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Cool concept and demo, I also think the combination of Metroidvania with bullet hell has a lot of potential! I liked the enemy variety and the bullet patterns, and the boss was also very fun and decently challenging.

However, in my opinion the rocky background kinda clashed with the overall "space shooter" vibe, I think a starry sky background with asteroids, debris, or some sort of space station scaffolding as "walls" might have worked better there.

I'm also not sure which one of the mandatory themes you went with (Unity, Unreal, Construct, Rust, Python, Pearl). I guess Construct is probably the closest since most enemies look like robotic turrets?

Regardless, I had a lot of fun with the game, good job!

I guess I'm just a terrible cook but I didn't even manage to serve a single customer.😢 I tried putting coffee in front of them but they didn't seem to want it. Still, I loved the character design of the main character and the concept seems cool!

Very nice prototype! I quite liked the writing for the main character and could immediately relate to her, haha. (Plus the little capsule bunny was oddly adorable.) I think the map layout was actually pretty solid for a short 3D Metroidvania demo, the central locked door made for a nice landmark to give a better sense of purpose to exploration. Plus, the last hidden health pickup was a cool touch. Best of luck with your future projects, 3D Metroidvania may be hard but I think your demo already shows plenty of potential!

Cool little demo! I loved the design and animation of the main character. The idea of a construction plan has a lot of potential, but I think it could make for even better visual storytelling if it actually looked like it represented some kind of real place. It felt like you didn't get a whole lot of control while mid-air, making it pretty hard to land on some of the smaller platforms. I also think it'd be nice if the checkpoints also healed you and/or gave you some other indication of actually saving progress. Regardless, well done finishing your first project!

Very fun little game with nothing really bad to say about it! I absolutely adored the character designs, the power-up screen was just plain gorgeous, and the graphics and sound felt quite polished in general. It really felt like something I could have played on the GameBoy Advance back in the day. The stealth mechanic and combat also worked very well, I think the only thing I'd add would be the ability to "wait out" the alarm and return the enemies to their normal state by staying out of sight long enough, as opposed to having to die or leave the room. The robot boss was also quite creative and unique in its combination of platforming and combat.

I quite enjoyed the humor and interactions between the main characters, and would love to see more of their adventures in the future. So far, definitely a strong contender for the top spot from me!

The character portraits were gorgeous and I think the 2.5D graphics conveyed the oppressive atmosphere of the castle/school really well. However, it was very hard to spot interactable things such as doors on the "near" wall and often required trial and error, and on rare occasions, the screen would turn entirely black when standing too close to a wall. While such a limited field of view can help the horror feel, I think at least placing things on the wall that the player can't see should be avoided in this kind of game. The one-shotting enemies got a bit frustrating after a while, and the first bunch of enemies had me very confused at first because they looked just like the NPC that offers a save point. Also, some rooms seemed to cause heavy lag for no obvious reason.

The story actually had me very intrigued and I'd love to see more, but sadly I haven't been able to progress past saving the first friend. I grabbed the feather in the library (which seems to respawn every time you enter the room), and found two sets of jump spots, one of which seemed like a mere shortcut, and the other led to what seemed like a door but that couldn't be interacted with. At this point I'd gladly take some hints or even an official playthrough video, because I'd really like to see what happens next!

The character is cute and the music is okay, but I had a really hard time getting anywhere past the starting room. It feels like any jump requires you to back away because of how long it takes to actually jump (and how little air control you seem to have), and tiny steps that look like your character should climb them automatically feel like insurmountable obstacles. By trying to climb the platforms to the right instead of going left, I managed to jump outside the playable area and get trapped below the level. The reflections (or whatever's going on with the floor and wall textures) feel like they only draw attention to how basic the level design is, rather than making it look better.

Overall, an interesting demo but very rough around the edges.

The music was cool and definitely had a magical girl vibe, but unfortunately it stopped after a while. The environments had a bit of that "early 90s 3D" charm, but the platform area hurt my eyes a bit and I managed to go out of bounds and get stuck in the big open area. Overall, not a bad prototype, though honestly there's not much to go off of when it comes to guessing what the finished game might look like.

Loved the interpretation of the theme, and the Metroidvania mechanic was quite unique and well-executed! However, using the menu to swap between the characters all the time got a bit tiresome after a while. I think having a separate keybind that instantly switches to the next character would have been a big help (while still being able to select them manually from the main menu). On the other hand, each character having her own music theme was a cool touch and definitely contributed to the "magical girl show" feeling (although Clover definitely got the short end of the stick there).

