itch.io

Thanks for explaining! I totally understand what you're saying now. If I'd just spawned the player in the button room, I think that would have solved everything lol. The parry makes sense too, that would have been a good idea.

The jump feedback is helpful. If the main issue is the way it's presented, then I think it could easliy be fixed with a small animation at the peak of the jump, like the frog shaking it's legs like it's trying to fly, or something similar. But, obviously, every dev has their own preference when making their platformer controllers. I'll definitely experiment a lot more with how jumps work later down the line. 

Thanks for taking the time to provide some really insightful criticism! I'm sure you understand how useful it is.

I appreciate the feedback. Despite whatever I implement when the player fails, it always recieves criticism, so I've just let you jump back into things. I've had people complain about a 2 room runback, and even complain about the fact that the boss's HP goes back to full. I'm not really sure what people want. Maybe it depends on the game?

As for the parry, I do understand your criticism on the fact that the particles look like the sword right after the parry deactivates, though I do think the parry window is already extremely generous. 

The jump, however, is where I dont really understand the complaint. What about it feels awkward? In my experience it feels significantly more awkward to be holding the jump button only to have nothing meaningful happen. In fact, my other game's jumps feel far worse to use for me. It could be preferential, but even if you feel like the jump acts more as a hover, what exactly makes that so horrible? Is it just the expectation of a jump more similar to my other games, or is there actually something wrong with it? Additionally, the jump was more "traditional" earlier in development, but it felt absolutely unfair when an enemy was attacking underneath a jumping player and instead of the player being able to stay above and avoid taking damage, they took damage as a result of the jump being shorter.

Finally, I'm sorry you missed out on a few secrets! If I could have, I would have made it much more clear that the hidden button sends the player into the final fight, but it slipped my mind. 

I hope that the issues you've listed didn't affect your experience with the game too badly, and I'll make sure to keep your feedback in mind when developing my next game.

WOAH! Coolest sequence break I've ever seen lol. Not too sure how useful it is but you can definitely get sprint early with it, you're just trapped in the town lol. Tempted to leave it in but I'll probably fix it once the jam ends.

EDIT: Okay so I just spent around 10 minutes playing around with this and I'm definitely keeping it haha. Doesn't look like you can really break the game apart from getting softlocked in the town, and it's actually possible to beat the game sprintless by staying clipped in the walls and travelling across the whole map. INCREDIBLY fun speedrun category lol.

Thanks for showing!

Piano room isn't required, but you're basically there with having to replicate the melody. (There's a difference in the scale that the npc sings and the piano's scale, so you have to account for that.)

Movement

Double tap like it says?

What about the movement feels clunky? The controls feel very smooth on my end, just a regular platforming controller.

Thank you for such an in-depth review! I think the idea of using the parry for everything would have felt pretty strange on the conrrols side, but I do see where you're coming from. I also appreciete your feedback on the design of the parry, and how you don't have to move as much. It's something I did notice while playing, but there's one thing that makes it make sense to me.

At heart, the game is a speedrunning game. I've said it before, but I believe the challenge of a boss comes from optimizing and chasing it down to get every parry you can, leading to clean parries and a bunch of timesave. (This is also why I removed unblockable attacks.)

I totally get it though. I do hope the design flaws you pointed out don't affect your ratings that much, and I'll be very focused on making sure everything feels cohesive and making sure the player has a reason to move about on a casual playthrough in my next projects.

Cool game.

It's nice to see some top-down metroidvanias for the jam. Unfortunately, the game feels super slow sometimes. The enemy design and especially the whip seem like they lend themselves better to faster movement and pacing. The fact that the whip sends you forwards and stops you from moving for a long time makes it pretty easy to just run into enemies. Would be much better if the whip knocked you back after hitting an enemy like in Hollow Knight. Other than that, great game! The story is probably cool (though, I don't really understand it lol), and the art is gorgeous, reminds me of Pippistrello and the Cursed Yoyo. Nice work.

Incredible art. So beautifully put together! Wish there was music, though. And those flying pricks that shoot at you are awful haha. Really solid entry, great job!

Great game! Lovely graphics and the music reminded me a lot of A Short Hike. There's so much content, and it's a super awesome experience all around. Well done!

Great presentation! Though, the movement can feel a little bit slippery at times. The UI is also a little bit bland I feel, but I'm nitpicking. Really nice progression and animations. Great entry!

VVRR

what if parrying was your only option?
> a tiny world packed with secrets, upgrades, and enemies <
> simple & clean combat <
> challenging bosses & tight timings <

> play the game here! <

Thanks for playing! 

A lot of the design comes from the game's speedrunning aspect, which is why I didn't add unblockable attacks. They slowed down the pace too much, and instead the challenge of a boss comes from how to optimize the gameplay to beat it /faster/. Not just win.

I see where you're coming from though. Definitely something I could've worked on a bit more..

Thanks for letting me know about the image, should be good now. 

(P.S. IIRC Kultisti is nonbinary)

Finished it! Really great stuff. 



The last main floor puzzle was surprisingly easy (maybe intentional?), but this new grid-based style of game is definitely really fun to explore. Awesome art, lovely puzzles, and just a fun time all around.

Great job!

(Basement puzzles can wait, I'm spent already. Super creative puzzle to get the key though!)

new game sick

No issues, but I might add health bars for the bosses or a couple secret bosses.

