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Thank you! I’m glad the game made you feel inspired. Thanks for playing and for the comment, it means a lot!

Thank you!

Glad you liked it! I’m gonna release a small update in a bit to make the platforming and combat feel a little better. I also feel like the combat is a little dry now, I might tweak it a little.

I had a lot of fun writing the dialogue for this game. Setting up a mystery is super fun (and really easy), so I’m happy you enjoyed the story so far. The hard part comes from making some kind of payoff to all the mystery that was set up.

Since the game is unfinished, the story’s in this weird ‘superposition’ where people get to imagine the best version of it, but if I finish it, that all collapses and that’s a little scary.

Either way, thanks for stopping by and for the comment!

Thanks! Particles / squash-stretch / flashing indicators are my usual shortcut for avoiding animating a ton of ‘anticipation’ frames for every attack. It’s also nice cause it’s easier to control the rhythm of the cues for attacks like this.

Thank you!

Thanks for playing, glad you liked it! I had a lot of fun with the music (it’s on my soundcloud if you wanted to listen to it outside of the game). I’m hoping to work on this more, but we’ll see. Thanks for the comment!

Thank you!

Thanks for stopping by! I actually used Unity for 4 years or so before I eventually switched to Love2D. If you’re primarily concerned with making 2D games, I highly recommend giving it a try - Love2D’s biggest strength is it ‘gets out of your way’, unlike Unity which I felt like I was constantly wrestling with.

I think I will do more devlogs with this game. I might do a technical blog post on how my engine-code is set up for stuff like what you’ve described, but I can try to give a quick summary:

• I use my own physics and collision, but it’s really simple: The physics is just “velocity = accelerationdt + velocity” and “position = velocitydt + position” with one exception (tile collision, which I’ll explain later).
• For collision, I just use AABB and circle collision
• For tile collision, I use a technique similar to the one described in this article by the celeste devs: https://maddythorson.medium.com/celeste-and-towerfall-physics-d24bd2ae0fc5
• Basically, for the player character, when I compute their position at the end of a frame, I do it by taking their target position and incrementing towards it 1 unit at a time until I hit a “solid tile” in my tile map (at which point I call the player’s onSolidCollision callback).

For enemy behaviors:

• Most enemies just use hard-coded coroutines for their behaviors. i.e the slug boss will always do 2 slams, dash across, 1 slam, and then shoot projectiles.
• The caretaker boss has a tiny bit of behavior-related decision-making that happens based on if you’re behind or in-front of him, but he’s largely hard-coded as well.

I really think Love2D has made me like 10x more productive in gamedev over the last 3 years. Having all of my own little tools and scripts and ‘engine code’ makes it really easy to quickly spin-up games. I also run into far fewer mysterious issues - all issues that I run into are caused by (and solved by) my own code.

Also it feels way easier to re-use stuff in-between games (I remember Unity had some notion of an ‘asset package’ for code re-use between games, but for Love2D my entire ‘Engine’ directory just gets copied wholesale between projects).

I highly recommend Love2D to anyone that likes making their own little tools/engines for gamedev. If you give it a try and run into issues or have questions, feel free to reach out.

Thanks for playing! Also thanks for the suggestion, sorry the UI was a bit tough to see for you. I think I can probably add a background to the UI to prevent it from blending in with the actual tiles, or perhaps add a higher-contrast option. I’m glad you liked the game!

Really nice work. I got to the part where you jump into the hole back to the starting platform (based on the other comments, it sounds like that’s the end?).

I’m sad this entry was so short, because the wall jump section where you get to use your platforms one-after-another was really cool. There’s a lot of potential to this idea.

It’s kind of funny: Metroidvanias have so much platforming in them but I basically never see ones that are centered around creating new platforms. Like I said, lots of potential here, I enjoyed myself with this one even though it was short-but-sweet. Nice work!

