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Soulacing's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Playability | #258 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Theme | #653 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Cleverness | #678 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Artistic Style | #893 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
Ranked from 2 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- Really enjoyable game, had great fun! Vibe would 100% have been improved by a soundtrack or some background music :) Fantastic job!
- I really like this game, the concept is clever and the puzzles are fun and challenging! One issue is that there is no mechanic for shadows, only set dressing. Also consider making a walkthrough for dum dums who can't make it past level two! (defenitely not me)
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
Yes
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
Yes in the description AND on main menu!
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes
Tell us about your game!
The game follows souls who have unresolved emotions who we must guide from the shadow realm to the afterlife. The character starts with an emotion, represented by their color. You must use the 4-directional input to navigate around the shadow realm to activate altars which correspond to the emotion. Your emotion can change by passing through emotion flames and there are unique obstacles and hazards. When all altars are activated, the torii gate opens to let you in to the afterlife (to complete the level).
Extra Notes
No
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Comments
The lack of audio is a quite noticable, but I imagine that was a choice rather than just something forgotten
This game is honestly cool as hell, the concept is great and the gameplay feels like a lot of little "Eureka!" moments
Wow, what a great little puzzle game! I managed to complete this and it was a lot of fun.
I really like the simple art style but also the framing used to tell the story. I really like the symbols and colors too.
The hints given in the levels to teach the mechanics were great too! And I really like how the last level combined it all together. I was stumped for a bit but given the rules, I figured there must be a route that works.
It's too bad there was no sound or music, but I definitely did listen to my own tunes while playing and that made it enjoyable as well.
Overall, great great job! This was so much fun!! :)
A short but sweet game. The puzzles flow well and interesting elements are introduced as you go through the game.
One thing I'll point out is that if you solve the puzzle but die, once you respawn, you can go directly into the gate as if the level was completed, despite the reset.
I really like the choice of having bars to the sides to show the text. It really fits with the game and sits nicely for both storytelling and introduction of new mechanics.
It'd be interesting to see possible expansions you could do in the future. The possibility of, for example, being able to control more intense version of certain emotions could open doors to even more mechanics. This game is definitely a strong base for something bigger, if you were to ever be interested in that.
Cool game!
This was creative! Fun and easily-accessible puzzle game. I wish there was a bit of music, but otherwise this game was fun! I was sadly defeated by I'm Sorry, I could not figure out how to get the purple beacon lit up.
Good work!
Oof... I'm sorry got me... couldn't get that yellow flame! NO 幸 for me! This really needed some SFX and Music, it would have topped it off so well! The movement speed and animations were top notch!
Wow! Fell instantly in love with the game.
It is a shame this game does not have a soundtrack. It would have been perfection.
Funny we ended up with almost the same color progression in our respective games.
I really like the puzzle design in this game and how each level teaches you new mechanics one by one. I don't have any "things to fix" feedback for the game that has not been said by others, so I'd like to give some ideas that could be cool to add in an update.
I think the game would benefit greatly from a more detailed pixel art style, like adding some brick walls texture and a little bit of shading to add to the atmosphere. I feel something similar to the pixel art in Otherworld Legends would fit the aesthetics of the game nicely. There could also be rooms with themes that highlight certain emotional concepts.
There could also be enemies that patrol an area as you move around and a flame that mix the next color you pass through with the color you have now. These would greatly increase the puzzle complexity and variety.
Of course, these are just suggestions but hopefully they will help if you want to develop this game in full production. Will be looking forward to it if you do :)
Thank you for the review!
I've been thinking about where to take this game visually so thanks for the pointers!
I will need to explore my options with enemies and see if it fits the game. I didn't think of adding moving hazards so thanks for the suggestion :)
My initial idea for this jam was actually about mixing colors where touching the altars is actually what adds to your color and you're trying to achieve white by mixing your starting color in a specific order, but as I play tested it, it felt really confusing to me and honestly a chore to remember what mixes to make what, color mixing would make the puzzles more interesting but having simple core mechanics is important to keep a puzzle game fun and more about learning than a really convoluted special system that only some people would even understand at first. This is why I had to pivot halfway across the jam and ran out of time to add sounds.
Really cool puzzle game ! Hard as it should be, and with interesting mechanics.
I completed even the last level, it took me 10 min worth of try but it was really a good feeling completing it.
Stylewise is super cool, bnut I wish it had a chill background music and some SFX; Keep it up !! GG
Thank you for playing the game and I'm glad you liked it! Music and SFX will be added in the next iteration!
This is quite a fun puzzle game with a neat idea.
