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A little bare-bones, but that's okay. I like this game, and I think it's adorable. Congrats on participating and I wish you all the best.

I'm free-falling, baby!

Not much to this game. Amusing though. Thanks for making it! I hope you were able to move into your new dorm well. Congrats on participating and I wish you all the best.

All good. I'm a platformer fan as well. Hindi naman ata precision o timing yung mahirap dito; yung randomness ng red balls at yung bilis ng boss yung mahirap para sakin. 

Masyado ata mahirap yung boss HAHAHAH pero ang galing. Ang cute nito sobra. I always love PICO-8 games. Congrats on participating and I wish you the best!

Funny and fun, a great combination! I don't even really know what else to say. It's a simple arcade that forces players to commit things to memory and let the urgent chaos wash over them as they desperately try to find the gifts they need. It's a great base for a fun game that could definitely be expanded upon! My only comment is that, right now, 5 items isn't enough to really feel the 'overwhelming chaos' that this game could easily excel in. This is just my idea, but it might be worth considering having multiple rounds with increasing item needs (until it reaches such point that it's practically impossible to memorize all of them)! Not only would this amp up the chaos, but also heighten the skill ceiling of the game in a natural way, and increase replayability as well. Nonetheless, great job! Love this game. Congrats on participating and I wish you all the best!

Oh, hey! Your team made a very similar game to ours! Another item-packing, space-fitting game. The shapes and overall mechanics of this game are a lot simpler in favor of a timed round-based system, lending to a much different, more urgent vibe compared to ours. I like it! I do have a few comments with regards to the base concepts that underlie this game:

* Since items are almost exclusively rectangular, packing is honestly not that hard on an also rectangular grid. The game's challenge is actually more about mouse maneuvering than space packing as a result.

* I'm a little unsure as to what the "High Turbulence" warning/mechanic does. I have a hunch that it is supposed to reset the position of the current item being held, but since the mouse position is not reset, the item is still placed upon release. But my point is not the lack of visual-mechanical parity, but moreso to the point of the High Turbulence mechanic's existence in the first place.

However, even still, I quite like this game! I appreciate that it's an attempt at a more game-y aspect as compared to the overwhelming amount of story-focused submissions. I love the art, and I thought the whole ordeal was a cute package. Congrats for participating and I wish Team Elysian the best.

Thank you for trying out our game! Not to scare you, but there are 8 more levels after Mikey & Joanne😅

Not to worry! Every level is possible, and your game progress is always saved, so feel free to try again whenever you're bored. Thank you again!

Jesus f***ing Christ. Some of you in the team also worked on a game I liked for this year's GMTK, and this feels like that if it were more personal and fleshed out. A terrific showing of unique storytelling, among already incredible submissions in the jam. Give it enough polish, time, and budget, and I can easily imagine that scene with the items in the province house being something incredible, given how gripping it already is here. Great job team! Congrats for participating at all and I wish you folks the best.

What a really good base for a game. The standout here is the story, told through interstitial handdrawn comic-style cutscenes, filling this game with a wonderful, home-like charm. When fitted with the polished and beautiful art, PasalubMon really comes to life. Congrats on making this game! Ang ganda niya, sobra. I'm in love with it.

As for the game itself: it's an impressively done base. Obviously, the 4 day time limit means you folks could only do 3 bosses (which is already pretty impressive!), so I won't comment on the quantity or expanse here. Instead, I'll focus on the fundamental base of the game and comment on what I like and what could be added upon or improved further.

