game!

The play window was really big and I had to zoom out the page to be able to see everything. The enemies and some of the environments looked nice, though the main character looked completely different from the thumbnail (I guess she's meant to be wearing a spacesuit?).

The movement felt a bit floaty and slow, the character's shots originating from above her head seemed like a bit of an odd choice, and the ammo mechanic felt a bit too restrictive. However, the warp feature was definitely a neat addition!

The bosses looked very cool, but the first one was a bit too easy (you could just stay in the corner and barely anything could hit you), and the second one seemed really hard. I couldn't outrun the little spawns, and trying to shoot them all down just left me with no ammo for the boss. Also, by standing too far left while dropping into the room, you'd land on the ladder and get trapped inside the door after the boss intro.

The music was really cool and creepy, though!