itch.io

Great game. Took me a while to figure out that only the dark colored parts of the blocks were what would be solid, and took me a while to figure out how to beat the levels.

One suggestion would be to have an instant drop and a slow drop like how most tetris games do. Sometimes i would want to drop the block to a certain point so i can slot it in somewhere, but the S key pretty much always brings it straight down to the floor wherever it is. Great submission!

This is incredibly visually stunning and a very creative take on the theme. I like this submission a lot! One thing that i think i would change about it is the camera angles, once you get onto the tower is very hard to get your character moving exactly where you want them to using a 4 directional input like WASD/Arrow Keys. I think the game would feel a little better if you were looking at your character with such a weird angle, or if the game was being played on a joystick.

Still though, great submission!

Thanks! I've been getting a lot of comments about the wall jumping and I think I know where I went wrong. Its using a radius from the players front to check for the wall, but that radius isnt covering the entire height of the player. I think what I should have done was use a boxcast for about 80 or 90 percent of the size of the player's sprite so that it would feel more responsive. I'll be sure to remember that for next time

Thats actually a solution i didnt think about for that issue so thanks for the suggestion! I was considering if i needed to just keep increasing the size of the camera but I had already increased it so much i decided to stop where it currently is

I really liked this submission, I liked it so much that I played it all the way through and now im gonna be late to where i have to go today but oh well lol. Great stuff

I like the submission! This was one of the games that i saw in the discord and wanted to play once the submission period ended. One critique i have though is that its hard to know when im supposed to hit the note. It felt like if i waited for the edge of the arrow to line up with the box it was too late, and other than that i didnt know what i had to go off of really. I think it could be better represented where the arrow is supposed to be when hit, like how the arrows have silohettes at the hit locations in DDR or how there is a little grey circle in a game like Taiko no tatsujin
Great submission!

Sorry I didnt get to play, but looks like you were able to get at least a few ratings

Thanks a lot! I thought for sure I wouldn't be the only person to do reticle bloom but from what I can tell no one else did it

I like your execution a lot here. The first few levels had me worried this was going to be a hold down the D button simulator but the levels genuinely did get harder as they went and it was actually fun to go through the levels and try to beat them all.

Great submission!

This is a fun submission, after all this genre is tried and true to be addicting. Although it does get repetitive after a while. I think the remedy the repetitiveness you could maybe have the timer be varying. Rather than just resetting the timer to full no matter what you could do something like if you only match 3 then it only adds 2 seconds to the timer but if you match 5 it adds 10 seconds. Or something like that. That way you can prevent the player from just matching 3s all day

If you really wanted to get fancy with it, then it would also be nice if the game had a system in place to assure that there is always at least one switch you can do to make a match, that way the player is never just forced to lose.

Good submission!

To answer your questions, I've been doing game dev for a little over a year now and how long it takes depends entirely on what skills you have and how much effort you want to put in. If you're an excellent programmer you could focus on making a very fun mechanic that feels good and just give the art to someone else and then bam you've made a good game. Or you could learn art yourself and that would take much longer.

As for learning art, I only know about 2D art really but the way I learned it is through repetition and through copying other people's styles. If you think that a particular piece of game art looks good you should look at it and try and determine why you think it looks good and what specifically is making it look good. Then try and think about how they went about it, then try and do something similar when making your own art. Personally I think its a good idea to start with pixel art, because when something looks off its super obvious what it is. For example if something is supposed to be circular, its immediately obvious why it doesnt look right because there is a correct way to draw a circle using pixels for every possible diameter. However, some people think sprite based art is better because its harder to notice mistakes.

Hope this information is helpful!

I think this idea of an increasing speed while trying to stay on track is really good, and the implementation of the movement is also very good.

The game would feel a little more complete with better visuals, and I think the idea you had for the camera snapping to the line was a good one although could have been implemented better.

Overall though, a game doesn't need to have great visuals to be fun and I think this game was definitely fun regardless. Good submission!

Did you delete the build on your itch page? I'm not able to play the game in browser and I don't see a downloadable build

Thanks so much for playing! The way its fits the bloom theme is partially because you're defending the flowers until they bloom, but also through reticle bloom. Usually in FPS games when you're moving, jumping, or hip firing the area where your bullets can land increases and that mechanic is called reticle bloom.

I decided to inverse that here and make it so that you get reticle bloom while you're still, as opposed to while you're moving

Just a little bug to report, when playing the game and then returning to the main menu none of the buttons work for some reason.

As for my thoughts on the game, I also agree with some of the below people on the point that the confusion mechanic is a little too confusing. In the sense that it confuses the real life player maybe even a little more than the in game player character.  On the other hand I think the style you chose is great! Kind of reminds me of undertale in a way and I didn't even play that game.

I really like this submission. I think the reloading of the petals and shooting them out in a fan pattern is actually really cool and a great core mechanic for your game. Especially for a first game jam I think this is a great submission and you should be proud of it!

I loooove the art style here. I decided to play this one because of the images of it I saw when i was scrolling over the game on the submissions page.

As for the gameplay, I do think the movement is too slippery. Slippery isn't always necessarily bad, you can use it as a mechanic to make a game harder, but its important to find the sweet spot of how slippery you can make it to still have it be fun and still feel like the player has decent control.

Good submission! I was able to get a score of 48 

I think the levels could use some work, they mostly seemed so close cut that it became an issue of timing instead of puzzle solving. I also think the jump may be too high or too floaty, jumping is such a commitment because youll lose almost all your light by the time that you land.

On the good side though i like the visuals and the sounds. Good submission!

