itch.io

Some very cool ideas. I enjoyed the cat-summoning lock on the spellbook. Much more interesting than simply finding a book.

I would have liked a very brief introduction to give me some idea of that kind of dungeon to picture. Getting straight to the point is great, but a high level overview of what and where this dungeon is would be nice.

I think all the mysterious, magical stuff in the dungeon would make for a very enjoyable old-school dungeon crawl.

I can't believe you managed to fit in a hexcrawl, bestiary, preset characters and a dungeon with over 100 rooms. An incredibly dense adventure!

The science-fantasy vibe is very cool, and I particularly like that the power cells are both used to power magic items, and to feed goblins. So much shenanigan potential.

The tone of this adventure is just fantastic. Really ominous.

I especially like the combination of timeline and random encounters to ramp up the tension. That seems like it would work really well to build up horror and desperation.

I like the fairy tale atmosphere of this adventure. It feels more gentle than most, which is a nice change of pace.

While I understand the logic of putting the map at the back for quick access, reading the key before seeing the map was a bit disorienting. Perhaps the key could start by noting where to find the map?

I'd have rated this highly simply for the genius of Jonsey the Badger, but the rest deserves a high rating too! The alien influence is maybe a little on the nose, but at the same time, it's really cool. I can see the dwarven magictech being really fun to play with.

I love how cleanly this is laid-out. It feels like it would be really easy to run, despite how complex the dungeon is.

Just looking at the map, this looked like a really fun dungeon, and the room descriptions did not disappoint. The amount of magical weirdness going on is fantastic.

I initially thought the two room 9s were literally the same room, with some non-Euclidean space going on. Sadly, not the case, though the identical rooms will also mess with players in a fun way.

I love the idea of tectonic plate titans as gods. That's such a cool idea. The whole setting is really evocative.

It would be nice if the river map had an indication which way was upstream. I assume the caves are downstream from River Hop, but I was never quite sure.

I really enjoyed the combat, once I got the hang of it. The trick seems to be to never use the second attack, and to always roll behind enemies.

I get a Dark Souls vibe from bits of the design, which makes me wonder: is the cheesing deliberate? I know From Software deliberately leaves in slightly broken stuff for players to exploit, and this feels similar. For example, you can bait enemies into hitting each other, and it seems to be possible to do massive damage to enemies on stairs.

My major complaint would be that this doesn't feel like a Metroidvania in any way. I never unlocked new abilities (unless you count the stronger healing items), and the branching paths were always dead ends.

Other things I liked:

- The art style is great.

- You put a health meter on the boss! That gave me the motivation to keep trying that fight until I beat it.

- The music is nice, and also unobtrusive. It never got annoying.

- Controller support :)

Minor complaints:

- Not much telegraphing on enemy attacks. It's quite hard to react, especially when you're just starting the game.

- I could equip healing items, but there didn't seem to be a way to use equipped items (at least, not on my Xbox controller). I had to open the menu every time.

Overall, good game, hope you can develop it further!

Honestly, this deserves more ratings. It's not perfect, but it's solidly executed and interesting to play.

I like how I can sweep up spikes to make them safe. That feels appropriate to what I assume is a cleaning robot.

My main gripe is the controls. There are too many to keep track of! Most of my deaths are to sweeping when I meant to attack, or shooting when I meant to jump. Could some of them be combined? I feel like sweep and interact could be one button, and maybe shooting could just be holding down attack. Perhaps space for jump would be a bit easier to remember?

I liked the music, and art, which is very readable. The way the character holds his broom makes it look like a big, bristly moustache, which I enjoyed.

You can use ENTER on the keyboard instead, if your mouse doesn't have a middle button.

Thanks for the feedback folks! I will try to push a bugfix, but it's not happening in the Unity editor, so it might be a while.

Until then, feel free to ignore Fisheye. You don't need anything from him until after the first boss, and the game does save your progress when you rest.

I thought the opening sequence was great. Seeing each part fall off gave me a really good sense of what my goal was, and the bat flying off with a bit at the end made me laugh.

The bad points are standard game jam platformer things. Add some coyote time so I can jump off the end of a platform without pixel-perfect timing. Make the hitboxes on the player and the spikes bigger than the art, so I can have a near miss. (http://devmag.org.za/2011/01/18/11-tips-for-making-a-fun-platformer/)

The sheer number of robot bits was impressive. I particularly liked rolling over to my legs at the very beginning, and getting my head back.

That does help, thanks! I didn't even know that was a resolution people used. I'm behind the times.

You have my respect for trying though. Rope physics is always hard.

I love the atmosphere. The empty opening areas, plus that music, followed by the ghosts, really gives a feeling of a land fallen into ruin. After talking to the king, I was intrigued.

I got stuck after getting the rope arrows. The way they worked felt too frustrating to me, and I eventually gave up. It's a shame, because overall I think the game is really interesting. I feel like I wanted rope arrows to be this dynamic, jump-shoot-and-swing thing, but instead it was more like hop-shoot-dangle-swing-swing-swing-plop. My advice would be 1) maintain the rope until fire is released. Holding down a button feels more intuitively like gripping a rope, and 2) let me jump out of the swinging state with the swing velocity: it felt like I was falling like a lead balloon as soon as I got off the rope.

