The attempts by the narrator to try and stop you from pressing the button are funny but...the computer generation voice just isn't it, especially since a game like this benefits so much from good narration. The team for this seems sizeable, so I struggle to believe you couldn't get someone to voice act.
It's a bit of shame, since I was hoping I'd really enjoy this. Oh well.
Thanks for the feedback.
Input buffering and coyote time are things I definitely would've considered adding had I spent more time on this. I made the idea within the first day of the jam but did very little work on it until the last 24 hours, within which time I made just about the whole game.
I get what you mean about the background. I think aside from just slowing it down, an option to disable the scroll effect entirely would've been good to add.
It's 100% possible to get all three abilities in one go, and with some ability location combinations it is required. Though, it is tougher to do then if you're able to get by with only 2.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by abilities not resetting? Not sure what you're referring to there.
Not much in terms of aesthetics, but the gameplay is pretty neat. Solid use of the theme too. Pretty funny how some of the messages when you fail talk smack a bit.
Not sure if this was intentional, but I found level 8 to be easiest to complete by not using the new green obstacles at all. The tutorial text for them also seems to be wrong, describing them as bouncy despite them not being that.
The debug mode is a cute reward for beating the game, though testing the full range of drop points does chug the game.
Neat entry overall.
(p.s. the "all new thing" in level 6 was, in fact, pretty cool)
The game was pretty neat. Second level was jarringly difficult because the game seemingly didn't register clicks half the time, but I managed to get past eventually. I liked the score counting minigame the most. The level transition and countdown sounds were cool and rhythmic, though I would've liked to have heard some music to go alongside them. The last level could've maybe benefitted from randomization of the layout, though I'm not sure if you would've been able to fit that in within the jam's deadline.
Overall, not bad.
Took me a couple tries to fully understand how to do the poses, and sometimes when I try to click on 1 character the game will start moving the other one instead. Aside from that though, the game is very cute. The art is very nice, and the music contributes well to the vibe.
Maybe I'm too pessimistic, but when I read that line at the end about them doing this again I couldn't help but feel like it won't work out so easily. Like something is going to happen to that other character that will make these two hanging out like this much harder, or even impossible. Made the ending feel almost melancholic to me
Regardless, this was really nice to play. Good job.
More of a narrative experience, but it's pretty interesting. The aesthetic was neat and felt pretty cohesive. The use of the theme was cool; I liked how it was not just central to the narrative, but also a recurring visual motif.
Each scene contributed well to the atmosphere. The microwave scene specifically did it quite well I think. The sporadic timer pop-ups showing up as you use the microwave did well to emphasize the main character's imminent fate. I do think it could've been a little shorter though.
Very cool entry overall.
Short, but sweet. The shooting through walls mechanic was neat, and I found bashing through the walls pretty fun too. The little idle animation enemies do is cute. The audio clips were funny. Music had a cool vibe. Aiming sensitivity felt a bit high, but my mouse has sensitivity adjustment buttons so it wasn't too big of a bother here.
Overall, it's a solid little game. Good job.
So, I eventually figured out that the in-game hints for the dry petal and gold petal are flipped from how they actually work. The jam page has it right at least, but it still was confusing.
I do have another critique for the flower picking gameplay though, and that's the time limit. 30 seconds feels a bit too strict, and still encouraged trial-and-error even after figuring out how the special petals worked.
The game was definitely more enjoyable after realizing what I did wrong at least. Will come back to it once you release Act 3.
The game felt pretty rough, but I did like some things. The player's attack animations were really smooth, and the special attacks were neat (though I didn't get much use out of the thrust). I also liked some of the narrative ideas that were alluded to like the stuff about mushrooms remembering things across loops, though the game doesn't really explore any of them.
To start with my criticisms, only being able to attack left or right and not up or down made combat feel pretty finnicky. Also, it seems like the thrust and spin attacks are on a cooldown that is not visible in the UI at all, which makes it annoying to try to use them for combat.
Feels like the game is over-reliant on the signs to tell you where to go rather than naturally leading the way through the level design. Cheapens the vibe of the surrounding environment a bit, and also makes it feel unnatural to explore.
Not sure if it was bugged or something, but the boss fight was ridiculously easy. The top part of its body ran away, but the lower part of the body didn't move at all, so I was able to just hit that part until it died. Only saw it attack once at the start of the fight.
