itch.io

Nice little puzzle-platformer! It gets hard pretty quick. I managed to get to the cloud world. I wish there was a level select.

I'm sorry you had a rough time with the controls.  I can see how those sections would be frustrating. Thank you for trying the game out, anyway!

Nice game and I liked the creepy music. 

The first zombie took a lot of hits and I wasn't able to kill it. I ended up running out of ammo, and I wasn't sure how to reload, so I just jumped over the rest of the enemies pretty easily and beat the game that way. I would suggest tweaking the shooting mechanics and give the player a reason to have to fight the zombies.

Nice job on the submission!

Fantastic art style and I love the music choices! Building up speed is a lot of fun. I wish there was more to do in terms of platforming such as dealing with enemies or interacting with different mechanics. Though, the tornado transformation thing was neat.

Overall, this is a decent prototype with a lot of style and promise. Nice job!

Good concept for a game. It's like a physics-based version of Bomberman. I like the art, especially the power-ups.. I like the risk-reward of risking your life to push the bombs towards other players, though, I wish there was a way to hit them to force them around a little faster. Jumping seems useless as far as I can tell. Maybe you could make use of the jump by having a way to jump over explosions with good timing or maybe adding some verticality to the levels..

I could see this being expanded into a fun party game. Nice job!

Nice platformer. The player controls well and the levels are designed well. I just wish there were more levels. I get the impression that you probably made this from one of the GDTV courses, but we all have to start somewhere. You start simply following tutorials and then you learn more from there and soon enough, you'll find yourself relying on tutorials much less often. 

Overall, this is far from being a terrible game. Nice job!

Nice job on making all the assets yourself and for publishing your first game! I love a good 2D platformer. The game is simple, but controls well and I really like the pixel art. Hopefully, one day you could expand on this with more levels and mechanics. Good job on your submission!

Great idea for a game! Interesting combination of a typing game and a 2D platformer. I've never really seen that before. Only complaint is the strange slope physics. Other than that, cool idea and nice job!

Interesting take on the theme. I found myself replaying a few times to see more of the NPCs' dialogue. Though, I did notice some of the NPCs said variations of the same thing. For example, one would say "Looks like I'm lost" and another would say "I'm lost." There were also plenty of variations of "This looks like a good place to X" and "Can't wait for the universe to end" type of dialogue, which made a lot of the characters feel too similar to one another. 

With that said, the idea of talking to different people and hearing their thoughts knowing the world is about to end is an interesting concept. Add more variety in characters and dialogue and this would be even better. Nice job!

Wooo! I won! Nice, short game. I like that you have to try to avoid hitting the wizards, so you can't just shoot blindly. If I were to suggest anything, I would say you consider having the enemies flash and some particle effects play when you hit them to make shooting them more fun.  Overall, nice job!

Nice little platformer with some cute pixel art. I like the idea of a platformer/stealth hybrid. Too bad you didn't have time to make more levels. Congratulations on your first game jam submission!

Nice game. I think the artwork is really well done and I like the music choices. I like that the foreground elements were made transparent as to not obscure the player character too much. I liked using the mouse wheel to quickly cycle through different weapons on the fly.

I did find the combat too slow and sluggish due to the high cooldown of your different abilities. Having an ability or two with shorter cooldown would definitely help make the combat more fluid. I was also unclear of what the little pill-like things I was collecting were doing until an upgrade screen popped up.

Also, I encountered a bug when I dashed against a wall on the right side of the map and got stuck until all the enemies killed me, lol.

Nice job on this submission!

Here's mine. It's a 3D platformer.

https://dylan-bee.itch.io/phantom-of-the-stars

Really cool game, though, it's quite difficult! I couldn't get past the third rail, but I loved the physics-based movement, and getting the brief bursts of speed through well-timed dashes was quite satisfying. Would love to see this one expanded on with a tweaked difficulty curve. Nice job on this one!

Nice little top-down shooter. I like the sprites and the music choice. It wasn't clear what the pickups were supposed to do. Killing enemies was fun for a bit, but it did get repetitive after a bit.

With that said, nice job on the game!

Decent little racer. I especially love the low poly aesthetic and the colors! I think the racing mechanics could be refined a bit as it was pretty easy to stay on the road and make turns. It seems too easy almost like I was being guided by the game. 

EDIT: Playing it again, it looks like you can't even drive off the road. Also, I would suggest including the timer during the race, so players can better keep track of their time if they want to climb the leaderboard at the end.

