This is one of the best entries we've played in this jam. So much about this is clearly well polished and cleverly designed.

There were a few issues we experienced that made it tough to get through the platforming. Multiple times we found that the solution to get through a room wasn't exactly very clear, and it led to us hitting our heads against the wall for a little bit. But after uncovering all the abilities, the smoothness of the experience really increases. When you know exactly how high you can jump it made it easier to tell what platforms were meant to be accessed.

It looks like, from reading another comment, you were going for a Metroid Fusion kind of a vibe. Very well done! We felt the same kind of horror vibe that the SA-X gives you in Fusion when it chases you through zones. The voice acting is really cool to hear, but it does also dampen the Metroidvania exploration aspect just a little bit. But for the scope of the jam, the size of this world was perfect and exploration seemed like it wasn't the number one priority.

The character controller is really smooth. We loved the wind-up to full speed, the force of the dash, the weight of the jump, and how the abilities helped augment your movement as you went through. Also the particles and explosions that happen when you shoot/dash/recall the bucket are SO NICE to look at.

Altogether we're really happy to have played this game. It was smart and very well assembled. Please keep working on this - we want to see a BucketHead release in the future!

Fantastic, one of the best entries I've played. I thought the voice acting was well done, and the player abilities had a lot of satisfying juice (recalling the bucket, and using the dash especially). And the "hard platforming" challenges towards the end were surprisingly fun.

The main critiques I have are:

• art inconsistencies (thought most of the art is great): mixed pixel scales, blurry background and some assets that look flat and unfinished in comparison.
• minor control issues: the slight kickback when throwing the bucket can be very annoying when throwing in midair. The dash stopping completely at a wall when impacting diagonally is unsatisfying and imo should continue grinding along the surface. And the dash/shooting often fired in the wrong direction. I'm guessing the last one might be down to using Unity's Input.GetAxis(), which applies smoothing, and could be solved using Input.GetAxisRaw()

Thanks for making this awesome game!

Really cool project, the set pieces were cool. The art was great, but inconsistent, things often didn't seem to fit together right. The Sprite animations on the player and other bots were really expressive though. I think the voice acting was often a damper because it really did not play like a Metroidvania for most of it. Any exploration I could do was solved by a voice in my head telling me exactly where to go.

Really cool game though, congrats to the team!

Really polished and good quality - and good game. Doesn't have the usual "jam vibe" but more like something from GOG or Steam.  The pixel-art, lighting, voice acting... comes together nicely.

The conrols were a bit confusing on keyboard - didn't have my gamepad close - but managable.

Super fun! but also I don't know if I can forgive you for not making an ending where we don't kill all the little robots :,( great job using sound design and lighting to make moments feel tense and urgent, even though there's seemingly no actual time limit. The controls feel amazing and I'm almost upset there's not more tight platforming using the mechanics. The only minor gripe I have with them is that with the dash ability it seems that your directional input is eaten sometimes whenever you hold down the directional key right after you activate the ability. As long as you wait a second before you try to move it works perfect, so that could just be a skill issue on my part, but maybe something to mess around with if you feel like changing it post jam. But then again, that didn't really affect my gameplay that much, I just had to figure out what was happening and get the timing down. 

P.S. Its embarrassing but I did cry when the EMP turned on when I saw the child robot, great voice work, I also spent like 30 minutes trying to find a way to not have to break through the floor at the end

Wonderful art and very unusual thing for gamejams - voicover! Abilities are well explained in popup windows, no need for trial and error. Story is not really unique, but there is moral dilemma, you can choose to kill friendly robots or to stop playing.

In this game I found only one flaw - it's pretty linear, and though powerups open new paths, there is no "explore every nook and cranny" aspect of metroidvania.

Great entry and good luck!

This was really fun, I liked the variety of challenges (fire jets here, drones there, you never know what's next). The music, art, and voice acting are something I aspire to! I do feel bad for the other robots since I couldn't escape with them, or maybe I'm not sure why my robot self felt like escaping instead of staying. During the part where I had to stand on the plate for the door to charge and explode, the other robot was like "no! don't do it!" and I jumped off the plate in case he would give me another choice when it was like 90% charged, but... he didn't offer any compelling reasons so I ended up blowing up the door. I'm... sorry, brother.

That's why our robots overlord will have so many stereotypes against us, fleshly beings. This was great in all aspects. Great job!

Omg amazing!! I was really looking forward to this entry and had a really good time playing it finally. I have nothing but praise for the excellent work on all parts. Great job by everyone on the team!

