itch.io

The game looks vibrant, the music is cute, and the dialogue and character design is a lot of fun! It took me a moment to realise that it's essentially a rapid-fire memorisation game, but once I figured that out, I was able to get through the majority of screens without too much hassle: there's a commendable variety of enemies and the dialogue adds real charm to the experience.

I have to admit, though, I gave up on the final boss and found several other boards very frustrating (and I say this as a diehard Crypt of the Necrodancer player!) There was one toward the end I even skipped, after dying right at the last enemy one-too-many times. The combination of staggered, tile-based movement with lightning pace made it tricky to "read the board"... what I instinctively wanted to do was confront those crazy combinations of projectile patterns, get a feel for where the attacks intersected, and strike a clean path. When that all worked out, it was a real pleasure. But because the projectiles operate with the same rapid tempo and shares the same set of limited spaces, tiles alternate very quickly between safe + dangerous in a way that makes it hard to associate those threats with the individual enemies.

Thinking ambitiously, players tend to adjust more easily to fast+frenzied experiences  if there are some grace mechanics (like death replays or practice rooms.) But such mechanics are obviously way too ambitious for a game jam project, so maybe the easier alternative here would either be to slow it down a touch, or to expand those enemy-packed later boards to have safe intermediate spaces, so that a player can break up the challenge of defeating that board by "getting here first, then getting there." Just throwing around ideas anyway, because I really do love the intent and creativity here.

Best of luck with future development, and thanks for sharing your game!
- mothgram