Lovely! I think that after the slow start, the game is really novel and joyful. Whimsical, even. More musical elements going on would hold the player's interest more effectively. Like, maybe some kind of percussion? Related to enemies spawning? Dying? I'm a huge fan of games with procedural music stuff going on and this could be so cool
The polish is unbelievable. It looks great, the characters are so charming, and the sound is very good, too. Of course, it's also a very well-executed physics-based game, which is a difficult thing to manage in a short time limit. I have to imagine that debugging was hard! Your team deserves the highest marks.
The simulation seems to have hidden depth. I think shorter rounds that increase dynamically in scale could make the game more interesting. I really believe you wouldn't need to make it more complex to make it fun. Also, it'd help if the camera were closer to the people. It's a game about people, after all. Just a contrasting opinion. High marks for creativity, and good work!
This was so lovely! I also really like the premise of a real-time game where the NPCs are all playing a completely separate game in a different genre that's turn-based. Very creative, charming artwork too. Great job!
voiceover narration in a game jam game. that's a first!
really delightfully silly game with some clever ideas. the platforming is a little unreliable and made the rougher levels worse. i think that without the physics issues, the level design would actually come across as pretty smart. nice work :)
Yeah, the written "tutorial" was a last-minute idea and I think it comes across as pretty mysterious. With a little more time, the first priority would be some in-level explanations. Thank you so much for the feedback!
The aesthetic is very peaceful and warm, but the puzzle design is fiendish. Excellent work! I feel that it would be easier if the player had more tools to visualize how their seeds behaved. For instance, if there were a button to go forward one step at a time through each cycle instead of having them play automatically, it'd make it easier to understand where your instructions go wrong. It was frustrating to see the level fail and then immediately end without being able to check exactly what happened.
this is such a wild ratio of game design quality over polish quality. there's no sound and the UI is really wonky, so i can't give you style points. BUT! this is so silly and so fun and an absolute joy to mess around with. you took a genre that was amazing for how much it succeeded despite offering so little player expression and then stuck sandbox building mechanics in it. in a weird way this was probably the most fun ive had playing a survivors-style game
That was probably a good choice to make! However, there are certain areas where the player may try to jump beneath a low ceiling or jump into a one tile-high passage, but they fall short. You should avoid these situations in the level design, and when they do appear, try to be generous. For instance, if a player hits a wall but would have landed on top of it if they were just slightly higher, you could nudge them upward.
Awesome game. I beat it on normal. I think that there are a few areas where the juice is masking gameplay issues, but these are relatively minor and expected for something made with so little time to playtest and iterate. For instance, I think that it takes a little too long to kill each Globbin and that the small ones are too difficult to hit; at the same time, the Globbins aren't especially threatening on their own. This means that the ramp-up and ramp-down of each level is a little boring, as the player spends a lot of time kiting a handful of Globbins around without taking them out very quickly either. Furthermore, I think that the different fire modes might be a little unbalanced, that the Globbin sizes should be more unique and distinguishable, that the boss round wasn't very different, and that the control scheme of number keys to switch modes was awkward.
I'm only giving such detailed criticism, though, because the game really earns it. It's worth taking seriously, you know? You did an amazing job. And it looks at a glance like you're a solo developer, too, which makes it even more impressive.
my score got up to 10,100! once i figured out what to do it was a BLAST. a lot of mileage out of something so simple. really awesome work and so visually cohesive!
i agree with ZivC about the respawning time for such a challenging platformer. i think you could be more forgiving to the player in general. however, the presentation is excellent and i really like the expanding levels!
It was interesting to gradually change strategy-- at first I played it like one of those tilting marble maze toys, but as the obstacles got increasingly difficult I pivoted to treating the ball like a lunar lander, using the flips like turning a thruster on and off and steering with slight rotations. It definitely gets really hard in the later levels. Nice job.
This brings back memories of fooling around with a Sharpie and cheap stripped books on the school bus. Expressive, well-presented, and REALLY funny. The art and music are perfect, too!
This game gets a lot of mileage out of a very simple set of rules. Impressive! There are a lot of "auto-platformers" in this jam, but yours stands out with a fun and responsive block-drawing mechanic. However, I think that some of the levels are too big-- in challenges where I'd expect to be racing to save my little guy, I end up having to wait for him to catch up. Also, it's easy to build a tube that avoids all of the obstacles entirely. Another reviewer suggested a block limit and I think that'd quickly make things more strategic. Great job!
The explosions, the sound, the constant movement, and the just-slow-enough responsiveness of the controls make for a very silly, very very fun game. Great job!
I like your version of the "reverse tower defence" idea because you can actually see the AI's cursor and menu. It makes the AI seem more like the "real" player and like you're on the other side of the screen, if that makes sense.
Thank you for taking the time to check it out! I agree that we could have iterated a lot on this and I think that I'd like to spend a few days making a more finished version, if the rest of my team is willing. We have a lot of mechanics already in-game and tested that we never explore in the 3 levels. For instance, "haunt" is separated from "possess" because time actually moves at 30% speed in the "haunt" mode, which would have made multitasking puzzles more forgiving-- except that we ran out of time to make any of those puzzles and test them.
The art is gorgeous! I especially appreciate the way that the eyes follow you around. It's one of those things that's hard to notice, but would be missed if it weren't there.
I'm surprised at how balanced this feels. How much time did you spend just on tuning and polish? My only complaint is that it takes a long time to figure out what each enemy type does, which I suppose a certain kind of player might actually enjoy.
That's actually the level start. We didn't have time to make a puzzle that uses it, but hypothetically if an obstacle killed the player character they would respawn wherever you moved the "start box."
