As much as I know this game will win since it is the only once, I sadly refuse to give it higher than 2 stars overall.
The graphics, I gotta be honest. I wasn't expecting full HD rendered 3D amazing graphics or even 2D awesome graphics, since this is a game jam. While I consider the main character's design goofy and funny, I couldn't find the rest of the game as quite "graphic". The objects are just lines and squares, and the menu screen seemed kinda odd. I actually took a whole minute to figure out that there were levels in the game (maybe it's my bad but idk).
Also, I couldn't figure out how to solve the first level. The lack of instructions are what makes this game kinda unfunny to me. From what I understood, I gotta get one of the squares to the end of the level. I tried getting the first square to the second one's place but after that, I could get neither of the squares to the end of the level, which, to be honest, doesn't seem at all like a switch but standing on it doesn't seem to do nothing. While maybe I ran into the glitched save bug, As there is no indication of what to do, even if I didn't ran into the bug, I wouldn't know what to do.
Then we got the audio. I don't think you should stress yourself out making a wonderful main theme, but no background music is something I don't personally like. However, the few sound effects I found are actually nice, so I'm kinda ok with that.
That being said, as I could not get past the first level, I can't get a full idea of the game, but from what I could see, there is no inventory or anything that can help you lift items. Of course, you have to push items against anothers (or maybe that's what I think you have to do cuz, again, no instructions), but I don't think that counts as "having" something. And as I did not get to the end of the game, I couldn't get the whole story. I suppose the "You are the monster" is a plot twist at the end, but as I did not get there, I won't be sure if it's well developed.
On the bright side, I appreciate that the mechanics are quite interesting. I won't say they are the most original thing in the world, but it works. Placing boxes on switches and having different switches do different things is actually quite fun and I would like to see more of it.
So, this are my recommendations for next games you want to make in general:
- Have background music, even if it's not the best one.
- Make clear instructions for the player in-game. Controls aren't enough, set a goal either on the description or in-game and how to achieve it.
- A non-animated menu image with more than one object on it is more appealing that an animated one with a single one and a grey bg.
- If you add something, you should make it exagerately obvious of how it works so even dumbasses like me can get through the levels.
That's all. Want to see more of you. The project isn't a bad idea, it's just.... it could be better executed.