The gameplay loop is split into two parts: preparation and combat. The combat itself is perfectly fine; it's a standard turn-order system with the added caveat of the Cat and the Special boss move when they reach 30% health. The cat is rather uninteresting at the moment. From what I can tell, the Cat seems to be made available after a certain number of rounds (or damage?). It's uninteresting because I think it's just something you just click on and not think about, thus not adding more depth to the combat system than it potentially could. This isn't necessarily a 'flaw' per se, but personally, I'd consider amping up the Cat. One of my ideas is to turn the cat into a 'hail mary' — something that could only be used if the player's mons are below a certain HP threshold. This way, the cat becomes a game element that comes into play during desperation than something simply automatic/thoughtless. Also, I encountered a scenario where my cat seemingly killed a boss (the rat boss), but it still performed its special boss move and healed, thus not granting me the win which felt unsatisfying. Might want to either kill the boss entirely when it reaches 0 HP, or make sure that they visually stay at 1 HP to prevent false information.

Meanwhile, the preparation system, inspired by mage spell prep in RPGs, is I think a much more interesting system! It lends the game a strategy dimension, and I personally find it to be the most captivating part. Good job! My only concern here is the mathematics. Think about it: if my pasalubmons only get called into battle when I cast a spell on them, then the value of casting multiple spells onto one mon will inherently be lower than if I had spread my spells upon multiple mons, as each spell not only gives its associated buff but also introduces an extra force in my favor. Again, this isn't a 'flaw', but it concerns me with regards to this game's expandability. You would either need to delicately design your skills in such a way that they complement both multi-mon and single-mon builds, or add some sort of extra incentive to putting multiple spells onto one mon. The base stat differential can help you out there, but some extra incentivizing mechanic may be in order as well.

Sorry for the lengthy comment! I love love love your game. Congrats on participating for this jam, and I wish you team the best!

EDIT: I wanted to add, your music and sound volume sliders don't work quite right! My guess is that you're treating the dB scale as thought it were linear, but -5 dB is already pretty quiet. This means that placing the music slider halfway through already completely quiets the music :>

Hey Co_lloid! I tried your game, and it looks wonderful, but I seem to be a bit stuck right after pressing play! Nothing I press seems to do anything, and I waited for five minutes and nothing seemed to have happened? Feel free to DM me at discord (@cookiejar2025) and tell me how I can proceed, if ever. Would love to give your game a real shot!

Hi everyone! In case you face any 'impossible' levels, try updating to v1.5. Thank you!

P.S.: We assure you, every level in version 1.5 is possible :D 

I'm actually planning on recording a finished playthrough of the game to upload shortly after the jam, just in case players feel like it's too hard but still want to see through the end, so don't feel too  pressured to finish the game. Thanks for trying it!

Hey, it's CookieJar from the GMTK discord. Just copy-pasting what I sent over via dms:

My comments are gonna be mostly preferential, so if it doesn't match your vision for the game or you can think of some other way to address 'em, feel free! My ideas are certainly only my own.

Main critiques:

* As someone who prefers simplicity in tabletop design, I do think that the character stats can be simplified into a more straightfoward system. For example, you could *possibly*(?) make do without the Agreeable and Stable stats? B/c from my playthru I think they both just affected how often characters comply to orders, and that could be condensed into the pre-existing Warm/Cold - Sub/Dom spectrum (btw very funny to use sub/dom as genuine character traits) or some other single stat imo.

* Flags! Make clearer when flags are set or not, for sure for sure. Especially in the beginning, I ended up doing and re-doing a few things multiple times because I didn't know whether the action registered or not. I scaled that first gate like 5 times while not knowing a thing xD. 

* I'm still a little unclear as to when and why I can't move characters. From what I gathered, I think all actions are locked if there are 3 or more actions currently ongoing atsm, but I'm not too sure! Make the conditions of action lock clearer, i think

* This is a good map, but visually I got a little red herring-ed by the House Accountants Office circle being right next to the Hidden Stair — i thought the former led to the latter. If that's intentional, that's fine, but I was led astray there.

Things i liked/loved:

* Loooved the setting, narrative, and theming. It wasn't too evident in-game, probably due to jam time constraints, but I genuinely did feel like I was on a heist, which is like *the* thing you want your player to feel for this game.

* Though I didn't find this to have had too much of an effect on my playthrough, the idea that my characters can make their own actions sometimes is awesome. Definitely expand on this system more later down the road.

