Play game
Nightsparrow in Dreams's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Concept | #5 | 4.237 | 4.364 |
| Gameplay | #5 | 4.061 | 4.182 |
| Overall | #9 | 4.090 | 4.212 |
| Challenge | #10 | 3.649 | 3.758 |
| Audio | #11 | 3.707 | 3.818 |
| Story / Writing | #14 | 3.237 | 3.333 |
| Use of Theme | #14 | 3.825 | 3.939 |
| Visuals | #23 | 3.707 | 3.818 |
Ranked from 33 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
This has a pretty good game design, Guiding player without a tutorial, smooth controls. Great work!
I had some trouble getting the figments because of how fast enemies would show up on screen, but this is definitely one of the more all-around quality entries for me, especially for a solo game. The controls are smooth and the audio really sets the mood; slowly gathering each type of resource and naturally discovering things like making circles around different objects because of how the collectibles are laid out was really clever too.
Maybe it would be better with increased warning distance, or just making the birds a little slower.
玩这个游戏的前几秒，我觉得它只是另一个吃豆人，但一旦我开始享受飞来飞去的感觉，我觉得这个游戏真的很棒，我喜欢你的艺术风格，希望以后依然能玩这样的游戏。
The first few seconds of playing this game I felt like it was just another Pac-Man but once I started enjoying the feeling of flying around I thought the game was really good and I love your art style and hopefully in the future Play games like this.
Thanks! Now that you mention it, the game does have some similarity with Pac-Man.
Collection games are addicting in their own right. It took me a while to notice that the egrets (?) bumping into me took away an entire meter (instead of dropping a whole bunch of extra fragments seemingly for free.) The most mechanically-challenging part was getting the surround on the white birds, and not knowing initially that it counts if they fly into your circle too.
The attacking birds are masked Mystia sprites. I did consider just making them normal birds (undecided species), but re-use was faster and it made sense for the story too. I love egrets, tho, so let's just go with that explanation instead! XD
God, flying around felt really fun. You nailed the controls here!
Getting hit by the shadow clones felt incredibly annoying, to the point where I just kinda camped out certain spots in the hopes that I wouldn't get hit rather than enjoying the flying, but once I got the confidence to fly around again it was a really enjoyable experience.
Thank you! Maybe the warning icons on the edge of the screen should display earlier so you have more time to react.
I opened the game. Bam, just dropped straight into things. So I just started flying around and picking things up. The UI communicated the rest. The way new mechanics are introduced in this just works so seamlessly, having the purple items circled around the lanterns so you learn how to active them later is fantastic, and having more enemies spawn later in the game also made me accidentally learn how to defeat them. I never knew what I was meant to be doing from the start, so I just did the things that could be done, and by the end I had a goal set for myself and a sense of direction.
On the flying physics themselves, they didn't immediately click with me but this also isn't really a problem, it didn't take long to feel like I'd mastered them after a while of picking up purple triangles. Maybe only bad thing about them is that sometimes I found it difficult to avoid crashing into an enemy, even when I could see it coming.
Speaking of which, the one thing I didn't like was that you dropped all of your collected "stuff" when colliding with an enemy, although that didn't stop me completing the game. I would have liked being able to pick a portion of the dropped items back up in a sonic-esque manner.
Still, really fantastic game overall, I mean it! Very enjoyable!
Thanks! Being able to reclaim some of the dropped stuff is a great idea.
this is the third time i have said it but. this is my favorite entry so far.
the movement and physics is simply incomparable. so smooth, especially once you get used to doing circles. just flying through the asteroid belt on the outside is a good game by itself but everything else makes it incredible
its hard to complete a coherent, completed story in a jam period. i know i didn't this time. but here? doesn't even feel stunted because its a jam, its perfect
fives across the board
A great mechanic doesn't need complicated tutorials.
A great piece of music doesn't need fancy instruments.
A great story doesn't need wordy rhetoric.
Fantastic job.
What a fascinating experience. It really felt like a dream. I think you really took advantage of the inherent limitations of a game jam and turned them into a positive, and I mean that in a few ways.