I actually really enjoy this submission. I think it was very creative and while it is simple its also fun. One thing I do wish you had done was a little volume mixing though, because the *ding* is so incredibly loud compared to the music lol. Other than that great submission!

The art and music for this are insanely good, other than that though I think the mechanics could use a little bit of work. For example, when i started the game I had no idea whether i was supposed to be purposely hitting the people or avoiding them, so I immediately game over'ed trying to avoid them.

Good submission!

This is definitely my favorite submission that I have played so far, it really is so polished and complete. Every member of your team did a fantastic job designing this, but especially your artist. This really does look insanely good for a 3 day jam. And the little pips gave me Ori and the blind forest vibes too which was nice because I absolutely loved that game. Amazing work and great submission by all of you

This was a fun submission! I was able to get a score of 69 (nice). I think the addition of being able to wrap your umbrella around to the other side of the screen is absolutely crucial and made the game much more enjoyable. I can see now that if you hadn't done that you would have gotten many complaints about how players were expected to block one piece of hail from the right side then move all the way over to the left to block another one. So good foresight on that!

I love the visual style you chose for this submission, although it was kind of hard to play with only a 13 framerate. All of my inputs would happen a few moments after I had pushed the buttons which made the game have a weird feel to it. I do think the concept is good though and your execution of your ideas was also very good. This isa good submission especially for a first game

This was a really good submission! The level design in particular is very good. You made levels that were challenging but possible which is the hardest part of making puzzle games!

A critique that I have is to make those crumbling platforms more obvious as to their purpose. I felt like I would consistently jump on one and not expect it to fall out from under me because the texture for it looks solid.

Great submission!

This is a funny game! "Water u doin?" is a hilarious thing to add when you hit someone with the water.

For some critiques, I think it needs a losing condition. As it stands the player will be able to play for so long that it becomes impossible to water all the flowers resulting in their score only going down, so there is like a parabola of scoring where youd be better off quitting while youre ahead. I also think adding a grass texture could give the game a much better look.

Good submission!

Sounds like you considered everything very carefully, which is great!

Thanks so much! I'm so glad to hear that you enjoyed it!

This is a really really good submission but there are some things I think are good about it and things I think could be improved.

I think that the player controller could use a little bit more fine tuning, which I know is difficult with only 3 days, but what I mean is just kinda messing around with the values on it until you get something that feels really good. It is pretty good now, but i think it could be better.

I also think the seasons mechanic could be a little bit more clear, although I know you guys were trying to make a difficult game, so if that was intended to be a part of what makes it hard then feel free to ignore my opinion on that lol

The music is so good, probably the best I'll end up hearing for the whole jam that was made over the weekend. In that same vein the art is also fantastic. It has its own unique style that stands out as recognizable and looks really good.

Overall I think this submission is great and you guys should totally be proud of it!

I think the art is nice, and the flower sound is very satisfying. Although my main problem with the game is that it seems like i would consistently run into things that I wasnt actually touching, like I didnt know how big my character's hitbox actually was. Other than that though I do like the submission

If this is your first jam id say you should be proud of the (seemingly) infinite level that you made. Most people would have made a level that you could run through for like 5 minutes tops and then just said it was enough but the extra effort to make it infinite is important. If the game felt better, as opposed to how just timing jumps with no sounds or effects, then the infinite level would make the difference between just a gag and a game that could actually be addicting.

Good submission

I like this submission, its a fun concept with fun visuals and a fun execution. For some reason I was only able to play level 1 though. Even with VSync on the other levels wouldnt load for me and I would just get put into like the void.

Overall I do like it though!

Speaking of cheese spots like the last commenter, I was also able to find one under a tree

As a review though, I think the game feels good to play and looks really nice too. Some improvements I think would have been possible within the jam would be making the gun feel better, and perhaps thinking of something to add to give the game more variety. I'm not sure if it gets harder as time passes but if it doesn't that may be something to consider adding, like a CoD zombies vibe.

Overall a great submission!

Thanks so much!! Thats what i was going for

I suppose I didnt consider if someone was just kinda jittering their mouse in one spot to tighten their reticle, but if you were able to do that and still land accurate shots I'd say youre probably pretty skilled lol

Im glad you enjoyed it!

Yeah I thought people would have trouble with it, which is part of why i didnt limit how fast you can fire, so hopefully it wasnt too difficult that it wasnt fun. Thanks for playing!

maybe youre right actually, I probably should have decreased the friction on the flowers. Them moving was more of a side effect and not something I coded in but i did notice it, I just didnt think to amplify it in any way.

Also the moving while shooting was something that I thought would keep the game fun as opposed to just being a point and click adventure. If it required you to stay still, or if your accuracy was always spot on, then the game would be insanely boring. Thats why I kinda inversed the bloom mechanic

Thanks for the feedback!

This is probably the best submission I have played so far, I really like the idea, and I think the execution is almost perfect. I do think there could be some improvements in the feel of the movement controller, I didn't actually realize the reason my character was turning red was because i was too far to burrow into something until i was on the last level.

On the topic of the last level, it was super well designed and I loved the kind of wall jumping mechanic that you had to do to get to one of the bees. The level design, art, mechanics, and music were all great. Great submission!

The workers are really funny little dudes and I love how they just run around and do stuff, although I do think the game needs some balancing. It felt like it was raining and sunny so often that I could have both workers gathering nutrients pretty much all the time. I also wish i could have gotten more workers somehow, but I know in 3d especially there is a lot to do in 3 days.

Overall I think this is a good submission and you were able to get a lot done in 3 days