You might be the first, outside of my playtesters, to mention the tight window of the 5th count check. Sorry about that! I couldn't figure out how to loosen the window until after the deadline. Thanks for playing!

Hey folks! It's CookieJar from the GMTK discord. Wow. This is the most fun game I've played in the entire jam. While yes, it's certainly on the more 'established' and trope-y side of game design (dash and wall jump are essentially staples now of metroidvania design), it's easy to forget that these things are still hard to execute well even if they are trite, and to do so in a 4-day jam is nothing short of impressive. Let's see: fully fleshed out world map with multiple, interesting routes for each lens and a plethora of secrets and discoveries to be made, at a scale rather impressive for a short jam deadline? Check. An interesting core idea (increasing the timer to explore more of the world) that gets used and fleshed out extensively? Check. Platforming that actually feels nice? Check. A narrative that's captivating from the jump? Check as well. Simply commendable work.

So what are my comments? 

* Is the wall jump for this game inspired by Super Metroid? It's a little tight and has a little more upward force than sideways force for my liking, that wall-jump vector might need just a little fine-tuning imo.

* Sounds! Definitely, if you're gonna expand upon this game or what have you, do consider focusing a bit more on the sounds. And I don't mean making them sound better (although they could use some of that as well), but essentially just more accurate, becuz when I throw one of those golden spikeballs (U button) it doesn't sound like a spikeball when it hits someone. 

* Consider adding hitboxes to the enemies. Because I can run past most of them, I as a player have less incentive to actually engage in combat with them. I ran past most enemies in my winning playthrough, for example. If the solution you want is not to add hitboxes, have some other way to encourage combat instead, like killing an enemy for the first time makes it drop a time stone or something (but only on the first).

I'd also like to note some subtle things that I noticed about the game that I simply love.

* Snird .

* The background sky scrolls perfectly to line up on the center of the screen when putting in the lenses. Whether or not that's intentional, it's honestly a flash of design ingenuity.

* The routes are quite well-planned. For the forest lens, for example, I initially tried the bottom route, which involved two locked doors which required killing a certain group of enemies to open. In another attempt, I skipped this bottom route, but when I was on my way back after retrieving the forest lens, these locked doors did not get in my way as there were alternate exit routes as well. Having planned multiple entrance and exit routes for each lens is just really really nice design.

Fantastic job team. I'm kinda blown away. Congrats for participating, and I wish you all the best.

"Music that goes hard" is a little debatable but man what a good game. Very simple but works so well. The graphics are clean and cute, and the game itself is incredibly well-made for something made in Scratch. Well done!

Apologies if my comment seemed blunt! I was getting tired last night. Truthfully, I liked this game, and I think it's well-made. I'm sure this is quite appealing to the right audience, though sadly that doesn't include me. I'm not really into this sort of games; I only like Balatro but I wouldn't even call that a game I love or anything. I don't really have much to offer for games like this xD. Also, QoL comments are kind of passe, I'm sure y'all already thought of many of these things you wish you were able to add before submitting. Wishing you all the best.

Hey, it's CookieJar from the GMTK discord. Honestly, a very cozy and cute game. I love the interstitial rocket flying segments: navigating between comets, sometimes threading the needle between a small gap, other times flying way off course the destination and ending up somewhere completely random... I've flown out into oblivion no less than once from missing my target planet, and I feel all the more joyous because of it. The rocket flying mechanics are surprisingly so finely tuned, bravo. 

For this reason, the planetary segments are kind of just okay in comparison. All players really need to do there is make one loop around the planet, collect especially the green rocks to re-fuel, and move on. And with the countdown urging players to get on quick, it feels like the game's crux is actually in its flying segment, as if the resource collection of it all is but afterthought. I will say, though, that the astronaut sprite is pretty adorable.

With all that said and done, this is quite a fine game you have here. Expand on the in-planet systems and mechanics more and you might have something special. Good job, congrats on participating, and I wish you all the best.

