itch.io

Got 2 pies but gave up on the rest, I can't figure out how to get a lot of the higher up ones with all the jank. I don't know how I feel about the game being intentionally glitchy and janky - most of the glitches and jank just felt awkward and inconsistent rather than funny or interesting to exploit.

Moving and dashing feels decent, but there's some weirdness with the gravity (or maybe just the vertical momentum?) where the player plummets to the ground when walking off a ledge, which pretty consistently felt bad.

Who on earth in their right mind would ever interpret "left" and "right' to mean "backward" and "forward". 

Visuals and sound design were good. A lot of the gameplay felt kind of slow and tedious. The lasso is funny and decently fun to use, but tends to only be used briefly while most of the gameplay consists of just slowly walking around. Which was still fine for the first few minutes as I took in the environment, but backtracking was a huge slog as I had to very slowly walk from one end of the main room to the other while checking every lassoable tree to see if it led to progress. Granted I think a lot of the back half felt worse than it might've normally just because I was still fuming over that puzzle solution - it really was a massive low point that dragged everything else down for me. I get that puzzles are difficult to playtest but oh my god I question whether any player would be able to actually intuit it and not just brute force which entrances the non-vertical arrows are referring to - which, doing so correctly requires that you even recognize the way backwards as a valid option, something that's deeply unintuitive with how the clue is currently written and I tried basically every combination of interpretations that didn't involve that before giving up and finding the solution you gave on discord.

The metroidvania elements felt mostly perfunctory and I got more of an adventure game vibe from this than anything. That's not necessarily a bad thing from a general design perspective but does make me wonder if a format that was either more linear or more open might've worked better for this had it not been squeezed into a metroidvania jam,. I docked it a bit on that category score wise, but not a lot as it does still have meaningful ability gates which is all that's really mandatory for jam purposes.

Thank you!

I ripped this player control from a failed attempt at a more in depth entry, in which I did hope to explore that mechanic a lot more. Unfortunately within the bounds of this game's mechanics there's not really anything I can do to force the player to use that mechanic - any gap that can be crossed with a normal jump into a midair dash jump can also be crossed with a dash jump into a normal jump, and this game doesn't have any hazards I could put in the way to force the player to use the normal jump first.

...those are supposed to jump? i've never seen them do anything but stand still. i got around it by nudging myself into the little gap between it and the edge of the cliff there, which felt finicky but i assumed was meant to be part of the "difficulty" promised in the area's starting narration (and i was still stuck there for a long time as i assumed there was some ability i was missing to get over it)

that room doesn't actually have nothing in it. don't listen to her

Was writing a review then closed the tab without realizing I hadn't actually posted it and now I don't remember all of what I wanted to say -.- you'd think it'd warn you when you do that like most websites but itch has never been very good with its text input

 Sucks that you weren't able to make very much :(  The core character controller here felt good, as did the wall run, but I feel like the ledge grab and wall jump/climb thingy were a bit of an awkward pair - I had a hard time telling if I was in range for a ledge grab or would need to use the jump and missed jumps several times due misjudging this and not using the wall jump fast enough. I like the gimmick of activating the switches, but it was really confusing what the actual conditions to power them on were - visually the player is clearly just sticking a battery in the slot and all of the batteries look the same, so you'd think you just need one battery per box, but there were several occasions where I wasn't able to power a switch despite having picked up more batteries than I'd spent. I don't know if there's specific batteries that correspond to specific switches, or if some require a specific total amount of batteries collected, or if some of the batteries just don't actually count (some of them might've been ability pickups which seem to look exactly the same?) Whatever the mechanic is, it's not communicated to the player whatsoever in its current state, and it made things really confusing.

Mouse sensitivity feels too high, I felt actively nauseous when i first moved my mouse. The fluorescent green grass and pixellation filter don't help with this I think.

Gameplay wise this was pretty decent, its a competent little 3d metroidvania controller. I like the particles on the attack - feels like it could use some screen shake to sell the juice a little more, but it being at the point where that's the first thing I think of is a really good sign.

Level design was less good. A lot of it feels really haphazard and confusing, and there's lots of weird side platforms that don't lead anywhere. The world also doesn't really have any meaningful side paths or optional content that help give it a metroidvania feeling.

Sound design was pretty solid (except for the boulders sounding like bowling pins? that felt awkward) but I would've liked some music I think.

