itch.io

Unreasonably good across the board. I really liked the skill-based components of combat. There was some real tension between taking the safe route vs trying to optimize wax usage. I ended up losing a lot of life to the armor arms. With my stats, I could do one burn and two slashes for a total of 5 wax, or just do two burns for a total of 6. I kept thinking I would just save the one wax by doing two slashes only to miss the dodge on the extra turn and end up taking >10 hp. Very memorable finale for me as well. I ended up down to my last life and low enough hp that one hit would kill me. I managed to lock in and get it done, with the extra couple wax to make it to the end. I hate to imagine some poor soul out there has beaten the boss only to melt down on the one room in between, lol.

Man, I panicked and lost about 5 shots to the first ‘sleeper’ that I came across. The rising SFX when you’re about to wake one up is incredibly suspenseful. It is manageable enough to back up a bit and scan the horizon until you start hearing a second sleeper start to wake. Had a couple of those happen. Great horror experience.

Also, as an aside on the loon sounds: the wail is the most iconic one (looooooow hiiiiiigh low) but the one with lots of short bits ( low hi hi hi low ) is the one they use for predators. This bit of bird lore made those SFX extra stressful, haha.

Very creative use of the theme. In particular, a lot of levels made great use of the fact that the digits could be changing in relevant ways whilst you are mid-jump.

Working around the parity restrictions in this one can be quite tricky!

The music track was great and I loved how it synced up with the traps! I was initially confused on which doors I could enter before realizing the gear rotation was relevant. I also have to imagine the difficulty can vary quite a bit depending on the order in which you activate the switches. I managed to make it through without having to restart and hyperoptimize. I think the spikes definitely gave me the most trouble, lol. Very fun!

The “follow they key” shell game is suddenly the hardest thing in the world when there are 100 other distractions popping up around the screen. Brutal review in the credits, lol. Hopefully not so harsh for the actual jam ratings.

Okay, so the interpretation of the jam theme here is actually flipping sick. There is no explicit countdown timer, but the ceaseless force of erosion is always inching the island towards erasure. The controls were a little unclear from the get-go, but once I figured out that you could left -or- right click to choose what action to take on each tile, it made a lot more sense. It definitely felt great to hit a good relic combo and then go crazy with the points. BUT even with seemingly unlimited relics, you always seem to end up with some relics that ultimately bring back the inevitable tide of erosion. Super cool concept and I’m honestly a little bummed out that a lot of people have probably passed on this due to not having a web build. I was there to witness it, at the very least. Bravo, dev!

I like the sprite for the count! The art direction and literal direction had me thinking of Downwell while I was playing.

Very fun idea! The “kill your clone” mechanic is an interesting way to branch off into different possibilities. It also provides for some slapstick moments where your clone yeets a box at you and you die on the spot.

I liked the level where you had to sync up with yourself to jump to the next platform while your past self switched between the buttons. I had my first looper do a little left/right dance to help me figure out the timing. I appreciate that the difficulty wasn’t too crazy here. Chain a few more of those jumps in a row and you can quickly get into rage game territory, lol.

The risk/reward tension here is really interesting: if you have a big number approaching the kill zone, you can either try to hammer it down with as many hits as possible or try to focus on some weak spots along either axis. There ends up being a bit more strategy than it would seem at first glance!

Level 7 definitely had me thinking it wasn’t possible for quite a while before I finally put the final pieces together. Glad you left the note about level 3 or I might have spent a fair amount of time questioning my sanity trying to solve it. Otherwise, I really like the idea of winding up a clockwork toy as an interpretation of the theme!

I did run into the bug where the spikes fail to raise/lower when you step on a button. It seems to happen whenever you restart the level while a button is currently held down. Wanted to mention in case anyone else gets stuck on this.

The final level was pretty challenging! It felt like there were a lot of ways to go wrong, so you really had to think clearly about what you’re trying to accomplish in order to make it through to the end.

Really striking art style! It reminds me a lot of the old Invader Zim animation.

Had a lot of fun with this one! The realism is impeccable: I’m thousands of dollars in debt and getting a dog anyway… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I mapped my click to the scroll wheel and the game locked me out for using the forbidden technology.

tags: psychological horror

Yes. Yes indeed…

The first time around, I managed to get most of the way through the submission page when the deadline hit. 💀

Super juicy effects! The core gameplay loop is solid, but having the escalating levels of effects popping off for more intricate combos really seals the deal. Great work!

Same

Fun little puzzlebox despite the DQ.

Amazing that this setup works. I’m not sure if my solution was optimal, but I did not have very much overhead left at all.

