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(1 edit) (+1)

Thank you for making the game intuitive, bite-sized, and clever! So many game jam submissions either have too complicated of mechanics, have far too much playtime, or just don't do anything special. Also thank you for doing levels, wish everyone would do levels!

What shines here is definitely the main mechanic or joining together with a box and the clever level designs that focus on that central idea. You get huge points for originality and design in my book, I doubt anyone else in this jam will think of such an idea and come up with such interesting implementations.

I think you should continue working on this after the jam is over, so here are some things I think you could improve in the future, otherwise great job!

Your game comes across to me as a puzzle platformer especially with the central mechanic and I think you do a great job at that part of it. However, I would say there are times the game starts to dip into precision platformer territory, where you require the player to time their movement or their jump a bit too much. I like the variety, however, I think the timing window was too tight sometimes and I think that adds unnecessary frustration and detracts from the brilliant puzzle designs you have. I wouldn't take those out, just make them 50% easier so that you keep the variety but don't make precision platforming a focus.

The art style and colors make it stand out, however I would still say you could have more art,  particles, animations, etc. that still fit within the same style. Again of course with limited time and limited manpower this is totally understandable. Also, I think the game would benefit from a little music and sound for things like jumping, landing, joining to a box, shooting the projectile, projectile hitting the box, projectile hitting the player, player dying, player respawning, etc. I think you are allowed to use free music and sounds if you have legal right to use them, although of course original audio would be great too. It's hard for me to say whether things like camera shake or post processing effects would help with this style of game, but they are also worth considering just for polish.

Overall, really phenomenal submission and I think you will rank highly because of your original mechanic and designs!

(+1)

Wow, thank you so much for the kind words and encouragement and the feedback!

You're definitely right about the game dipping a bit too much into precision platforming. I wanted to fuse a puzzle style game with platforming but it's a bit too tight in a few of the cases. It's really hard to figure out what is too much, although I can definitely point out the first time you encounter the rocket-blaster shooting towards you. That jump was really difficult for my wife and I think I should've tweaked it just based on that. She's not a gamer but even for me it wasn't easy to get past that.

Another problem I found showing it to friends who are more experienced gamers was that many of them didn't think of the levels as a puzzle to be solved and instead tried to pixel-perfect jump around. I think the physics of the game encourage this a bit too much which becomes really frustrating quickly as the box-pickup range is huge. I really like the physics feel so I was thinking I need to do a better job at introducing the puzzle aspect of the game earlier so that it's absolutely clear you get through the levels mostly by solving a problem instead of jumping and timing perfectly.

I'm really proud of the puzzles I came up with from the single mechanic of joining with a box. Initially when I had this idea I dismissed it because I didn't see puzzles but I came back to it and found there's actually a lot to explore with it. My goal is to continue developing this throughout the year.

Lastly, this was my 3rd ever jam - the first time I used Godot / a game engine so it took me a bit longer than it could have to get things going. If I could do it again, I would budget time a bit better, I think I lost a good 3-4h doing nothing at all after I had the basic prototype ready. Sounds are sorely missed but I have some really cool music from a friend lined up!

Thank you again for taking so much time to not only play, but also critique and outline your thoughts clearly! I really really appreciate it!