Excellent art/animation. Writing is excellent; I enjoyed every character greatly even with such a short amount of time spent with them. I like the varied enemy designs, though I found myself getting a little frustrated at the rose heart creatures as they could hyper armor through my attacks with their own. The following are my personal preferences for action games. I think the animations can all afford to be sped up somewhat, especially Tama's attacks. My biggest complaint in this regard is that the screen freeze upon hitting enemies lasts just a little too long, especially when hitting multiple enemies at once. I also found myself yearning for the ability to cancel my attack animation into a block or to change attack direction mid combo (my combo would often force me to push past the target I wanted to hit). These would both increase the game feel at the cost of reducing challenge somewhat. Also pertaining to game feel are the sound effects for striking, which I found somewhat lacking in impact. Excellent work!

[Narrator voice begins] On the previous episode of Tama and Paisley's adventures, after Paisley came to realize her true feelings towards Tama, she awakens as a magical girl and confesses her feelings to Tama. After months have passed, Paisley has yet to receive an answer from Tama and decides to try again on Valentine's day but not knowing there lurks in the shadows an unknown group who plans on testing the strength of their Entangled Hearts. So be sure to tune in to tonight's short and highly polished magical girl game and find out if the two magical girl's heart are truly entangled as one [Narrator voice end].

Entangled Hearts is a game that is part of a series of game jams about the adventures and relationship between Tama and Paisley. In this latest part, the player plays as Tama, a magical girl wielding the powers of art, battles against the nightmares appearing through the city as she seeks to save Paisley from her captors.

Magical Girl Concept:

The game portrays several magical girl who wields a magical weapon and can also transform between their magical and non-magical form.

Visual:

The art style is really nice and it portrays the magical girl world in a vibrant manner making it feel like it came out from a super hero comic book. The choice of using pixel art sprites and animation gave it a very polished feeling to the game and is very consistent through out the gameplay. Every sprites, which includes the character, enemies, and parts of the background, are all animated and it can be seen that it is done with a lot of care and effort put into it. The UI art and design is clean and laid out neatly which isn't distracting in any way while being able to visually show the player character status.

Audio:

The music composed for the game is well in tune with the art style and the genre for a Beat'em up. Every scene of the game has a track attached to it, from the main menu to the boss fight so their is a good amount of tracks to keep the player entertained. The sound effect gave the game an added bonus to the feel and feedback especially during combat.

Theme:

The theme picked is Entanglement and Energy. Entanglement is immediately displayed in the title of the game and also found in the story where it is mention whether both Tama and Paisley's heart is truly connected. As for energy, it is part of the story and in the game mechanics where the player collects a sort of magical energy from fallen enemies and is used to fuel the healing magic or allows Tama to fire a ranged attack. (Spoiler Alert! Start) Later in the end it is shown that when Paisley and Tama worked together in battling Tama's doubt, a large amount of energy can be seen released after defeating her doubts (Spoiler Alert! End) .

Challenge / Engagement:

The game has several levels featuring many enemies types that consist of either melee or range attacks with some range attacks being able to track the player character position. The game level of challenge is quite balanced where you get a group of weaker enemies with a good mix appearing while at times harder but only a couple of them appears at times. (Spoiler Alert! Start) The difficulty isn't very apparent during battle with the nightmares or minions until the player reaches the first and final boss fight which consist of a magical girl, number 21, and then Tama's doubt which requires a good level of dodging enemy attacks (Spoiler Alert! End). Besides that the story is engaging in a way that it drives the plot towards the romance genre and how there is also a sort of mystery being revealed mid to end section of the game. I expect this is possibly a setup for the next release so it good that there might be plans ahead of time.

Overall:

Mechanics in the gameplay is solidly built with some fine tuning required on the combat segment. I find that the move distance on each attack executed could be toned down so the player character doesn't move into enemy range while the animation attack speed could have been a little faster. The artwork in the game is absolutely wonderful and it shows a lot of passion and care has been put into building the world for the two characters. The choice of music track composed for the game is pretty accurate with the game depiction and suites really well for the genre. The story is well written with no issues and has a solid direction with what comes next.

This time around I saved the best for last. Okay, I don't want to say whether this is my favourite game in the jam or not (although I might have already said that about another game), but it's definitely up there. I liked this game a lot.

