It's like the controls were designed to mess with anyone who's ever played a game before. There's nothing wrong with them in a vacuum, but they're so far removed from any standard conventions that I just cannot get used to them. I don't think this is a bad thing though, it was actually a lot of fun figuring the game out and breaking away from years of muscle memory. Also I love the fact that the main menu is basically a tutorial, it works really well.

I do think some of the enemies are a bit too hard, especially with the controls in mind. There were several encounters where it didn't feel like I had enough time to react and died as a result. Other than that this is pretty much flawless.

[Some edits for clarity because I accidentally said the opposite of what I meant in a place or two.]

We're going out of order on this one because I have some things to say and they will go better if I go out of the usual order. Please understand the following is meant primarily in jovial spirit. I TRULY believe the choice of controls was a mistake on your part, but I promise I'm not mad and I hope this doesn't come across condescending. But because it feels like the sort of thing that could have been entered in Oktrollberfest (that is a real jam lol), I feel OK rating it a little in that spirit.

This broke me.

Minimalist theming is an easy 5/5, because the aesthetics alone would have gotten you there. That means everything else INCLUDING a less drastic of your own phrasing, "very minimal amount of buttons", would have gotten you full marks on the theme already.

Execution is a 3.25/5 rounding up because I can't bring myself to round it down. And yes, you did get that .25 instead of the .5 for the reason you're thinking.

In case we're not on the same brainwave here, it's not because it's not mechanically solid but because the sheer audacity of this control scheme, per the above, was 100% a choice and not a thing that needed to be done to get the theming. It's because it IS so mechanically sound otherwise that I have to give this a four a not a three.

To be clear I had a lot more fun with it than I expected but unfortunately no matter how well-executed everything else is (AND IT IS), I don't think I can give a good execution mark to this on account of the controls. So even though it's well executed there's no way it's getting above a 4.

It is a choice I would rather not reward in any way, shape, or form, and would actively like to punish in the scores, but I can't get myself to do it. Others might. I can't.

Enjoyment is a 4/5 rounding up.

Sensory is a 5/5. Why that short loop isn't driving me mad I don't know.

SO AFTER ALL THAT I have some questions.

The first question is why as in "why would you do this."

The second question is why as in "why am I still playing this."

The third question is why as in "why does it work so well?"

Anyway here's the video:

I'm gonna be honest, this is my third time playing the game and I feel like I know less about controls every time I play. The game looks very fun, but every time it gets harder even though it should be the opposite

The screenshots caught my attention because of the artstyle, which I thought looked pretty nice, and the unique control scheme is interesting. However, I honestly just couldn't bring myself to play much further past getting the ability that lets you push boxes. 

All the enemies take forever to kill, and some will take over half your bar. And the control scheme, while interesting, feels it lacks the speed and precision to make killing or navigating around those enemies feasible. A fair amount of my small amount of time playing was spent wandering around, dying to an enemy with a lot of health that can kill me in 1-2 hits, then wandering about elsewhere to find an easier path, only to run into another enemy that has a lot of health and can kill me in 1-2 hits. 

Even when I did find an easier path with weaker enemies, I would have to repeat it at least a couple times due to how janky the control scheme is for combat. Sometimes I would simply face tank a weaker enemy and use the invincibility frames to get by, just so I don't have to spend time trying to fight it.

At the very least, things would be easier if there was a clearer indicator of what direction your character is facing. The small change to the direction of the eyes is noticeable enough when casually exploring, but is hard to keep track of when getting hit by enemies. Maybe some sort of indicator in the UI + a sound effect when switching directions would work?

Anyways, I wish I could've finished the game, but it was just way too frustrating for me.

I absolutely love the unique control scheme here. Going from not even understanding basic movement to slowly learning about different button combos to perform more moves feels very satisfying. I haven't finished it yet, but this is definitely one I'll go back to once I've given more things a vote to give it more attempts.

(played like an hour of the game, managed to get the floating guy and umbrella)

The game looks nice, specially the main character. The music is okay, but with how long the game ends up taking, and the size of the map, some variation would have been welcome.