Rapid-firing arrows into ghosts felt really fun. The energy arrows are a really interesting idea. There were a lot of really nice animations. Basically, I really liked this game, but I wish it were a bit more polished.

Wouldn't have to be UI. Just a sound, or character animation that plays when it's recharged. I believe that's how Hollow Knight handles it. Minimalist HUD is a fine goal.

I love how clean and simple this is, in visuals and design. You weren't kidding about your programmer being a UI wizard! Love how the charge metre is on both the HUD and the gun itself.

I wasn't quite able to put my finger on it, but the enemies felt weird. Like they were maybe glitching through walls or floors sometimes? Not a big deal, but it felt a bit disconcerting. Also they respawned a bit too often for my taste. It was annoying to clear a room, take a wrong turn, then immediately have to do the exact same combat again.

I like how open this felt. Straight from the beginning of the game, it seemed like there were loads of places to explore, even though it was actually a linear progression (as far as I could tell). Getting that Metroidvania feeling of "I'm excited to be able to go over there" early on was really nice.

Fantastic game! The art is nice, especially the derpy tongue as he jumps. The story was surprisingly touching, and I enjoyed the final boss fight (this as someone who generally dislikes bosses).

A few minor quibble about polish: there are spikes which you can fall onto without seeing them, the "coyote time" doesn't seem to work on moving platforms, and the dash cooldown isn't indicated in any way I could tell. As I say, minor problems. Overall, this was a really nice entry. 

I liked the level design. It looped back on itself very nicely, and the checkpoints were much appreciated. That said, you could maybe be more generous with checkpoints early on, to help ease players in.

EDIT: And apparently there's a map screen? The level design was clear enough that I never found myself needing it.

The sprite work on this is very nice, as is the music. Really good aesthetics.

It would be nice to tell the player that they can double jump. It never occurred to me to try, and I got stuck for a while.

Is there any way to regain health? I'm not very good, and I keep having to restart from the beginning.

I absolutely love the way the slimes pop like a balloon full of paint. That's very satisfying.

Really great game! The way the art, design, and music all come together is fantastic.

I found it a little counter-intuitive that the bomb select wheel rotates counter-clockwise. I kept expecting right click to rotate the other way, and ended up trapping myself with mushrooms.

I think the recharging bomb mechanic is really neat, and the bomb capacity upgrades are a good idea for an optional pickup.

It kind of has that roguelite/Darksouls quality where rushing through rooms tends to get you surrounded and killed. I liked that. Even the early rooms never stopped feeling like a challenge.

There were a couple of points were the screen transitions felt unfair. One where I had to bounce up on a mushroom and land on a platform in a different room, and one where a rat was able to walk across the room transition and surprise me.

Overall, really impressive entry. It's scoped really well, and feels very cohesive.

The UI is meant to be multi-resolution. I tested with all the standard aspect ratios, and it worked fine. Could you let me know your aspect ratio so I can try to figure out why it's not showing up for you?

Thanks for the feedback! I've tweaked some of the level design to hopefully guide the player a little better.

You're definitely right that something is up with the input, but I wasn't able to figure it out.

Thanks for the feedback! I have fixed the geometry where I'm guessing you got stuck. If anyone else gets stuck anywhere, you can quit to the menu and continue game to return to the last checkpoint with all your progress saved.

Sadly there is no sound. I lost two days to camera bugs, so sound and music got cut.

First time hearing about the Itch app, so naturally I haven't tested it there. Thanks for the heads up!

EDIT: I've now uploaded it with Butler, so it should work through the app. Thanks again for pointing that out to me.

A very nice entry. The combat feels fun. I like the tension of not being able to move while casting.

The level design is nice, but the gates feel like a bit of a cop out. I would have preferred something more thematic, like freezing a path across water, or burning an obstacle with the fire spell. Being told to get fairy X to open the door loses some of the sense of wonder.

I really like the zoom in and blur when your character dies. That's a nice effect. Overall, very nice effects and animations.

Came for the nice mountain, stayed for the cute goat.

I don't know if I'm missing something, but I wasn't able to progress very far. I got the goat face (HP?) and eventually worked out how to ram the wall around the chest (by the way, the controls really need to be tutorialised), but I wasn't then able to collect the chest, and there didn't seem to be anywhere left to go.

Short and sweet. I liked it. I chose the virus option.

The art is interesting (AI generated?), but it doesn't quite fit together. Maybe some manual tweaking to blend the room edges a bit more cleanly would be good.

Your level design is clear and simple enough that I'm not convinced the big red arrows were necessary. It might feel more like a Metroidvania without such obvious signposting.

I really like the minimalist art-style, and the way you blend tile sets at zone transitions.

I found the screen transition was a little disorienting, especially when falling or jumping. There were a few places where I fell onto spikes in the next room.

