OOOOOH. MYYY. GODDOOO!!
That game is so ADORABLE!!
I knew this was gonna be one of my favorites just from the cover art and the description alone, and it sure delivered!

The artstyle is extremelly cute! I really like all of it, but I specially ADORE the cutscene pictures and the brewing menu, they're soooo charming!! Everything is charming!!
The music as well? It's all bangers!! There's only like, 3 tracks? But they are all aewsome! And the boss theme is exactly the kind of bossfight vibe I strive for!

And speaking of these bossfights tho?? They're phenomenal! They're sooo simple in concept, but you executed them to a T!
Like, the first boss is the Sun on the background??? And once you beat it the Sun is ACTUALLY gone for the rest of the game???
And the second boss is FRIGGIN NEWTOW'S CRADLE???? AND THE FLOOR TURNS INTO LAVA TO FORCE YOU ABOVE IT????
10000/10, you nailed these, please 25 more on my table asap!

And you honestly also just hit my weakspot tbh, wich is making a game with an actual character with an actual name and actual personality that is actually shown in the game and an actual mini-plot to follow throught. These entries always make me so much more attached to them in a personal level...

Now gameplay wise, it's pretty fun! Movement feels fairly fair and level design is pretty serviceable, despite some shortcomings here and there thanks to the spotlighted mechanics.
Speaking of wich, your abilities system makes me very conflicted on how much of a metroidvania this is, since the upgrades are not things you unlock for Ariana herself, but instead they're "skills" for the enviroment around her, wich is.... quite unseen before for me?
It's definitelly a unique and very creative system, and I deffinitelly can't say they feel like keys to doors since there is a certain amount of deliberate decision making involved on wich one to use when and they do affect how you approach things beyond just opening a passage here or there, but at the same time Ariana is the same from the start to finish, so you really got me backed into a corner here, and honestly, in a good way! What is the purpose of genre conventions if not to be broken, am I right?
That said, there a few places where this system faulters a little, mostly on some spots where you clearly intend for the cloud platforms to go up, but if you jump on them without cloudisol there is no way to come back so you just fall to your doom, and the camera often doesn't make a good job of letting you know the way ahead was a dead end all along. Plus a few blind jumps here and there.
And a little side note since I don't know where also to mention it: I love  how bubbloft makes both Ariana's AND the enemies bubbles to float, it is very amusing x)

Lastly I gotta say, sending you back to the menu everytime you die and making the default selected option "New Game" is super evil lmao, the chances of someone just spamming space to get back to the action quicker and wiping out their progress is huge xD
It didn't happen to me because I was constantly conscious of it, but still, I'd reccomend making "Load" the deafult selection if you're gonna do something like that, or just not sending us back to the menu at all, just make Ariana respawn on the last bed she slept right away.

Aaaanyway, I think that's it, thanks for this very delightfull experience!

Why do spikes instakill you. Why does dying boot me all the way back out to the main menu. Why does said main menu default to selecting new game instead of load. Why am I being put in immediate danger of accidentally deleting my save with one bad key press every time I touch a spike. Please change at least one of these things. Preferably all of them.

Otherwise this overall seems like a decent game, but I did have a good few issues with it. A lot of the enemies are just too fast to reasonably deal with - the ones that drop down from the ceiling end up making basically the entire surface they land on impossible to be on because of how fast they move, and then the projectile shooting ones feel basically impossible to dodge with any reliability - their shots are too fast to weave between, and there doesn't seem to be any way to get them to stop shooting after they start, so I ended up just tanking the damage almost every time I aggroed one. I also had the teleporting enemy straight up teleport on top of me one time, which seems like something that needs to be fixed.

In general I found the combat to be kind of just uninteresting or even frustrating most of the time, though looking at these other comments it seems like I'm in the minority? Maybe it's because I found the bubble stacking to mostly feel janky and awkward rather than satisfying. I feel like the game could've used some more meaningful platforming challenges or mandatory puzzles to pick up the slack from the combat, as I enjoyed the few challenges of that sort I encountered a lot more - the puzzle to get the pig plush was really clever, and the one platforming section with the falling platforms was a lot of fun.

I did really like the theming on this one. It's not the first game in this jam I've seen to take the "side effects" theme to mean that your abilities all have drawbacks, but I think the execution here is the best I've seen so far - designing the game around abilities that are just fundamentally sidegrades makes the drawbacks feel really natural and more interesting than being an upgrade and a drawback tacked together, and all of the upgrades do a good job of feeling like meaningful new powers while still having good reasons to turn them off and on at various points.

The world design was just a little bit off I think. It's mostly fine, but there's a few odd decisions - checkpoint placement was a big one, there's a lot of big stretches with no checkpoints followed by areas where there's a checkpoint what feels like every few paces. The checkpoint droughts are a really big issue as with the aforementioned instakill spikes they lead to some very frequent runbacks, and frankly with how basic both the character controller and combat are the game's general traversal just isn't very interesting without the allure of exploring somewhere new, so these runbacks ended up feeling a bit tedious. There's also a lot of one-way pitfalls in the world that make backtracking feel similarly tedious - you end up having to do these big circles through several already cleared rooms just to check one of them.

I was never able to find my way to the final boss or ending. I'm not really sure where I missed - I tried going back over a couple locations, but I don't really want to comb over the entire map. Maybe a map screen would've helped. I also got stuck for a bit early on because I couldn't figure out how to get through the gate before the first boss - the keyhole on the gate made me think I'd need an actual, physical key to get in, so I just assumed the green circle was decoration and it never crossed my mind that it could be a switch - I think I ended up pressing it on accident while spamming bubbles on like, my third trip to the room and that finally let me move on. Maybe the visuals on that could be adjusted a little to be clearer?

