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Well, it took me about 6 or 7 tries to finally win...

Death by R: x2-3

Death by falling block: x2

Death by bugged ship: x1

Death by other: ?

It felt great to return to it today and make it out of that world! 

**the following review is completely unbiased!**

Out of all the games submitted, I personally think this one was the best implementation & pairing of mechanics and theme. The goal was clearly established from the get-go, and you did a great job of incorporating multiple gameplay mechanics that made this small game feel really unique! The intersection of between the mechanics of resource gathering + upgrades, platforming (I'll let that part slide 😉), and time management made each playthrough memorable. On top of that, there were plenty of different strategies to try on each load up, meaning I was excited to try something new each time!

As far as the platforming goes, movement felt really smooth and satisfying. I liked the triple jump system a LOT.  It definitely helped the player to feel capable and under control.

I really appreciated that you developed the soundtrack and art yourself!! On top of that, it was awesome to have control over so many volume sliders! But yes, a master volume slider & persistent settings would've been a huge help! Also, R is dangerous... too dangerous!

Glad I had the opportunity to break the game for you 😉

Thanks for your submission to the HF 2023 Game Jam!

At least this wasn't as hard as that clucking chicken game 🤣

Loved the aesthetics of this game quite a lot - I got some serious Dome Keeper vibes from your choice of assets! Also, I've now learned that a platformer is automatically better when you add a pogo stick!!

Thank you for your submission to the HF 2023 Game Jam! 

Adherence to jam theme ✅

Adherence to HF theme ✅

Puzzle game! ✅ Forreal though, I'm really happy someone submitted a puzzle game! Puzzle games are probably in my top 5 favorite genres 😁

I was a little confused when I clicked "Next Level" and hit the main menu instead 😲Including an option to speed up the passing of time might've been nice for waiting out the rotating asteroids. 

Thank you for your submission to HF 2023 Game Jam!

GG, you win the 3D prize!

I really liked the rogue-lite aspect of your game. Super cool that the levels changed each time you went on an excursion. I also felt that your gameplay loop did a good job of complementing the procedurally generated maps! I liked finding the loot and doing the upgrade thing! 

As a player, I had a difficult time comprehending what my overall goal was, or what I working towards. Combat was really hard to understand at a glance, but the provided tutorial went a long way towards helping me comprehend what was going on. I would've liked to explore the combat system more than I had the opportunity for, but I kept getting lost and dying before making it the teleporter! I don't think the answer is necessarily to provide more teleporters, as I think maybe implementing a way to find the teleporters might be more interesting overall. 

I don't know that I enjoyed this game being top-down. I think I would've felt more immersed if the camera angle was instead isometric? Hard to say, but I was disappointed that I couldn't see more of the physical details of the things encountered on the map. 

Thank you for your submission to the HF 2023 Game Jam!

From the moment I saw this submission, I was excited to play it due to how drawn I was to your thumbnail art. XD With the game's name and star drawing mechanic, I was expecting a puzzle game, but the visual novel aspect was lovely. I enjoyed the games aesthetics quite a bit, and I really liked the character portrait art. 

I felt that each character had a distinct personality, and I appreciated the journey of this family learning confront and overcome their differences. The ending was really beautiful, and it left me feeling a little teary even! 

Out of all the other games submitted during this jam, this one felt the most "complete"... in terms of length, but also by having a contained story that reaches a satisfying conclusion. 

I had a little bit of trouble figuring out how to draw the constellations, and this ended up being trial and error for me. Also, as TelinArtho said below, I had trouble differentiating between the monikers "Granny" and "Grandma", and the story made much more sense once the story explained the relationship between the two.

Thank you for your submission to the HF 2023 Game Jam!

And here I was gonna leave a comment saying:

QUACK QUACK QUACK

But rabbits beat me to it! 

I definitely wasn't expecting a Duck themed game! More story plz! 😈🦆

QUACK Thank you QUACK for your submission QUACK to the HF 2023 QUACK Game Jam! quack

I'll start by saying - platformers are my mortal enemy, this game kicked my butt and made me angry, but I felt like a pro once I (finally) beat it!!

Your graphics are stunning! The color palette is gorgeous and the pixel art itself was serene and really captured the essence of the game. The game included lots of purples/blues though, so a colorblind mode might be a good addition! I also felt that the spirit sprite was too "slippery". I had a really terrible time adjusting to not sliding into walls of death XD

With the spirit walking mechanic, I almost felt like I was controlling 2 characters. Providing a unique ability for your corporeal form, in addition to your spirit form, could lead to lots of interesting puzzles to platform and solve

Thank you for your submission to the HF 2023 Game Jam!

The hand drawn portraits were lovely! And from the tutorial provided, the proposed gameplay loop seemed really promising. Let us know if you release a new build!

Thank you for your submission to the HF 2023 Game Jam!

I love the idea of the reverse-bullet hell/survivors-type game! I could sink hours into a game like this. 

I loved the art you used for this game. I can't remember - did you create these for the jam specifically, or were these premade assets? Either way, they're so beautiful! I want them as a wallpaper XD

As we discussed on stream, my biggest issue with playing this game was due to the static background/parallax-y things confusing my eyes! 😁 If you do decide to update this game and test out different settings for the background, I'd be happy to playtest the changes!

