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Thank you for the honest and helpful feedback.

I'm glad you somewhat enjoyed the game and you're right that it is rough around the edges in certain parts. It's always helpful to watch playtests like this since some bugs/crashes don't happen on all machines. I was able to fix some of those issues now.

Regarding controller support, it's actually not done yet but it does show up in the settings already, which is probably a mistake. I might disable it until it is complete.

I do agree that there is something missing, but I'm not yet sure what that is. Maybe the content should also be distributed more to the beginning of the game, since most players will spend a lot of time in the first few levels.

Appreciate you for giving it a second try, and have fun with the rest of the jam entries.

Thank you for the extensive feedback :) Glad you enjoyed it. No I don't have meta progression at the moment and I plan to keep it to a minimum tbh. I do want the player to discover lore fragments or unlock new item drops for the dungeon eventually though, so that might count as a bit of meta progression. There are 4 biomes in total, though the last one is not complete. Cave 4 is quite good for 30 minutes of playing. What do you think, should the first biome be a bit easier (maybe reducing it to 3 levels) so players progress faster? Or is it good like this? Also good call on the mana system, I should probably communicate this a bit more.

Very fun platformer. Played this with keyboard and mouse and it worked well. Interesting and creative levels. I think this could be made into a full game if you add more items like the fish scale that have interesting effects on either movement or the environment.

Fun little game. I like the retro aesthetic and low poly artstyle.

Fun game! I spent about 20-30 minutes on it. Mostly played with the samurai. I liked the variety of enemies and that there were some minibosses in between that were tougher. The dialogue of the different characters was well written too.

I feel like you could actually make the combat more difficult, the player takes very little damage and oftentimes I could just stand still spamming my attacks and survive without problems. Without the fear of death it takes away from the tension of combat a little bit. I also felt like upgrades were a bit too frequent while mostly being stat upgrades which were difficult to notice. Maybe you could decrease the amount of upgrades while making them feel more impactful.

Overall a decent game, looking forward to see where it goes.

Thanks for playing :) It was fun to watch you figure out the mechanics. Funny how many parallels to Terraria there seem to be, I never played it haha (maybe I should). Will try fixing the issues you mentioned (Command line grabbing focus, scaling being displayed incorrectly in the tooltip, the game not communicating when you cant swap an item due to the carried one being cursed). The green potion was indeed a bug, not that it was too green :D Thanks for testing and good luck with the rest of the entries

Hey, thanks for testing and letting me know. I was able to reproduce it on my end and it should be fixed now (was related to an outdated dll). Would you mind trying again to see if it works?

One more question regarding the difficulty and things dealing too much damage. Did you feel like the player just didnt have enough health to begin with or was the problem not finding enough healing items along the way? 

No I don't think I pressed any number key on accident. The problem also resolved itself after a little while. But I tried it again, and this time it was fine, there were no lag spikes. I tested the number keys in the beginning and they worked fine as well. I played it for a bit and the enemies stopped spawning at some point after a wave, is that intentional? Also another thing that I noticed was that the bullets dont spawn directly from the player (which is fine) but that offset means they dont go exactly to your mouse pointer but are slightly off. Maybe you could take a look at that

Hey, so I played your game and I think the concept is nice, the movement and shooting feels very juicy. However after killing the last enemy of the first wave, the framerate drops very drastically to 2-3 fps for about 10-15 seconds, and then normalizes again. This happened multiple times after killing certain enemies. I'm not sure what could cause this. I don't think it's my machine, it should easily be able to handle a game of this scale. If you need more info on this let me know

Hey, thanks a lot for the extensive and honest feedback! It's definitely helpful. I think you're onto something regarding the difficulty, I'm so used to the movement and mechanics myself that it's hard to judge what feels fair and what doesn't. I will try to rework some of the things you mentioned.

I'm down to play your game as well, I'll give it a try in the next few days and let you know on the game page :)

Hi! I’ve been working on a small hardcore roguelike prototype called Ivory Keep. (Ivory Keep by Scewps)

A single run takes about 5–15 minutes, depending on how far you get.

I’m mainly looking for feedback on the difficulty curve (especially in later areas)

and whether items meaningfully help overcome that difficulty and shape runs.

Gameplay

Details:

- Genre: Roguelike

- Platform: PC

- Status: Early prototype

- Controls: WASD move, LMB attack, RMB shield/secondary, E interact, Tab inventory

Feedback questions:

- Did you understand the core mechanics without explanation?

