I really appreciate the simple logic of light world/dark world reversing the object's properties - passable-impassable, mobile-imobile, killable-unkillable, moves left-moves right, hidden-revealed.
I also see that a lot of care went into the layout of the level, so that it's impossible to get stuck. Huge thumbs up for that.
Also big plus to the presentation for that little opening animation.
Unfortunately there's a lot of bugs with the game, some of them game breaking, but that's par for the course for Jam games.
DigitOwl
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It's a really cool concept and the nice chill game. That said I suck balls at it. Couldn't make heads or tails out of most of the star clusters I found. I think in the end I only managed to draw 3 constellations.
The presentation's top notch, with both music and art. Everything about it is so warm and cozy. Almost like a storybook illustration.
I also like how the first star cluster you see nicely tutorializes the mechanics ( connect the dots to draw the shape, not all of the dots are used, thought bubble shows shape). Also being able to scroll through the sky by clicking and dragging (in additnion to wasd) is a really nice touch.
Overall this is very polished game, especially for a jam.
Also, that cat is the world's best dad, this is canon.
Nice job. I think the puzzle/level design really makes your controls scheme scheme shine. The game overall is fun to play.
Also the cover art is really eye catching tho it doesn't really have much to do with how the rest of the game looks. That said I'm really impressed how appealing you managed to make those simple geometric models look through the use of lighting and colors. Oh and those electricity arcs are great looking.
There's only one minor thing I'd criticize.
The level that introduces the "grab" mechanic doesn't in any way require the use of it to be solved (also it's more of an "attract" than grab in a way that it functions).
Yeah, more lives would mitigate the issue somewhat. I think giving player more or less lives can even be done independent of other changes. For example, it could be tied to a difficulty setting (Normal: 3 lives, Easy: 5 Hard: 2, Expert: 1 etc.).
I like the idea of lives sending you back to the physical mode the most, but you could also handle it some other way.
For instance, if you want to keep lives sending you back to a previous level when you run out, you could group levels into chapters. Every couple of levels you go to the next "chapter" (or whatever you choose to call it), dying could still send you back a level within a chapter, but it wouldn't send you back into previous chapter. It'd give some sense of permanent forward progression to the player.
Man this game is really simple, but really smart, I can see myself sinking hours into it. (In fact once I'm not under pressure to play and rate more games I'll prolly play this some more).
Art style is lovely, simple yet appealing. And that weapon, it's a very clever use of the theme, but it's also both simple yet very versatile. You must be quick and strategic to survive more than 1 round of this (I frequently don't ^^;)
Man, I really love the concept of this. Controlling the two rocks is so much fun, but I'm really bad at it.
My dumb brain just can't handle whenever the arrow boulder is to the left of the wasd boulder, it makes the control feel unintuitive in that instance (for example to bring them closer together you need to push both A and ->, buttons that face away from each other). Not sure if this is something you should correct or just a problem with me.
Anyway it's so much fun to pull off those choreographed physics dances that let you accelerate to ludicrous speed (and likely die right after in a hilarious fashion xD). It's so much fun, I just wish I was better at it.
Also I managed to completely fly right over a checkpoint and die right after a couple of times. xD I'd consider making the hitbox for the checkpoint taller.
This is a really neat prototype, I think this could be refined into a really cool game.
I really liked the presentation in this game, the assets you've created are really nice and you use them in lot of creative ways. The music is nice and chill. The death scream contrasts with that quite harshly, it gave me a good chuckle quite a few times. Making dying its own fun in a game that you die a lot is always a plus.
I also liked how the game design tutorializes some mechanics (like that wall jump in level 6).
Unfortunately, I never managed to get past level 6, between dying being really easy in these game and dying 3 times on a level sending you back I replayed levels 1-5 a lot.
I think auroratide has the right idea about lives.
I also died a lot right after respawn, because I was still trying to save myself from death a moment before, I think locking the players controls for a split second after death would smooth that out a bit.
The grapple mechanics have a lot of oomph to them they are SO satisfying.
That said, I feel the difficulty ramps up a bit too quickly, after the initial phase of idly collecting the scrap I soon found myself completely overwhelmed by meteors with no time to save up enough scrap to repel them or heal the ship. Especially since you need to first upgrade your scrap capacity a couple of times, to even be able to afford either of these vital purchases (at their base price, which then also ramps up).
I also found maneuvering around the ship rather difficult.
With that said I do have to emphasize, slamming into meteors and chaining from one to another was IMMENSELY SATISFYING.
I'm also impressed you managed to make a rather good 3D within those time constraints. Oh and your ship model is really nice too.
TL;DR Fun game, wish it was a bit easier ^^;
Really coo and original l idea, tho in practice I found it a bit stingy with what words it allowed me to combine. Sometimes there were just straight up no pronouns on the screen, so I couldn't really do much.
The presentation is really good too and the pace is nicely frantic, so with some tweaks to the spawn rates of certain words this could be a really fun casual game.
Or for peak comedy, you could relax the restrictions on grammar and just let people combine whatever and try to have the game make sense of it best it can. I think that could yield some amazing results. x3
I like the idea of you being in control (partial) of both your characters and the hazards. That is a rather clever use of the theme.
I can also kinda see what you were going for with both the enemies having same speed, projectile speed, same projectile, same propulsion effects, that's really neat. That said I do wish the player ship moved a little bit faster so as to be able to catch up to the enemies moving away from you without needing to wait to them to change directions.
Lining up shots on distant enemies was also rather difficult, with the relative slow speed of your projectile and the very slight perspective shift towards the middle the further away something was.
I also noticed that sometimes enemies would refuse to shoot if there was another one of their own in front of them. I think letting them kill each other on your command would have added to the fun of the game.
Overall, very neat idea, could do with some more refinement. Little things like showing the life bar (I do assume there was some health system in the game since I seemed to be able to tank 2 shots before dying to the 3rd).
It's a very tightly and elegantly designed game. I love how you control both your blobs and enemy blobs at the same time, that's a nice touch.
I got a bit stuck on the first two levels, but I think that was just my dumb brain getting used to the mechanics.
I also like how you clearly indicated the controls on the screen and that there's options to both reset and skip levels (very thoughtful indeed, tho thankfully I never got so stuck as to need it).
I honestly think this could be a commercial release if you just made more levels for it. Maybe toss in a mechanic or two into later levels depending on how long it is. The simple controls lend themselves well to porting to mobile and I think this is the kind of game I'd love on my phone (tho it's good enough for a desktop as well).
Oh and the blobs are adorable. Both visuals and audio are stellar in this.
I like how the gathering of parts has almost this risk reward element to it. You wanna shoot it and drive towards it, but if you're too hasty in getting the parts you might damage yourself instead. It's also nice how the smaller your raft is, the easier it is to avoid obstacles. A+
Wish there was something I could do about the crocks, they don't seem to give up or react to shots so getting munched is a bit of an inevitability. Tho it does make getting new parts all the more frantic, which is good.
I've considered a similar idea for my game, but I couldn't quite figure out how to make it fun, so I went with something different. I'm glad someone managed to make such a compelling game about constructing a ship (raft) out of random shapes.