Ending the game with a cliffhanger and mention of a "chapter 2" rubbed me the wrong way. Wouldn't have minded as much if the NPCs didn't set up ideas that this demo did not actually contain or elaborate on.
Despite being very critical here, I do think this game could be interesting if you end up expanding upon it. I just think as a game jam submission it doesn't stand on its own very well, as it feels a bit too much like just an intro to something else for me.
I think the ideas the story explores were pretty interesting, and they did get me to ponder things a bit. I was hoping the ending would be less vague, but I guess it wasn't a bad thing necessarily.
Presentation was pretty nice. I liked the way the music got more emotional as the days passed.
It did feel a little odd that the protagonist's mood didn't seem to change at all no matter how well or poorly you do in the minigames. I get how that was part of the point, but it feels dissonant considering what happens when you get hit. I do think the latter aspect itself was interesting though, and emphasized the character's feelings well I think.
Overall, it was a solid short narrative game. Nice work.
Art and story is very cute, and the music is pretty chill. The flower picking mechanic is a neat idea, and it's animated pretty nicely too.
Unfortunately, I found actually playing it to be hard to understand. The descriptions for the special petals don't seem to fully explain what they actually do in practice, and it isn't entirely clear which option will get picked to start out with. I ended up just picking petals at random and retrying when I didn't get the result I wanted, rather than thinking about which petal would be the correct one to guarantee it. It makes it very annoying to see the results of different choices on repeat playthroughs, since it feels like I'm ultimately relying on chance alone for the result I want.
Edit: I suppose part of that might be intentional, but it just feels odd when you also mention the game having 32 endings. Feels like those two things kinda work against each other.
I guess it wasn't that bad, since I did enjoy the game. Still, it was big damper on the experience.
For the games I had trouble understanding at first:
Also, the time limit indicator at the bottom of the screen made things a bit confusing for me visually because it almost looks like it's an interactable part of the minigames. The second stage's indicator in particular felt pretty distracting. The annoy the customer minigame also has one of the dialogue options partially covered up by the indicator, although this doesn't impede winning much particularly.
For overheating, I only just now realized that I was supposed to hold the right arrow rather than do individual presses. Might be bad for that one.
The use of the theme here felt a little weak, but aside from that I really liked it. The narrative context given by the intro cutscene made the game feel more rewarding to play, even if it was just a vibes thing. The music is catchy, especially the jingles after failing or not failing a task. The artstyle was charming, and the occasional use of realistic looking objects was funny. Overall, everything felt really cohesive.
I did have some issues though:
Regardless, this game was very cool. Good job.
Neat game. I liked how some of the upgrades changed the way your bullets work rather than just simply making them better. Music felt a bit mismatched for the gameplay though imo.
You said you didn't have enough time to add more than 3 abilities that you get from dying. While that is fair, I think a small amount of extra exp could've worked as a filler option. Would take the sting out of losing a life a little bit once you've obtained all 3 of the abilities.
I tried to do a run without dying, but I unfortunately encountered a bug. At one point when I leveled up, the game broke (see image below). I was at around level 11-13 when this happened.
Very cool little game. The bombs have a nice risk/reward thing going on, and the fact they can get passed around between enemies adds a bit of extra depth to how you can use them. I tried using them to knock out multiple enemies at once, but it felt like the explosion radius was a bit too small to reliably do that. Might be a skill issue though.
Some small pieces of criticism: it wasn't clear that regular enemies turned into those orange angry versions when they reach the bottom of the screen. I didn't realize that was the case until I read the jam page after already playing a good few rounds. It's also a little annoying that there is no indicator for where or when an enemy spawns. Makes it feel like a bit of a gamble to hang around the upper part of the stage. Some visual and/or auditory indicators for one or both of these things could be good.
It's simple, but pretty amusing. Very meta that this game made within the figurative last minute of the jam is about making a game within the literal last minute of a game jam.
The parts where you have to manually input stuff were funny. The most practical option is to do nothing more than the bare minimum, however I thought it was kind of fun just to mess around with it and input stupid stuff. Though, it would've been nice if the drawing parts could be manually submitted with a button rather than automatically doing it when you stop drawing.
Would've also been cool if after completing the game you'd be able to look at a little "game page" with the description and title you typed out as well as your game being playable on it. It'd be a nice touch that would make finishing feel more satisfying I think.