I really liked the little bullet hell boss fights, it was cool to see everyone show up and help as you unlocked more characters! I think this is an idea that definitely has a lot of potential, especially with more different arenas and bullet patterns.

The model and cutscenes of the main character were gorgeous, and the music was very nice too! I was quite intrigued by the story and would love to see more. The urban setting made for an interesting contrast with the supernatural themes, it reminded me a bit of the city area in Wario Land 4.

It felt like the first running speed should have been the basic movement speed, and the animation of the character at max running speed felt too slow compared to the movement. Also, the halberd stab while standing seemed really short and glitchy. The story and design behind the final boss was very interesting, but she kinda died to just walking towards her and mashing. Regardless, really cool and promising game and story!

Congrats on beating Unity and sorry for the issue! Sadly that's a bug that I only discovered after the submission period, where the boss doesn't despawn correctly after beating all the sub-bosses. I will definitely be uploading a fix for that first thing after the voting period ends on April 6th.

As for ???, you should be able to press Esc and load the game during the final cutscene, or just close and reopen the whole game and it should put you back before ???. (I should probably make it so after a few attempts, it stops putting you in the ending and just loads the game automatically.)

Just to save you some frustration, there's sadly also a bug with ??? where a lingering hitbox might prevent you from finishing the fight at the end (but the fight itself functions correctly).

Even if it did count, beating Unity doesn't do anything right now besides opening a shortcut back to the starting room so you don't have to go through the spikes again. Beating ??? only changes one minor line of dialogue in the ending.

Again, apologies for the game being so unfinished, and big congrats on beating Unity, I definitely tried my best to make the boss hard! And if you choose to keep trying to beat ???, good luck!

Thank you and congrats on getting to the end!

Very nice game! I liked the graphics, they were very reminiscent of the 90s aesthetics, and the music fit the bill as well! I felt like the bullet patterns escalated pretty quickly, but it was still bearable most of the time thanks to the responsive controls and the focus mechanic. However, it was a bit hard to tell if the different gem types did anything different other than moving at different speeds and dealing more damage(?), and towards the end, my own bullets made it pretty hard to see the enemy bullets.

Sadly, I didn't quite manage to beat the big goblin lady at the end, but I went into the other room and the game said I won, so yay me I guess! Either way, it was a fun little bullet hell adventure.

Really nice little game! The music was gorgeous and I loved the artwork of the main character. I enjoyed the story quite a lot and the interpretation of the theme was great. The movement and shooting felt a bit basic, but the boss fights were very cool (although I was able to cheese the first one a bit by shooting her minions before triggering the dialogue, and the 1-tile wide platforms felt a bit unnecessarily harsh on the second one). Not sure if I'd call it a Metroidvania as opposed to just a traditional platformer, but it definitely fits the magical girl genre!

RPGMaker XP is definitely a name I haven't heard in a long while, and one that brings back many memories! (Including my own first cancelled attempt at a game many, many years ago...)

The old RPGMaker assets definitely have a ton of charm and still hold up to this day, plus they work surprisingly well in an action RPG setting! That said, it was often quite confusing as to what was walkable ground and what was an impassable wall. Beside, while the attempt to implement Metroidvania elements in such a specialized engine is quite impressive, there's a certain clunkiness that can't be escaped when trying to force the old RPGMaker engines into any form of real-time gameplay. I think it would be very worthwhile to give other engines a try when it comes to making this kind of game. :)

The game initally kept crashing a few screens from the beginning due to missing a "Graphics/Panoramas/006.-Mountains01," but I was able to fix it by putting my own ,png file in that location. It was also quite unclear that the vampire was meant to be an unwinnable(?) fight, and I spent a long time plinking away at him before he finally put me in jail. Sadly, I eventually jumped into an unintended area from which there was no jumping back and foolishly saved over my main save through the menu, essentially bricking my playthrough.

Regardless, a cool little project that definiely earns a bunch of nostalgia points from me!

Thank you for the review and congrats on getting to the end despite the many shortcomings of the game! The final boss is not intended to be beaten, but is indeed beatable, with the only change being one small line of dialogue in the ending. It is there solely as an option for those who want a truly hellish challenge for whatever reason. :)

(I will be seriously impressed if someone manages to actually beat all 6 bosses within the voting period.)