I had a little trouble getting far in this one: I got to the green enemy and attacked it for a while, but it was tough to tell if my attacks were doing anything. Some kind of particle burst or ‘hit VFX’ would help give some feedback on whether or not the player’s attacks are actually connecting. I like the way the wall jump works. The tighter vertical corridors felt good to wall jump in. The player’s design and attack animation are nice too!

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it! I’ll probably tweak fall speed or add a bit of hang time at the end of a star pierce to make that room a bit less tight, it’s currently a bit rough. Thanks for playing!

Wow, this feels like a huge game. I’m not super good at navigating games like this so I got pretty lost pretty quickly. I managed to get the wall kick, the super-wallkick (using it on green platforms) felt really good, but I was kinda lost after that. I explored a few more areas but it seemed like I was missing some other abilities that I couldn’t find. I came across a tall tower that required like 6-7 consecutive super-wallkicks and wasn’t able to get past that (perhaps it’s not on the critical path though? I couldn’t tell). That part in general was a little frustrating, I wonder if snapping the player to a nearby green surface during the wallkick would help. I got to a room with the moving platforms and the cube with the item inside, had trouble figuring out what to do from there.

I think the ‘resting in beds’ taking you to-and-from the two worlds is a really cool idea. I’m still pretty blown away by how big the game seems. I liked the animations and the enemy designs. It’s impressive that you had time to make different enemy types with different weapons. Fighting enemies felt pretty good too! Nice work!

Really cool idea, I’m sad it’s so short but as someone who submitted an unfinished game I totally understand. I love the concept, never thought of metroidvania elements in a genre like this but it works surprisingly well. I’m excited to see more, I’d definitely play the final version of this.

Thanks for the feedback! If I keep working on this, I’ll probably tweak the fall speed, a few people mentioned it being a little fast. Thanks for playing, glad you liked the bosses.

Thanks for playing, glad you liked it. I think I’ll keep working on this, I had too much fun making it.

I might reduce the fall speed and add a bit of hang-time after you do a star-pierce, quite a few people have commented on that and it does feel a little jarring to fall so fast. I might also allow roll queueing after the attack, or maybe cancel the last couple frames of the attack with a roll. It’s a little high-commitment now for sure.

Thanks for the feedback and for playing, I always appreciate hearing from you.

Nice job! haha yeah I gotta put that tutorial text somewhere else, seems easy to miss.

Thanks for playing! Yeah returning to title resets the game, sorry about that. In the future I might implement saving/loading game. I might consider adding the option to switch keysets too (though controller is definitely the optimal way to play the game).

Thanks for playing! Keith is def a fan favorite, had fun writing his dialogue.

I had some fun with this! Though I got stuck after getting the remote bomb - it was tough to continue due to frustration with the inputs getting stuck. I tried to push through the issues but it was really tough to fight enemies and move consistently, felt like I kept getting stuck moving in one direction. Or, if I stopped to attack an enemy, my character would randomly face a different direction and start moving without my input.

I liked the interconnectedness of the rooms. Getting the engineering key felt super good thanks to how many connections it opened up. I also liked how the EMP gun opened the un-powered doors, that felt cool to figure out. Also the art is great, love the entire game’s aesthetic.

Really really cool. The art style is so sick and the music works really well. The grapple hook felt good to use too. Chaining momentum off of multiple grapples was really satisfying.

I thought the multiple upgrades for the grapple hook was really cool. It made traversing the first few rooms progressively easier the more upgrades I got - very cool stuff.

Ended with a time of 6:42. Great job!

Nice job! I got 29 deaths, 624 seconds.

The platforming is really solid. I really enjoyed the tongue ability, I appreciated how generous it was with letting you hold it for a bit. It took some time to get used to the warp distance. I really appreciated at the end how a lot of the bouncers were exactly 1 warp away.

Love the art. The purple on orange contrast is really stylish. The main character looks really good too. Great work!

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it. I hope I can finish this in a couple more months, but TBD! Thanks for the comment and for the kind words.

