Really cool game, with nice animations. Wish there was a small idle anim for player.

Beautiful art, animation work, and music!

Without spoiling anything, the way it fit the theme was very clever. I didn’t read your theme explanation before playing so I did not see it coming.

I felt like the controls during the main game were good, but didn’t really like how the final battle felt. It was very hard (impossible?) to avoid the projectiles due to their fire rate and my jump height and hitbox size, I would always land touching at least one even if I aimed for the middle.

I checked whether there was any different endgame if you played a pacifist run, and there didn’t seem to be (unless I killed an enemy by accident and didn’t notice). I think it would have fit the theme of your game very well, but I also understand that it’s hard to put in everything in 48 hours :)

First of all, thank you for making this pacifist (except the boss fight, but that's a given). As a person who tries to play games in a more pacifist way, that allows me to play this game. Now since the twist was already mentioned, I played this game knowing the way to go would be to not get the abilities. The game felt a little too short and anticlimactic, but maybe that had to do at least partially with how I played the game rather than the game itself. Also, I couldn't get the shift button to work with the new character (though I beat the boss with all basic attacks, so it didn't prevent me from winning). Also, I'm not entirely sure if I would prefer more difficulty as it could have been frustrating. It might be good if movement was more nice, but then again movement may be hard to nail.

Cool vibe, designs and overall aesthetic!

The gameplay feels kind of stiff, but i think that is easily fixable.

Great Entry!

This is a great idea! I really loved the visuals and the music and the twist was great. I did run into a couple of problems but I'm sure they could be ironed out:

- The robot felt kind of clunky to control, maybe adding a little bit more acceleration and lowering the default jump height would help with this

- You can fly as the robot by shooting and then jumping repeatedly because shooting refreshes your jump

- The monster's attacks felt kind of jank  + could have been introduced better and i lost at the end because of this (maybe have an option to retry the boss a limited number of times instead of forcing the player to restart right away?)

- For some reason the robot's dash animation is the same as the monster's but this is almost definitely super easy to fix

Overall, this is a great concept which was executed very well. Great job!

Graphics and sound effects were top notch. Really great work, especially the alien boss at the end which is really a wonderful design. Game hit a good level of difficulty, took quite a bit of damage on my way up. The shooting mechanic was a bit unusual at it appeared to pause my character for a brief second before firing off the projectile. The twist at the end was super welcome, I like how you get to play as the villain prior to being forced to fend him off. Really nice entry, fitting theme, well done.

Really really sick art! Cool aesthetics and it fits the theme very well.

The music and animation was really nice. I really like the concept and had a lot of fun playing the game. Really nice art and cool idea ! :D

Neat little metroidvania.

Excellent art and aesthetics. Gives me vibes like its set deep underground. Animations are nice too. Very impressive how much you've managed to make in the Jam timeframe.

For improvements, I think the controls need reworking, i.e. adding mouse support for the attacks (J -> Left Mouse, K -> Right Mouse).

Overall, very pretty game that needs some work on the combat/controls. Well done. Definitely would recommend spending more time developing it.

Great twist! Love it

Nice plot. Your art is so beautiful. It's a little hard for me to control . Great job.

Really cool take on the theme, the visuals also look awesome and the music is catchy, the only thing that needs improvement is the controls I think

Wow, what an amazing concept! I really liked how the penalty for dying is gaining more health so that the game becomes both easier at the beginning and harder at the end. Graphics were also superb, nice job!

That was genuinely super cool. There have been plenty of games that take a genre and invert it, but I haven't played one yet where you start normally (albeit with some morality questions!) and then have the inversion part way through. That was a clever technique, and I felt way more invested because of it.

The gameplay was quite difficult for me, but I got there in the end. I found the knockback on taking damage meant I fell down some levels which would sort of snowball me. I also found the players hitbox quite large so I would often hit my head and therefore miss my jump. And maybe it was just me, but I realised I never made use of the melee attack. The game was nice and responsive though and well balanced (I only fully died twice after all!), and I was genuinely immersed during the end fight. Both emotionally and gameplay wise, that was awesome.

Great art (I especially loved the boss and its animations), thematically on point, and really fun. Awesome stuff

Very cool graphics!

The controls feel a bit too slow for my taste, and would have liked to use both hands more easily, but solid entry.

Love the little dialogs when you kill an enemy, kinda foreshadows the end!

Very nice game!

I liked it. A bit of a challenge, but a nice one. The level design was cool, the 'enemy' variety was also pretty nice.

At first I noticed that the enemies didn't drop anything, and that there was nothing stopping me from just running past the enemies without fighting them. Then I realized that that actually makes a lot of sense, progressing without fighting.

Excellent work!

bro aliens are so cute! I feel bad for them lol
the key bindings are a bit difficult for me, but I enjoyed the game anyway!
interesting twist :)

Really cool idea of building up the thing you were going to have to fight at the end! The controls were a bit rough for me as j and k aren't very natural to use, binding the mouse buttons as an alternate button would be a good way to keep both options open. The art was really neat, I especially liked all of the different aliens you put in too.