Graphics were amazing. Love all of the little details for the cute main character, like the way his eyes turn red when the bucket returns. The ability upgrades were really fun and just tricky enough that I had to master them after a little bit of trial and error. The sounds in this game really make the whole world feel alive. The storytelling and the voiceover gave a constant push forward and I think was really effective as a storytelling device. I definitely saw the twist coming, so it was not a huge surprise, but it still was compelling and I wanted to find out how the game ended! Really awesome background work too; I especially liked the starscape background during the credits.

The level design was also executed extremely well. I love all of the distinct props and set pieces which gave each area its own feeling of space, and helped me mentally map out where I was in the ship. Very well done.

I also really liked the musical shifts and tones throughout the playthrough. It was also the perfect length (15-20 min to win). Man... really memorable, charming, and inspiring. Great work!!

I wasn't a huge fan of the mixels, and some of the platforming sections while using the mechanics well felt a little strange. Otherwise, pretty solid and I never felt lost. I think the "escape" sequence's level design was much better than beginning of the game, at the very least more traditional. The story was definitely an interesting touch. Gopd luck on future projects.

Such a great game! It's very polished. The art, voice acting, music, SFX, and the creative use of the bucket are all so good. I love the story as well. One tiny bug I found is that you will get pushed back a lot and out of the room if you retrieve the bucket in the low ceiling area of the left bottom room entry. I guess it's the collision with the bucket that pushes the player out. Overall, it's an amazing game. Congratulations!

For any Mac user running into the "application can't be opened" error, download the itch.io app (https://itch.io/app), then download the game from there. That'll work without issue. Happy gaming!

Very cool and original game! And it's very well executed

I left me to think that there was an alternative ending so I replayed it but didn't find anything.

The only word of critical feedback. Space sky in the central room window looked a bit odd to me. The parallax is reversed. As I get it you tryed to achieve an effect of looking into an actual window. So if you shift rigth your view opens more to the left. But it feels odd considering other places normally parallaxed background. Well, maybe it's just me but it really cought my eye

Other than that, it's a great game!

That was a fun experience, there were very creative upgrades and the audio was great. The graphics were good too, but as said they're unfortunately quite uneven as some backgrounds were blurry and some pixels bigger than others. That's my biggest problem with this but I definitely enjoyed my time, your team did good job.

Hey! I really wanted to check this one out but the mac application says it cant be opened, do you know how to open it?

Hello there! This was quite a nice game overall, I have a few gripes which I'll write down here, but for the most part it was an enjoyable experience.

I softlocked once at the beginning, a video of that is attached.

I feel like some timed sections were too tight, one comment already mentioned the first bossfight being too tight, which I agree with. In the final boss room, shooting the second button also had a tight window and took me a few tries.

The gameplay felt super neat for the most part, there was one tiny thing that I didn't like about the character controller, the character x velocity seems to get reduced/set to 0 when hitting the floor after jumping/falling, which feels super awkward, you should be able to keep your momentum after jumping. Aside from that, dash and regular movement felt great.

Your audio department did such a phenomenal job all across the board! Great sound effects, super fitting, never felt out of place! Music is fantastic and always fits the current situation. Great work guys, keep doing what you're doing!

The art was fine on paper, if you look at an individual sprite it's good, but I think you had multiple artists working on this, which made some sprites have different styles from others, which does look kind of odd. You also have uneven pixel sizes which is generally more of an amateur thing to put in your game. The visual effects are amazing though! Very over the top, in a good way.

The story was good, though I feel there was a missed opportunity to give us an alternate ending where we side with the robots instead of shutting them all down. It's okay, there's only so much time in a month.

Good game, very well done!

Hello - good to see another large team with a voice-acted game! 

If you guys don't mind, I'm going to post feedback quickly since there's not much time before the deadline. So it'll be a string of comments instead of one big comment. It's too last-minute to make changes, but if any of my feedback is worth taking into account even now, I'd be very happy.

The buttons I need to press are difficult to see - they're slim and they don't stick too far out of whatever wall they're on. 

Edit: The first boss is mega-hard! Dunno if its possible to slow the boss down by a few pixels. Ofc pls keep in mind this is just me.

Nice game really liked the intro sequence and the fact thats voice acted, the history  and bucket mechanis are interesting, understanding how to acquire the second upgrade was very hard for me I think making so the human character speaks like he does with the previous one would help, the backgrounds are great and add some storytelling but somethings kind of blend on it(mainly the buttons). Only played until the part where your returning  after the battery because I got stuck on the wall where you would go up to encounter the first boss, will give it another shot later as im  curious about the ending.