Being able to shape the layout of the game is a cool mechanic for a metroidvania, although it felt a bit "trial-and-error"-y to use here. Would've liked the ability to, after entering a room for the first time, be able to view that room's layout from the build mode screen, or at least whatever portion of it you explored. Would have made it more intuitive to create room layouts for me. It was also a little bit annoying that the mechanic isn't even mentioned in-game, requiring me to the jam page to actually start playing. At the very least, some sort of feedback for trying to enter a door that isn't connected to a room would've made it more immediately apparent that I had to do something different.
The Kirby-like aesthetic is very cool, especially the detail of the character's portrait on the HUD changing for certain actions.
Movement felt clunky in certain aspects. Your jump height cutting off for when you move towards walls made the jump feel unreliable for certain bits of platforming, and your character freezing for a moment when landing just felt awkward.
The background in the home base seemed to have thin flickering lines that appeared as you moved. Looked really jarring. Don't think I saw it anywhere else though.
Cool game, but could use some more polish.
This game's main mechanic of extending and retracting the little screw's head was pretty interesting. Cool way of interpretating your chosen theme. Not sure how much it benefits from being in a metroidvania though; I feel like it's possible that a simple level-based structure would make it easier to make interesting puzzles using the mechanic. Although, I suppose for the purposes of this jam submitting something that isn't a metroidvania wouldn't really make sense.
Interesting how the mechanics were taught mostly wordlessly, with only a couple button prompts and the level design to show you how to do things. The "tutorial" placement for the screw upgrade was done weirdly though, since the button prompt that tells you how to detach from the big screws is placed after you've already had to use it a few times. It actually got a chuckle out of me, since I had already backtracked and used the ability a bunch before seeing that prompt.
The head felt very slow to extend and retract, which is pretty annoying when you're trying to figure out puzzles or fail to make a jump.
"Area not in this demo, sorry :(" was funny, but it did feel a little odd to see in a jam game. I'd assume you're planning on developing this more? The puzzles here were pretty straightforward, so it would be cool to see them get more complex.
Overall, interesting game. Would like to see more.
The visuals here have gotten a pretty big overhaul vs the jam version. The things that stood out to me the most were:
Overall, the game looks much nicer now, which is... nice.
Also, it's a small thing, but I didn't like how the music would play for only a short time and then fade out. Wasn't a fan of it that much when I played the jam version either. I wish it would be on like most of the time, although I realize the way it is was probably intentional and that this is a personal preference thing.
This game… Well, it’s not quite a “game” is it? It’s more like a moment. A moment in time where one finds themselves asking many introspective questions, such as “what’s the meaning of life?”, “what is a Metroidvania anyways?”, “why in this game is there a single brick house you can enter, with nothing inside it?”, and most puzzling of all, “why is the downloadable executable called “index.exe” like it’s a web build?”
This… moment, has no interest in answering any of those questions, but it does offer the tools for the player to do so themselves. For you see, it appears that the downloadable build of the "game" is a debug build, and comes with the ability to view a console window where secret messages from the developer can be parsed.
So, with that in mind, what’s the answer to all this then?
…the game wasn’t finished in time. Most ways in which you were probably already aware of before submitting. It’s difficult to write much of anything constructive in this case. Regardless, I’ll list down a few of the things that stood out to me.
The player character’s design is cool. I know they were supposed to turn into a dragon or something, but to be honest I kinda like them as is.
The one music track here is neat. Kinda reminds me of Pokemon, although I suppose that tends to be the case for me with a lot of JRPG-esque battle music. I did notice that it fades out after some time then starts from the beginning… and that perturbed me a little.
There's a drop shadow, and a realistic directional shadow. Very peculiar (also the drop shadow looks kinda weird to me).
There is no physical collision on the levers, you just phase through. Seems odd for such big levers.
It seems like those giant doors can be opened with no requirement? Or at least, that’s what it seemed like, but I’m not sure.
Spamming the attack is faster than walking; It can even function as a janky dodge.
I realize there was probably supposed to be much more to the single enemy in the game other than just being unthreatening fodder, but throwing around crowds of those things into the air is still kinda fun in a primitive way.
The shopkeeper's design is cool…although in this state there is no shop for them to keep, as that part is unfinished.
The boss fight thing’s visual design is kinda... endearing in a way, although it kinda looks like it too was rushed out. The fact there is a boss at all though is impressive in its own right given whatever troubles I assume must've happened during development, even if it’s a pretty simple boss.