I wasn't able to get very far (I'm bad at this kind of precision platforming), but I liked how all the powerups I found were movement related. That felt very clean and simple.

Really nice game! I really enjoy the aesthetic, especially all the effects. The way the rocks glow when you mine them is so nice. The ambience is also a nice fit.

My complaints are mainly about communication. The fact that I can double jump and dash feels like quite an important point, but it's never explained. I was stuck in the first "room" for a while, because I didn't think to double jump. Small problem, but you don't want players to start frustrated. Similarly, the boss fight when you get the cannon threw me for a couple of reasons. First, the enemies have no reaction to taking damage, so I'm never sure if I'm missing, or if they're resisting the damage. That was fine for the bipedal ones, but not the long-legged thing. Second, the rocks on the long-legged thing aren't the same colour as the ones I'd been mining thus far. It took about 5 minutes before I thought to switch weapon. To be clear, I think that's a really neat mechanic, and a fun fight, it just needs more feedback to keep it from getting confusing. Also, I think a clearer "colour language" might be good for this game. Like "blue things are helpful, orange things are harmful".

I think you've got something really neat here. I hope you'll polish it up so I can really get into it. 

I love the atmosphere, and the character design. I wasn't able to get very far, but I'm interested in the creepy world. It reminds me of playing Axiom Verge.

My biggest gripe is the jump arc. There are so many ceiling spikes and spiky blob monsters. I found myself really wanting control over how high I jumped. I wanted to tap the button for a little hop, but instead the character rocketed into the ceiling, then bounced down into an enemy.

I'm planning to come back to this one when I have more time, so congratulations on a compelling opening!

Thanks for the heads up!

I wasn't expecting this to be as scary as it was! This is a really well-thought-out horror experience; the task that keeps you focused, the sound design, the half-glimpsed monster. It all adds up really well.

A very interesting idea, but a little tricky to control. I had to reload the game a couple of times because the ball went so far offscreen that I couldn't control the movement.

Really interesting idea to have the box evade the enemies, rather than the player themselves. I really enjoyed this.

It was nice using the spacebar instead of actually clicking. Much less RSI-inducing!

I don't know if this is just for me, but the link to the page doesn't work. Did you forget to publish it?

Good:

• The shortcuts are really nice. I had a really nice moment with the first one, where I had a choice of two paths, and was able to guess that going right would let me open a shortcut. It's a really good feeling, and I think it speaks to good level design.
• The atmosphere is good. Strange, unsettling colours, and oddly disturbing animations on the enemies. I think it comes together nicely.
• The combat works well. Getting a hit in, then dashing away feels satisfying.

Bad:

• Some guidance on the controls would be good. It wasn't too hard to work out on a gamepad (and thank you so much for supporting those!), but on keyboard, I had no idea. Eventually I triggered an attack by clicking on a menu, but I still have no idea how to dash.
• Speaking of controls, pressing enter caused the game to quit to the menu with no warning and, as far as I can tell, no save.
• Obviously, you ran out of time, but if you plan to continue this project, I'd like to see more juice. Combat is good, but it could be so much more satisfying with some screenshake, freeze-frames, and sound effects. I want to really feel the impact, especially from the big sword guys.

Overall, I like this game. It controls really nicely and it has a good atmosphere. Hope you find time to finish it!

"Gaping hole" is a bit strong. It basically worked, it just wasn't the smoothest learning curve.

Now that you've explained it, I totally get how this room was supposed to work. If I had actually held down J, it would have done a really good job. What actually happened when I played it was:

1) The first time I tried to drill, I must have been jumping. This caused me to shoot up into the ceiling and die.

2) Since I didn't want that to happen again, I made sure not to hold down the drill key, meaning I got stuck in the middle room. It wasn't until I worked out downward drilling that I was able to get past this room.

It's tricky to teach this mechanic without straight up telling the player what to do, but I think the game is better for it. Maybe if the ceiling on the left were really low, so the player could only enter the wall at ground level?

Btw, I feel like you're being a lot harder than yourself than you need to be. This is a genuinely good game, especially given your time constraints.

Good:

• Really deep platforming mechanic. It takes a while to get used to, but feels so good when you get your head round it.
• Nice, simple 2-bit art style. It's very readable, and looks good.
• Normally, I would hate a game this difficult, but your generous checkpoint system makes it so much more playable. No lives, no fuss, just back to the start of the room. Usually not far back either.

Bad:

• More tutorial would be good. I like how it's not shoved in my face, and you clearly built the second room to teach the drill mechanic, but it was very unclear to me for a long time that I needed to be falling to drill into the ground. I thought some floors were just drill-proof.
• While I like the sound effects, the music/ambience is not very pleasant to listen to.
• It feels like there's a conflict between the one-room camera and the multi-room level design. Sometimes I drill off-screen straight into spikes, that I had no way of knowing about. It's very hard to react in time when the whole room is popping in at once. That's a lot of information to process.

Overall, not the kind of game I usually enjoy, but I had a lot of fun playing it. The fact that you made something so polished in just one week is frankly amazing.