Pretty nice game. The art is gorgeous, the player's base movement feels good, and the gimmick is interesting - making all your upgrades modifiers to one central move is a neat way to put a bit of a spin on otherwise extremely traditional metroidvania upgrades, but it does also lead to a lot of accidental activation that got a little frustrating at times.

Where this fell flat was the level design. There were some really interesting ideas playing with the moving blocks in the first area, but by the third area it felt like every room was a big empty passage designed just to fill space, with interesting setpieces or challenges being few and far between. You mention in the game's description that you threw together a very large map in the last couple days, which seems like a mistake - I think the game would've been better if you put that time into a smaller but more focused map with more thought out level design.

really cool game! found everything but one white puzzle piece (though I was only able to find the final room thanks to the hint in the comments here). the minimalist visuals are really nice and appealing, and i like the central character switching mechanic, though i definitely feel like it was at its best initially when it was just the bunny and spider. you get a lot of fun mid-air switching shenaniganry with those two that never really comes back later, and i started getting mixed up about which button would transform me into what once there were more than two forms. on that note i usually rest my hand on zxc with arrow key controls so having to press v just as often as c felt awkward. considering x wasn't used for anything i don't see why it couldn't just use x and c to cycle transformations instead. 

getting the bird felt like it kind of made the other transformations fully obsolete which was a bit eh as it removed the main gimmick of the gameplay up to that point, though i do applaud you for actually having a significant amount of gameplay using the infinite flight unlike lighthop making it a lazy postgame reward x)   the little puzzle to get into the final room was also pretty neat and wrapped things up nicely.

also despite the fact that you couldn't think of anything for the theme interpretation this was maybe the most on theme feeling game i've played yet. something about the structure of the game makes it feel extra like a journey despite any lack of overt theming to that effect.

unfortunately "without help" isn't really accurate bc i didn't notice those trees until reading the other comment here complaining about them :(  i knew how to get in without help at least x)

The core Necrodancer inspired mechanic is cool and made it pretty fun to move around generally. Unfortunately I greatly disliked the world design - every path loops back around on itself with the key abilities being stuck off in inconspicuous corners making it incredibly easy to get lost since you very literally get guided into walking in circles rather than actually finding the abilities. There could be something interesting to that with the time limit, having to discover the locations of each abilitiy so you can actually get to them in time, but right now the ability locations didn't feel satisfying to discover, they just made me go "what the fuck is it doing over there I already checked this room", and I came off with a bad taste in my mouth that made me not want to try again after I ran out of time.

The music was nice at least.

can't believe deltarune is canonically tomorrow

absolute cinema. my only negative is the ending being so abrupt i need more of this silly star girl and her imaginary bird hater

but like what is a metroidvania though

I think it very literally is just the player moves too slow. There's not a lot you can do to spruce up the level design when the player only moves a few tiles a second, and the distribution of points of interest felt perfectly fine to me in most cases. Adjusting the player speed is also just a really easy thing to do so I wouldn't be afraid of playing around with it and seeing if it feels better at a faster speed. It doesn't need to be drastically faster, just a moderate increase can really change the effect it has.

Really good game. Attack spacing took some getting used to but I actually enjoyed having that bit of friction at the start give way to eventually mastering the combat and the overall the pacing of the gameplay felt perfectly fine to me, I don't agree with the complaints about it feeling too slow. I suppose if one thing did feel a bit slow to me it would be the dash which felt like it could use a little extra range to make it feel more impactful. Art is gorgeous, game is fully featured and well polished, story is... well I'm personally not a huge fan of "death is actually good and necessary" themes as a rule but having a substantial amount of well thought out writing in a jam game is always massive bonus points. Easily a top tier entry. Really liked how the teleport worked too, being able to set up my dodges ahead of time in the final boss was fun and set it apart from just being another dash.

The character switching gimmick seemed interesting at a glance, but it never really seemed to go in any kind of actually interesting direction. The fact that the three journeys never interact with each other in any way makes it feel like three completely seperate metroidvanias stitched together, which seems to be more or less the intent as it does fit with the narrative... but, like, that just makes me question why this is the narrative framing that was chosen, when it doesn't really allow for any deeper mechanical exploration of the gimmick. As it stands, the campaigns could be selected from a menu and it feels like the game would barely change. Alternatively maybe leaning more into the time limit aspect could've been an interesting direction to go in - tightening the timer and forcing you to hectically adapt as you swap around would make the song timer feel more relevant compared to the current leisurely pace.