This momen—excuse me, this game has no form of an ending, and it doesn’t even really fit either the “metroidvania” or “magical girl” genres. That being said, it still has neat aspects to it. I imagine there was supposed to be a lot more to it than there ended up being; it would be neat if you worked towards that after this jam I feel like.
P.S. This isn’t even close to your biggest concern with the game, and you might already know this but; if it wasn’t clear from that intro, I believe you shipped a debug build of your game. Even the debug console is included where you can peer into the output of all the “print” statements the code runs 👀. Just felt like pointing that out.
Thank you for playing my game.
I didn't expect the air dash to be a consistent problem. It's hard for me to tell what the difficulty here is exactly, but I would assume it was either one or a combination of:
- It being unclear that you dash in the direction you're aiming, meaning looking straight up in the air and then dashing will give you the most amount of height. I don’t think the ability description says anything about this though, I kinda expected people to just figure it out 😅
- The force provided by the air dash does not replace your prior velocity, but instead combines with a fraction of that velocity. So if you're already falling at an extremely speed for instance, you're not going to be able to gain any height at all even if you aim straight up. The reasoning behind this was that I found it felt more natural if you already had a lot of momentum when you sprint and then jump or when you launch yourself with the grapple, but I suppose it might not be immediately obvious that it works that way.
Originally, the “orange element” was going to have a double jump instead of air dash, which also would’ve been easier to use, but I found the air dash to be more fun so that’s what I went with.
I did struggle a bit with the grapple’s collision during testing, but I never thought much of it in part because there was so much else that I needed to get done. I’ll be looking into making it easier to use.
With the hit sounds, my thinking with that was based on the Metroid Prime games; or, rather, what I remember from those games. As it turns out, those games had more indicators that you were taking damage than I remember, and even the indicators I did recall didn’t work exactly the way I remembered either. I’ll definitely be taking that into account.
Visuals are really simple. The sea background is pretty though. The player character's flowing ponytail also looks nice.
All the upgrades and expansions share the same sprite, which was confusing (although that didn't really matter much).
There's only one music track. It's neat, but that's all there is. I would've liked if there was at least maybe an ambient track for those dark areas. I think it would've improved the atmosphere.
It was funny to me how similar the abilities are to those in Spector of Torment. Nearly identical, in fact. On one hand, it's not exactly super original... but on the other hand Spector of Torment is really good, so I didn't have much of a problem with it. Plus, it’s a Metroidvania instead of a level-based platformer, which also makes things feel different.
There's a bit of jank in some places though:
- The direction of the... homing slash (not sure what to call it) felt a bit less reliable than Specter of Torment (although I may be misremembering).
- You can phase into enemies when using the homing slash, causing you to take damage. This made me avoid going into the air and instead just attack staying grounded, which felt kinda bad imo. Specter of Torment had you bounce off of enemies instead, which not only avoided that issue but was also pretty fun to do in and of itself. Although, there are probably other ways to solve the issue that don't just involve doing what Specter of Torment did.
Also found a couple exploits:
- If you use the wall climb ability to run up off the edge of a wall and then press jump within a certain window after leaving the wall, you'll gain a bunch of height. It's a cool trick, but seems unintentional.
- You can spam the shift button with the float ability to stay in the air for a really long time. This one feels a little too cheesy, although that wasn't very relevant for anything (outside of being able to skip certain parts of a room when backtracking) since it was the last upgrade.
Also, it's not a big deal but there's no controller support, and I don't tend to like playing 2D platformers on a keyboard as much.
The reused witch bit was funny (even if there wasn't a more fitting ending). Item completion percentage is appreciated. Got 100%
Neat game.
This game was pretty cool. Very solid and polished experience overall, although there were few hiccups.
I got softlocked twice:
- Got stuck underneath a room in the top right area with a lever.
- Got stuck in midair in the rainy area to the left of where you get the time wand.
Thankfully, the game does save your progress, so it wasn’t too big of a deal.
Another minor bug I found is that bubbles can sometimes get stuck in walls and start spamming the bounce sound effect for a second or two before popping. It's a funny glitch, but it's easy to accidentally trigger when using the bubbles normally, and also it sometimes seems to cause the music to stop playing (although it doesn’t happen every time, so it might be something else causing that issue).