I'm not sure if the lack of a title screen was a time-related choice or an artistic one, but I think it paid off not having one. The lack of... pomp and circumstance, I suppose, really set the tone.
Minimalist visuals are kind of a natural way of turning the time limit into a positive. Especially with this jam's theme since minimalist art often feels "dream-like." It's not an uncommon way of interpreting dreams in art and media. It's natural because it works so well.
The learning curve is well done. The fact that what you have to do is wordlessly communicated adds to the "dream-like" feeling. You will, most likely, eventually figure out that you have to circle the lights with fireflies because the purple bits keep spawning around them . And once I realized that, I eventually naturally thought "what if I circled the enemies?" It would've been easy to explain what you were supposed to do at the beginning with text. A lot of people would've done that, and it would've taken away from the dream-like feeling.
The last instance of this that I want to bring up is the fact the ending is just white text on black. I think it actually works well. To me it evoked the feeling that I had just woken up from a dream. Like I'm half asleep listening to someone. To use the same term from before, no pomp and circumstance.
The one thing I would change is that I think having the player speed up when they collect an egg kind of contrasts with the rest of the experience in a strange way. Kind of took my out of the flow.
You not only turned the lack of a thing(s) into a positive, but made it contribute to the theme. I don't know how much of what I've mentioned is artistic choices or just time constraints. Judging by the fact that this was submitted less than 30 minutes before the deadline, I'm gonna guess that at least some of it was the latter lol. ('m genuinely curious.) Either way, I think it really it came together in a beautiful way. I like the word "magical" that was used in another comment to describe this. Great job!
The real reason there is no title screen is because I am in the middle of changing how I make menus XD. But I am a fan of when games effectively blend the title and the game together.
The fully scoped idea for this game has a lot more mechanics, and they also kind of lean on the environment itself nudging the player toward what needs to be done. The eggs making you go faster is actually a pretty important part to me - that opportunity to just stop worrying and zoooom. The planned idea was for flaming rings to appear when you pick up an egg, and moving through those would progress hatching as well as speed you up. (You could also opt to throw the egg through the flaming rings to heat it up, lol.)
Basically, the full idea was a bit of a playground, with a lot of implicit interactions between things, and a fair bit of strange. But it would have taken me at least a week to finish a minimal version of that.
Also, the full scope had an incident in which Doremy Sweet herself was trapped sleeping in a dream world, and some evil baku was using her powers to trap other people the same way, to feed off of their figments, wishes, and fears. So like, you would have to wake up four others first in a strange sort of boss fights in four stages, then challenge the evil baku and sleeping Doremy in the end. The ending would have been very different. The dialog would have been focused on contemplating the sleeping characters' wishes and fears.
But honestly, I like the simple and down-to-earth Mystia-Wriggle interaction here too. :)
This was really nice. I enjoyed just figuring out the game while coasting around and how you used the concept and evolved it. Circling around the lamps was very satisfying, and the pacing and the music of the game made it feel like something straight out of a level in flower (which just so happens to be about the dreams of flowers!).
Definitely the kind of thing best experienced either early in the morning or late at night.
Flower, but with violent birds. :)
I love the sense of it vibing with morning or night magic.
It was pretty magical just jumping into this game and figuring out everything on my own. Fantastic job.
I'm glad it wasn't too obtuse.
"One day your eggs are going to hatch and very strange birds are going to emerge"
While it's not telegraphed, it's the fireflies that hatch out of the eggs. You are in Mystia's dream, and you're basically gathering parts of her dream (figments, wishes, and fears) in order to "hatch" them as something that gives you more influence over the dream.
The full idea was to have four stages, each with you entering a different character's dream. And they would have their own themed wishes and fears, as well as something else that hatches out of the eggs based on their character. (Ghosts for Yuyuko, foxes for Yukari...)
Neat and graceful little game. Pretty music and background noise. Fun and well done gimmick. I wanted to get stronger so I could draw circles around everything.
I got frustrated around the point when I had 3 eggs, because the guys kept hitting me and making me lose everything. After that point, the enemies were easier to deal with and I had fun.
Don't even got any menus. That's pretty cool. And a cute end. Good job on game