I like having the weird control scheme, and having to adapt to it. But I think it kind of clashes with the rpg elements, making it a bit too frustrating, specially at the start/early, by not only struggling against the controls but against the enemies, where for a long time a lot of your stat increases feel like they don't do almost anything. It does feel that as you get more tools, and are able to get more upgrades (despite still being really hard), you can make a lot more progress a bit faster, so maybe the early levels could be balanced in a way that ease the player a little bit more?

 I respect the vision of having it be this hard, with a world that feels big for what it is. But you certainly have to get past a lot of frustration to get far.

Boy, this is a game I have very complicated feelings about. I played for about 3 hours, and was not able to beat it.

I have a bunch of good things to say. I love the unique control scheme, it actually feels really fun to master. The graphics and music are quite nicely minimalist. The character is so cute with her little faces, and the double halo when she dies, it’s adorable. The game is very polished, everything works nicely and nothing really stands out as unfinished or rough around the edges. And there’s a ton of content in this game. I don’t even know how much, because I clearly couldn’t beat it.

But it’s SO hard. Even by gamejam standards. Like obscenely, insanely, “how did this ever get playtested hard”. To the point where part of me feels like I’m missing something, because surely this can’t be intentional? For some context, I’m level 22, 66 offense, 58 defense, 182 HP. That’s 3 hours of play, finding a ton of secrets, health upgrades, etc. But all the enemies where I haven’t explored yet still kill me in no time flat. All the attacks are so fast, and constant, which, combined with your own somewhat sluggish controls makes fighting a clean fight almost impossible. And if you fail, you have to walk back from the start again and walk past those fuckin randomly moving flies that hide in walls. This can easily take like 5 minutes.

So this makes it really tempting to cheese things by going AFK and letting your drones do the work… Which is often really easy, and so, so, so boring. Sure, it’s slow, but it’s still faster than dying and walking all the way back. Why take the risk when you could sit in a dead zone corner and let your drones sloooowwly snipe that dragon that’s gotten stuck in a loop? I beat several of the eyeball rooms by just finding a safe spot, throwing on a YouTube video, and not touching my keyboard for 10 (!!) minutes. The enemies are so tanky that doing it any other way feels completely unreasonable, especially before getting the charge attack, which admittedly does help a lot.

Currently the only unexplored points I’ve found are 3 knight guys with shockwave attacks (whom I’ve never even been able to get close to, and who no doubt would take me several minutes of attacking to beat while they can kill me in 5 seconds) and an arena with several of the trident guys, diagonals bouncing, and timed laser beams. I spent 15 minutes AFK do my drones would kill the bouncers, but there was no blind spot for the trident guys, so I tried fighting them straight on, and died quickly. That’s another 5 minute runback + 15 minutes of AFK. This surely can’t be the way this game is intended to be played…

Despite it all, I felt compelled to play through this game for probably longer than any other game this jam, and lord knows I’ve given actually beating it a fair shake, but I just… can’t? I am very curious to see a dev playthrough of this, because I’m not sure if this game is really just incredibly hard, or if I’m completely missing some kind of core mechanic that’d turn the game on its head.

as an avid Mooncat enjoyer I love the concept of cool control schemes, so I was ready to really like this one! However, these controls feel like an extreme version of mooncat, to the point where it can be super frustrating to do anything. There were often times where I thought I input the right input, but got a different result. Could be a skill issue on my part, but it was very frequent, even happening when I thought I had the controls figured out. Plus with the controls, the enemies feel very punishing. I feel like the game is hard enough as is to get used to the controls.

But overall, its a really cool interpretation of the theme, and the artstyle is really neat for being so simple!

The unusual control scheme is interesting and I really want to give this a proper shot, but the enemies are just way too obnoxious as is. Just getting around normally is plenty difficult enough with the controls scheme, and being constantly knocked around by enemies that move faster than I do and are so tanky that they'd take significant time to kill even without having to finagle your positioning in order to even be facing the right direction to hit them is just. not fun. It feels impossible to make even the slightest dent in exploring this game without being killed in one or two hits and being sent all the way back to the start, and every time I think I've found a relatively easier passage it just leads directly into a dead end.

Maybe I'll try to give this another shot later, but right now I just feel no incentive to attempt pushing any further.

Yeah this game fuckin rules