The only real "Metroidvania" aspect is being able to backtrack with the pulse rifle to beat whichever "second" boss you might have skipped (either Rust or Construct), as well as climbing all the way back to the beginning and fighting one last (thoroughly unfair) secret boss.

I 100% agree on the stuff that should have been added, especially some music would definitely have made a huge difference for the game. Sadly it was not meant to be, as coding the boss behaviors took up basically the entire month. It was one of my goals to truly test the limit of what I could make in a month, as well as how far I could push the boss difficulty while still being able to barely beat them as the developer - and I guess I found out in both regards!

(For the record, I think both the final boss and the "secret" sixth boss took me upwards of 2 hours each to beat.)

With that said, I might try to finish this game after the gamejam, since I'm pretty happy with what I was able to make!

Really cool game! The music was by far my favorite part, it's really beautiful and haunting and I loved the way it seemed to shift seamlessly between areas. I also really liked the pixel art, I certainly didn't expect an industrial aesthetic in what seemed like a game themed around the sea, but it was executed very well and played strongly into the Rust theme.

The character felt very slidey and it was often hard to land on some of the narrower platforms in the game. There also seemed to be no limit to falling speed, meaning in some areas it was possible to fall through or get stuck inside the floor. The invincibility frames on enemies felt a bit excessive and did too good of a job discouraging aggression in my opinion, leading me to simply running past enemies whenever possible. Coupled with those issues, the fact that every contact with spikes reset the whole room felt overly punishing and in the end it was a bit too much for me.

That said, I had fun exploring around and did manage to find 4 out of the 5 collectibles!

Very fun game and characters, I loved the cutscenes and the design of the main character! The pixel art was also gorgeous for the most part, especially for the player, but the city background in the final area clashed with everything else a bit. 

Using twin snakes to fight is a really cool concept, it reminds me of my favorite character from Star Ocean: The Second Story (Ashton). However, the range on the melee snake is very short, and it was especially a problem on the first boss due to its superior range and high health. It felt like the only solution to the fight was to bait an attack and get a few swings on your own before running away, and sooner or later I'd always end up getting too greedy and taking a hit. Its dash attack also seemed to glitch out if you took the boss offscreen after starting it, and in the end I was able to cheese the boss by getting it stuck in the running animation. On the other hand, Ivy was a really cool boss fight and actually felt a lot easier than the first boss.

Either way, a really cool project, great job to everyone involved!

Thank you! Terraria was definitely one of my biggest inspirations, along with Starbound and Risk of Rain 1 (and Deltarune for the difficulty). In fact, my development of the enemy and bullet behaviors heavily draws on my past experience as a Terraria and Starbound modder. So, I'm really happy that you're the second person who recognized the Terraria influence.

I'm also glad that you like the characters! They are the same characters from my past two games, although I think of each game as being its own timeline. (Although, DERELICT and Temple of Endymion could possibly be part of the same timeline.)

I used a palette called Retrotonic DX by Doph for the colors, I would definitely agree that it pretty much carries the visual side of the game as I'm not that good of an artist myself!

Excellent job for a first project, keep up the great work! Always cool to see a top-down metroidvania, and I really liked the graphics for the main character (especially with the red powerup) and the city and forest areas. The use of different colors was a simple but effective metroidvania mechanic, and I liked the little arena where you had to kill all enemies for a powerup. The ubiquity of death pits felt a bit punishing at times, it would be nice if it was also possible to push enemies into them. Also, the arrow traps were very hard to see. I think the focus on the themes could have been a bit stronger as well, but overall a very fun prototype!

Thank you! Sadly the movement wasn't really super well explained in the game, but you can actually slow down with Shift on the keyboard. It is also possible to move the character more precisely with the analog stick on a controller. Although ironically, the only bosses where I felt like going slow was really necessary were Rust and the final one.

 As for jumping, the falling speed is actually very fast. I think you might have been either holding jump or shooting the whole time, as those things keep you in the air.

Regardless, thank you for giving it a shot! If you beat Rust, you were actually really close to the end of the game. :)

Thank you! I would have loved to add more sound feedback in general, as well as music and more background graphics. Sadly, creating the behavior of the bosses themselves consumed pretty much 90% of the available time. That said, I'm interested in finishing up the game after the voting is done, since I'm pretty happy with what I was able to make!

