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Thanks for playing! I recorded a full playthrough here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgLIrrz6-EI

Aaa thank you so much! And I really need to implement that tutorial graphic better. Thanks for playing!

Thank you! Yes it is an absolute headache to develop and I can’t wait to work on something that doesn’t use this gimmick. Regarding level 4 - I’m curious, were you able to rotate the camera to face completely top-down? I know someone else missed the control indicator in level 1 for moving the camera (move mouse or right joystick), is that what happened in your case?

Cute little game! With upgrades the gun does get overpowered but I also did a run only powering up the sword and it was quite satisfying to use. I did notice 2 bugs. First, I believe the little minions that the boss spawns don’t freeze during the upgrade screen. Second, I tried upgrading Knockback but it seemed to just upgrade one of my weapons instead. Aside from that, I really loved the pixel animation smears and the variety of robo enemies.

Short and sweet, I would’ve loved more! Physics feel nice and clean. I love when platformers start you off without an ability, then you get it and can backtrack a bit. Fairly generous checkpoints. Very pleasant, serene music. And big plus for CONTROLLER SUPPORT :D

I love 2D platformers, Celeste is one of my favorite games. You have some good challenging levels here and they would benefit immensely from revised controls, which have already been discussed. I noticed you said that a small wall jump should occur if the player only pressed Spacebar while against a wall, but for me it was the opposite; only hitting Spacebar gave me a big jump and attempting to hit A/D would kill/diminish the jump.

Functionality-wise, your usage of mode here reminds me of the pink/blue alternating rhythm blocks or the switching between ice vs lava sections in Celeste. What those have in common is that you can always see where the objects/platforms in the other “mode” will be, so it feels fair. I would argue that’s my biggest gripe here, especially in the level where there’s a horizontal moving block in dark and another horizontal moving block in light, but they get desynced from each other.

You’ve got good ideas here, like how it’s not just the environment but also the character’s movement ability that changes with the mode. Having revised controls and improved indicators would help it shine.

Everything looks so lovingly made. The illustrations and sound are all so charming. Nice variety of platforming mechanics. I had fun flinging myself like Spiderman! Spidermoon?

The idea of the one star orbiting around the moon is cute but definitely feels awkward in practice. I was really hoping this would support a controller, I think having the star cursor bound to the right joystick with a shoulder button as the jump/action would feel quite nice.

There was a pretty big difficulty spike at the end. I almost gave up on the “weaving through the minefield” area, having a checkpoint in the middle or another powerup refill before the descending part would have gone a long way in making that part more playable. I also thought I was supposed to continue going up and left after getting the red skein of yarn, maybe put some spikes up there and have a star pickup guiding the player to the right?

Overall a very elegantly-executed platformer!

Everyone asks “where is dark mode” but nobody asks “how is dark mode”

Combining all 3 modes was really interesting and it felt satisfying to start piecing together the best way to tackle a given scenario. For the platforming mode, I’m not a big fan of when horizontal character movement stops as soon as input stops. However I do appreciate coyote time and jump buffering being implemented, and the ledge grab is very convenient.

I’m not sure how I feel about RNG in turn-based tile puzzle games, but maybe that’s just me being burnt out from games like Into the Breach lol. I found it frustrating when I thought the situation was in the bag but suddenly 2 extra portals would spawn. Also it was only while writing this review and looking at one of your little gameplay GIFs that I realized that each enemy on the screen spawns a spike ball at the end of the turn—I was confused about why spike balls were seemingly spawning at random. Perhaps some way of indicating what’s coming up would make the experience less blind for players.

I love the sprite art and chill music. I’m curious to see where this goes if you do decide to keep working on this.

Thanks for the feedback! There are shadows in 3D but they are pretty subtle and they are intentionally long so they stretch across the ground, I’ll see if I can get better shadow contrast. I’ve realized that a lot of people tried rolling the ball in the first ball puzzle which isn’t something I wanted players to get stuck on. The simple fix is just turning it into a cube since I didn’t mean to bait people into thinking rolling was part of the solution. And the final level is straight up not well-designed, It’s going to get overhauled. Thanks again.

Thank you! And thanks for mentioning the Tab thing, you’re the second to mention it recently and I have changed it to Shift (but that only matters if I keep working on this).

Thank you for the nice words. You’ve been going through a volume of games on stream (and really dedicating yourself to finishing them!). Awesome of you to interview/highlight devs as you have been doing, and it was a pleasure getting to be on stream. It’s invaluable getting to see someone playing your game in realtime.

I have some interesting ideas but omg it’s such a nightmare to program mechanics that work seamlessly in 2D and 3D 😭

Had to give up on level 23. Challenging! Interesting how it became about finding the right route to weave throughout the enemies, I wasn’t really expecting that going in. The sprites, pixel animation and sound are all on point.

