I’ll start with a recap of my experience: when I first tried this game last week, I was deterred from finishing it. I had a lot of trouble with the moving circle-platforms as I kept slipping off them, they just seemed very janky. I kept falling into a pit that seemed to have a buggy room transition, as I ended up inside the wall of the room below. after some struggling I managed to get out, but the way back to the circle-platforms was really tedious. I quit the game after this whole ordeal happened for the third time.

I tried the game again today, and I realized that standing still was the trick to those moving circle-platforms, so they didn’t give me much trouble this time. I beat the game in 22 minutes on normal.

for the feedback: the “no art” visuals work well, although it can be a bit busy at times. I think it could have leaned more towards minimalism, but I realize that’s a personal bias. the music got a bit repetitive, and there’s a lack of sfx.

I enjoyed most of the mechanics, especially the core dash/attack. unfortunately, I found the most viable strategy to be spamming dash through enemies, as every room gives a full heal and the checkpoints are very forgiving. I wish the combat was better tuned, as right now there’s no reason to fight anything except for the bosses. the dual-purpose action is really nice, and having to counteract the movement from dashing while attacking is an interesting concept. it’s a shame that it’s only played into with the triangle boss.

here’s my list of nitpicking:

• it seems like the only way to get the double-jump back is to touch the ground. it would have been nice to get it back after rolling on a wall or swinging with the hook as well.
• the jump is a bit boring, it feels very floaty, and there’s no variable jump height.
• it should be possible to cancel roll by pressing jump or dash/attack.
• building up momentum with the hook is really cool, but after letting go there’s a lot of deceleration which doesn’t feel very good.
• it would be nice to be able to shorten/lengthen the rope of the hook while swinging.
• having jump and talk on the same button is a bit unfortunate, sometimes I accidentally talked with people when I wanted to jump.
• having the abilities on 1 and 2 seems weird, I think it’d be more convenient on e.g. Q and E.

to end, I wanted to address the control scheme. I get that this game was designed for spamming clicks on a mouse, and controller is “not recommended”, but I beg to differ. the default controller bindings seemed incomplete to me as I wasn’t able to move, so I played around with rebinding things with a third-party tool: left-stick/d-pad for movement, A for jump, B for roll, X for hook… and more interestingly, I put each click on two shoulder buttons so I could alternate between them: left-click on LB and LT, right-click on RB and RT. I don’t think I could have spammed mouse-clicks for 20 minutes straight, but with this controller setup it was just a blast. it felt great to spam buttons and fly across the screen.

1H 12 on normal. Slow but fine for me lol.

I enjoyed how much you managed to stretch minimal mechanics both from the bosses and from the platforming in the last fight. Gameplay was very smooth once you got used to all the stuff. I especially liked all the boss mechanics on sky lord. The last boss was a skill jump compared to the first 2 but you make good progress as you iterate through it, and thats a very rewarding feature of good platformers.

The graphics were very thematic across the areas, allowed some intuitive navigation.

this was pretty solid! took me around 47 minutes to beat on normal, wasnt expecting so much stuff in it! my favorite part of the game was definitely the grappling hook, rly fun to use!! i kind of wished the rest of the game felt as fluid, but besides that, this was cool!

Oh, a fellow metroidvania entry! :D

I like that you managed to do so much with just simple shapes (and text to drive the story of the world of shapes). :)

Wow, what a ride. finally beat all the abberations on easy mode. That was a full fledged game. Amazing.

Movement feels nice, though I feel like the dash isn't very impactful. This probably is because you can click it as fast as you want, might be a consideration for future updates!

That was a really cool game!

I got frustrated at first when unable to beat Spike Lord but I made it to the other boss and it was really well made in my opinion (even if getting hit by the big ball can result in a kick death). I managed to beat Spike Lord with a bug : its timed attack continue to change when the game is paused, which makes it possible to just wait for the floor spikes to disappear.

The mechanics felt pretty good, but I would make the swing be able to shorten the rope to avoid getting stuck on the floor. I was kind of disappointed to not be rewarded for explorations (a few empty corners) but I understand that it takes time to do this sort of stuff.

Edit : I felt that coyote time did not work when falling off moving orbs, I might be wrong tho.

Edit 2 : Also really appreciate the Linux build.