I like the progression of the difficulty. Every level introduces a new mechanic and teaches you how to handle it. Although I think difficulty spikes quite a bit on the last level. A few more levels that use all of the mechanics would give then a room to breeze, and would let players catch up on the nuances they missed.
Graphics are quite nice. I would like to see a bit more visual feedback to player actions. For example, it’s not immediately obvious if you need to bump into the symbols or just move near them. And sounds, obviously.
I actually quite like the setting of the game, with emotions and stuff, but I don’t think it really conforms to the theme. Both alchemy and shadow aspects seem to be tacked on.
Which would be fine if your own theme of emotions was expressed more. Right now I’m just matching colors and there is some flavor text I guess. But it would be better to see some visual effects that correspond to emotions. Maybe screen shakes and turns reddish when you are “angry”, or ball moves slower when you are “sad”. Or at the very least show the name of emotion in english somewhere.
Overall, great job!
Thank you for the review!
I didn't have time to add the polish and music because I wanted to prioritise good puzzles. I've definitely been thinking about how to introduce the emotions and make them visually and audibly unique.
I designed the levels to make the player believe you have to bump into the altars initially, the ability to activate them by sliding past is actually a bug turned feature I introduce intentionally with one of the levels and it's one of the key "tricks" to solving a few levels. Now that you mention it, I will look into visually and audibly differentiating between bumping into activation and sliding past activation.
My take on alchemy was pretty abstract, seeing it as transition from one state to another, that's one of the core mechanics in this game, changing from one color (emotion) to another. The shadow thing is part of the story/setting which I didn't have time to create cut scenes for. One again, my take is pretty abstract, shadows are the absence of light, but I take it to be an absence of *something*, with a certain darkness to it, so evil spirits (which I represent by being a black color) are souls with an absence of emotion, hence they are able to go into voids which would otherwise kill you.
Usually puzzle games aren't my jam but I enjoyed this one a lot and actually finished it.
The progression and introduction to different mechanics was absolutely spot on. I never felt overwhelmed or confused at any point.
The depressing messages throughout were kinda heavy though haha If that's the vibe you wanna put out there for the world that's cool though.
I wish there were some sound and SFX it was the only thing missing in an otherwise really well put together game.
The graphics although simple fit the game very nicely. I won't pretend to understand what any of the kanji(?) means bit I would assume it was related to emotions or souls in someway. (please let me know). The character you play as was nicely animated although I think it could have been doing with a little outline to make sure you know where it was, at one point I looked away from my screen and totally lost my position (I was inside one of the flame/colour changing things)
I'm not sure if it was a bug on the last level there's a green and blue gate near the end, if you go towards the blue flame/gate even if you turn blue you still pass through the green gate anyways and die. Really confusing.
Also the gate to the next level remains open even if you die after solving the puzzle, not sure if that was a bug or by design.
Overall I had a lot of fun and I don't usually stick around too long for puzzle games but this one really caught my attention and I enjoyed it :)
I do want a deep emotional story to the game but I didn't have time to flesh out something during this jam. I do want to include it in another iteration with cut scenes and the like.
The sound obviously I did not get time to complete due to poor time management which I'll get better at over time. I'll be adding music and sfx to the next iteration of the game to keep a look out for that :)
The kanji/chinese characters represent the 5 emotions happiness, sadness, fear, disgust and fear. I was going to introduce them slowly one at a time for more emotional effect but I did not have time to make more than 8 levels as I wanted to focus on quality of levels rather than quantity for this jam.
You make a good point about the lack of visual clarity on the character, there's a reason I make the void spit out particles when you're inside it. I didn't want an outline on my character because it would take away from my theming of souls completely filled with emotions, that's why I'm exploring these other means such as particle effects to expose your position instead, as well as a very noticeable idle animation.
If you start as a specific color and move towards a gate of that color, even if you change color midway, you'll go through the gate. This is bug I noticed during development but I did not have time to fix because it's pretty complicated, instead I intentionally designed the last level in that way so the bug adds to the complexity of the level. I will fix this bug in the next iteration though.
This other bug is when you unlock all the altars and die, the exit remains open (although not visually). This is a bug I was alerted to after submission deadline and have already fixed locally, it will be published in the next iteration of the game after the judging is completed.
Thank you very much for your lengthy review, I appreciate it :)
Neat little puzzle game! I like the concept. The difficulty ramps up a bit quickly, especially heading into the final level, but the game does a good job of demonstrating its mechanics, leaving players with nothing but time to figure out the last one.
Besides the obvious lack of audio, I think this game would shine with some input buffering, allowing inputs a few frames in advance to make quick moves in succession feel smoother. That was my only real pain point, though.
Great job! I’d love to see this concept further fleshed out in the future.