Thank you! I agree, I think I might make dodges cancel the last couple frames of the attack (or at least allow queueing a roll after an attack), like others mentioned - it feels a little stiff and high-commitment right now. Thanks for playing and for the feedback, glad you enjoyed it! I’d love to keep working on this, hopefully I’ll find time haha

Nice work! The music was killer, really impressed with the composer’s work. The map was fun to navigate too. I was a bit confused at first but I liked the loopback from the ‘roll’ unlock to the first area, that helped get my bearings. There were a few rough spots that I ran into:

• I don’t think it’s possible to jump from a down-slope, because moving down a slope seems to make your character airborne. This made platforming in some of the slopey section really tough.
• Moving up slopes always eats your jump since it also sends you airborne at the top of the slope.
• Checkpoints felt pretty far apart. Dying usually meant a multi-minute trek back to wherever I died.
• Getting one-shot by falls felt pretty rough too.

Outside of that, I enjoyed this. The platforming felt super good after I got the double-jump. The last area (after getting the 3 upgrades) had some pretty gnarly platforming sections but it felt quite good with the double jump and the wall-jump. Glad I played to the end, nice job!

Thanks for playing and for the feedback! That’s a great suggestion, I wish I’d thought of that earlier. Adding a tiny bit of delay to the fall after using a star pierce would make those sections way smoother, I’ll give that a try in a post-jam update.

Nice work, I made it to the end! That final fight is tough, those mobs are ruthless.

I think an indicator for when your dash is ready would be really useful. There were a decent number of times when I’d jump and try to dash, but my dash would still be on cooldown from before, leading to a fall.

I ran into a bug where I entered and exited a room a little too quickly and it seemed like my character got lost on the screen, ended up refreshing and didn’t run into the issue again. Not sure how to reproduce or if it’s a known issue though.

I liked the final boss a lot! The mobs in-between phase 1 and phase 2 were a little rough. It felt like I was mostly playing hit-and-run, which sounds intentional but felt a little rough. The ‘jester’(?) enemy’s attack hitbox (where they stab the ground) seemed a little bigger than I expected.

In general I kinda felt like unmotivated to fight basic enemies, so I found myself running past most of them. I think that’s fine though - it kinda comes with the territory for metroidvanias.

The final boss phase 2 was super cool. I loved how the projectiles made me run away, which causes the boss to use the ‘hand through portal’ attack. Really cool pattern- it incentivizes sticking close to the boss so he’d use the less threatening melee attack, nice!

I really loved the way the secrets were designed. There was a point where I found a hidden path, walked through it, and saw nothing! Then I dashed around and found a second hidden path. So sick, I love “secrets within secrets”. Some of the secrets were so satisfying, like the early health pickup near the start - hiding right under my nose the whole time! The secret that lets you get the left key while skipping most of the left side platforming was also so cool. Really satisfying to get.

Great job!

Thanks for playing and for the feedback! Glad you liked it. I might end up tweaking the fall speed at some point. Glad you liked the rat haha, he’s a fun little guy. Thanks you for playing!

This is super sick, I loved it. My final time was 1266 or so.

At first I was a little lost due to the lack of a map, but I’m actually really glad there was no map. It felt rewarding to recognize the terrain when I was re-exploring old areas with the tonfa jump. I also really loved the abundance of secrets and health/damage upgrades everywhere. I found the sash at the top of the map and that felt really good to get.

That one room before the end with the chain grapples + tonfa jumps was really satisfying. In general I love how the grapple gives you a little hop at the end, it makes everything flow so well.

Loved the final boss too. The attack pattern felt really good. My only possible feedback for that fight is it would have been cool if the boss required you to grapple at some point, i.e when the boss jumps away, if it spawned ‘grapple points’ (or even if there was a couple static grapple points throughout the boss room), that might have been neat.

Really great job. Also the art style is so cool. The high-contrast white-with-shadows design for the player + enemies is great, I haven’t really seen that style before.

Thank you!

Haha glad you liked the NPC dialogue sounds, I had fun making those. Thanks for playing and for the kind words, glad you enjoyed it!

The game is already playable in the browser via WebGL - are you having trouble running the web version?