Cute game! I love the different abilities each mode gives, and bringing in some cursor action was a nice change of pace for a 2D platformer. Beep Boop is adorable, music is great, and the environmental art is quite nice too. My only 2 complaints would be that some areas feel a bit claustrophobic and the camera swinging really fast after each death can give some folks like me a bit of a headache.

I do my best to read all the comments on a game before commenting so I don’t say anything too redundant. Your game has had me reading the most of any I’ve played so far!

I love platformers. I’ve never played The Messenger and perhaps the controls are close to it, but I wasn’t a huge fan of how sticky the wall grabs felt. But that’s really the only platforming mechanic gripe I have. The movement feels great, and I love the small things like being able to jump higher/farther only if you’re holding the staff.

Graphics-wise, it’s already been said but the two styles are very nice. My only nitpick would be I wish there was some clearer visual indicator of which platforms/spikes would move when the mode was changed.

You guys already mentioned that the boss was one of the last things you were able to work on, I would’ve loved to have seen what you could have done with more time! I was confused while playing the boss on hard mode, it took me a long time to realize I needed to switch modes during the fight because the normal mode didn’t require that.

Hard mode was a nice challenge! Very much reminds me of Celeste B/C-sides. I think it was a great idea to take parts that might’ve felt difficult during playtesting and move them to their own dedicated level. Nice reward too ;)

Side note, I appreciate you guys not slapping an obnoxious fisheye CRT effect on the retro mode, it always hurts my head when I have to play games like that lol

Thank you! And yeah I suppose Tab is a bit out of the way, do you think Shift would be more comfortable?

I had seen your game floating around and was excited to finally get around to playing it. Very cool concept. Plays like Into the Breach combined with tower defense. I find this game really interesting and I hope you don’t mind me spilling my thoughts (feel free to ignore, honestly!). I’ll try to avoid any comments that have been made already.

I discovered the KING glitch on accident, then started fresh and beat the game using only SHOTs, then played and beat again without using any SHOTs.

The whole idea of modes for metals is interesting, but I found myself almost never switching modes. I’d say a big reason is the 3-turn lock; imo staying in one mode and focusing on its playstyle is simply easier than the hassle of switching modes only to regret it a turn or two later.

Being able to explore/uncover the map was really neat. From a visual standpoint, I think there should be a clearer change in what a tile looks like before and after it’s been “uncovered.” Also, once you’ve sent a metal into the depths of one maze-like branch and defeated the hives there, it feels useless and just sits there (unless you feel like wasting a bunch of movement grit). I really liked that units like the ROOK can only push one unit into the darkness but can move back into known territory two spaces. Helps combat that issue a bit. Otherwise maybe being able to scrap a metal for resources could be useful?

Healing seems to have very little use since enemies don’t attack metals off the track (except for the flying guys). It makes me wonder why the ROOK is the only metal with self-healing, yet it comes with the most HP—I cannot imagine a scenario in which I’d need to use it.

I found the flying enemies to be very overpowered, at least compared to the metals’ abilities. Travels over barriers and heads straight for the base, moves multiple spaces, and damages metals in its path.

There’s some info that’s always shown that could probably be hidden. In my experience a small amount of the game is spent launching metals, so I don’t know if the UI for launching them needs to be on-screen for the entire game. I’m not sure why the launch cost for metals is shown on the upgrade page, considering it’s already been launched. On the topic of upgrades, I only found myself needing to upgrade damage. Any other metal upgrades (especially upgrades to special abilities) seemed expensive for little reward. Dice upgrades also seemed too expensive for the return on investment.

Again, I love the game mechanics and concept. The entire aesthetic is excellent. I am super envious of your choices for SFX and music (thank you for introducing me to Ruskerdax!). I bet you have a lot of interesting ideas up your sleeve and look forward to seeing your game develop.

Very fun! I love the layering of mechanics in big mode, and the extra camera angles give it a (fitting) comic book feel. Sounds like you ran out of time for small mode which is a bummer.

On another note, it looks like you included some “Do Not Ship” folders in your build, one of which is over 600MB in size!

I remember you mentioning that you couldn’t run UE games on your computer so I’m glad you went out of your way to do so! Thank you for the kind words. Yes, there’s quite a few design flaws with that last level and I’d love to redesign it. Thanks for sticking to it!

Thank you! And you are the second person I’ve seen run into that issue haha. If I keep developing I’ll add a slight clamp as well as an option to reset the camera in-game just to be sure. And I will definitely redesign this level!

Very amusing premise! Really makes you FEEL like you’re a guy on the run. Partially reminds me of Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. My first attempt felt pretty hectic but my later runs went a lot faster to the point where I was just waiting out the timer. Sounds like there might’ve been more to it? Regardless, I love the charm, great music, and I was pretty invested in where the narrative was going.

