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drainhopper's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| I appreciate the sound design and/or music | #27 | 3.380 | 3.380 |
| I appreciate the mood/atmosphere | #29 | 3.560 | 3.560 |
| I appreciate the art/visual style | #30 | 3.640 | 3.640 |
| I find this game's challenge/puzzles interesting or compelling | #39 | 2.600 | 2.600 |
| Overall | #51 | 2.851 | 2.851 |
| I would buy a longer/commercial version of this game | #57 | 1.960 | 1.960 |
| This game was intuitive and self-explanatory | #62 | 2.980 | 2.980 |
| I appreciate the game-feel (responsiveness of interactions) | #85 | 1.840 | 1.840 |
Ranked from 50 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Jam Entry Confirmation
IGC collab jam 2026
The Team
Noah Ensslin - programming and some art
Corwin Defeo - music
We both came up with the theme for the game together.
Other Credits
Please see desc on the game page
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Comments
I enjoyed the concept, art, and music. The jump mechanic definitely seemed interesting, with both the mouse and spacebar driving the distance - however after using it a bit, I was questioning why both were necessary. I was getting really frustrated getting hung up on walls, and having lots of slowdowns/bugged physics stuff happening. I loved using my tongue to press buttons. Ultimately, the character controller was feeling too clunky to fight off some frustration and I was not able to finish. Perhaps have a more responsive/faster attack animation, and give some player feedback on the jump power? The jump control scheme is indeed interesting - in fact I forgot that I could even move traditionally with a/d for quite a while, and was just hoppin along as my primary locomotion.
Here's a playtest
I liked the concept for sure, I kind of wish there was a bit more a visual representation of the jump, like a wind up that you could see the power of the jump.
Unique game! I expected it to be a typical (fast) platformer, but after understanding the combination between the mouse and the key presses, I started to play it very slowly, almost puzzle like. Not sure if this was the intended outcome? Just curious! A neat and memorable game in any case.
Thanks! I think the fact you need to angle the jumps and that you can't move while charging the jump just naturally makes the game play more slowly. I did want to add more puzzle elements than just the boxes, but only had so much time.
Really cool concept for the controls, and different from anything I've played before. Some indication of power on the jump would be nice (e.g. a gauge showing how far off max-power you are).
Because they're so different from other games, the controls are tough to get your head around, which makes the pace quite slow and even some basic platforming areas quite tough. I'd love to play more of this, but I'd definitely need easier levels to get used to the controls.
Really liked it.
music is killer, and concept is pretty cool, but the controls are not intuitive and let to frustration.
I like the music a lot.
I was able to kill the first mouse, but then those steps up to the waterfall are reallly hard to climb up! I made it to the top once, but then fell back down and gave up. 🤪
I wasn't sure what the 2nd instruction panel was saying.
To me, it looks like the message is "You will jump higher if the mouse pointer is farther away", but that didn't seem to be the case. 🤷♂️
Music was cool, frog is cute. Like others have said, the jump-power mechanic could use some feedback as could the switches. (maybe im dumb though)
I am probably not the best to judge, not being a big fan of these kinds of platformers specifically but the levels really could make better use of the 'aiming the jump' idea...
Personally I think I would also enjoy this more if it was more 'casual' in every respect (purely speaking to my tastes): more of a 'flappy birds meets sonic concept' maybe and I would also drop the combat entirely.. focus on 'being a frog' at high speed with the aimed jump.. Interesting idea though!
(idk why my review posted 3 times lol)
Great game! I love being the drainhopper. Some real-time indicators for everything explained in the starting room would have made controlling the character feel more reliable.
I had trouble on trackpad, but still had a good time. Nice work.
Love this idea! The attack definitely needs to be faster, and triggering it when the mouse button is pressed down rather than released would help a lot with the feel too. The puzzles were surprisingly satisfying. I think I was almost to the end before I got myself stuck between a crate and a wall lol
Echoing others, but the addition of a jump strength indicator and the trajectory would really improve this. Otherwise loved the idea, visuals and music!
the design and map look very clean, unlike some others it was obvious for me what to do from the begining. and also like many others i agree a visualisation of the jump strength would be nice
Really interesting concept and love the art and music! The controls feel a bit unintuitive; I wonder if a mouse click to jump or at least a visual indicator to show how far you're going to go would feel better. I think players are so used to jumping on button click instead of on button release in these types of games that changing the responsiveness might impact gamefeel. I also cannot get past the first gate, not sure if that's a bug/missing visual cues or a skill issue on my part.
A suggestion for the controls:
Art seems nice, but unfortunately I couldn’t play much because I keep getting stuck in some places after exiting the first door. Also the jumping badly needs some kind of strength/angle indicator to remove the guesswork.
Well, the other comments capture my thoughts. I think a good way to make the jump more intuitive/useful/way less frustrating would've been to show it's arc before you jumped. I ended just never using the arrow keys because everything was vertical, and the complete lack of air control made the jumping even more annoying. The very slow sword strikes were also annoying.
So the movement needs more work, but I can see some good bones here.
I appreciate the feedback! Thanks for playing.
There was a bug in the door at the beginning of the game. And then at some random point in the game i couldn't move anymore. Other than that i liked the art style mostly.
thanks for playing! There are sadly a few spots where the player can get stuck and I wasn't able to fix it in time. I am planning on addressing that and other feedback and publishing an updated version sometime after the jam.
Ok maybe i didnt get something but it seems that you can only jump to the right? frog auto turns to the right so after pressing the first button i was unable to jump out of the pit
Very interesting design but personally i dont like the jumping logic since its bit hard and player needs to stop in order to jump
Interesting concept, I really like your combination of mechanics but it felt very clunky to control. With a little bit more work on the communication this can be viable! I would even play it without the arrow keys.