itch.io

Tricking enemies into running into the coral and each other is a creative mechanic. Also nice art and sound effects.

I felt like the text between the battles wasn't the most interesting. 

I feel like onboarding players could be a bit smoother. For my first play, I read all the tutorial text, which felt like too much text to throw out all at once. Then I was just shooting my goldfish at the sunfish trying to eat me (which did nothing but waste my troops). I started using the special fish to kill them, but that uses up your fish quickly, so I started clustering the enemies and using the puffer fish to kill a bunch at once, which was easy since the enemies move so slow for the first few battles. It wasn't until I reread the tutorial did I understand that you bait the enemies into the coral with the normal gold fish to easily kill 3+ per troop, which completely changed the gameplay since then you could kill 3+ sunfish per one goldfish and never have to use the special fish.

I wish the goldfish clustered around you better instead of getting stuck behind each other in a line, making them easy targets to get stuck behind an obstacle or all get eaten at once. Maybe have each fish want to move both towards you (the monarch) as well as away from each other (weak repelling impetus). This might help them spread out around you.

Very cute. Love the difference in art style between the game and mom. When I'd level up in the game I'd often accidentally pick one of the options before being able to read what they were since I was trying to shoot enemies.

I love how the game device shakes when you shoot, so that interaction is juicy, but other interactions could have a bit more feedback. I also would like if the fan had a sound effect when you use it to cool down mom. Would also like a sound effect for when she starts to get really angry, or when you are hurt in the game (particularly useful while looking at mom). Maybe a sound effect for when the player is low on health as well, or a visual change on the game screen to help add intensity (like a vignette and heart beat or alarm sound or something like that). 

Moving around inside the game also doesn't feel very useful since enemies spawn at the edge (so being close to the edge makes you more vulnerable while fanning mom) and you kill each enemy so quickly anyways, so it seems easier to stay still and just shoot enemies as you see them. Movement not being useful also makes a lot of the power ups useless. Moving would be more useful if you could fan mom at the same time, so you can actively dodge enemies while fanning mom, but that would require having both mom and the screen visible at the same time.

Creative idea, both in terms of fitting the game jam theme but also I like being the referee instead of the fighter. That perspective change is a fun mixup.

The fighters take awhile to go down since they are tiny in the big stage and space out so far from each other and attack randomly. That also means I can only shadow one of the two fighters at a time, so I kinda just follow the same guy the whole time which is a bit odd perhaps as a ref.

The countdown clock is very quick and not as fun a mechanic as the rest of the gameplay. It isn't forgiving either since you have one chance for each number instead of having a few lives or a time limit to finish the countdown by or something. Or maybe failing the countdown doesn't end the game but doing it well would reward you more audience approval points.  First time I got the countdown clock I lost since at first I didn't know what it meant by "count the bell when a fighter is down".

Nice SFX. I do wish there was a sound or visual effect when a fighter is about to go down, or maybe some grace time before the audience approval meter drops. It's a bit much to be dodging a constant string of attacks while having to watch the tiny health bar of the dude you aren't shadowing on the other side of the screen.

Super creative on the theme. I like the parallax and the character designs.

I wish the movement was less floaty, as in I'd prefer higher acceleration on the player movement. Would make me feel more in control as the player, like I'm fighting the level and not the controls. The platforms can move faster to balance out the difficulty.

I wish you could maneuver up and down on the screen as well.

Good job on your first game jam entry! Keep adding features to it.

Nice style.

There is a ton of text. The text displays at a snail's pace and there is no option I found to speed it up, just to completely skip it. The Game Over screen in particular takes a minute or two to display. I like the lore but reading it is impractical. Combat is also slow too once you only have 2 days left as you have to just sit and wait for the numbers to tick down for a couple minutes.

Combat feels like I'm not making any meaningful decisions since each lane is basically the same.  Each enemy wave is incredibly easy to beat until they become seemingly impossible. Maybe there could be a balance between having to strategize to beat the current wave and having to beat future waves, like short-term vs long-term planning. Maybe you should show the enemy troop numbers and your kill multiplier for the current day so that you have a sense of how strong you currently are and can plan the day accordingly. Make decisions feel impactful!