Thank you! The palette is called Retrotonic DX by Doph!

A very cool game with far more than initially meets the eye. I regretfully didn't have time to beat it fully, but I'm excited to give it all the time it deserves after the jam! The intro area was fairly unassuming, but I was really impressed with how the game gradually expanded and the sheer sense of vastness and loneliness in the level design, and the little bits of lore and foreshadowing in the areas I explored left me with many questions.

The moment I was truly hooked was when I first saw the giant ziggurat/temple, and I'd just like to say the song that played there might be the single best piece of music I've heard in this jam. The red boost zones were also a great addition and really took the platforming to the next level.

Aside from the environment, the main character was definitely the star of the show. Tizli's design is amazing and the model is very well made. The animations that were there were nice, and the abilities were nice and satisfying to use, with the slide being my favorite (and admittedly, watching her T-pose up a pole was hilarious). Even more than that, I loved the visual storytelling of her changing appearance as you progress, and I enjoyed piecing together her backstory from NPC dialogue. Definitely looking forward to beating the whole thing eventually, and can't wait to see where this project goes in the future!

Very cool game, and definitely one of the most unique sets of powerups I've seen in the gamejam! The monochrome style definitely has potential, and I'd love to see it more polished like in the initial area. I think some of the puzzles could use some reworking, since I often ended up resetting the room to fix what seemed to be an unsolvable state. The part with multiple rotating platforms involved a lot of waiting for things to be in the right position, which made it all the more painful if you missed a jump all the way near the top. On the other hand, the section with the bull miniboss breaking the wall was a really cool moment!

I adore the neon colors and the retro aesthetic, and the music and sounds are amazing, but boy did I immediately get completely overwhelmed as soon as I started the game! Then I watched the official playthrough... and was no less confused than before!

I think for me it was really the issue of throwing everything at the player all at once. As soon as I got the gravity upgrade, it felt like the entire map became accessible all at once, and there was never a chance to learn or focus on any single mechanic or object. That said, the minimalist vibes are great, and from what I've seen in the video, the final boss looks cool!

Apologies for the short review and not beating the game fully, I really wanted to fully play at least every game that left me a review, but it turned out a lot of them were much longer and more substantial than I expected and I "kinda" ran out of time - people really went all out this jam! 😭

(That said, I do find it really cool that between this and Gravoneer, I've seen at least 3 different implementations of gravity in the jam (player only, player + props, props only), and all 3 featured an ominous thing hanging out in the middle of the room at some point!)

A very competent and well-made short game with some of the most beautiful artwork I've seen in the jam. The protagonist is super cute and very well animated, even down to such details like the hair moving when you jump, and the elephant enemy is adorable as well! The atmosphere in the main sky area is truly heavenly and serene, and the water effects throughout the game were downright gorgeous.

A fairly standard Metroidvania in terms of gameplay and powerups, but everything that was in the game was implemented very well and fun to play with, and the parry ability was a great touch too (thinking about it, I should have tried using it against the final boss...). The infinite butt slide was hilariously powerful and a great help zooming around the map, and the giant bat made for a cool finale!

Not really a Metroidvania in my opinion, but still a nice game with a very cute and unique art style, and a cozy and dreamy atmosphere! Some more sound effects would be nice, and even the attack sound is very quiet compared to the music.

Definitely a very unique entry and a cool idea for interpreting the theme, and I guess technically a Metroidvania in the most fundamental sense. (Does every item that gives access to a new area in a video game automatically make it a Metroidvania? I don’t really want to get into the philosophy of it, but I suppose it’s really up to individual interpretation!) Sadly, being pretty bad at point and click games, I wasn’t able to get very far (only as far as wandering about in the technical section, based on the maps in the extra folder), so take my feedback with a grain of salt!

I do appreciate the dedication to black and white graphics, and some of the sprite work is pretty nice (once you’re able to see it). However, I don’t think it interacts with the echolocation mechanic very well. Since black is the color of both areas that haven’t been echolocated yet and areas that simply have nothing of interest in them, it’s often not immediately clear if you’ve even successfully used echolocation or not. The cooldown also doesn’t exactly help here, and I think having a cooldown on what is essentially your ability to experience the game is just too punishing.