The final challenge was pretty cool, but I think it was maybe a little too short (and simple?). When I got there it felt like it was a bit too early for it (I only had two shafts and two toppers at that point). It didn’t help that you couldn’t backtrack either due to a wind current blocking the way you entered, so when you enter that room you have to complete it with what you have at that point.
Also, it’s pretty easy to accidentally enter the final challenge from the wind currents in the room below, which is something that happened to me quite a few times when I was collecting all the items I missed. At that point I didn’t know that you could press R to respawn at your last checkpoint, so I was closing the game and reopening it to return to get out of the final challenge. That was a bit of a pace breaker. Knowing that you could respawn at the last checkpoint you saved at would've been nice to learn about in-game (or in the README), but it's at least listed on the jam page, so I eventually did learn about it.
Aside from that, I’d say the game was great overall.
The visuals are very charming. They make good use of "flat" coloring.
There were some specific visual details that I want to point out:
- The little twirl animation of the dash ability was pretty cute.
- There are 2 versions of the slash effect when attacking rather than just 1, which gives some visual variety/flair.
- The wind movement of those foreground shrubs is pretty nice, although it seems a little inconsistent that none of the other foliage type stuff moves.
The music is also pretty chill. I specifically liked the track in that area in the top right with the blue terrain. The start of it is very serene, then the beat comes in and it gets a nice groove while still feeling laidback. Then the beat leaves and you get another very peaceful segment again. It feels almost nostalgic; it reminds me of Minecraft’s soundtrack a bit.
That area just has a pleasant vibe in general. I can't think of a good way to describe it, but the color palette of that area feels... cozier, vs the other areas. The leaves(?) blowing in the wind also contribute to the vibe.
I like how the wand construction system is an interpretation of the "Construct" theme that isn't just robots. It's a neat system, although I found that I ended up sticking mostly with the bubble shaft and the dash topper once I got them. It felt like the most flexible combination; all the others felt too niche.
Another reason I used the bubble shaft so much is that it was also my favorite shaft. I really liked how the bubbles have good movement utility but are also pretty good for taking out enemies. It was very fun to spawn tons of bubbles and gain a bunch of height with them, although it feels a bit too spamable (and because of that, exploitable) imo.
The map is pretty well-designed I think; it leaves enough room for some good exploration, but it doesn’t feel meandering. The map screen was a big help though. I referenced it a number of times to help me navigate, especially after I beat the final challenge and started trying to find everything I could.
The NPCs you could find scattered about the map were neat, although they mostly only seem to be there for flavor text.
The alternate colors you get when collecting hp upgrades were a nice little touch that made collecting them feel a little more fun, but I wish you could select which one to use. Also, having some sort of item collection tracker would've been cool too I feel like. I believe I got 8 health upgrades; I'm not sure if that's all of them, but that's all the ones I was able to find simply by exploring all the room connections marked on the map screen.
There’s for sure a good few flaws, but I don’t think they’re major enough to drag the whole experience down. Very good job!
The art is very nice, with plenty of cool details. The main character has a cute design. Backgrounds are quite detailed, with multiple layers and decorative props and stuff. The wires in the background in the area where you wake up specifically had a cool sense of depth. The enemy designs are pretty cool too. In particular, I really liked the flower enemy. It struck a nice balance between freaky and cute, and it had very lively animations.
I also quite liked the music. The vocal tracks in particular are sick. Also the combat variation of the area music is kinda groovy. Would appreciate if the soundtrack were to be released so it can be listened to on its own.
The sound panning feels a bit strong. It's rather common that I'm pretty much only hearing stuff in my left ear or my right ear, and it's a little distracting sometimes (although not enough to ruin the experience or anything).
Gameplay is fairly normal, and there aren't very many collectable abilities, but what's there is cool. The saw is very satisfying to use (although it doesn't always seem to start charging up when I press the button), and the speed and bounciness of the drill is thrilling if a bit unwieldy. I think there could be some interesting gameplay/level design possibilities if you could cancel out of the drill in mid-air to perform other actions (such as the glide the game has already).
No save points felt a bit odd, although the game isn't *too* long for it to be that big of a deal. No way to restore HP (outside of the health upgrades) was a bit more awkward to deal with. Although, when you respawn you come back very close to where you died, so even that isn't too problematic.
On a related note, I think the "respawn" animation after getting hit by certain damage sources (like bottomless pits or the giant worm in the underground area) takes a bit too long. I think the final part of the animation with the cutesy pose in particular feels like it could be a bit shorter and still have the same vibe.