I love when a puzzle game can get a ton of juice from a minimal set of components. The rolling candles that light, meltdown, and extinguish are apparently enough for some very compelling puzzle setups. Level 13 put me to work and the challenge remained elevated throughout. What a gem!

Poor Bob going blue in the lips with his constant wheezings and exertions. Anyways, I speedran the any% ending in 20.00 seconds. Also, crazy that every 1 in 100 votes is currently going to this one game given the current ratings/entries metric. Definitely a strong hint for us to consider what makes this game so good.

This was awesome. I don’t know who out there is so dead inside that they’re not maxing out the grooviness parameter, but I would have dragged that slider off the right side of my screen if I could. I always like to go minimal components in these sorts of games, so it was fun trying to repurpose waste output into new numbers. If I had my pick to change one thing, however, I’d definitely be bringing those higher count requirements down by a lot. It takes longer to count down as-is, but going all the way to 100 with no fast forward takes a long time.

Made it through all the levels. I’m curious if you had other levels drafted for the last few empty rooms or if it was just a placeholder?

Phew! Glad to know it isn’t just me. There was at least one other level where perseverance got me to the solution, so I didn’t want to throw in the towel too early.

I died an embarrassing number of times to the pawns despite learning exactly how they move and attack half a dozen levels prior. I liked the level with the knights where they slowly take each other out until you only have the one remaining knight to deal with.

Funny concept. In a strange way, the game can get more difficult the more different games you’ve played since you then have to forget any stale mnemonics from prior runs.

Very fun, but I’ve gotten myself into a spot where I’m not convinced level 10 is possible. I’ve discovered enough mechanics to be able to solve it if the egg timers were switched, but I’m just not seeing what else it could be. Is the level solvable from this state? Not necessarily looking for any hints, but if you can confirm if it is solvable from here or solvable from a different state, then I’d be happy to come back and ponder a bit more. I’ve done all the other levels, so this is the last holdout. I’d love to round it out!

Awesome look and feel! I really loved the narrative that you’re digging up body parts and zapping them together into “close enough” monsters. It’s not hard to imagine filling out the gameplay loop with upgrades to provide longer lifespans etc. in order to have this pop off into a more incremental-style gameplay loop.

I like the visual style and the ensemble of puzzle mechanics here. I saw on the main page that you mentioned running low on time to continue with more level design, which is a shame. Some of the latter levels definitely suggest that difficulty and complexity could scale up quite high under the right conditions. Glad you were able to get these 10 levels out, though! It was fun to play.

Really stellar visual juice here! The subtle motion (shader?) puts forth a cute/playful vibe. I was also mesmerized by whatever smearing effect was going on the background of the pause menu.

On the puzzle side of things, I’m glad there is a “chill” mode in addition to the timed mode to cater to both ends of the think-y <> do-y spectrum.

Neat idea! I didn’t realize you could choose when to split off until level 17, which seems to be the first place where it is a hard requirement. I felt like some of the puzzles could probably be culled in order distill things down to new mechanics and new ways to use them. As others have said, the art here is really beautiful. It definitely carried the vibe of a strange creature that splits into different eggies.

Gave me a chuckle on a handful of occasions. I goofed toward the end and the “Good job! Wait, wrong person” message got me good.

Very fun puzzle x metroidvania crossover! The item/ability setups did a great job allowing incremental progression across the map. I did have some trouble getting started, however, due to screen boundaries obscuring certain paths into new areas. The other friction point I found was the lack of visual indicator for what the currently inactive switch colors are. This would have helped the puzzling side of things a bit toward the end rather than just running around flipping each switch by hand. Still very fun overall!

This is fantastic. I love how planning around the simple goal of sorting your cards in order feels like an actual game of <<your favorite TCG>>. Loved the little visual indicators at the bottom and the tap mechanic. “STORM” was a great way to add another layer of complexity to it. The solution to the last level also gave me a laugh.

I really liked the ramp in difficulty. The early “here is what you’re doing” levels quickly lead into some tougher setups that force you to think through the plan. Of course, level 8 really sets the stage for the best parts of this game. Very interesting puzzles from such a simple rule set. Very cool setup in level 14. It was a nice reprieve from the tough sokoban’ing in room 13.

Very challenging puzzles hiding in seemingly simple setups. The core mechanic puts in just a boat load of mileage throughout. Fantastic work here.

I don’t know why, but the fading ball trail made me feel like I was crushing it (probably more so than I actually was, lol). I did try out the highest difficulty and it felt like it was not too much trouble to get the counter arbitrarily high. I imagine the time added could be slimmed down a bit for the sake of difficulty balance.