I like the art in this game. The animation is good looking too. But the move delay makes it feel a little unresponsive. It may not be needed for the puzzle game, but for the sake of game feels. Well done.
The puzzles in this game were very good, hard enough to challenging but not too hard such that I had no idea what to do, definitely well balanced. The art lends itself well to the game I'd say, with more time I think some extra visual effects could be cool, like a little splash of colour when hitting against a wall. Sound and music are definitely lacking though I totally understand why since the time limit of the jam doesn't allow for everything you want to be added, very nice job anyway :)
Finally completes the last puzzle! Love that puzzle especially as it's quite challenging to figure out. Good one! The art is simple yet effective and it really makes me focus on the puzzles. Good learning curve too, and that's a real plus.
It would be so nice if I could input my next move directly instead of waiting a bit. But other than that, the game is fantastic! Well done!
Thank you for the kind words! What do you mean by input my next move directly? Do you mean an input buffer like in Celeste where you can press jump right before you hit the ground and it will still jump? If so, I planned on adding that into the game as an extra QoL feature but I didn't have time to add it, I'll add it in the next iteration of the game for sure. Do you think it should stack so you can pre-move multiple moves?!
Yeah, something like that. Since I am quite literally spamming input and retrying, such QoL would really ease some frustration. As for input stacking though, it may be a good idea but would really need play testing to confirm. May lead to some other kind of misinputs, but I just can't be sure on top of my head.
Speaking of misinputs, probably a undo button would also be nice
I got an undo request from another review as well but I don't think it fits my game, my puzzles lure you into soft locks that you have to restart out of, having an undo just mitigates that effect. The idea is to make the player realise their mistake, and give them a fresh start so they can apply their new learning properly.
Not sure how this one fits the theme (yeah, I've read about shadow realm but I know that you know that if you know you know).
Anyhoo, game works nice, has consistent art assets and difficulty curve feels right.
Last puzzle was actually really fun to figure out, there's nothing to be sorry about.
As a probably unnecessary but neat addition might be a lil bit of lore. Fox example, slides between levels or similar, to explain hieroglyphs you've used.
Thank you for the review! I interpret shadows and void to be similar if not the same, my lore is that souls either have resolved emotions (go directly to afterlife), unresolved emotions (the ones you are mainly helping in the puzzles), or they are emotionless (essentially evil spirits who thrive in the void and need much greater intervention like in the final level to get to the afterlife). As for alchemy, I interpreted it as changing from one state to another. One of the core mechanics in this game are the emotion flames which change your emotion (color) to that flame's emotion.
Since I made all my main mechanics and did all my level design in the last 2 days, I was not able to add the shadow entrance area as I had planned for the story which sets the setting for the game. I had also planned to introduce each altar (and emotion) one level at a time but I wanted to focus on the quality of the puzzles rather than quantity of puzzles for this demo with the limited time I had :)
I will be sure to add lore into the next version of the game!
Fantastic puzzle game! I really enjoy the challenge of this. Would love to see this expanded with more levels and sounds, music, etc. Well done!
Puzzle games are probably my favorite genre and this one is great. The levels are perfect difficulty for a demo and the mechanics are easy and intuitive to grasp. You have a knack for this! Very clever and fun!
Great game! Despite my struggles I actually like how the puzzles make you think ahead. Usually I just go for the closest objectives and later find out that I need to think about where I go first before I just press the button.
This game doesn’t have it yet, due to scoping issues that are common in game jams, but sounds would definitely have made this game a lot better. Although it is already satisfying to complete the puzzle after pondering for so long, it would really make completing puzzles feel even better!
I love games like this. I echo that calm or ethereal music would be perfect. Good job!
Wow! I thought that this was so cool all around. The theme/design was very unique. I really really loved the text giving small story beats, and I think it created a very abstract and emotional theme, which is impressive for a game with a colored circle that is sliding around! (I relate to this a lot, my first game jam entry was very similar :))
The movement felt great, and the animations were very snappy. I think the difficulty ramped up a bit quickly by the final level, but I felt very comfortable with how everything worked because it was shown off very nicely in the previous levels.
What this was really missing for me to take it to the next level was music and sound. If there was a somewhat emotional/introspective song in the back, I really think that would have made the emotional tone hit home. The mechanics introduced worked very well and could lead to a TON of interesting levels. Speaking of, I thought the level design was fantastic! I have always found puzzle level design complex and difficult to understand, so this is VERY impressive to me.
Another 10 points in my book for having your GDD LINKED IN YOUR GAME?? Ingenious. Overall, I thought this was an absolute treat, and was only a step or two away from being a perfect 10 in my book, which is MASSIVE for a two week prototype. I am really looking forward to what you accomplish in the future! Keep it up my friend :)