Couple more minor nitpicks:
- The camera being locked to the player is... serviceable, I guess, but doesn't feel particularly great. Something a little more involved might be nice.
- Feel like checkpoints should just heal you to full on interaction rather than healing you slowly over time. The current system felt a little like it was just wasting my time when I needed to heal - it's not like there's any checkpoints in dangerous areas where the difference between those two things could be important.

I don't have a lot to say about the visuals or music. They're alright. I like the cutscene art, and the sky permanently turning to night after you beat the sun boss is a really cool detail. Music also still hasn't gotten grating even after leaving it playing the entire time I've been writing this review, so that's a really good sign. I feel like the game still could've used one more general level theme to add variety, but oh well.

I am rather ironically getting too tired to think clearly so I'm gonna stop here :p. I know I complained about a lot, but I hope I said enough about the stuff I did like, because there was a lot of good here! Definitely one of the best uses of the theme I've played so far.

Really fun game and great implementation of the theme! The art style, music and controls reminded me of a mixture between Wario Land 4 and Super Mario World. The protagonist was adorable and fun to control, and I quite appreciated how easy it was to tell the different enemy types apart by their silhouettes. The bosses were really cool and had some neat attack patterns, too! I think the pendulum boss was the coolest and most unique in terms of how the fight played out.

Some of the rooms felt a bit big and empty, and it took me a while to find the final boss. Aside from that, my only minor complaints were that the enemies that drop on you from the ceiling were a bit too fast, activating/deactivating the square enemies while being above them felt a bit inconsistent, and the first and last bosses could do with a shorter delay before the fight when dropping into the arena on subsequent attempts. On the other hand, the cutscenes were gorgeous and the story was really sweet and heartwarming, and I think I managed to get all the secret plushies! 

[SPOILERS BELOW]

I got an ending with the protagonist repairing the teddy bear and chilling on the beach, I'm not sure if that was the best ending or if I missed something? Either way, outstanding job, and definitely a top contender for me!

Absolutely incredible!!!!! Very well polished, every boss fight was a struggle, and each boss had quite the dramatic entrance! The potion mechanic really felt like experiencing the side effects of your combinations, especially after I noticed the bubble ingredient affected the enemy's bubbles too.

I never figured out how to get the pig plushy though.

I think it might be cool if your bubbles could pick up items for you, sometimes when I defeated an enemy on the ceiling a heart would spawn but I couldn't jump high enough to reach it. There was also one spot to the left of the starting bed that if the red blocks were active and I tried to jump up the platforms, I would get crushed between the platform and the red blocks and die.

Great story, art, and music, and fantastic job with the game mechanics too! Bravo!!!

A cute and fun Metroidvania game!

The cutscenes before the game are a nice touch!

And some very clever puzzles (pushing the block to reach the plushie) and boss scenarios (the background element being a boss is class!)

The music is nice and there are a few sound effects.

No notes - this is a stacked game! (Maybe some more game content in the future? :D)

Excellent work on this - you knocked it out of the park!

This was really fun! The bubble attack felt unique and fun to use, especially since I could spam it. To balance that, it might be worth it to increase enemy HP a smidge? Most of my enemy encounters ended pretty quickly, even in large amounts, so more enemy HP could maybe balance that. I also think dying immediately when hitting spikes is a bit harsh, especially since there's not too many save points scattered around. I also didn't realize I needed to press Load Save after dying, so for a bit I kept starting new playthroughs! A quick prompt on the menu could clear that up.

As a metroidvania, I really like the mechanics! The bubbles floating up is especially unique, and I love how all the abilities are toggleable. I also enjoyed the first boss, really surprised when I saw it for the first time! The boss itself was also designed quite well, and it's attacks looked really polished. Unfortunately, I got lost and didn't now how to proceed after getting floating bubbles. I wish I could have gotten further, but you have a lot of neat stuff here! Congrats!

What a silly little girl she is!! First of all cute game love it second of all love the aimable bubbles (reminds me of me as a child blowing bubbles :3 )

I love that you included cut scenes! The bubbles the character throws are also really fun!

Because the you can aim with the mouse and I was playing with a controller, I think it was effecting the player direction. At first she was only facing one way and I couldn't figure out how to face the blocks to make them stop moving or throw bubbles the way I wanted. Once I figured out what was going on and that I could aim with the other controller stick, the puzzles were a blast! (I probably should have read the instructions on the page closer lol) Still, I wonder if there's a way to disable the mouse sensor when you're playing with a controller.

Loved the boss fight and it's music! 

I ended with 3 plushes (+ the teddy bear) and 25 hit points.

I enjoyed the game a ton. The  tunes are all awesome and the game looks cool, especially the "cutscenes" but I also really like the enemies animation. Exploration is great, I really like that the abilities are switches (neither a bonus nor a penalty) and the best one in this aspect is really the floating bubbles as it changes fighting, I love that the enemies' bubbles are floating as well by the way. I enjoyed working my way into picking the secrets, the best part was reaching the pig early, thinking I would have to get back later then when I got all the abilities I got back and realised I had to work harder to get it, that was great. The boss fights are super cool, great staging especially the classroom one, and the overall difficulty was exactly as I wanted to be at the moment it was perfect.

The game would likely benefit from some extra sound feedback here and there (for example when you get hit or when you hit a button with a bubble).