Ah that switch in the tomb checkpoint is just a placeholder, I originally had another room planned but didn’t finish it. Little Abhi is correct, you’ve finished everything! Thanks for playing!

Love this font. I’ve used it in quite a few of my games now, and it’s basically my go-to for anything low-rez that’s also readable. It’s so clean but still stylish, great job!

This is so sick, you totally captured the feeling of scourgebringer with the dash chaining. I love the enemy variety too. I really like how you can stun enemies out of their attacks, so when a big wave spawns in you have a second or two to identify the biggest threats and just stunlock them down. Also it’s so cool that you made this with a custom engine, that’s gotta feel so good. Wish I’d seen this during the jam, really great work!

Thanks! Glad you liked it. Really happy you found the attack patterns fun. I don’t usually spend so much time on a single boss fight, but since this game was just 1 fight, I had a lot of fun making the attack patterns more intricate.

I totally hear you on the grading system. When I watched my friends play it on discord pre-launch, I could hear the anxiety ramping up in their voices when they’d be close to no-damaging an attack, only to get hit at the end. The grades here were kind of an ‘engagement stop-gap’ to give players something to strive for during the practice phase, but if I ever return to this concept, I think I’ll have a more free-form practice mode (a ‘playground’ like you describe). Or maybe I’d do something like the player has to demonstrate a certain level of mastery before proceeding, but they get as many tries as they want.

Music is something that’s been on my ‘list of things to improve’ for a bit. I’ve been doing “seasonal themes” this year, so my fall season theme was “drawing”. I might do “winter of music” or something to give myself a reason to do some music exploration. I’m still happy with the OST, but I do feel like I’ve fallen into a bit of a formula. I’ll check out chiptune.app, I’m definitely in the market for new musical inspirations. I’ve been listening to a ton of jazz fusion recently, so I might try experimenting with that a little.

Thanks a ton for playing and for the comment. I think I always say this but I’m always really happy to get a notification from you.

Loved it. It feels like kind of a meme to compare every retro horror game to Faith, but man this game really reminded me of Faith (especially the battles).

Loved the use of sound vs silence. It felt like the tensest moments were the hallways where all of the sound completely cut out. Walking into the library after the ‘outdoors’ music and having everything but the ticking clock go silent was so good.

The room with the really-messed-up-geometry was sick. Going from silence to THAT was a really cool moment too.

I really liked the entire ‘camera following’ section where the camera swaps from fixed mode to follow mode. Something about that switch was super unsettling. I half-expected a first-person mode at some point haha

Good fights too. That final boss double-projectile attack pattern was gnarly, but ingenious. Felt really good to stand my ground and watch the projectiles go around me before I repositioned to dodge the boss.

I also really liked the little unanswered mysteries you peppered in throughout the notes. Like the “it’s not even human blood”, or the books written in “a language we don’t understand”. I remember reading somewhere that a lot of horror is just getting the reader/player to ask questions whose answers might scare them (“who/what bled here? who/what wrote these books? what is THAT?”).

Renaissance pig!

Thanks! If I get time, I can probably release the GLTF reader code on github, though it’s not very clean / re-usable. If I end up releasing it, I’ll let you know!

This is super neat! I loved the full game, so it’s really cool to see what was originally pitched and how much it changed in the final product.

Super sick. I love how the enemies only attack once they die. It adds a really cool element of planning to the game, where if a wave spawns and I see a bunch of pink dudes lined up, I can do a little bit of prep work getting into the right position to dodge before I actually aim the saw.

I really appreciated how enemy waves tended to alternate sides. It made it so that when new enemies spawned, it was rare for them to all just die instantly (leading to a big burst of bullets I might not have been expecting). It goes back to the aspect of planning I mentioned earlier.

Also having the option to reset the size of the buzzsaw was really interesting. At first I was like “why would I ever give up the big saw?” but the big saw, despite being more powerful, makes planning around enemy spawns way harder. Surprisingly cerebral, very cool tradeoff.

Great work dude, good luck at the jam!