This was a crazy huge game for a jam wow. I ended up finishing it in 52min with 61% completion and 2 deaths.

I think the art all looks really nice, it kinda reminds me of GBA games from when I was younger which I love. There is an insane amount of pixel art in this game between all the different biomes and stuff great job. One minor thing I think would improve the pixel art is fully animating the idle animation instead of squashing and stretching the sprite I think would've looked better.

The gameplay was all solid and there were a great number of new powers to unlock throughout the game. I found the wall jumping a little frustrating to pull off since you fall off the wall instantly when you point the analog stick towards the direction you're planning to jump towards, it'd be nice if you stuck to the wall for a tiny bit like super meat boy does. I liked the ability to dash twice a lot and the jumping up waterfalls was fun to spam jump. I would've really liked the fast travel to be unlocked way earlier, I found it in the final area and at that point I was ready to finish the game so I never used it.

The game was a bit too easy overall for my taste. The bomb attack does so much damage I was just one shotting everything with it and once I had 6 or 7 life I was completely ignoring the boss mechanics and just bombing them to death before they could kill me. Maybe some optional challenges would've been nice to add, I think there was some real opportunity for cool platforming challenges with the dashing, grappling hook, and double jump all being so fun to use. Altho I didn't find 40% of the items so maybe there was some tough optional stuff I never found.

I don't mean to be overally negative or anything, I just spent so much time playing this game I had a lot of thoughts I guess lol. Overall I really enjoyed playing thru your game and it is a very impressive jam entry, great work!

What a meaty experience--very impressive amount of content for a jam game! Completed and found everything except for one drone chip.

Fun map to explore, had good connections and never got too tedious. Abilities were all intuitive to use. Satisfying pace and variety for power-ups and upgrades.

I ran into two issues: 1) at some point I stopped being able to unequip my first three talismans, so I was unable to swap those out. And 2) I was able to dash on an inclined ceiling to get into the submerged area before I got the scuba gear, which was a softlock (easy enough to exit to menu though).

With how large the the world was it was really nice having both a map and minimap and the ability to place markers. A minor gripe though was invisible walls wouldn't be marked as room boundaries, which made it hard to tell if those were paths I hadn't explored or not.

The art, sfx and music all fit well. The music might've gotten a little repetitive, since I think a lot of the area themes sounded similar. Nice detail being able to equip different outfits, and them having both lore and a purpose in unlocking things is neat!

The worldbuilding through all the logs and flavor text was cool. Seemed ambitious and I got the sense that a lot of history was thought out which I appreciate. The ending was a bit abrupt, but that's understandable considering how much else was present here. Great work!

This was just what I needed!  Outstanding, well..., everything!  There were a few very very very minor points:

• Prompts (sometimes) need an outline or a background, some early ones were hard for me to see (could be, in part, bad monitor calibration but it was still light-on-light)
• In the factory, it was weird that the moving platforms would bounce off of each other
• The music got a little old, not enough for me to do anything about it but some different sound fonts and maybe a bit more variation.
• Getting damaged was too intense and occasionally threw me weird places. OTOH, it never made things bad so maybe ignore this one.
• Attacks rebounded too much, esp when it was just a wall
• Sometimes there was a stalactite and I initially thought they would damage me due to seeing the pit earlier.
• Not a fan of the idle squashing, it makes the pixels look weird to me and being slow, it really stands out whereas the fast animations feel fine since it's so brief.
• The ending was abrupt (but really, who am I to complain, you had one at all)

It was 1:46 for 100% and wanted to note some extra great bits without spoiling them.  I loved how to get the vengeful talisman, as well as how to get into the room with all the hanging cages for the talisman upgrade.  Also, I felt the lore was really easy to read, not too much text but enough to really tell a story.

Also the pacing was sooooo gooood!  I never felt lost, and having the markers meant I generally had an idea on what to do/go back to.

Again, stellar job!

It took me 3 hours and 17 minutes to finish it over a period of 2 days, although I was missing two talismans and one ability. I loved everything, from the art to the way the story was told. The GUI is a 10/10. I loved that the map had a simplified version and a more detailed one, and being able to place markers is super useful, especially with a map as large as this game’s.

I must admit that the music can be a little monotonous even though it changes a little depending on the area, but it's okay, it doesn't get tiring or anything.

I finished it because it genuinely hooked me. I have nothing bad to say about this game except for a few bugs:

I got stuck in this area using the "Mist Dash":

Also when entering this area from the right:

And as a final detail it seems that there is a bug with the talismans since I suddenly stopped being able to unequip the ones I already had equipped and therefore I could not use the last talismans I got.

Anyway, I think this is one of the best contenders of this Jam, a great game and well polished in all aspects.

A great job that is to be admired.

This is highly polished and I am somewhat envious of the ability to put this together in a month. There’s so little to say about it because it is such a good example of a Metroidvania. I guess that would be my one criticism: it ticks all the boxes so well it lacks an identity of its own. We have large interconnected areas, traversal mechanics that unlock areas, save points, a story that unfolds in parrallel with the the player’s understanding of the environment.

Okay, one actual criticism. There’s a certain enemy that appears to be invulnerable that we see very early on. I think their dimensions would benefit from some shrinkage. Given the tight spaces and their unpredictable paths, it’s a bit too hard to avoid them in areas where they are not trying to specifically keep you away from something (like the chip in the first area).