I managed to get a B! The infinite lives/quick respawn with temporary invincibility makes for a very pleasant experience. I’ve never played any of the OG bullet hell games, the most experience I have is Isaac and Gungeon. The swapping between shooting and being small is very satisfying, and it reminds me of the airplane segments in Cuphead. Others have already mentioned the issue with enemies being in the bottom half of the screen, and it looks like you mentioned having moving enemies which would be awesome to see. You’ve got very clean, easy to read visuals (I feel like I’ve played too many games with heavy filters!). Great work.

Couldn’t stop smiling while playing this. Love the over-the-top action, reminds me of old Playstation days.

I always love a little bit of bullet hell action! This was no exception. Mischievous fun playing as the “bad guy,” love the quirky enemies. I’d say my only complaint is I wish the character had some more mobility, but aside from that I really enjoyed the automatic attacks and seeing when the best time to use one or the other was.

Thank you! I absolutely understand, that level does have a lot of moving parts (literally and figuratively) and if I continue development I’ll do what I can to make sure levels are more readable.

Thank you for letting me know! There is a graphic showing the controls for moving the camera in the first level but it looks like I might need to make it more apparent. The power of playtesting!

Thank you! I’ve had many people tell me this game is like FEZ but you’re the first to mention Captain Toad, which was equally inspiring if not more for this game. In fact I don’t think I would’ve come up with the idea for COGMO if it weren’t for Captain Toad.

Thanks for playing and for the details, I’m always curious to know the specifics of how people fare so I can improve. I’m glad you stuck it out and got as far as you did. I know the first ball puzzle stumps quite a few people but I think it’s a fair challenge. On the other hand I’m not particularly happy with the last level and I can’t fault people for not clearing it. Now that you mention it, it’s a case of exactly what you said—the physics almost allowing people to do something, but not exactly as they want it to, leading to frustration. It’s the only level that actually requires physics simulation and if I continue development I’ll take that in much heavier consideration. Thanks again!

Thanks for playing! Just curious, were you able to rotate the camera to be top-down in that level? That’s what is intended and I’ve seen people do that, so I’d like to know if there’s some issue I haven’t seen yet.

Oh my goodness this needs to be a whole-ass series with different characters. Phenomenal job, cute little puzzles, great atmosphere. My only gripe would be that some of the dialogue text went away before I noticed it/could see it since it was kind of small on my monitor and my eyes suck. But aside from that, 10/10. Or should I say 5/5/5/5.

I’ve always loved Mario Kart so the controls felt very intuitive. Having a ghost to race rather than just a time to beat is great, and seeing a hard mode ghost let me figure out the “wiggle directions while drifting” tech (which is also in Mario Kart!). It’s a shame you couldn’t get more frequent respawn points working, perhaps some “offroad” terrain around turns and corners could reduce some of the brutal-ness of going off-track.

Crypt of the NecroDancer and DDR had a baby and it’s this game. Such a clever idea mixing those two things together. I love me some rhythm games and this was excellent.

Loads of personality in this one. Mowing down targets is morbidly satisfying. The only con for me is that the camera wobble from beer pickups gave me a little headache (and it looks like I wasn’t the only one). Perhaps things like flipped controls or other temporary game play changes could be a substitute to assist those who might get motion sickness.

I’ve never played Black & White but I did enjoy Virtual Villagers as a kid and this reminds me of it! The ability to directly choose what you want each Medo to do without moving it to any particular location is great. Pleasant atmosphere. My only gripe is that the map is definitely too large—I never looked at any of the land behind where the camera starts and a lot of my Medo would aggregate all the way at the coast when I ran out of food storage, and it’d take a long time to navigate all the way over there to get them to do something else.

Wow! I LOVE the execution on this. Such classic fun and aesthetics. Had a blast with this.

Cool game mechanics! Love that the “mode” theme ties everything together, from the dimension switching to choosing your ending. Looking at the art style (the location you first spawn in is a good example) I almost wish the camera was NES-style, with the view locked down in a room and only moving when your character moves to another “screen.”

I love puzzles, platforming, AND origami. This game delivers! Others have said it but I’ll repeat that the open-ended nature of puzzles like this is quite nice. There’s many different possibilities for how a level can be cleared, just as a square sheet of paper can be turned into just about anything.

Oh my goodness thank you for the glowing review!! You don’t just feel like a genius, you ARE a genius 🤓 I think one of the main flaws with that level is it requires the player to do something I didn’t introduce earlier, so as you said the intended solution feels like cheese. This is my first game jam and I’ve been floored by how supportive and wholesome everyone’s been!

Engaging with a very distinct personality. Very polished, I think you did an excellent job here. My only comment (looks like someone else said this already): I love the visual style, but I think the effects combined with the camera moving around with the cursor can lead to some motion sickness. An option to disable the fisheye and CRT effects could help with accessibility.

Simple, smooth, charming! Really reminds me of Eatsa Pizza from Mario Party 3—imagine a multiplayer version of this! Loved seeing the variety of added challenges in later levels to keep things interesting. My only complaint is how the player kinda gets stuck/loses momentum when hitting walls.