Gameplay wise the individual metroidvanias are fine. I never actually found any upgrades in Vert's campaign, but it does look like there clearly were some that I missed, they were just never involved in the critical path? Which left it feeling decidedly less metroidvanish. Honestly Alma's was the only one that felt especially Metroidvania being the only one to actually have multiple critical upgrades and a pretty winding path that, like a lot of good metroidvania maps, felt nonlinear while (as far as I could tell at least) actually being pretty linear. Buster's was more middle of the road but did still easily pass the bar by jam standards. Was a bit disappointed that the different weapons for them never actually unlocked anything - particularly because the first one I got was the one that shoots through walls which is a feature that seems like it'd only really be useful for puzzles (it certainly never saw any meaningful use in combat in my playthrough).

There is exactly one big gameplay gripe I have and it's with the camera's vertical scroll. Oh my god it is awful. The camera constantly lags behind you, then jumps around what feels like at random and never in the direction you actually want it to go. It's mainly a problem in Vert's campaign because of... well the fact that it's mostly vertical. I felt like I spent half my time there not being able to see where I was actually going. The manual camera control helps a little bit, but its severely hampered by the fact that it can't be used on semi-solid platforms since pressing down just drops you through those - there's a good reason a lot of games require you to press down and jump to do that!

Visually I like the environment art (at least the spritework - some of its actual placement in the level feels a bit haphazard or unfinished, but such is how jam games go) but was very much not a fan of how the main characters looked. The borders are full of jagged edges and holes (and also just, like, having pitch black borders to begin with tends to be a negative point for me unless you really know what you're doing with em), the shapes are weird and indistinct, and the complete lack of shading compared to the much more detailed environments makes them stick out like a sore thumb and look like some kind of placeholder, but with way too many animation frames to seem like they actually were just placeholders. Its just generally a very odd jump in quality between the environment and characters that never really smoothed itself out in my eyes as I played.

The music was pretty good though, which is important for a game where it's central to the theming! I can't say that it's anything I'd personally put on for a journey, but it's quality enough I could see someone doing so :P Was enjoyable to listen to the whole way through the game.

Overall if there is one thing this game achieved it was delivering on its very ambitious scope - this sure is three metroidvanias in one, which is impressive! But I feel like a good bit of quality was sacrificed to achieve that, and the end result is a game that is often just kind of vaguely decent at best. I feel like more effort put into refining what was here could've given a game with some more memorable environments, or better character art, or just a more fully baked idea for building off the central character swapping idea - any of which might've made this stand out for more than just a passingly interesting gimmick.

Fun game! You really have the metroidvania level design down pat, was a lot of fun to explore and I really enjoyed the secret health upgrades. Kudos for including a map screen, the game's just large enough that it would've been an issue without one, I definitely needed it to find the last couple upgrades.

My big gripe with this is just that the player's base movement felt really painfully slow. I spent about half the game expecting some kind of dash that would maybe help mitigate this, but the only thing to come close was the flight upgrade near the very end and frankly the speed that moves at feels like it should've been the player's base movement speed the entire time. The slow movement made getting around feel pretty much always just a little tedious and I'm not surprised to see other commenters saying they dropped the game because of it, though for me it never bothered me enough to get me to stop playing.

The damage balancing also feels really awkward, I don't really get why there's such a large spread of damage values? The very first spike you encounter takes out half your health if you graze it but the first proper enemy only takes a sliver of health on hit. Felt really strange and inconsistent. Also, because the player always gets knocked upwards on hit and has very very few iframes, I ended up stunlocked when I hit spikes on the ceiling, since i just kept getting knocked back up into the spikes, which strikes me as a bug.

The protagonist is cute. I wish there was some actual art for the environments, as there's not much to say about the visuals overall in this state. Opting for this degree of minimalism was probably for the best though if you didn't have time for good environment art. Music was solid, didn't get old over my time playing it which is about as much as I ever ask when a jam game only has one track.

aaaaaa i think i found the spot where that's possible. didn't even think about jumping up there

Uh. What? No? I'm very concerned for your workflow if you have absolutely no idea what your game looks like until after its submitted.