Man i suck @ss at this game LOOOOL but honestly a simple but clean game. Well done!

I mean it's fine? Feels like a Rube Goldberg-type with the way it encourages chains and synergies, as is typical with any round-shop-round based roguelike; it's Balatro-like in that regard. The game just lacks precision in its explanations, like what constitutes as a "chain"? Would also love some QoL, like the ability to swap fireworks around and preview my score, which I think would've greatly helped with my ability to understand the game. The assets are well-made though, and it's commendably complete and polished. Great job on this game, congrats on participating for the jam, and I wish you the best.

An incredible game. Just incredibly tight design. Really the only pain point for me as a player is that some attacks being spam gets hard on my finger after a while; utilizing the keyboard in the full release (or some other input method?) probably wouldn't be the worst idea, that or simply reducing the spam. Anyway, I could see this one being a winner. Great job. Congrats on participating, and I wish you the best.

For those in your team who personally know me (you know who you are), hello! It's Randolf. I like your game. Having to transition to a bat to move is a cool mechanical restriction that would [ideally] force creativity and a back-and-forth flow between bat-mode and non-bat-mode.

But it's not really even worth talking about that.

This game isn't really a game, is it? The whole portion before the 'final countdown' is all but smoke and mirrors, setting the player up for a subversion of expectations to fire the cocked gun, [ideally] blowing their brains out with emotional impact. It is as though the game attempts to point beyond the screen and go, "Look at what you've done!" Ooh! Spicy! Riveting!

If any of you have played Davey Wreden's The Beginner's Guide (if you haven't, you should), you might understand when I say that this game feels like a Coda game. Simple but high concept, restrained in design, all with an intent to convey some [ideally] potent message, with a bit of bruntwork left upon the player, not giving them the necessary thoroughfares that would 'streamline' their interaction process, no backdrop upon which they can stand, dialogue via which they can be fed the world. All this game says is: here's an idea: here's why that's fucked up. Dare I say, it is art.

Of course, it's not actually incredibly polished. That's not 'intentional avant-garde artiste' — that's a game crammed in two days due to real life getting in the way. That's okay, but I'm sure you could've actually fleshed out the game game part more to better sell the inevitable twist later on. Because, honestly, players will be too focused on their being teleported all over to place to even register what's happening to them. It took me a second playthrough to realize that I was teleported to the next level when I killed everyone.

Also, slight plothole, but in the final level, the timer is reset to some preset value instead of however much time I've accumulated throughout. That kind of undercuts the whole "you had to drink the blood of your fellows to maximize your time." Would've been better if, by killing other vampires so efficiently, I had so much time left by the end that the effect of reflecting while running my clock down would be made more haunting.

Sorry for the lengthy comment. Great job team. Congrats on participating, and I wish you all the best. 

Hey man! You asked me to play your game, and so I did. I came into it with very little expectations. The artstyle was charming albeit pretty crude, as though it had been drawn in crayon by a child, while the screenshots didn't seem to offer much in terms of variety. I'm glad I stuck through the game's three levels, though, because this is honestly pretty great. As someone who also excruciatingly made a 2D platformer game that centers around time troubles, I know that you know just how hard it is to convey the necessary information without burdening or overwhelming players. This game straddles the "info load"perfectly well, being that it is intuitive and easy to read which is especially important for fast-paced games (see: Pizza Tower and the Sonic franchise for examples). Examples of intuitive design in this game include the subtle way which this game teaches the wall jump mechanic, the secret key paths that unlock some faster route later on which feel neatly inspired and not just tacked on, even the way the intro cutscene clues players into the fact that they can damage boost off the purple spike to launch upwards into a secret key path! These are all convincing examples of a game that, while seemingly basic, actually features strong design fundamentals. I commend you for the great work you've put into making the level design as tight and understandable as it is. Even still, I have a few comments:

* For fast-paced games like this, it would be a wise idea to let players skip the intro cutscenes for each level. When you encourage your players to be in a mindset of "go! go! go!" you're going to want to let them be able to skip anything that could slow them down, unless it's something important, as it can be rather irritating and flow-breaking (especially when players die a lot, like I did).