- Does the difficulty ramp feel fair, even when it gets punishing?

- Do items feel impactful enough to influence how you play a run?

- Did you get stuck or confused anywhere?

- Would you play more of this? Why or why not?

Thanks for your time. I’m happy to return the favor and playtest your game as well.

Thanks :) it was a last minute addition 

Short but sweet, I like the first person animations

Thanks for the kind words! No I never heard of Quantum Break, but I'll definitely look into it now :)

Thank you for the feedback :) 

thank you for the feedback :)

Very fun platformer :) I did struggle with the controls a bit since Z is in a weird spot for german keyboards, but it was doable. Loved the secrets!

Thank you for your nice comment! Your criticism is justified, but I'm glad you had fun with the game :) This made my day

Thank you :)

Sick entry! I didn't make it to the end because of the bomb dropping phase but I played it a lot longer than expected, had lots of fun. I especially liked the intro cutscene.

Fun bossfights. After dying the first time I couldn't re-enter the bossfight though, the door stayed locked for some reason.

Like other people already said, it's a really cool concept and the artstyle is very nice, but too difficult (especially for the first boss). I feel like this could be a very good game with some more work on balancing and fluidity of the different mechanics.

Thanks :)

Thank you so much for the nice comment! Appreciate your feedback and I'm glad that you enjoyed it.

Good call on the crossbow, it does work but I never properly explain how to use it. You need to load it with an arrow first by using "Attack Secondary", which is the right mouse button by default. Maybe I should include a short description on how to use certain special weapons in the future. Also you're right about the theme haha, the game got further and further away from it as I kept working on it.

About making a custom engine, I hope it goes well! It can take some time to build your own tools, but there is something satisfying about knowing every puzzle piece inside out. Also being able to tailor your workflow perfectly to your own needs is very rewarding. Don't be afraid to reach out in case you ever need help :)

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah you're making a good point about the replayability. Might tackle that after the jam. I'm glad you enjoyed it :)

Thank you very much! The randomness is a good idea, I might add that after the voting period. Also I'm really happy you liked the music, this was my first time composing something for a game :)

Thank you for the extensive feedback!

Thats a good call on the contact damage, I originally added it when I was working on the first few basic enemies but now that you mention it, it might be better turned off for some. I'm not sure if that would make the game too easy as a whole, but maybe it could also shift the focus more towards the bosses attack patterns themselves, so its worth a shot.

About the spell select button, you're right! I completely forgot to add it to the options. In case it still helps you, the default is either Mouse Wheel Up or I. For the time being you can also change it in the settings/InputBindings.config file. Will update the build when I can too.

Also dual longswords sounds pretty sick ngl, might try that myself later :)

Thank you for playing :)

Fun game :) I think there could be more contrast between background graphics and important objects like projectiles, spikes, etc since there can be a lot of bullets. But cool entry nonetheless!

Thank you :)

Very short and simple game, but fun nonetheless :)

Very fun game :) 

Really fun game, I like that you added some backstory but also didn't dump a bunch of lore on the player all at once either. The fact there was lots of variety in the type of gameplay (sometimes platformer, sometimes top down, sometimes rhythm game) was also a cool idea.

I had a bit of trouble judging how well the knight was positioned, a lot of times it looked like the sword should hit but didnt. Other than that it's a very cool idea and interesting take on the theme :)

Cool design! I struggled a bit with the second boss, because the dash often didnt work that well, despite timing it correctly. I don't know if it was just because of the small size of the arena or if I misunderstood how it works. Otherwise fun entry :)

Very cool game! The overall vibe was very interesting. I liked that there was some exploration but for others it might be a bit too much to get to the boss. If there were multiple bosses you could find in different parts of the level the exploration would be a really good addition. It does seem like more was planned in terms of bosses, judging by the different buildings, multiple checkpoints and the cat statue. But only so much can be done in a month, so it's totally fine. The boss itself was fun to fight, even though it only had 3 attacks.

Really fun game! Enjoyed all of the bosses and the spinning top mechanic was interesting :)

Couldn't get past the first boss because there was so much going on at the same time, I would have liked a slower introduction to the mechanics and combat system. Other than that its a very cool take on the theme, and the art and music are well made :)

Saw this last feedback friday and wanted to try it for myself. The game has a really well done atmosphere, especially in the office. The tracking on the melee attacks of the bosses is a bit sharp, I got hit a lot of times by the second swing after dodging the first one because they did a 180 degree turn towards me. But other than that very cool entry :)