The art and music is absolutely top notch. The pixel art is just about flawless and both the highly detailed stills and sprite animations look fantastic. I'm not a fan of pixel art in general, but I am a fan of this. Tama's expressions on her world sprite are the absolute icing on the cake here. I'm assuming this is another FacemeltingSolos collab? The music has a very familiar feel to it.

I can see Tama and Paisley's relationship being divisive, either because they're super awkward or because it's a same-sex relationship. I'll say I liked it, I think they're a cute couple, and I'll leave it at that because that is not an anthill I want to kick over.

The level design was just okay, and the background art, well, faded into the background, but I think that's fine. I did appreciate the extra effects in the dream world.

As much as it pains me to say it, the gameplay was just okay. I found Tama to be a bit slow and clunky. She actually had the feel of a big powerful knight with a two-handed sword; slow but powerful attacks but you pretty much have to tank damage. Which is cool, albeit a bit at odds with her visual design. Unfortunately it just doesn't really mesh with the other mechanics. Dodging and blocking are at best extremely difficult to pull off, because Tama's attack is slow and you tend to end up in a solid one-two-three cadence and to react to a lot of attacks you end up needing to block mid-attack. 

This was particularly evident in the first boss fight, where it was basically impossible to dodge the red 1's if you'd already committed to an attack. The second part of this boss fight was a lot easier, but confusing- I wasn't sure if I had to keep hitting the doors and it was just a long repetitive fight, or if I needed to hit the right one or hit them in the right order or something.

Difficulty and length are just about right for a jam game here. Despite getting frustrated and failing a few times I never felt the game drag and never had to repeat sections over and over to get past them. I think some will probably disagree about the difficulty. I don't think this game was screaming out for save states at its current length, but a pause button would have been nice. I also would have preferred Arrow+ZXC controls but I got used to the WASD+BNM scheme pretty quickly.

All in all a very solid jam entry and a great addition to the series that has me excited for the next installment!

EDIT: Not relevant to this game necessarily, but you've set up a lot of big myth arc plot stuff. I'm excited, but also a little nervous, because tackling some of that stuff might be a massive expansion in scope from previous games.

I can only assume you spent the whole month working hard on this game, because it’s incredibly well made and polished. Your dedication deserves a lot of praise.

The graphics are amazing. The style of pixel art is my jam, especially the characters. The outlines are super characteristic, the colors are beautifully picked, even the animation is very smooth and expressive. Character design is great as well. Paintbrush motif? That’s awesome.

The gameplay and the music evoke the mood of the Streets of Rage games for me. It didn’t take long for me to get into the rhythm. The moves you have available aren’t that many, but it gets the job done and I can’t complain about the animations. The difficulty might be a little easy but that might be a good thing in a game jam. And the boss fights are definitely interesting enough to be fun despite not being super hard.

The story is essentially very good. But at least for me, who hasn’t played the first two games, some things are confusing and not really addressed to satisfaction. Why you are fighting drones, for one. The shadowy cabal doesn’t really seem to have a genuine stake in the story. I wouldn’t call it contrived, but… maybe if you dropped some more hints throughout the game I wouldn’t even have thought about it. Nitpicking aside, I really liked the story, the conclusion especially.

I don’t know what else to say, it feels like I could have paid money for this game. (though if it was a commercial game I would expect it to be longer)

Great game! And wow, 1 person team. I can tell you put a lot of work into this. Love the character designs, nice story flow, and game planning. One thing can be improved on is attacking. When I attack, it locks in state and it makes me harder to dodge enemy incoming attacks.

So... let's start with the good part:

The graphics. DAMN. The pixel arts of the scenes, the characters, and the enemies are absolutely amazing. This looks like a paid game art-wise.

I also love the labs and the drones and those futuristic stuffs -- truly a marriage between technology and magic -- well done!

The music is also as always pretty good. The last boss fight's concept with the tennis ball thing... I wonder if I should say this, but it kind of reminds me of one of my fav last boss fight in hack & slash games and I love it (Galbalan Boss fight from Ys: Oath in Felghana)

Story wise, I'm not a fan of yuri so I won't say too much about that aspect BUT... I can tell a great deal of effort is built into the character writing and the narrative. Absolutely complex and fantastic -- can be turned into a novel or sth.

Now with that all said though... I'm sorry to say this but there are some parts of the game that I do not really like.