Ingame descriptions for the gold and withered petals seem to be flipped :P

Fun game, gets a surprising amount of depth out of the core mechanic and narrative based games are always impressive as jam entries

darmicy!

the name and description implies the goal is to take down the count, but poisoning him leads to a game over. how curious

fed the count delicious plates of raw onions until the game just stopped responding to my mouse. game truly is broken, 10/10 for honest advertising

really fun little game, really enjoy the interactions for using the "wrong" tools, adds a nice bit of flavor and thinking to what's otherwise a pretty simple game

feel like the music needs to be a little louder compared to the sound effects, i was struggling to actually hear the songs i was supposed to be playing to the beat of. art is very cute, and the main mechanic makes for a really neat if brutally difficult rhythm game.

Pretty interesting concept! Found that it tended to be more efficient to just play as a scavenger rather than actually fight the other microbes though, which didn't make for particularly exciting gameplay :P

I reallly wanted to add an ominous ticking sound to the timer but I ran out of time :(  Might do a postjam update just to touch things up with some sound and a menu, maybe a couple extra minigame screens as well

very fun game! randomization could use some measures to prevent repeats - at one point I got the same painting three times in a row, and frequently got the same one twice in a row

Could use a forfeit button tbh. Several times where I ended up with no useful moves to make (often barely any legal moves even) and a ton of turns still on the clock.

If there is one thing I've learned from this, it's that I have absolutely no fucking idea how to play go

Control was a bit janky but a very cute game

Ahhhh, I was in fact trying to shoot after the sun stopped, that was probably it x). Maybe needs some more clarity as to when the window is, since I assumed high noon would be the earliest you could draw.

Pretty fun game! There was some glitchy behavior with the screen wraparound mechanic that got in the way a bit, but this was otherwise a very polished and creative entry with a fun gimmick

Cool concept and art, but it feels impossible to shoot faster than your opponent. Is there some part of the controls I'm missing other than selecting a shot and clicking, or is it just web build lag making the timing window impossible?

Making a hand drawn metroidvania in 4 days is impressive, but unfortunately the game ended up feeling pretty scuffed as a result. Wonder if scoping down a bit might've given a chance for it to get more polish on the movement and level design. I gave up after getting the dash ability as the platforming to get out of that room was just too finicky.

Really funny concept, game seems really poorly optimized for web though. Might've been worth adding a downloadable version even if fewer people play those.

Interesting concept, but it was really hard to keep track of what was actually happening behind the scenes. Some kind of indicator of what the current state of the game actually looks like would be really nice - as it stands, the only active feedback you seem to get is whether the team was happy, but just keeping them happy still got me what seems like a pretty mediocre ending (though at least it said they actually submitted something, so maybe that's a relatively good ending after all?)

nice little warioware like. that sure is a lot of floors, i wonder how feasible it is to actually fully complete this, i only got to around 70

damn, i was kind of hoping zima would actually just be a stock image of a snow leopard doing some wacky antics to get money. decent little idle game though

so very serious. pretty simple game but a really creative and funny interpretation of the theme!

This isn't a rhythm game? Just a timing one. The cards aren't timed to the music at all, so it's just a game of pressing a button when two icons line up with no musical component (a perfectly fine base, but not what's being advertised!)

The gameplay got tedious pretty quickly unfortunately - the cards move and appear really slow, and the angels other than the basic shy one have really excessive amounts of health, so the game quickly felt really slow paced and repetitive. Upgrades costing health is really interesting in concept, but they take so much of your healthbar for such lackluster upgrades that they just do not feel worth it - buying upgrades seemed like a death sentence every time I tried. The game also seems to have some really inexplicable and severe bugs - I had several occasions where the deck seemed to get stuck and keep repeating the same card over and over without counting down? Which in turn made the upgrades feel even more worthless, as I often wouldn't even be able to access the part of the deck where the cards I bought ended up.

On the other hand, the visuals are absolutely gorgeous. The character designs and stylization are so instantly iconic and appealing, it's such a cool aesthetic. Massive kudos for the artwork.

Fun game with some solid theming! My big criticism would be that a lot of card pairs just don't feel worth it to get - why would I ever add more difficult monsters or attacks for dealing with them to my deck just results in getting less of the ritual power I actually need to win? I ended up just avoiding any card pairs that included anything other than basic ritual/knowledge gains for the positive and raw damage/time loss or basic husk summons for the negative on my successful run, which felt like I was avoiding a lot of the more theoretically interesting mechanics because they were just too risky with basically zero reward - I could always just put my knowledge into upgrades that were strictly more useful anyway if there weren't any viable card pairs on offer, after all.