* Consider using hit-stops for your game. Hit-stops are brief pauses after killing an enemy. They might be useful after a player does a running attack and get a speed boost, just to let them quickly get their bearings before being launched forward.

* Narratively, you should make clear who's who. I don't know who Jacarilo is, I don't know who "the mosquito" is, and for all I know, I haven't even seen a mosquito.

* Finally, and this one is smaller compared to the others, but your game might have a bit of a categorization issue. Are you sure this is a "racing" game? Not too big of a deal for a game jam, but when you're selling your game to the masses, you're going to want to find your right audience. You might want to think a bit more deeply about what you categorize your games moving forward.

That's all. Take these comments in good faith. You've done a great job; this is one of the best platformers I've played so far in the jam. Congrats on participating, and I wish you the best.

This game is definitely designed to make you panic, so in a twisted way I'm glad you felt panicked xD. Thanks for playing!

Oh, wow that's incredibly solid advice! Thank you! Actually, that contrast might've been what I was going for, but I didn't convey it as best I could. Thank you so much! How far were you able to get in the game?

Thanks for playing! Are there any things you like or dislike in particular about my game? I'll play your game when I have free time.

Boy, do I feel you there with regards to the people not really playing the games :"D 

The pixel art assets are cute. However, the game lacks enough possibility space to make for interesting play. Combat consists of spamming one attack button until you need to heal, which, okay, hey, that's just the usual RPG. The chess mechanics are shallow and vestigial at best, because their utilization extends hardly beyond the movement system, which itself is not backed up by interesting terrain or obstacle generation. Unlike previous comments, this isn't just a matter of "polish" — unfortunately I don't think there's enough of the substance to make for something standout. So, allow me to make a few suggestions:

* Complicate the combat system. Could still of course be something from RPGs, but this is too simplistic. The choice of keeping or discarding weapons is the only real meaningful choice to be made in the game, and this can be rather one-note. Consider expanding on this system as well.

*  Make dedicated levels that utilize the chess movement mechanics in more interesting ways — or, if at all possible, cram unique and interesting level designs in 8x8 grid spaces. Having interesting and engaging level designs in a limited play space is one of the core tenets of good puzzle and strategy design, for example, so pulling inspiration from those genres could help you out here.  

* Amplify the "roleplaying" of chess. Make stories. Write, and have fun with the war plotlines. Obviously, not feasible for a 4 day game jam, but if you ever consider expanding this game or doing something chess-related in the future, that'd be a great bet.

Even still, congrats on submitting for the jam. Be proud of what you were able to accomplish in such little time. I wish you all the best.

P.S. The countdown theme is also not very evident. Didn't even know I was timed on my moves before a 'boss' came, so more clarity on that would've been great.

Hey! I actually got pretty far into this game. Made it to about 14 days remaining. Sadly I found that the gameplay loop got kinda repetitive after there were no more unique events that I could find. The last event I found was when the boss got mad at me for trying to lie to him about how many days I had left three times in a row, which was quite funny. Honestly, good work! The pixel art is cute and the overall story is wonderful. I have a few comments:

* This might be intentional or not, but the progress bar and sticky note blocking the keys that you're supposed to press is kinda silly. Unless you intend to specifically discourage the player from doing their job (and hence encourage them to explore the world), I think you can do away with the blockages and just show the keys.

* You possibly already know this, but there's a bug where you can tip over an invisible bucket. 

* This game can benefit by having more unique events that unfold throughout the days! Obviously you were limited by the jam deadline, but if you ever plan on expanding this game..!

Great job on this. Congrats on submitting such a unique entry to the jam! I wish you the best.