• The attacks... in my opinion it feels way too slow. I think you should omit one or two frames there to make the attacking slightly faster.
• The mana... is the only use of the mana to heal? I suppose there was only one month to work with but... I think it could be more fun if there could be other uses like... energy ball attacks...? (^_^;
• The movement... I feel like it's way too slippery. I mean... she walks on grass and asphalt, not ice. It feels kind of weird imo. (^_^;
• I can't believe I actually complain about this BUT... everyone's health feels a little bit too thick. I think it could be more fun if everyone's HP were a bit thinner, and make everything more fast-paced.
• The blocking ability is kind of annoying to use, I think. I don't know how to improve it better though, and it's not completely useless so I think I won't really say too much about it. I think some games allow some destructible projectiles...?
• The humanoid enemy -- idk what it is but I think I know how to improve it: if you make it such that the humanoid enemy always faces the player, and walks backwards when walking away from the player, I think it will be much, much cooler. Right now when it's walking away from the player it almost seems like it's short-circuited or sth and just wandering aimlessly.

Okay. I think that's all I have to say for this game. Sorry I was quite late checking my jam's submissions. Very good work -- good luck with the ratings d(^_^;

Great game! I really enjoyed playing. I like the story and the graphics. Really good job!

The story was super cute and the general feel of the game felt very polished. I'm pretty curious now as to the general backstory of the world, was Madoka Magica an inspiration?

It's been such a blast to play! I was already blown away by the look of the game (especially in such a short time!) but it was also really fun to play! The enemies being a reflection of the protagonist's feelings was really clever and allowed you to have fun designs for them as well. I also think the story is cute and that there's just enough characterization for the protagonists to be endearing. Really, really well done with this one! ^^

I like the juice in the game, there is just enough audio visual feedback to make the action and reactions look and feel nice. The enemy animations look cute. A lot of animations in this game, really nice to see. 

This game is spot-on! The character art is big, bold, and polished, the level design is straightforward but not boring, and the audio features chunky hits and beautiful tunes. It's occasionally difficult to tell if I should be able to hit an enemy (particularly with the flying enemies) but that's a problem for this style of game pretty much no matter what you do. Like your previous MGGJ entry, this game would not be out of place in the arcades of old, but this time it wasn't too challenging and I beat it. I don't know how you could have done this game better. Way to go!

A vary solid beat-em-up, it is amazing what you did within the month, I was there in the progress section of the discord.

I was really looking forward to playing this judging by your other work! You never cease to amaze me. Everything about this is very polished to the bone. The feeling you get when you land a successful attack, the sprite work and the gameplay. 

Story was compelling enough for me to see Tama's goals 'till the end. Music was fire and the sfx were great too. 

I enjoyed my time with this a whole lot!

Really liked the music and graphics of this game. I found the range attack to not be that useful. They take a lot of magic and don't do enough damage. It would be cool to have a throw attack or something that does a huge amount of damage in a big area. Good job overall.

This was so cute and super polished, amazing work! I've also played the last two games you made for the previous magical girl jams and it was great to see new characters! :3 Can't wait to see what you do next!

I'm impressed with what you managed to create in a month. The game is very engaging; I enjoyed every stage and I didn't feel like it went on too long.

The music helped to set the atmosphere and sound design was good too. However, if I had to give some feedback I think the first stage's song is too calm considering the amount of Nightmares on screen.

As for the story, I did enjoy Moonlit Curse's story more but it was still good, just not really my kind of story.

The gameplay here is great and the variety of attacks made each battle feel different. I also enjoyed both of the boss fights, although it did seem that Number 21 had a lot more health and was generally harder than Tama's Doubt.

The art style was consistent and fit the game well. Animations are very smooth and the hitstop helped to add impact into the attacks.

If you were ever going to update the game in the future, I would suggest having some level of interactivity with the environment, such as being able to knock over bins or smash the glass tubes in the lab area.

Great work!

wow that was a pretty fun game shibey sempai...

i just think some kind of auto collect energy stuff is missing since im kinda lazy to collect stuff...

the control is very good also the the art is awesome you quite improve in that one even in background and stuff.

the story and audio is a bit lacking but is good overall... not sure why the story don't feel too much engaging ... well i'm not a writer nor can write a good story so im not the person that can judge it right.

also the audio i can't do it too, but as player point of view don't feel the right song for the right time kinda thing....

thanks for the awesome work sempai i really enjoy your game!!!

Just leaving a comment to note that audio-wise, most was made during the Jam period by Facemelting Solos! He produced a full sound track and tons of sound design. The boss music and a few SFX were recycled from previous MGGJ projects due to time constraints, but are all Facemelting Solos work as well!