Even though it’d mean breaking with the duotone artstyle, I think having a third color for walls (basically areas that have been revealed but don’t have anything in them) would be a massive improvement. That way, at least you’d be able to keep track of what you’ve already looked at, and what could still contain useful items. Also, the inventory was hard to see over white objects due to having no background, so another color (or even just putting a black square behind it) could help there too.

With all that said, I think the game does a great job at capturing the oppressive atmosphere of the regime, and the subtle ambience makes it even creepier. The idea has a lot of potential too, and doesn’t have to be limited to point and click games either - but I think it definitely needs some work to make sure it works for the player rather than against them. I’m pretty sure there have been several games with this kind of echolocation mechanic, so perhaps looking at them for inspiration could help!

Man, I really wish I had started playing this game sooner so I could have given it the time it deserved. I only managed to get as far as the long jump ability, but I'll definitely be checking it out again after the jam!

The pixel art is immaculate, this game might have the single best designed and animated protagonist I've seen in the jam, and the enemies and backgrounds are great too - I love the brutalist, almost Source Engine-esque aesthetic. I liked the music too, and the sound effects were just perfect and created an amazing sense of feedback that made every action fun.

The controls and combat were snappy and felt great for the most part, though I have to agree that the window on the dodge roll was pretty unforgiving. I never found much use for the melee attack while playing since the game was so generous with ammo capacity. The humanoid enemies that I encountered were fun to fight against, but I wasn't a big fan of the flying robots. They felt blander than the humanoids appearance-wise, the small exploding drones were hard to see against the background and tended to swarm you right after entering a room (and on one occasion even knocking you out of the door entering animation while trying to escape), and the bigger, shooting robots just felt like a more annoying version of the humanoid sniper.

Like I said, I will definitely try to beat the rest of the game after the jam, but I dare say what I've seen is more than enough to give it high ratings in most regards! I'm only a bit torn on the minimalism, since minimal pixel art is kind of the norm for most gamejam games, and I'd say this one goes well above and beyond what you'd normally see in a gamejam. Regardless, the atmosphere is top-notch and I had a lot of fun exploring around and fighting!

I see, thank you for the clarification!

Quite a nice prototype! The graphics have a nice retro vibe and I really liked the music playing near the healing stations. The voice acting and the sounds for punching were also amazing, and punching in general was super fun and satisfying - I loved how fast you could swing by alternating buttons, and punching out doors never got old!

That said, it was hard to tell when an enemy was about to damage you at times, and hard to avoid said damage, so after a while I started just avoiding them. It was also hard to stay on the crab, and it took a very long time to come back if you fell off and respawned.

On the other hand, special props for actually having kill planes in death pits - you'd be surprised how many short prototypes missed that part and had you falling endlessly and having to quit the game. I managed to beat up the giant bee and the game said "Nice," so I guess that's the end? Either way, had a great time punching things while it lasted!

(Note: This is a review of the browser build, I went back to check and I think the Windows build is slightly different?)

Great game and cool implementation of the theme, not really much negative to say about it! The art style was simple but effective, and I liked the use of sparse background elements to give rooms more personality. The music seemed a bit disjointed at first, but it did grow on me over time. It did such a good job staying in the background that I'm not actually sure if there was more than one song, so I think a bit more "kick" in that area definitely could have helped!

As someone who's pretty bad at both making and solving puzzles, I thought the puzzles in the game were quite creative and just the right amount of mind-bending without ever taking too long to figure out. I also appreciate that the backtracking never got too bad, with the warp mechanic definitely being a big help there. I think my only issue was that some of the bounce timings were pretty strict and took a lot of attempts to pull off. I actually had to remap my controller to have the transformation ability on another button to pull off the various tricks comfortably. I think the deadzones on the analog stick might also have been a bit low, as trying to use the stick often resulted in jumping or transforming by accident. While I appreciate the dedication to the directions-only control scheme, I think more mappings for the jump and transform would definitely have helped!

I actually went back and played it in an incognito tab to make sure, and all the "powerups" indeed seem to be available from the start (at least in the web build, I think in the Windows build, the square form and the warp aren't unlocked by default?). The "Metroidvania" is purely based on player knowledge, which I think is super cool and great for replayability! Some mechanics and reveals were pretty easy to figure out by accident, like the bounce ability. Others, like the various checkpoint shenanigans, were genuinely jaw-dropping, and I think the game did a great job helping you discover them organically!

