Almost full marks on this one.

Enjoyment was a 4.5/5 rounding up.

Execution was 4/5, there was some lack of proper triggering on certain things (a save point, as will probably be verified by a video, and a couple of scene transition triggers.) Nothing insurmountable. Almost missed that double-jump upgrade in the blue area; TBH I looked down there mainly because I was hoping for a hard 'checkpoint'

Sensory 5/5 This is just good all around. The sounds in particular are very pleasing.

Metroidvania 5/5. 0 standard deviations away from genre.

Relevance to theme 5/5. Interpretation is good and you've stuck to it.

This is a really solid entry! The star of the show is absolutely the central hook. The changing environments are very pretty, and I love the new elements hinting at where you should go next with your new ability. Signposting the save points is a nice touch as well. I also want to shout out the vertical boost you get when you room transition upwards, a small detail that makes a big difference.

Enemy and boss design were fun, very Hollow Knight (complimentary). The combat is decent, I like the healing, and I appreciate that enemies go from idle go aggro once they spot you. Hitting things feels alright, I think a tiny bit of player pushback and maybe a chunkier hit sound would help. Enemies can largely be ignored, which isn't necessarily a problem, that's true of many games, it just felt especially noticeable here. It usually felt safer to just jump / dash over them than try to engage, unless I needed health. The boss was enjoyable, though a few of  the attack telegraphs felt a little too similar. But nice range of attack that all requires a different method to avoid!

The world design loops back onto itself to lead you into the next area in a very smooth way, which sounds like a good thing, but in practice, lead to the game feeling somewhat linear. Combine that with my avoiding most enemies, and the game kinda ended up feeling like just a gauntlet of spike traps. And many of them were nicely designed! It just got a little exhausting.

The jump felt a little weird for me. You have a nice even upward movement and hangtime, but then you fall *so* sharply and quickly, it was hard to judge a lot of the precision platforming. This was made worse when you needed to shimmy into a correct position on the wall-grab foliage to prepare for a jump, but then you bonk your head on a block and fall so rapidly into spikes.  I think you spaced all the level geometry out really very, so none of the jumps every felt too demanding, I think the difficulty was tuned pretty well! It just *felt* harder than it needed to be because I felt very out of control making some of the jumps. I think slowing the fall speed, and probably the horizontal movement a bit would go a long way.

Again, I love the premise, but beyond that the game does feel very "standard" in terms of execution and abilities. And there's not much connection to the theme beyond the game having minimalist art initially.

I raised a lot of criticisms but it's only because I see a lot of potential in this project! I hope yall continue working on it, great job!!

A very well put together entry. Lots of polish went into it, it shows, and it is appreciated. On a more fundamental level though, the game ended up feeling pretty linear. You just naturally went to get your next upgrades, as you only had one path available each time. This dumbed down the metroidvania aspect of the game a lot. On the other hand, I love that the sort of "hub" area get colored the more powered up you get, which is another thing I liked about the game: the progressive coloration of your environment. Precise platforming was harsh at times, especially considering that, as far as I've tested, there is no controller support. But overall a very nice experience.

Visually very pretty and the music was nice, but I didn't like how the game felt to play. You simply drop too fast (ESPECIALLY when hitting your head on the ceiling) to be able to reliably react fast enough to do some of the precision platforming required, making it much more frustrating then it needs to be. I didn't like that I was able to cling to/slow fall along walls from the start but never got the ability to actually jump off them. It felt weird and kind of clunky. You also move forward a bit too fast for aforementioned precision platforming. It was very difficult to land on ledges in front of spike walls. There's no reason to ever fight enemies outside of ones that physically block your path. It all combines into an overall experience that's just kind of frustrating.

The boss fight is fun though. I liked learning how to deal with it.

(I think I would otherwise really like this project but right now its left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I do think you can definitely improve it further by ironing out the player physics a bit more and adding actual exploration/goodies to find; I understand that the game jam doesn't leave a lot of time to do those during the jam but yeah.)

If I were to pick a word to describe this game, it would be "clean". Everything feels properly finished up, play tested and tuned. The art style leverages the theme effectively, and the world changing as you do feels empowering in a way, and serves to visually reinforce the recontextualization undergone.  The movement is nice and snappy, and can feel a bit quick initially, but gets comfortable within its runtime. Immensely well scoped and produced in this jam setting, and at a good length for feasibility and playability for ratings too.

The cleanliness does somewhat come with its own trade-offs. The map design leads you so effectively from road block to powerup, back and to the next section, that it feels like there are zero optional areas, no getting lost or navigational challenges when playing naturally. This is enhanced by the clever use of the colored design elements, which seem to indicate what paths are relevant for the newly acquired power up to open up. As such, the guided non-linearity leans very strongly to guided. The abilities are also very standard-issue, making the experience very smooth, cerebrally. Of course, executing established things extremely well has a place in the genre!