Even if the overall feel can be improved, It's a pretty cool minimalistic metroidvania.
As a masochist I decided to play on the hardest difficulty and I managed to kill the first boss, if only there was saving I would continue it but maybe for the next build.

Other than that, I think the dash/attack ability is kind of unintuitive and frustrating, I don't know if that's intentional, but if not you should consider having one button to attack (shoots in the last direction you walked) and one for dash (shoots in the opposite of the last direction you walked) instead of having one for right and one for left

The game is really enjoyable to play, offering a diverse range of enemies, bosses, and environments. The music is beautiful and, combined with the smooth and organic animations, brings the character to life, despite being just a small white square. As for improvements, you can try making  the player character a bit bigger and adding a cooldown between dashes. Also adding sound effects would greatly improve the experience. Overall, a fun and content-rich game. Greatjob!

I really like the difficulty aspect and the sort of bullet hell. The platforming feels good too but its kinda weird you cant dash to the left, idk if thats intentional 

Good game!

i don't personally find this game hard, just very frustrating

specially combat, the idea of you attacking with your dash is nice and all, but the fact you have two buttons for each dash direction makes it very confusing

double that with the fact that if you want to dash to a direction you have to click the mouse button opposite to that direction, while attacking you need to click the one pointing to that direction and it just causes the whole experience to become confusing

i spent the whole game just dodging enemies instead of engaging with them 'cause it just wasn't worth it trying to combat them with how weird attacking felt, which is a very weird thing since whenever i play a metroidvania i ALWAYS make sure to kill every enemy on screen, even if i know they'll respawn, but this game just makes me feel like combat is not worth it at all

i also really don't like the way the dash was implemented, in any other metroidvania the dashes stop or at least reduce any sort of vertical movement

i get that doing that would probably conflict with the fact of the dash being spammable, but i don't think there was a single moment where i though "wow, i really need to spam the left mouse button to get to this place"

i think this game tries to reinvent the wheel by combining movement and combat into one single thing, but it just ends up making the movement seem confusing and the combat very unapproachable

although, i have to say i really enjoyed the power ups you get after fighting the bosses(or at least the one on the red village, i stopped playing after i got to the second boss lol, but if they're all this creative then congrats dude) they really make navigating around extremely interesting

and i also enjoy the animations, i kind of get the artstyle you were going for, even if it feels very incomplete it still is interesting

although the background being the same texture as the floor do not look very good, i genuinely think you could have gotten away with just making the background black to add some contrast as the way it currently is makes everything very hard to read

plus, the mini map blocks my view a lot of the time, there probably should be a way to turn it off

This game is interesting, at first glance, by just looking this you see simple shapes, and some are glowies but the atmosphere is very dreamlike which reminds me of Yume Nikki. But that's how I see it.  I've been playing this game with my lights turned off.  The Aberration Lord got a dope soundtrack!!!

The game has lot of content for a jam game, it really is a metroidvania with a fairly chunky map, tho I wish there's some way to get around the map faster. I think the dashing as attacking mechanic is an interesting concept, but I got a bit motion sick when spamming it a lot as it also moves the camera. Overall, a good chunky game with  interesting combat idea. (also input remapping would be nice)

very fun game!

so i just went to the boss without killing any abberations...(except tutorial one)

Super solid execution and a really interesting twist on the platforming genre. Feels good to control jumping and moving which is always the first thing I look for in a jam game like this. Nice feedback on actions and damage and clear instructions. Having the villages and NPCs gives it a narrative arc that brings it together.

The dashes are really fun! I like that your lifebar is a square as well, nice game!

I didn't make it very far into the game, but I found the mechanics fun to get used to. It took me a little while to get used to the idea of the dash being an attack, but I realized you could just walk towards your attack and you'd basically stay in place just fine.

Difficulty is the kind I enjoy, although perhaps a health managing system would be able to mitigate that feeling of unfairness some might feel. Otherwise I think it's a great game. And although presentation isn't great I like the "Thomas was Alone" feel of it. Proves it's a good base.

Even playing on normal I didn't make it past the first boss, tying your attack to the dash seems cool in theory but it make combat feel slippery and imprecise, which is awkward when the bosses moveset calls for precision to avoid the spikes. If you're expecting people to play patiently and only attack between moves then there should probably be longer punish windows or give the boss less health to avoid it feeling like a slog (especially on lower difficulties).