Either way, I had a great time and managed to find both secrets according to the credits (I'm guessing the frog at the start was one of them, honestly not sure what the other one was)!

Very fun little survival/tower defense/Zelda/shoot’ em up-vania! I loved the graphics and overall tone a lot, especially the ruined city backgrounds - I always enjoy a little cozy apocalypse. The different ingredients were adorable, and I loved the idea of taking little blob guys and improving them in various ways.

All the different mechanics were quite intuitive and blended together surprisingly well. Being able to carry and place your own defenses was a lot of fun, and I particularly enjoyed making my own army of followers with the table recipe. That said, I had trouble figuring out what some of the items did, like the angel or the devil, and overall I felt like there wasn’t much reason to craft anything else besides the turret guys.

The RNG of obtaining ingredients felt a bit restrictive at times, and it was annoying to leave an ingredient behind only for it to be nowhere to be seen later, whether due to despawning or wandering off. Some way to store ingredients for later could definitely be a big help there. The slow walking while carrying an ingredient also felt a bit too punishing, considering the player wasn’t even very fast to begin with.

The Chungus™ was a cool way to combine crafting and a defensive objective, though I feel like the “defense” part never really came into play much - my character ended up getting swarmed and dying long before the enemies were able to even take a sliver off of the Chungus’s health bar. I think perhaps getting rid of the “tower defense” altogether and focusing on protecting your character could help the game flow a bit better.

Another thing that might improve replayability and help alleviate the bitterness of defeat is if all the recipes were “active” from the beginning, rather than needing to be found every time before the Chungus will allow you to craft them. I just think it’d be a cool way to "sequence break" subsequent playthroughs and reward the player for actually remembering them.

Sadly, I didn’t quite manage to get to the end due to being overwhelmed by a procession of unkillable enemies following me. However, it was fun crafting and exploring around while it lasted, the presentation was amazing, and I think this combination of mechanics has a lot of potential for a bigger game!

It took me most of the night to finally beat the game and I think I can safely say it's the first entry in this jam that I both loved and hated, haha.

First things first, if I was reviewing only the first 60% or so of the game, I think it'd be a near-perfect score. The art style was gorgeous and captured the retro sci-fi aesthetic perfectly in a manner that reminded me of Starbound, and the combination of pixel art with dynamic lighting was quite effective. Despite the overall cheerful color scheme, some parts like the dark zone or some of the empty-looking rooms (perhaps unfinished) around the outskirts of the map made for a genuinely spooky and unsettling tonal shift. The map was overall a lot of fun to explore and blended puzzles with the environment very well.

The main gravity mechanic is brilliant and well-implemented. Most of the puzzles were quite creative and encouraged multiple solutions, and I really liked how collecting additional block colors encouraged you to see previous rooms in a new light. The other player abilities were pretty straightforward for a Metroidvania, but they complemented the gravity manipulation very well. I think my only major issue for that part is that the game doesn’t really feel very “minimal,” as it has a very substantial amount of content and quite fleshed-out graphics and gameplay.

Now, I’m pretty sure I had even more good things to say, but I honestly struggled to hold on to those positive feelings during the final segments of the game… The frustration began to kick in as I was trying to hunt down the last of the four giant buttons. I spent upwards of an hour stumbling blindly around the entire map looking for any doors or movable blocks I might have missed, somehow repeatedly missing the giant orange room directly right of the vortex. Now, that one is probably mostly on me, but I'd have loved if the world map gave some kind of visual indication of which rooms have been fully explored.

After I finally found the last button and destroyed the big vortex, I stepped into the door fully expecting to see the credits. However, nothing up until that point could even compare to the hell that the final room put me through. Needless to say, I was already tired and frustrated from the button hunt, and completely unprepared for a difficulty spike that felt like something straight out of a Mario romhack.

There were two major offenders here, the first being the wall-jumping section just below the entrance. At first, it was extremely unclear what the game even expected me to attempt to do here. On most of my attempts (that I didn’t die on the initial spike tunnel drop), I died due to stopping the moving wall a smidgen too late or too early. If I did manage to get past that initial hurdle, and managed not to overshoot or undershoot either of the following jumps, I would still end up completely stumped by the last part of that section. I think I was supposed to slide down and wall jump into a double jump backwards onto the suspended section of the wall, except it felt like the game would take away my second jump if I bumped my head against the ceiling, or spent too much time sliding against the wall? In the end, I somehow managed to finagle my way close enough to the last ledge that I guess the game decided to give me the next checkpoint out of pity.