Hey, here's something you can note for future game jams: you can change anything outside of the game after the deadline! This includes the cover and itch page and whatnot. I actually made my cover a day after the deadline for this jam xD. Did me wonders! 

I hope your submission does well and I wish you the best for your future endeavors!

A little too many dinosaurs for the game's own good. It affects readability because some dinosaurs block other dinosaurs' orders, often they just clip into each other's bodies which is silly but probably unintentional. My main comment is that I would love to play an executable build of this game instead of a web build, because the game freezes every time I complete an order, unfortunately. Still, the style is GREAT and lovely. Feels like a Vector Unit game. The overall experience is greatly elevated by the polish and graphics. Great job. Congrats on submitting for the jam, and I wish you the best.

Agreed on this one. The game spiritually feels like an arcade game to me, so there's a lot of satisfaction to be had from learning what the upgrades do and gradually doing better in subsequent runs imo.

Hey Nostr0! It's CookieJar from the GMTK discord. I like your game! It feels very polished for something made in a jam. I particularly like, for example, the achievements, the red shaking timer when time is close-by, god even the way the music speeds up? Really good attention to detail for a seemingly simple game! Just a few comments:

* Perhaps you should consider choosing a more representative cover for your game. The game made me expect that I was gonna play as some sort of space sheriff? Because the purple person in the cover looked like a sheriff to me, idk.

* This game will benefit from having more variety! Maybe some special kinds of trash (lol?) that needs different ways to be picked up. Or other level layouts that force players to not stay so close to the trash-selling machine, for example, to encourage constant movement. It also emphasizes the time limit and makes going fast even more interesting! :>

That's all. Great game! Congrats on submitting for the jam, and I wish you the best!

Aw. Shame. There are four levels, each of which adds a new rule on top of the first one, in case you're curious. Thanks for trying my game anyway. 

Hey, I got to a level with 4 sodas, one yellow, one red, two greens, and one of the jumps requires falling into the rightmost green and then dashing right after getting launched. The problem is this level doesn't have a working level goal. I reach the goal and it doesn't transition me to the next level. Is there no next level? 

It's a fine game from what I played. My game is also a challenging platformer, so I have a knack for these. Love me a decently challenging platformer. I don't really have many issues other than the bug I told you guys about. The pulsating dithering is a little distracting but that's about it. Congrats on submitting for the jam and I wish you the best.

Oh, I dig this. Love it love it. It feels reminiscent of one of my favorite games, Papers, Please, in the way the rules are gradually layered on top of each other — hell, even the printing of the new rules feels Papers-esque. Even the artstyle feels similar! I love games like these. It's surprisingly easy for me to forget the date rule LOL. The launching sound effect is super loud though, and also when I go off the tab, the 10, 9, 8 countdown desyncs with what it says on the clock. Anyway, great game! Congrats on submitting for the jam and I wish you the best.

P.S. I recognize Software Automatic Mouth when I hear it ;) 

On the easy side, sure, but honestly a pretty well-designed puzzle game. It's simple and doesn't go for more than it needs to. You've got something interesting going on here, keep at it. Congrats on submitting for the jam and I wish you the best.

If you have the energy, you should try making it past that. Maybe you'd like to know the "new mechanics" that better explain the absence of the visible timer?

Well-made bomb defusal, what else is there even to say? I have no qualms, I simply really like this game. Great job! Congrats on submitting for the jam! I wish you the best.

The pixel art is fantastic, the cover looks great, the visual effects and post-processing do great leg-work, and those are the biggest praises I can give this game. It lacks a core that dictates all the design decisions that would make the game cohesive mechanically and thematically. It feels like a hodgepodge of game-like-ish mechanics that don't really conform to a tight experience. Game design is all about making decisions, and centering your game on one idea (or a group of closely related ideas) is usually what makes for great games.

Take this in good faith. You're amazing with art and visuals, and I'm sure you can get very very far with more work and practice. Congrats on submitting for the jam! I wish you the best!