I really quite like this game, the artstyle and graphics is great, the music is great, and the death physics thing is quite interesting and fun! at least to me the progress bars are slightly confusing and some stuff like when you press space during a dialogue the text just keeps repeating, but again still really nice!

I love this! The art and music fit so well together, I love the colours and animations. I think once the jump cooldown is shorter it'll be so much more fun!

Thoughts before meeting the female NPC:

• The graphics look great on their own but I feel like the style is quite consistent. For example, the grass has no outline but the player does. I feel like this is due to combining art from different asset packs

• I’m not a fan of the background. I feel like it would look good normally but it looks a bit blurry. I assume that was done intentionally (since the other art isn’t blurry) to keep the player’s focus on the foreground but it just feels off with the pixel art aesthetic

• Pretty minor but sometimes there are gaps between tiles

• I don’t like the color of the progress bars. I think they could work if the entire game was of a similar style and used a similar color scheme but here it doesn’t feel very cohesive. I’d recommend using a site like Lospec, it has some really good pre-made palettes that could help with this

• I’m also not too sure what the two progress bars represent. It seems like one of them is a jump cooldown but it’s pretty confusing. (I’m aware there is an issue with the jump cooldown judging by the game’s tagline)

• LMB makes the player render above the grass which I’m not a fan of. I think the player should always render above it. I also don’t like the animation. Assuming it is attacking, it doesn’t really look like it. It just seems like it gives the player an angry facial expression

• I don’t like how the player isn’t as mobile in mid-air. It makes it feel pretty clunky. Definitely my biggest gripe with the game. I think it might have just been a bug though

• I feel like the music is too loud but the music itself isn’t bad. Nothing spectacular or anything but I feel it works well for this game

Thoughts after meeting the female NPC:

• The dialogue box looks good but I don’t think it fits with the rest of the game’s style (although it’s not as jarring as the progress bars)

• The “continue” button hitbox is quite small. I’d personally prefer a hotkey to continue with the dialogue (that way the game would be keyboard-only as well which is always nice)

• I just realised the “female NPC” is actually a man. Sorry Mr Tutorial Man, no offence intended

• The green bar seems to be a jump cooldown and the red one an attacking one. There’s a delay between the player pressing the input and the bars starting to deplete which I think looks weird. I also don’t like how it vanishes and instantly reappears when the cooldown finishes. Personally, I’d prefer an animation of the progress bar increasing as the cooldown comes to a close instead as I feel like “a progress bar increasing” has more positive connotations

• I won’t be able to critique any of the audio past this point as my headphones are currently being used by my dog unfortunately

• Someone else mentioned this but the tutorial man keeping track of my deaths gets annoying. I like the death counter in the top right though. I wish it says “Deaths: [number]” instead of “Death - [number]” though as at first I thought it was talking about negatives and thought it was a bug

• The player kind of floats when walking over the clones

• It looks funny but I don’t think it’s a good design choice to allow clones to rotate freely once dead. I feel like it could open up the possibility for a lot of frustration since the rotation is pretty dependent on RNG

After meeting the first enemy (wizard-like guy):

• At first, I didn’t realise it was an enemy. I thought they were just an NPC so I just walked into them. I feel like this could be made a bit more clear

• The enemy’s idle animation is quite blurry. (I would record a video of it but you can’t see it when the fps is low)

• I think there should be more visual feedback. When the enemy dies they just vanish. Perhaps an exploding animation of some sort?

• The tile edge is a cleanly cut vertical line which breaks immersion a bit

• I like how the map has decorative objects like trees and what I think are tombs dispersed throughout. It definitely makes it feel a bit more lively

• The cliff (see screenshot above) was very frustrating to get past since I restarted back at the tutorial man every time. Someone else described this as a rage game but I don’t really agree. This particular sequence just feels a bit frustrating and repetitive

• I encountered an invisible wall at some point but it fixed itself when I jumped

After the cliff:

• I’m not sure why but I just floating on these set of grass tiles. It doesn’t seem to happen with the other ones though

• I keep on getting stuck in these tiles and periodically the player just vanishes and then reappears while being stuck in said tile (isn’t visible in the video): https://gyazo.com/b73f6d651e326481bbfcede2afe39edc I wasn’t able to progress past this point unfortunately. If this wasn’t a bug then I don’t think this is a good design choice as it very much seems like a bug and it’s not very clear how you’re supposed to progress past the point. Also, if this isn’t a bug please let me know how to progress past this

Extra thoughts:

• The game feels quite slow-paced which I don’t think works very well in a game jam setting

• Overall, a pretty solid entry!

Edit: After talking to the dev on Discord turns out you’re not supposed to be able to progress much past the cliff. Here’s how I did it though and found that walk-through tiles bug:

Really nice game! love it but though the cooldowns was too slow (just remindin). It's a nice rage game because mr tutorial man keeps reminding me of the number of deaths and it's annoying

Well done! Well-made game with great graphics and audio effects. I liked the idea of using the bodies of your dead people to your advantage! In fact, my game is similar!

Good rage game. The jump and attack cooldown seemed a bit too slow however. I did like that the previous failures are physics-based and can be pushed into spike pits to help build a bridge.

Loved the game! i like the idea. The graphics, music and characters are cool! but the Mr. Tutorial Man was a bit annoying counting how many times i've died lol. But it's a really cool game!

Great concept and I really love the graphics :) The color palette is very pleasing to the eye!

Okay, first of all this is a really interesting concept. I love the art style in general, the ground tiles, the background and the animations (the front grass covers a lot of them though)! The music is beautiful too! The only thing that i don't like is that the cooldown bars (especially for the jump) are taking too long for no particular reason.. Also, you didn't "close" the left side of the game and you can easily fall til' infinity, but this is minor. Overall, the main idea of usefull deaths is great and i hope you will dig more into that! Great job!

The idea is very, very interesting ! I'd love to see a fuller/shipped version !

That's kinda funny cause I've remember very well the core idea of using your own corpses as a bridge in the belgian comic named "Kid Paddle" from Midam. I searched the the exact page for a bit but can't manage to find it. I always thought it would be a good idea for a real videogame. 

I only wish there was more checkpoints, it's kind of frustrating of starting at the beginning everytime. Especially in a game where the very goal and way to finish it is to actually die. 

But there's definitely and idea to explore right here, are you going to continue making it ? Or was it just for the gamejam ? :)

It was fun breaking your game. :)))))

Interesting game!!

Interesting idea!

Nice art and interesting idea. But sometimes it seems that the jump button is not pressed.

The art is stunning and the idea of using your dead bodies to progress is something I've never seen in any game. Great job on coming up with that idea. Unfortunately, the jump timer and the lack of checkpoints took a lot of the fun out of it for me.

Cool concept, love the design, art and sound! Great work! It just needs that extra bit of polish for the jumping and attacks but the idea of using your past self to progress is neat!

Nice game, good looking, nice soundtrack . Jump cooldown is way to long and the colliders of objects are very stange.

Great execution on this! I appreciate that you took a simple mechanic and then explored it really well, and the art and music are great! Everyone has mentioned the long cooldowns so I won’t say anything more about that, but yeah giving the player more freedom to play around with the system without waiting or travelling a far distance could make this a really great game, I hope you keep up with this!

Nice looking game! Things i would change:

-On the beggining, you have the "intro cinematic". I would put 2 black bars on the screen to show that it is a cinematic. I got confused thinking the character was moving alone.

-Cooldown on jumping is WAY too long in my opinion. Of course it makes the game a bit more challenging, but it also slows the pace a lot and is frustrating.

-Sound for killing enemies... Feedback for the player. 

Other than that, its a pretty solid game :P