Really cool game mechanic and it feels god to play
Play game
ThawStroke's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #11 | 3.952 | 3.952 |
| Overall | #16 | 4.048 | 4.048 |
| Originality | #20 | 4.190 | 4.190 |
| Theme | #27 | 4.286 | 4.286 |
| Is the graphics 1 bit? | #28 | 4.905 | 4.905 |
| Art | #48 | 3.714 | 3.714 |
| Music | #55 | 3.238 | 3.238 |
Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Really cool game! It reminds me of that one minigame in Snowdin from Undertale. I like how it progressively gets harder.
Cool idea and implementation. True, there are some shortcomings: 1) The options button does nothing. 2) The direction of the push was not always read correctly. 3) After the victory, the music started playing again and it began to overlap.
Thanks! Unfortunately I didn't have the time to make the option button actually display the settings haha. I will make sure to add it though. The ball physics will need to be surely improve, but for now I honestly have no clue what's causing the issues unfortunately. I already fixed the music overlap but thanks for reporting! It turned out that I had 2 music players trying to do the same thing xd
A clever idea really well executed and one of the most fun games of the jam, great job :)
Love when you can just play a game that teachesby itself how to be played.
((( to give some feedback, it was sometimes hard to kick the ball when it gets small and the music restarting each time felt weird, but I insist this is one of the best games I played this jam !! ))))
Thank you very much!!!
The self-teaching element was really important for me and I'm really glad that you noticed and liked it. I still need to make some more improvements as some people were confused by the melters, but I think that it's heading in the right direction.
For the ball movement, others suggested making it so the player can control the ball from anywhere on the screen and I think that it will make the steering much easier and allow for more interesting levels (as I needed to compromise on how hard some levels were as the ball wasn't the easiest to control)
I think the reason why the music restart felt weird is because of otherwise seamless transition between tracks on different levels. I made 9 different tracks with the same chord progressions and made them continue where the previous one left off when switching the level (so it's like the same music playing but a new instrument added on each level). Unfortunately I run out of time to make the music during restarts as seamless as it otherwise is, so it might have been especially noticeable. Still, thank you for reporting that!
I think this might have been the most positive feedback I received during this jam, thank you very much!!!
Awesome game dude! I really liked the shrinking mechanic, but it wasn't really used in the game. I think it would be cool if after each level it showed us how many hits it took to get to the goal. Very clever spin on golf. Nice job!
Interesting game, I think some tutorial or help with differents objects could be great!
Cool game man. Ah I got a bug that made snowball very very very big jaja.

Game is fun and the idea is good. I wish it had more levels. Also a way to lower the volume would be really nice, i like to play games while listening to other things, and yours is really loud. Other than that cool game, good job.
Nice and short! Figuring out a way to not have to move your mouse back to the center would make this play much smoother. If you want to take that idea even further, I don't think that the "Drag" interaction adds to your core concept. If the player could just click without dragging it might feel much snappier and responsive
This was actually a really fun game! The melting snowball is a really cool concept that I would really love to see expanded! Although you should probably increase the frequency of the "melters" as some levels were easily skipped due to the aforementioned.
Hey, thanks for the feedback! Honestly the melter/burner frequency was kind of a last second decsion. Originally in the "maze" level the melters were supposed to be constantly on. But then after finishing it it took me about 20 minutes to beat. Usually developers are a bit better at their game jam entry then new players so making the burners turn off was my way of making the levels easier. But then they turned out too easy haha
Simple concept but fun. Music got a bit repetitive but overall cool game!
Short, sweet and fun! What I really love about the melting snowball is that it isn't just a time limit for the level, the ball being smaller also provides opportunities to use alternative paths or just get through obstacles more easily. This creates a really satisfying risk/reward sort of system where waiting out the timer a little can actually be good but overdoing it will cause you to fail. It also naturally creates this system where the game gets a bit easier if you are doing poorly, kind of like a dynamic difficulty.
Having the snow pick ups grow the ball bigger again provides has a ton of potentional for interesting level design. But speaking of the pick ups, on one level I found an oversight, if you quickly fire through the course while the burners are off, gathering all the pick ups this happens:

The ball gets giant, stuck in the walls, and you get blasted with the collision sound. Have to a wait a while for the ball to shrink before you can continue playing. So you should probably put a max size limit on the ball or something.
This was a really cool entry. Simple idea yet lots of fun. Would play again
This was a really cool entry. Simple idea yet lots of fun. Would play again
This has a perfect winter theme! It reminds me of the touchscreen minigames on the DS.
Everything felt quite good! Some feedbacks:
The melting circles that melt your snowball faster do not look particularly dangerous, so it took me some time before I understood they were melting me faster when on. Perhaps a pixel smoke animation could help with this!
Since the snowball is not always centred, grabbing it while it is rolling (which you almost have to in some levels to get to a safe place fast enough) is extremely difficult at the moment. I would recommend either keeping the snowball in the centre of the screen and instead doing a nice rolling animation that reflects its direction or allow the player to click and drag from anywhere! I think option 2 would be easier and would make this game very easy and fun to play on mobile.
Sometimes the snowball felt that it didn't go in the direction I set it to, but perfect physics is absolutely not something to be expected during a game jam.
I really enjoyed the level where you could wait for the snowball to become a certain size to go through a secret way. I think more levels that use this design would be fantastic! Maybe you could also make levels where you have to pick up snow to become gigantic and roll over enemies/things in your way.
One more thing, you should "catch the mouse" for this game, as if you go outside the window, the game stops working. If you catch the mouse, you could stretch the band as much as you want.
Overall spot-on with the theme, fun gameplay and the music is nice, too! Consider working on this some more, I think you could release it!
Hi, thanks for the review!
The first few levels were supposed to be the "tutorial" levels where the player gets to learn the main mechanics of the game. I was going to add some text, arrows, or other infographics to tell the player some things. In case of level 4 when the melters first appear, there was supposed to be an arrow and text "Warning: HOT". Unfortunately, I didn't have time to add these haha. They will surely be there if I ever release the game! I like the idea of pixel smoke, but I'm not sure how it would work in the top-down perspective. I feel like it has been really hard to show that something is hot with just 2 colors, but I will surely work on it.
I think the game is a bit smoother without the snowball being always centered, but I didn't think about how that would influence gameplay. I really like your idea of controlling the ball from anywhere on the screen, I think I will implement it!
As for the physics, yeah, it's not perfect. I think Godot has some troubles with the fact that the collision body is being continuously resized by the melting mechanic. I will do my best to improve it though!
The 3rd level's mechanic with the path only being accessible when the player is small was actually supposed to be the main mechanic of the game! Then I realized it may be harder to fit into levels without being repetitive than I thought. I'm glad you enjoyed it though, I will make sure to create more levels with this mechanic if it was memorable to you.
I will definitely consider releasing it, although I may not have too much time to work on it in the upcoming months. Thanks for the very detailed feedback! It's really nice to hear that someone out there likes your game, no matter how small it is.
Loved the game, simple, but fun!
The levels have a fun challenge and are really replayable and speedrunable wich i like alot
The controls are simple but a bit tricky to get right, overall, really cool!


Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.