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I'm just back and resting, had an amazing time, thank you for asking and always good to see familiar faces in this jam :)

Thank you for the kind words

Wow that is the best record I've seen so far, haha that is amazing.

As for the achievement, I found the issue: It only triggers if you win with a time between 241s and 300s, because I stupidly coded them as if-else statements. HAHA WELP. It's an easy fix so I will address it once the jam period ends and the game can be updated! :)

That's awesome!

Yes the council works in mysterious ways!

Woah what a surprise to see you Rock!!!

Glad you like it :D

Haha yass, the planets were really fun to make! Hope you managed to blow them all up :)

Heyyyyyy!

Thanks so much for playing it! I didn't have as much time this jam to develop and playtest as I have been overseas sadly! However your feedback is still valuable. In hindsight I would've made the upgrades a lot more powerful and more automation would have worked well for the rebirth/new game plus mechanic which would have worked well with a Rebirth currency of some sort.

Haha, glad you liked the news reports - seems a lot of people liked them and I enjoyed writing them a lot too~

Thanks for reporting the bug! I have fixed the first bug - I've tested and multiple sun fragments can drop now! :)

I couldn't replicate the second bug. Time manipulating when upgraded immediately starts making the countdown faster. I will continue to monitor though, thanks for playing!

I am already in the midst of deploying v1.4.12, so it won't make it into the next direct update, but rest assured I have resolved it for v1.4.13 which addresses this issue, along with other potential fixes that may arise. :)

A Steam Post will be made when that happens!

Once again thanks so much for letting me know about this issue~

Thanks for sharing, let me check it out

Aww thank you so much and for also sharing the link and timestamp! <3

Will check it out as I definitely love seeing other people play Astral Bloom and also to seek out improvements!!

Hi there so sorry about that! I've updated the game to v0.9.0 to fix this issue! Appreciate you dropping a comment and hope you get to try it now!

Ahh, so like Blizzard Mutator: Slower wisps & trees, but faster of something else!

Heya! Just letting you (and anyone else reading) know that v0.7.0 was pushed. It increases the map size greatly and you can also delete, rotate, and move buildings for more design control over your little planet! :)

I'll also add decorations in a future update~!

I just looked up Skyblock and i love the vibes it gives too! Maybe the game could have little islands out there that have little critters!

I like your idea of different biomes! Would they be purely visual or are you thinking of some gameplay effects for them?

I'll be pushing out v0.8.0 tomorrow, but I wanted to show you a preview of something I call Sanctuary Mode/World.

Heya, I remembered you and thought I'd let you know that I've created the Steam page and will release the demo there in 5 days (13th March)! 

If there's anything you want to see in the game, happy to add it yeah! <3

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4464970/Astral_Bloom/

Also congrats on your game, you got really good gameplay! :)

Thank you for such kind words, Pizza!! I'm glad someone else was also able to see the vision XD!

I'll be working on the game to release more updates after the jam and likewise, I look forward to seeing you too in 2026.2! :D

Hey there Ben, that's a good question!

Regarding the movement, my thought process was that it isn't a purely grid-based game in that your position is snapped to a grid. I suspect that movement type is more common for action combat games, whereas here I wanted to align it with the camera, so that left really means left. Especially as you expand to a huge flat space, the grid becomes less and less relevant.

The other reason is that I plan to allow the camera to be rotatable in an upcoming update that also allows camera zooming, so the camera will no longer be fixed to isometric angle.

I did consider your feedback though as I wondered the same thing! :)

Thank you so much!!!

I will be posting very frequently in the days and weeks to come, hope to show more exciting stuff and of course push out more updates once the rating period is over :)

And of course I am open to all feedback and suggestions to help make the game better for everyone~

Heyyyy!!!

Thank you so much, I hope to make as much improvements as I can until then!

no worries, good job on the game man! very good for the first attempt~

I like how the enemies turn to colour when I swipe them with my paint brush, some thoughts as I played:

• Beginning room could be a bit clearer that you have to dive into the painting, as I thought this was one of those point and clicks where I had to find a key to go into the door. But very minor point that did not distract from the experience.
• I like how you don't have to backtrack in this game and go back to the starting point when you find the key, and instead unlock a shorter path to go back, which makes it not repetitive.
• The sound effects were used well, such as audio feedback to indicate that a gate has unlocked offscreen, which is a nice touch for user experience.
• The subtle animation to show an item is interactable is also nice, as otherwise it would have been harder to differentiate what is interactable versus background objects. I think assigning it a unique colour could also be used to differentiate too, to make it even more identifable.

