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Hey, coming from the rate-for-rate and I want to start by saying this is probably my favorite entry I've played so far. It's insane that this game only has a few ratings, it 100% deserves more. I didn't end up completing level 3, although I got very close. Here is my feedback (keep in mind how far I got just in case I missed anything important later on):


The aesthetics of the game were great, they felt juicy, cohesive, and overall just looked really good. I don't think the screenshots do the game justice lol, it looks much better in-game. The music was fantastic and was part of the reason I even played as long as I did. It reminded me a lot of Deltarune's music with the chord progression and upbeat drums. I would have liked to be able to fully appreciate the game in my ultrawide monitor (with no black bars) but for a 2d game I can see why you might not want to reveal more of the map to players who pay for a wider screen lol. I think something as minor as a hue shift for the tiles or a slightly different instrumentation for the music would go a long way with appeal (especially in the screenshots), as that would essentially show people browsing the page that you have more content than if all of the levels looked the same.


As for the controls, at first it definitely took a bit getting used to, especially with me confusing WASD with up/down/left/right arrows. I would recommend that, since the mouse is not used, to simply hide it when the game opens, as it confused me for a moment before I realized to use WASD/E for the menu (I think having Enter be an interact key for the menu would have been nice too). After getting used to all the mechanics eventually like down grappling and slowing the fall, the controls felt satisfying to use and it felt good to maneuver around the map dexterously.

For level design, I think the levels were mostly good; they introduced mechanics at a good pace and felt like they were of adequate difficulty. I would personally have probably split the third level into two or even three, as it was much longer than the first two. There were some parts of levels (I think level 3?) where there was a blind jump that killed me which was a bit frustrating (although I might have just not known/forgotten about pressing E), and some spots felt like they could have used an earlier checkpoint, as losing all of that progress hurt sometimes. There were also some times where I walked off a ledge and grappling would not work when falling for some reason. Besides that, the levels felt very solid and fun to play around with.

Overall this was a super great entry and I think if you just joined some streams and posted in more rate-for-rate forms (or started some of your own) you could really give this game the recognition it deserves. Another commenter wrote how an HTML version would help, and I agree, but I also get that if this was made in Godot (where HTML doesn't support forward+, shaders lag, and is generally more unstable) it makes total sense why you'd do an executable build. For future reference though I would definitely recommend exporting a linux build too, as that should be just as easy as Windows and would open your game up to a plethora of new players. I just want to say you guys did an awesome job and this was the most fun entry I've played so far even though I didn't make it that far at all, so great job, I am very impressed!

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That is a huge compliment, genuinely thank you so much! The fact you played enough to almost get to level 4 means a lot to me. I assume most people stop before they finish level 2.

I appreciate your comments on the game feel and artstyle! So I actually took into account what you said about the screenshots not doing the game justice, because I 100% agreed with you subconsciously, and then I started to actually think about why. The screenshots were way too small, so you didn’t really get to see the pixel art in a crisp way. I’ve zoomed in on those screenshots so they are more visually coherent and don’t require an inspection to appreciate.

And that is such a compliment on the music! Toby Fox is my biggest inspiration musically, so to have my tracks be compared to that is very reassuring. 

I do wish I had made some more variation in the tilesets as well, the color palette is kinda gross on its own (intentionally) so having more brick textures or background elements for some levels would have been best. I’ll consider adding them in a patch :) 

Fun fact, the music was originally going to be more dynamic, and add more instruments based on what level you were on! I decided against it, because I didn’t think most people would be able to appreciate the music to its fullest extent. I could definitely see how the music as-is might result in driving somebody crazy lol. I think the track could have definitely benefitted from being longer, or the game could have had one or more songs added to the rotation.

Yeah, I agree with you on the 3rd level. I think there is a lot of visual clutter in the 2nd half of the 3rd level. I think the problem lies in the distance between checkpoints, so in the patch, I’ve made this level a lot more lenient, and cleaned up any walls that don’t serve an immediate function :) 

I have taken the html pill for this game jam LOL, I should have just sacrificed one of my levels to be able to figure out the problems with my web build. I currently have a version of the game that seeks to work out your critiques, and it’s also built for the web! I should have done it sooner, and I’m paying the price for it. But these in-depth reviews help lift my spirits, so thank you again for giving my game your time.

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Hi! I am back and I have finished the game after a few hours lol (I collected the poops for every level except 5), and I think it was a ton of fun and I have some more feedback now that I've seen everything. 