I love the health system. It reads very clearly with the flower petals, the pace of the game, the high contrast on a partial heal, with no extra steps required. The combat around it also does a great job at punishing you from face tanking, while a good level of aggression lets you stay healthy when alternating successful and failed interactions. If you're playing clean, you're not going to run into any health issues, and if you're not, there's a decent margin before you have to start over. It does break down a little bit in pure platforming sections, such as the end of the orange area, but they're not so long with the checkpoint placement that it becomes more frustrating than engaging.

All that said, there were a few minor hiccups I ran into. When walking out of a save room immediately on respawn, it seems the loading zones at the doors don't respond yet until moving in and out of them. The spikes in the red section were a bit hard to make out, and since they only recently got introduced, the red grass could come off as damaging as well. 

Finally, and this is a very personal skill issue, I found it hard to consistently click with the Z-X-C keys for the main abilities. They naturally unlock alongside the ability order, and in a metroidvania it is a bit spoiler-y to allow rebinding, so that's all fine. The buttons being so neatly lined up, and the attack being between two movement abilities, I think, gave me pause just enough for the boss to give me a lot of trouble. 

What a polished game, I’m impressed! The game is gorgeous, and the idea of the world being filled in as you get more colours is inspired. I like the idea of the colours being used as indicators for where you can use your new abilities, though sometimes perhaps done a bit too blatantly.

The healing system is simple but effective, I like it, it works quite well at rewarding consistency. It did make the platforming sections feel a lot harder than the enemy sections, but perhaps that’s intended. I found the room with the moving horizontal pillars the hardest section of the game, but not in a frustrating way, it was a fun challenge to learn to overcome.

If I were to deliver some criticism, I’d say that aside from the stellar presentation, the game itself is good, but a bit standard. I’d have liked to see a more novel upgrade rather than the standard dash, wall cling, double jump, maybe something tying into the colour theme? But perhaps that’s needlessly lofty. Overall, you both did an excellent job, great work!

this has to be one of  the best games i have played in this jam everything is just amazing  nice job 

This game is honestly excellent. I’m struggling to find words that really do it justice — what an experience. Amazing work.

This game is honestly excellent. I’m struggling to find words that really do it justice — what an experience. Amazing work.

First of all: the art is powerful and atmospheric, you did an execellent job on that. The movement feels fluid and exploration and exploitation of mechanics is balanced well. But: that the spikes are reseting the player position is incredibly frustrating and causes some really weird difficulty spikes in the game. What I did like, although maybe not intended, was that you could play the game mostly as a pacifist, which is kind of interesting. 

Overall: awesome game, keep going!

I beat it! I really liked how the environment changed to be more beautiful as you unlocked items! Was a really cool way to showcase where to go as well (even if the game felt a little too linear ;) ) Final boss fight was cool as well. Definitely felt hollow knight and souls inspired. I wish the abilities were a bit more interesting but you can't go wrong with a double jump and a dash! But overall, good job!

Everything about this game is so beautiful, the idea, design, development. I can see the hard work you put. I couldn't finish the game yet (and I have to restart when I'm back TvT) but enjoyed a lot playing it

Honestly, this was really good except for some annoying difficulty spikes and some jank with the ledge grab mechanic. It's a simple solid platformer that feels good with a familiar, but solid metroidvania structure. My biggest criticism is that the save points where too far apart. I almost quit on the blue area and I eventually did in the yellow one so I couldn't finish. Still think this was good overall.

This game looks good ! I love what you guys did with the minimalist theme and how the environment evolves to add color. Feels very polished ! The music and sound design also worked well.

One of the best entries I've played yet !

10/10

10/10

10/10

Definitely a top contender as well! Great feeling of the character, level design on point BUT I have to take away points for this horrible layout of controls haha arrows are OKAYISH but that Z,X,C was killing me. WASD and maybe I,O,P or J,K,L would have been way better. The art style is one of my favorites and the way the world Blooms was incredible! Amazing idea :) 

One of my favorites for sure. Great art style, good execution sound design are very good. this game has a lot of potential, please keep working on it.

This is really good, probably by fave so far! The only annoying thing was the ledge grab was inconsistant, it felt like I would be on a ledge and it wouldnt grab on. Player feel and art and enemies are awesome though! Hope you can do something with this, its great! If you wouldnt mind checking my submission out, that would be awesome to get your feedback, because you're obviously credible!

nice game, i really love the art style