Progression felt a little too straightforward to me. Again, not many upgrades, and it kinda felt like the game guided me relatively heavily towards each one. Didn't feel like there was much room for me to have that "aha" moment you can get in metroidvanias, where you get a new ability and start thinking back on all the places where you might be able to use it.
Map screen feels hard to parse with the lack of zoom combined with the somewhat irregular shape to it. Not sure how much could've been done about that though given the time frame.
The story is minimal, but what's there is cool. The bits of lore scattered throughout were pretty neat, but I do wish there was some way to view them again after collecting them. The monkey guy at the end also kinda felt like they came out of nowhere, but they had a pretty cool design. You get a choice to kill them or not, but it seems like it's more a matter of principle as neither choice seems to affect the ending. It's cool that it is a choice though.
Also, props for managing such a large team for a game jam. I've heard organization gets a lot tougher the more people you have on board, so it's commendable that you got it all to work well.
Good game overall.
It has a very nice and polished aesthetic. The bits of voice acting is cool; the voice clips for jumping in particular I found were rather charming. The music is also pretty chill.
To be honest though, I think I didn't get very far into the game, as there seems to be a lot of stuff your page mentions that I didn't see. I don't really want to push through to see them at the moment though, and that's mainly because of the character's movement. It feels... off to me. The base move speed is slow, and no sprint to speed it up makes it feel extra sluggish. Also the character is really hard to control once in the air, which kinda makes thing tough in regards to platforming challenges.
There was some cool aspects to the character though. I liked the dash attack in the air that lets you gain a nice amount of height when hitting a wall with it. The overall movement also has a nice feel to it (outside of the movement speed); feels a little like a Mario game (kinda).
I was taking a screenshot something when the floating cat warned me that I should go back to school, and I actually got kinda scared by the weird whale thing that showed up. My heart was actually racing a bit. I think the bells I was hearing were foreshadowing it, which honestly is really cool and foreboding. The sound it makes when it does appear is also quite haunting. I really like the vibe of this thing, it's great.
I found a boat that took me to some really dark location. I explored a little bit of it, and seeing those glowing jellyfish fade into view to cut through the darkness was kinda neat. I liked the atmosphere provided by the lack of light, but I didn't manage to get very far into the area since I struggled to get past the jellyfish. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to go back there with a powerup or if I can technically do it with the base moveset but the way the movement just makes it difficult.
I couldn't figure out how to get back to the fountain from other side of the gap near the area you spawn at. Had to let the whale kill me to get back to the school.
This game feels a bit too unpolished gameplay wise for me, but I still found it neat. I might come back to it to see what I missed (since I feel like there's a fair amount).
It's not a big deal, but it would've been nice if the controls were explained in game. Especially since they are a little unusual; arrow keys for movement + AS or ZX and the surrounding keys for actions would be more intuitive I feel like. Plus, I think those would've felt a little less awkward to control.
Music is pretty cool. Also I like the sound the checkpoints make, I find it amusing.
The sentient gun thing isn't really conveyed well in the game at all, and kinda caught me by suprise when the text on the end screen started talking about it.
I like the shotgun upgrade; making a dash/double jump explosion/gun-themed is cool I think. I also like the double jump is sort of an attack as well. I would've maybe liked if it could also be used as a weapon though.
Movement as a whole feels awkward though. The lack of acceleration + lack of fixed jump height makes platforming feel very imprecise, which did get to be a bit of problem when the instant-kill lasers started showing up. Also, stopping in place to shoot felt very pace-breaking.
And it's just a little thing, but the flying enemies coming in from off-screen with 0 indicators makes certaom platforming segments kind of annoying.
Overall though, it's a neat game. 👍
Not a big fan of the focus on boss fights, but they are pretty cool. I like how all the bosses are distinct both in appearence and mechanics from each other. Their movement is also quite distinct; The "Pearl" boss specifically I quite liked, with how it moved its legs across the walls of the arena like a spider.
Some of them do feel like they have too much HP though; namely the "Python", which I feel like is a little too bulky for being the first boss, and "Rust", which I feel is a fight that just drags on a little too long.
I do like amount of air time you can get with the multiple jumps + floating. Like another comment said, it makes the boss fights feel similar to Terraria, and I'd say it works pretty well here. Although, I would've liked a variable jump height (holding down the key sends you higher than just pressing and releasing the key quickly), although for the most part the game didn't really need it.