(Worse yet, I actually had to do that section twice due to getting softlocked later, in the section where you ride a white platform through spiky gates. I respawned inside the platform and got pushed out of bounds, forcing me to replay the whole room from the beginning.)

The other big offender was the penultimate section with the multiple turrets shooting you and having to open and close doors while zigzagging your way upwards. Not a bad challenge by itself, but at that point the framerate was suffering severely for me, presumably due to playing on the web build and the entire room and all the enemies being rendered. While I understand the appeal of having one final giant room, I think cutting the room into smaller rooms might have helped the game perform better in the browser, while also saving you from having to replay the whole thing if you get softlocked.

The other parts of the room were tough and a bit jank or confusing at times, but nothing on the same hair-pulling level as the two sections I mentioned above, and overall I did find some masochistic enjoyment in pressing on. I nearly got softlocked again in the part where you’re supposed to build a little cage for yourself to pass through lasers. Two of the pieces got stuck together in the corridor, but fortunately I was able to push them apart with the third one. The part just after the many diagonal enemies and before the turret gauntlet introduced what I think was a previously unseen mechanic, where you had to use the momentum from the trapped platform to jump higher. Definitely a cool “gotcha” moment, but it’s something I feel should have probably been taught to the player earlier.

Overall, I think it took me over two hours to beat the last room alone, and it was certainly a big relief to finally see the credits. Now if it wasn’t clear enough, while the game did leave me quite exhausted, my declared hatred of the last part was only half-serious - after all, the reason why I was able to push through to the end is because I enjoyed the game a lot in the first place!

Cool game, but pretty rough around the edges! I liked the character models a lot, especially for the player and the AI familiar. The environments were a bit repetitive and easy to get lost in due to everything looking similar, and the music was nice but stopped playing eventually.

The controls were usable but could definitely use more sound effects, especially for hitting enemies and perhaps even a footstep sound - those boots have got to make some noise! The main character felt much too fast and agile for the size of his armor (guess that’s the power of the sun for you?), though I did like the air dash ability. The gun felt extremely weak compared to the melee attack and I think I only managed to kill something once or twice with the charged shots, so I ended up sticking to melee for everything as it did the job much faster. The familiar is cute, though I’m not sure if she’s meant to serve any purpose in the game? At times she randomly seemed to fly off into the distance or get stuck looking at a dead enemy.

The main mechanic was interesting but didn’t really feel like it had much impact on gameplay, since the only ability you really needed was melee (and you could easily clear the whole map of enemies before having to give it up). Fun fact: On my first playthrough, I didn’t realize you were supposed to take your abilities back, and ended up stuck in the boss room without any means to harm it! I also discovered the boss could push you out of the map, leading to an infinite fall into the void. The lava pits also don't seem to actually hurt you, leading to another softlock if you fall down there without any helpful enemies to finish you off.

The final boss itself looked very cool, though the fight itself was a bit simplistic due to only the minions seemingly being a threat to you (and I think the boss’s body blocked most of their shots), so ultimately I just ran next to its head and spammed melee. Eventually the boss seemed to go down, but the health bar was still on screen and I was still trapped in the room, so I guess that’s the end of the game for now?

Like I said, definitely needs some polish, but there’s definitely potential there!

Loved to see another implementation of the “one screen” idea! The art style is very unique and detailed. Personally, the dark environments with brighter characters are quite easy to read, and together with the sporadic music, they make for a truly bizarre and haunting experience. The main character is very cool and extremely well-animated, and the little cutscenes when collecting powerups and at the end really give her a lot of personality.

The array of powerups and items is quite impressive and creative. The switching mechanic took some getting used to, but all the abilities feel fun and satisfying to use. The star ability was my favorite, being simple and effective to use, and I also loved the ability to find hidden objects by zooming in - it really added a lot to the feeling of discovery. However, I think the base jump could be a teeny bit higher, as it feels like you can just barely make the 2-tile-high jumps that are expected of you. 