For one, I just want to say this is a very solid entry and it has a ton of content for only being made in 9 days, so awesome job on that. That being said, I will start with this: I think that the ability to go between checkpoints would be helpful for certain collectible poops that are only obtainable with certain checkpoints. I figured out that my issue with the grappling sometimes not working only seemed to happen on level 3 with all of the diagonals, so take that as you will. I think for level 4 and the exploding projectiles, the tiny ones should disappear after a few seconds since they were interfering with earlier points in the level that I would go through if I died, making the part before that section a little harder. Level 5 was quite large (not just length, but size too) and I think that zooming out wasn't sufficient enough to see what I needed to, since there were still some blind jumps. Maybe a way to preview the entire map could suffice? I think in general, all of the levels 3+ could have been split into 2 levels each, with each one introducing a new mechanic on their own (pipe, exploding projectiles, directional tiles, liquid, etc.) instead of having one level introduce several.

Currently, pressing the escape key brings you to the menu, which tripped me up a few times (thinking that it would pause and sending me back). My advice would be to either have [ESC] open a pause menu (since most gamers are accustomed to this standard), or, if you really want to keep [ESC] as the menu, either require it to be held for a second (similar to Deltarune) or have a confirmation dialogue pop up so that the player must confirm that they want to lose their progress. I think this would save a lot of future frustration from any players.

Since this is for a game jam, in the future I would recommend making the game quite a bit easier, simply because most people won't have the time and/or dedication to play the entire thing if it frustrates them. I did enjoy the game enough to complete it despite the frustrations lol, and I would totally play a steam release of this if it were available in the future. But as for balancing, since it seems you are solo, my best advice would be to try to get other people to playtest it before the jam ends, as it is incredibly valuable to see how others play your game before sending it out to the wilderness of Itch. If that isn't feasible, and you are the only playtester, then you should go by the rule of thumb where if you feel the game is just right (in terms of difficulty), it is likely too hard. Likewise, if you think it is too easy, it is probably just right. Trust me, I have had several games where I thought it was the perfect difficulty and it ended up being WAY too hard 😅, so just keep that in mind as you move forward. That is really all I have to say, this was a really solid entry and definitely my favorite so far, so great job and I hope to see this game expanded upon since I seriously enjoyed it and would love to watch it become something bigger. Please do let me know if you plan on expanding this game and where I could go to watch the development of it, because I am very interested. BTW, I am curious, what engine did you use to make this game?

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Wow! You have no idea how much it means to me to have somebody complete level 5, that is just such an encouragement. 

To address your point with the grapple sometimes not working, that will be fixed in the post-jam patch : )

Going between checkpoints is a great idea! It’s definitely unfair that if you missed one of the poops after reaching a checkpoint that it would gate you from going back and collecting it. I’m going to try to implement that before the patch releases. 

For the exploding projectiles, I agree. It has been changed so the death rattle bullets now only last for a second and a half. 

And yeah the zooming is kinda primitive, the player should be able to see more. A lot of these puzzles call for larger rooms because of how high Grapplo can jump, and how far they can extend their antennas. If you don’t know where you are falling to or where you plan to go, that’s frustrating. I’ll be changing the way the zoom works, so that it’s a toggle rather than holding down “E”. Since the player is already sitting still when zooming, using WASD will move the camera around :) 

When I initially created these puzzles on graph paper, my assumption was that each level should increase in length, and I think the core of the problem is that I was equating difficulty and length. Sure, it might be a good idea to have each level get a BIT longer as you play them, but level 5 is practically twice as long as level 3 lol. So if I develop this game in the future (which I’m definitely considering, there are so many puzzle ideas I had that I didn’t get to implement) I’ll design the levels around their consistent length, rather than whatever ideas I come up with. The water mechanic was one of those things that opened Pandora's box for puzzles lol, so that on top of wanting to pull out all of the stops for the final level culminated in what you are describing.

I actually watched a friend play this game and they accidentally pressed esc to pause twice. It was VERY demoralizing. For the sake of the post-jam patch, I’m going to require that you hold down the button (similar to deltarune like you said!) and then in the future, I’ll figure out pause functionality.

YUP, the difficulty philosophy is a truth nuke lol. Designing a game by yourself can be quite  desensitizing. Not getting anybody to test this before I put up the version that is up now is one of the many things I’m kicking myself for. Knowing all of the solutions to the puzzles, I can beat the game in like 10-15 minutes, and that was the perspective I was viewing the experience from. It heavily influenced the length of the levels and the checkpoint placements. 

Hearing this feedback has been invaluable in helping me identify my thought processes, so truly, thank you so much!

If I ever do end up expanding this game into a full project, I made a youtube channel today that I’d potentially upload to (@ScrapboxGames). I can’t promise that I’ll have anything soon, though.

Also, I used GameMaker! :)

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This game is too peak I'm forcing the rest of my team to play this masterpiece