Thank you for your submission to the HF 2023 Game Jam!

I think everyone below me has already covered what I had prepared for technical feedback!

I will say, however, that this game totally blew my mind! Like, it shattered my understanding of how a program can work 🤣 Very well done! This was crazy creative, and a pleasure to experience!

Thank you for your submission to the HF 2023 Game Jam!

It seemed like you had some great ideas planned, and I want to know what happens next!! The board counting time passed/remaining, along with the ambiance, made me feel unsettled - in a good, atmospheric, storytelling kind of way! I could have seen this becoming a psychological horror game, a puzzle game, or even some sort of ship sim. 

I enjoyed the walking animation quite a bit, even if it did feel a little too slow! 🤣 Also, the line minigame was cute and I replayed the game until I finally beat the NPC! 

Thank you for your submission to the HF 2023 Game Jam! 

Puzzley strategy card game... that's my kind of game!😲

Overall, I really liked the concept for Galaxy Cards. The complex interactions between colored cards, rows, and columns worked really well in my opinion. I also liked the look of the game itself, along with your soundtrack! I actually went back and played this a second time today after playing it for 45 minutes or so yesterday! 😁

This definitely seems like a great game to have running in the background to enjoy on breaks. I also think it would be a good candidate for a mobile game! I could absolutely see myself pulling something like this up on my phone in bed.

I have a few suggestions for improvement!

- The coloring off the cards themselves was hard for me to interpret. Black/purple were too similar, and it was very difficult for me to identify the planet type before revealing their cards. It took me far longer than I care to admit to realize the info box was shaded by their respective planet's color. I'd maybe opt for a more distinct palette, and one that accommodates color blindness.

- My biggest issue with gameplay was that I felt very uninformed in my choices. I'd suggest providing the player a breakdown of overall income and its sources, while also having the actual card values update when hovering over cards to reflect the effects/synergies of your purchases.

- This suggestion is far outside of the current scope of the game, buuut... it'd be awesome to have a variation of card types/card locations so that no game is quite the same. This would provide for interesting strategies and synergies, and would greatly increase the replayability of the game.

Thanks very much for taking the time to create and submit a game to the HF 2023 Game Jam!

Thank you for the explanation! That's helpful indeed ^-^

I also have a love-hate relationship with this game, as others have mentioned. It totally brought out the frustration that only Getting Over It has caused me in the past, so nice job with that! Platformers are not my thing, but I was determined to reach the end... and I'm glad I did! The ending was really satisfying after all that frustration!! As I mentioned on stream, the ability to cancel your jump and toggle visibility of the jump arcs would be SO helpful, as it does get quite difficult towards the end. Thanks for hanging out in chat and discussing your game with us, and thanks for the submission!

Elftwitch, your art is gorgeous as always! I really enjoyed Bea, your OC, and I thought the storytelling  through texts was done well! I only got 2 endings, and one was *much* darker than the other! I would maybe suggest different fonts/text box backgrounds to differentiate between characters. My biggest concern with the game was around the personality of one of the characters, but I think that's more of a personal thing and not necessarily something that detracts from the game. I hope you keep working on this! I would love to see anything additional you bring to Bea's story. Thank you for your submission!

This was really cute! There was a good balance between excites and stress, and while I was able to pull off perfects, most of them were down to the literal LAST second. Your flavor text was also humorous and gave me lots of giggles. I experienced some issues with collision and audio bugs, but nothing major or game-breaking. Very nice job! Thanks for your submission!

(This review is totally unbiased, mhm!)

Neat idea! The art was cute too. I like the idea of Twitch integration, and I could actually see this working quite well as a community/party game. Unfortunately,  I couldn't get the game to connect to chat (entered the token and everything) I can't really speak much to the voting mechanic. It was also very hard to read some the pitches, as the text ran off the side of the box. I would totally try this again, maybe against someone on Halcyon ;) Thanks for your submission!  

I really, really liked this game concept! As I mentioned on stream, I love the world building aspect! I really enjoy the way your buildings synergize with the surrounding terrain. Waaay more info needs to be communicated to the player, and some tweaks to the mechanics would be wonderful (currently there's just too much RNG). I hope you continue to develop this concept! I would love to return to it once again. Thanks for your submission!

You clearly put a lot of effort to this, and I think it shows! Your world was very pretty, the robot was super cute, and I loved the little desert forests! It was so relaxing to scoot around watering the desert while hanging out with chat.

I really can't wait to see what you do with this moving forward! Keep us posted, and thanks for the submission :D

I thought this looked really nice, even the intro screen. I really hope we get an update for this because I would love to see your idea come to life! Thank you for your submission :D

I managed to reproduce this same bug, although I'm not sure what I did to cause the issue. Essentially an alarm would go off, and then upon snoozing it, the time would reset to 7:59. I refreshed and the issue went away.

This was totally fun (and stressful) and I couldn't make it past 30ish seconds XD The controls felt pretty intuitive, and I got a good laugh out of the game! Thanks for your submission!