Great game! Wish there was more polish/juice around successfully hitting a move. It just kinda... disappears. Would be a lot nicer with some sort of particle splash or tween out, you already have the function to make them smaller, so why not apply that when I do something that should feel punchy and interesting? It seems small, but once I noticed that it just gets removed, it made the experience a whole lot less satisfying than it should have been.

Either way, really creative game, and awesome presentation too!

Glad you enjoyed, thanks for giving it a go :)

Fun game! Love the physics-based approach to an infinite runner, real creative.

If I had to give one piece of feedback it would probably be to make the jump more impactful. as it is, it's not too notable in gameplay, and you're sometimes just left up to luck if you can get coins or not since you can't control the wheel aside from it.

All in all, I'm nitpicking. It's a great game with lots of opportunity to add depth. Nice job dude :)

Thanks for the review! One thing I'll say is that the stars and the hidden room are related, so if you figure out what one does, you'll figure out what the other does as well. It's nothing interesting though, thanks for playing!

Best game I've rated! The art style is awesome, reminds me a lot of Sokpop and Crashout Crew. At first I thought the controls were way too sensitive, but then I realized how much it added to the chaotic vibe. Really smart!!

Lovely entry :)

Thanks for taking the time to put together a review! Really appreciate the feedback, and thanks for playing too ;)

That's so sweet!! Your page turned out great :)

Samsara was pretty good! 

/jam/theveryseriousjuniperdevgamejam/rate/4710248

Yeah, I could have explained the premise a bit more I suppose. The whole idea was that gravity flips (or in this case, spins) every time you land. I tried to show it in the starting cutscene with the title spinning, and originally the entire camera flipped every time gravity would change, but it ended up too annoying. Thanks for playing!

Damn, thanks for playing though. Sorry you didn't enjoy the bosses as much as I intended. Hope it didn't go into the score too much :( 

Either way, glad you liked the art and sound effects.

Super slick game! The concept is very polished, and the simple visuals help to make everything clear. No real notes here, just a great, engaging game that played smoothly.

Feel free to check out my game too :)

Great concept. Time loop stuff is always impressive to me, and adding different characters that can do different things is pretty cool. Managed to beat the game too!

A few points of feedback, though:

- The actual "spinning" part of the game felt really annoying. It was pretty shoehorned in, and, at least for me, the later puzzles I found were very confusing, making me have to spin over and over. I ended up having to go through every room with every character to understand what you're supposed to do. The fact that you can't stop the wheel immediately and the fact that the bird removes a bunch of spikes makes it so that every mistime is amplified and takes what feels like years to go and fit yourself into a little hole and die in the egg room.

- The mole/capybara/big rat thing was really underused and confusing at the start. The symbol on the wheel for it doesn't help either. If the symbol alluded to digging or breaking walls, it would have saved a lot of struggle.

- The switches shouldn't be able to go back. There was never any reason to switch them back off, but the fact that you're able to made it so that I would flip the switch, not know if the input went through, and then spam switch and go see what changed in the world. The fact that half the time, the switches don't affect anything I could see was really annoying.

- The "impossible" jumps aren't impossible enough. Every time there was something that a character barely missed, a jump, a ledge, a rope, it felt like it was really close, so I ended up trying it over and over. The one headhitter near after the first water room felt like it was just really hard, not impossible.

Otherwise, it's a really great game. I enjoyed it tons at the start (though I lost a bit of my wit near the end of the game), and the cozy/horror vibe here is great.

Good work!

Thanks so much for the kind words! I think you're dead on with the feedback. Those are the exact two things I was thinking as I submitted the game lol. If only there were more time!! Regardless, I appreciate the comment, and I'll give your game I play in a bit to return the favor :)

Fun game! The mechanic has so much potential, would love a post-jam version with more areas or even upgrades. Thsoe enemies are brutal though, so fast!

Like the wheel flashing white, or spawning a little particle explosion when the result comes in, that kind of thing. It's not a big deal though, just a little extra polish that could be nice :)

Genuinely really addicting! I wish there was a little bit more visual feedback/particles but this game is just really fun in general. Really great work!

Nice twist on a clicker! I feel like a small tutorial might help, since I only noticed the motivation meter at the very end when it was going up a bunch, but it's simple enough that most people can probably figure it out without big paragraphs. Great work!

Nice entry, though it can feel more like a simulation than an actual fight at times. Maybe if the enemies weren't on a wheel, or they had a different, simpler wheel, it would be more engaging/interesting. Either that or a way for you to influence the outcome, since right now the player is just clicking a button and watching their lives go down. It'd be really interesting to see this game with some kind of E33-esque parry/dodge system that still keeps the elements of turn-based that you want. That aside, the art is good (though the mixels aren't great), and the narrative is interesting. Great job getting voice clips in there too!

Great concept, but it feels like the flail's impact is missing something? Maybe some screenshake, particle stains, flashing, hitstop, squash and stretch, or collision sending it back around could help. Other than that, the game is pretty juicy, and the different enemies definitely keep it fresh. Nice autumn palette too, great work!

Here's mine: https://kingmidis.itch.io/umop

UM▲OP

what if gravity flipped every landing?
> 3 areas <
> multiple bosses <
> a tiny world to uncover <

< play the game here! >

Here's mine!
https://kingmidis.itch.io/umop
Peek around and see if there are any bugs to fix if you can.