Shooting and deflecting is also nice and has a great sense of feedback, though the enemies do take a while to put to sleep. Combined with the fact they wake up eventually, it often feels like it’s better to just run past them. On the other hand, I certainly appreciate the ability to slow down bullets, as it helps even players with skill issue (me) pull off the deflections!

The map is fun to explore and has a truly impressive amount of content and secrets packed into a single screen. It does lead to the issue where it’s hard to see things at the farthest zoom level, while the closest zoom is a bit too close. The UI being part of the map itself rather than its own screen layer was also a bit confusing at first - it took me a while to find the health bar, and I initially thought the matchbox icon was an item in the level.

That said, it was awesome to see so many secrets and optional interactions. All the unique NPCs really make the game world feel alive, and finding and talking to all of them was definitely the best part of the game for me. The stalker interaction and the camera “powerup” were absolutely hilarious, and some of my other favorites were the witch and the construct (definitely a very relatable NPC…).

Overall, definitely a top contender for me among the entries I've reviewed so far. A very polished and atmospheric game that captures that dreamlike vibe perfectly, and a great idea and interpretation of the theme (and I’m 100% not being biased saying that)!

A beautiful and exceptionally well-crafted short adventure with a very fitting and satisfying conclusion. I think it perfectly embodies not only minimalist graphics or gameplay, but the spirit of minimalism as well. The visuals were lovely and the music was quite fitting and serene, and I loved the variety of weapons and enemies. It really felt like there were multiple ways to deal with each room and encounter, which is quite impressive for such a minimal game!

My only issues were that the orange enemies often ended up stuck in doorways, and I wish the warning for the larger enemies' dash attack was a bit more visible. Perhaps the enemy attacks themselves could be a bit snappier and more aggressive, too - as it stands, I feel like there wasn't much reason to use the player's own dash ability. In addition, I think the player might feel better to control if the hitbox was slightly smaller than the visible model. Also, the game crashed on my first time trying to collect the circle powerup, though fortunately this problem solved itself afterwards.

That said, those were at most minor nitpicks that didn't detract from the experience at all. And I'd say the implementation of the theme was hands down immaculate!

First of all, Allo is clearly the best protagonist I've seen in the gamejam so far (and I'm 100% not biased saying that)! The pixel art for the characters and biomes is gorgeous, with Allo’s crouching and crawling animations being my personal favorite - he's just so adorable! I also liked the music and the sound effects, especially the feeling of impact from shooting and hitting enemies.

The idea of using multiple smaller missions is clever for a minimalist Metroidvania and does a great job creating a sense of exploration while preventing you from getting too lost. The levels, enemies and powerups are certainly very much inspired by the classics, and overall I feel like there weren’t many big surprises there. However, the controls are nice and snappy and everything feels like it’s implemented very well.

My one and biggest issue with the game is the timer. I was able to barely beat most of the levels on time, but ended up giving up right at the end of the third mission due to running out during the final boss. I just feel like it creates unnecessary stress, and considering the high health and tight placement of some enemies, the timer kinda encourages just running or damage boosting through some sections.

That said, I actually went back and played Super Mini Jumper after this, and while both games are fun in their own right, I can definitely see the improvement in the player attacks and enemy design in this one. Looking forward to more dinosaur adventures in the future!

One of my favorite entries so far when it comes to theme interpretation. The shooting mechanic does a great job creating a sense of progress and player power, not to mention the sounds and feedback make it very satisfying to use!

I'm a big fan of the visual style and the music as well. The art might have seemed simplistic at first, but I was very impressed with the way it managed to paint different biomes with such a limited palette. The complete shift in tone and ambience in the dark zone was one of my favorite parts of the game. I also adore the main character and the little room we start and end in!

The difficulty ramped up quite nicely over the course of the game. Some parts were pretty tough at first, but it was satisfying to get to a point where I could zoom through parts that used to give me trouble, and the snappy controls definitely helped. That said, I gave up pretty quickly on both of the bonus rooms (and did also encounter the softlock near one of the secret flowers).

One thing that I felt was missing was a straightforward fighting section or two, since for all its versatility and how powerful you feel with a bunch of upgrades, you don’t actually get to use the shooting mechanic against enemies much! Though I guess the moving crystals could kinda count as enemies? Either way, it’s just something I thought could help tie the game together, but of course a more puzzle-oriented game is perfectly fine too!

Regardless, a super fun and memorable game with a distinct style, great controls, and I’d say a perfect implementation of the theme!