Overall nice premise as well as the lore that sets up how you enter the painting and become miniaturized. I tried to speedrun it by rushing through the areas but the monsters got me xD. The monsters are also very cute.

"Ari and the Fading World was made by a crazy talented team, excluding myself. :P " Also nooo why discreditting yourself? 

This is a nice little crafting game that has more than i thought! I usually leave detailed feedback so hope this isn't intimidating!

• The world is more expansive than I thought, which rewards exploration.
• I didn't know that I had to return to the den at night, so I lost everything, I think this is quite demoralizing as most people might not give another go if they had to restart from scratch.
• I think the game could benefit from having more inventory space - either a way to upgrade it, or just more base slots, given the number of things that we need to craft, as well as different categories across food, crafting, and advanced crafting, which we don't all memorize the ingredients for.
• The character moving slowly was something I thought was a glitch, but I suspect it's because I didn't have enough food, i think some visual indicator like flashing the hunger bar would reduce this confusion, or showing a 'tired face' with a low battery icon or thought bubble of an apple to keep the UX simple.

Overall, this was a lot more complex than i thought and the goal of having to build a rocket definitely had set up an interesting premise.

I overall enjoyed playing and the crafting system - I love crafting games so I might be biased!

Hey there! Sorry I didn't reply earlier, glad you like the experience! It's always glad to see people from past jams coming back for sure! Will check out your game shortly :)

This is one of the coolest comments I've read so far, it made me feel so warm inside HAHA

Thanks for playing and i can totally imagine your alien walking around just collecting things :)

I'll be adding more stuff to the game after the jam ends so feel free to share more cozy ideas if you have them, and I will add them to the game~! (I also just got the Steam page up which I'm quite excited about!)

Heya, thank you so much for the kind words! Glad you liked the various mechanics. I am looking to add more features so if you really like it and have suggestions for what you want to see, please let me know!

Also just got the steam page up if u wanna check it out :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4464970/Astral_Bloom/

Haha I'm glad I managed to get the rebirth mechanics working, and am glad to hear you like it!

Thanks PAT, glad you enjoyed it~

Thanks so much for the kind words Anthony! Was indeed a labour of love. I decided to make it into a full game on Steam thanks to a friend's support. I will be posting more about it and putting out several updates once the jam is over~

Nice game you have too, very soft and poetic title and I do love me some pixel art! Edit: I've just played and will leave my thoughts shortly!

Ahh my bad, I was not expecting the map limits to be reached! The original plan was to have multiple levels of worlds so you would build a new layer after hitting the limit but I kept it simple for a jam.

In the next version,  I have made it possible to delete blocks by selecting them, allowing more designs but also allows you to then build the rocket!

Aww thank you so much, it was very heartwarming to hear that it pulled on your heartstrings!

I'm going to put out a detailed devlog on the roadmap I've planned for the game. With a friend's encouragement I also decided to put it out on Steam and I'm looking to put up the Steam storepage up by this weekend if it goes well!

Yaaas! I honestly kept spamming the ability button just to see the effect when i added it, it's so mesmerizing, so much that I had to add a 1s cooldown haha!

And yes I do find myself just walking around seeing the tiles glow, especially at night when they glow a warm yellow. ^^

Wow that's cool! It's fun to see comments from people who've played the earlier versions to compare to the latest one. I'm glad to hear the polish elevated the game~

Thank you for the kind words too :)

Ahh! Sorry there isn't a way currently. I've just added feature to select and delete buildings on the next version but I can't upload new versions until the jam period ends this weekend! Sorry about that but rest assured this feature will directly be in the next build, along with other new stuff in v0.6!

Edit: The rating period ends next weekend, not this weekend, I mistook as I thought it's normally a week.

Wow, your timing is just as phenomenal! Under 5 minutes! :O

Glad that you like the game vibes and appreciate the kind words, I'll continue to push out updates once the jam ends! :)

haha I don't know if you are serious but after much consideration, my friend told me to do it, so I'm actually gonna go for it!

I'm excitedly creating the storepage right now!~

Thank you for playing and for the kind words! Glad that you enjoyed it~

Ill be putting out more updates in the coming weeks!

thanks~

Thanks sicave, glad to hear you enjoyed it! I am planning the roadmap now and will be putting out updates to add more content, such as a research tree, upgrades and character customization!~