Play game
The Crystal Cycle's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #177 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Visuals | #491 | 3.941 | 3.941 |
| Overall | #595 | 3.612 | 3.612 |
| Audio | #611 | 3.412 | 3.412 |
| Creativity & Theme | #889 | 3.647 | 3.647 |
| Seriousness | #1767 | 3.059 | 3.059 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Game Engine
Godot
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.


Comments
The audio and art is very good and the grapple mechanic feels very fun. I think at checkpoints since it does get frustrating at some points restarting. Pretty good :)
Really loved the visuals for the game and the audio design. The hook mechanic felt very responsive, and the levels were well designed. Overall, great entry with a great atmosphere.
This is awesome for a first game! There are lots of nice little design decisions (like the MC's jump being so tiny, which really encourages using the grapple hook). The grapple hook was a great choice, and there's all kinds of neat movement tech possible there. It feels like you spent a lot of time tuning how the grapple hook feels, and it shows (it feels great to move around in). The level/puzzle design is also great. And the art and music give a really nice sense of atmosphere; everything fits into a cohesive picture.
A couple of things I would suggest (feel free to take these with a grain of salt, but just thoughts that occurred to me as I played through):
All-in-all, this was a fantastic jam entry, especially for a first game! Very polished, and very fun. Great work, and keep it up! :)
Thank you so much! We spent a ton of time making the grapple feel really good, so I'm very happy that it comes across that way. As for the player movement, we definitely could have used some more tweaking before it felt as polished as we wanted. We also agree that the difficulty ramps up very quickly, and the game could definitely benefit from checkpoints. All in all, we're very pleased with how everything came together, and we're glad it shows how much effort and time went into this project! Thank you for the kind words!
Big fan of how responsive everything feels, it's hard to get a hookshot working this well, great game!
Epic game, really enjoyed the grapiling mechanic. The respawn button was not working for me tho so I had to go to the level select to respawn everytime.
Hmm that is strange, it should just be 'R' and you should be able to press it even before you died. What browser are you using?
The lights at good grapple spots were maybe a bit heavy handed, but did make it pretty easy to figure out how one was expected to get through the level.
Overall, I thought this was pretty neat.
Fun platforming, needs checkpoints tho
A good game with a pleasant atmosphere. Unfortunately, I didn't have the patience to fully master the mechanics, though I might return to it someday. :)
The movement system is actually deep enough to be engaging, and the levels make good use of it. However, it felt a bit too demanding regarding timing (the character latches on very quickly)—though perhaps I just didn't get used to it in time.
By the way, early on, I felt an urge to climb onto the ceiling or get under the floor. I managed to do it, but it didn't yield anything. The game's mechanics naturally encourage that kind of behavior. Make of that what you will. :)
I would add some secrets.
Great game all around given the time constraints. Presentation wise this is fantastic, very clear explanation of how to play plus visual cues. My only critique is that switching from right mouse to left mouse when the hammer is flung feels off, I kept expecting the hammer to just latch to the wall. Maybe making it so that the hammer automatically attaches to walls, but left click drags the player towards the hammer would feel better?
Hey Helperguy, I think what you described might be what we currently have? If you throw the hammer into the wall (once fully charged/in range of hitting a wall) it should slam into the wall and you have like half a second to click to pull you towards the hammer. You can kinda click and hold before as it reaches so it feels better and makes it easier. Also you could go the pause settings menu and switch the left and right click if that feels better. If any of those helps let us know and if I am misunderstanding this also let me know lol.
OH!!! yeap that explains it, I was just basically detaching myself early.
Great game all around given the time constraints. Presentation wise this is fantastic, very clear explanation of how to play plus visual cues. My only critique is that switching from right mouse to left mouse when the hammer is flung feels off, I kept expecting the hammer to just latch to the wall. Maybe making it so that the hammer automatically attaches to walls, but left click drags the player towards the hammer would feel better?
I really enjoyed it! Nice art and really cool movement system, it kinda lacks momentum from letting the hammer go while flying, to give the character a swing mid air. It would have been 100x more satisfying imo.
Good work!
It took me a while to enjoy this game, but then it clicked, and all of the sudden I was a speedrunner
There are a couple things holding this game back, though. The grapple approach that this game takes is an interesting one, it allows for a lot of flexibility, but also can feel very finicky. Moving the player directly toward the grapple point gives you the ability to stack momentum, but it also frequently feels "floaty". This is somewhat alleviated by the heavy control over lateral movement you have while grappling (which, to be fair, I'm not totally sure is a good thing). I don't know what would actually make it feel better to control, but in it's current state, it does hold the game back a bit. Some other things: The crystal hitboxes feel unfair at times, and the camera position smoothing takes away a lot of precision at high speeds. I think instead of smooth camera follow, it should lead ahead of the player at all times, which won't look as good, but will help the precision.
Overall, great game, I played it for much longer that I do most jam games
Yeah we spend a lot of time on trying to get the hammer mechanics to feel good, I think we would have needed an entire rework on it to feel really nice. We did do playtesting, but I wish that we would have done more to get a better feel of how a general audience actually feels about it. I'm glad that if was able to click for you after some time.