Useful control information is not explained or taught at all. I was unaware you even had multiple jumps at first, which is a bit of a problem since this game seems designed around that. Also I do agree with one of the other comments here that using the shift key to walk slowly is pretty important for the "Rust" boss, mainly for the bullet-hell esque phases.
A small tutorial would've definitely been useful here. Also, just having some more exploration/platforming between bosses would provide a nice place to get accustomed to the controls, as opposed to trying to figure everything out in the middle of a boss fight.
Aiming feels weird on controller. It's tolerable on mouse & keyboard, but it still feels a little awkward with how the gun rotates towards where your cursor is at.
The story was a little vague. The opening dialogue was a neat touch, however I found the (an?) ending after dying to some mysterious-looking humanoid boss. It felt kinda abrupt for the game to just end all of a sudden like that. The art of the two characters was cool though. I imagine something different happens when you beat the boss, but still, it does feel a little jarring.
Also, I feel like the game was lacking in terms of... metroidvania-ness? It didn't really have much ability gating. But I suppose I do see the magical girl aspect to it, so it doesn't matter that much for this jam.
All the being said, the game did have good boss fights, and that was clearly the focus, so I'd say the game is pretty good. Good job.
Edit: oh also, this is a bit of a me thing but I feel like having some cool music playing during the boss fights would've made it a little less frustrating to die them over and over again. Not a big deal though.
The screenshots caught my attention because of the artstyle, which I thought looked pretty nice, and the unique control scheme is interesting. However, I honestly just couldn't bring myself to play much further past getting the ability that lets you push boxes.
All the enemies take forever to kill, and some will take over half your bar. And the control scheme, while interesting, feels it lacks the speed and precision to make killing or navigating around those enemies feasible. A fair amount of my small amount of time playing was spent wandering around, dying to an enemy with a lot of health that can kill me in 1-2 hits, then wandering about elsewhere to find an easier path, only to run into another enemy that has a lot of health and can kill me in 1-2 hits.
Even when I did find an easier path with weaker enemies, I would have to repeat it at least a couple times due to how janky the control scheme is for combat. Sometimes I would simply face tank a weaker enemy and use the invincibility frames to get by, just so I don't have to spend time trying to fight it.
At the very least, things would be easier if there was a clearer indicator of what direction your character is facing. The small change to the direction of the eyes is noticeable enough when casually exploring, but is hard to keep track of when getting hit by enemies. Maybe some sort of indicator in the UI + a sound effect when switching directions would work?
Anyways, I wish I could've finished the game, but it was just way too frustrating for me.
This game has a cool aesthetic and an interesting gimmick. The different projectiles corresponding to the different abilities looked quite nice, and the enemies and little friendly creatures/NPCs scattered about were pretty cute. However, the game being zoomed out almost all the time made it hard to appreciate all that. I had to play in fullscreen simply so I didn't strain my eyes as much. Also, it's sometimes hard to tell dark tiles apart from the background. Maybe making the background a bit darker could help with contrast.
All that being said, the metroidvania/exploration aspect of this game was pretty fun. Progression felt relatively loose, but never to the point where it was too hard for me to figure out where to go next. And judging by the pause menu, there seems to be a few items I missed, which is cool. Although, there was a weird moment where I managed to get the "Sundance" ability without obtaining the dash first, which resulted in me being stuck in the room where you get it, forcing me to respawn back at the start.
I also liked how the zoom ability you get later on lets you see things that you otherwise wouldn't see. You can even see extra little details, like how the player character's eyes turn yellow when using the star ability. It does feel like it should be something you have from the beginning though, especially due to visual strain I mentioned earlier.
The music is... certainly minimal. There's very little of it, and the little that is there is rather discordant. It's not exactly listening material, but I suppose it does have an uncanny vibe that befits the game.
There not being a sound when taking damage felt weird and made it hard to tell at first what was going on.
Being able to gain height by deflecting your own projectiles was pretty cool. It's what I used to get the Sundance ability early. I also thought it was kinda neat how you have to deflect the projectile to switch abilities, although admittedly it was a little inconvenient at times.
The projectile also felt kinda weak vs enemies. Feels like the enemy health should be reduced a bit, or maybe give the projectile a damage increase for each projectile ability you have, instead of just with the star.
The game overall was pretty fun (but maybe a little jank), only major issue was the zoom thing.