Anyway, though, nice job!

Hi, thanks for trying out my game! Sorry you're having issues.  Your suggestions are very helpful. I hope I can provide some clarity if you decide to try the game again.

Most of the important helper spheres are right near the starting point of the game. Basically, they'll tell you that a ghost appears at night and chases you and kills you with one touch, but if you collect the sun tokens scattered around, you'll get more sunlight and prevent the ghost from appearing. The amount of sunlight is indicated in the top left of the screen with the number by the sun icon. If it reaches below 10, the sun goes down and the ghost shows up.

If you have at least five crystals, you can fight back against the ghost when he finally does appear. The #/8 number in the top left corner next to the blue diamond shape shows you how many you've collected so far. Collecting all eight crystals is optional and they can be collected in any order.

Yes, the flame you can touch and your player will immediately pick it up. However, a timer will appear, indicating how much time you have before the flame blows out and returns to its original position. If you are able to carry the flame to a candle on time, a crystal will spawn directly above the candle.

The areas where the yellow bubbles are rising up, there are flowers on the ground in those areas. Walking across those will help you move faster for a short time. Some of these are needed for one of the flame/candle puzzles.

The timing of the switching platforms can be tricky. In some areas, it's best to time a jump towards a block right before it appears. The really tall area with the switching platforms is probably the hardest crystal to get, in my opinion.

Here's a hint, one of the crystals is hidden in one of the more dense collection of trees. Also, there's no crystal by the little neighborhood of houses. That area is pretty much there for stocking up on sun tokens.

Thanks again for playing and I appreciate the helpful feedback!

Thanks for trying the game! I definitely should've included a shadow for the player character. I remember thinking about that early on when I was developing the game, but I completely forgot about it as I was focused on finishing other things before the deadline. The game does have controller support if that helps you!

Nice little puzzle-platformer! I like the premise and the art is good. Using light switches to make monsters and hazards disappear is a cool idea. The eerie music choice is great. 

I wish the game was longer! I definitely think this idea could be expanded on with more mechanics and puzzles. Nice job!

Great atmosphere. I like how the graphics have a combination of retro low-res 3D art with a more modern lighting style. The shading, the environment, and the ambient sounds all help create the eerie atmosphere.

Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to get past the second area, the more open one after getting past the first area with all the trees. I didn't know where I should've been going and kept getting blown around by the wind. I used Shift to sprint and fight against the wind, but I ended up running out of life. The sunlight is supposed to help heal you, right? It seems like it worked sometimes, but not other times. Also, the sunlight would disappear without even healing me, it seemed. Not sure if this is a bug or if I'm missed something. I also encountered the pause crash other people had mentioned, although the pause screen worked fine the first time I had used it.

Overall, a very interesting game. Your team did well with capturing a creepy atmosphere. I think making the mechanics and the objective more clear to the player would benefit the game a lot. Nice job!

Here's my game. It's a 3D platformer and my first attempt at making a 3D game.

https://dylan-bee.itch.io/phantom-of-the-stars

I really like the visuals you chose for the game. Even though you got the art from different sources,  they still mesh well together and don't clash. I also like the double jump mechanic, and the player character controls well. Too bad you didn't have time to include an ending. It seems the level just ends with the player falling to their doom offscreen. Nice job on the submission, though!

Nice little game. I like the sounds and particles for bursting the blobs. The art is simple, but I like it. Reminds me of some of the flash games I used to play on AddictingGames. 

A few levels in, the game did seem to stutter a bit from too many blobs and enemies appearing all at once. Other than that, nice job!

My final score was 4,516

A nice little puzzler with great art and music! I like the wavy effect you added to give the game that underwater look. Nice job!

Nice, short little platformer. I recognize the art from that Brackeys tutorial! It's very appealing pixel art. I managed to get all 10 coins! The trickiest one was definitely the one near the bottom where you have to slip in that one-tile gap over a bottomless pit. Nice job!

Thanks for playing! Glad you liked the game!

Really great game! Great art and well-crafted levels and puzzles. I love the different mechanics and the twists the game takes on them, like the spikes being added to the moving bubble platforms, using the water geyser jars on the moving platforms, or having to swap between the different pick-ups. The game and puzzles felt very intuitive and I don't think it was ever unclear of what I needed to do outside of solving a puzzle. The checkpoints were pretty forgiving, which is good. One small complaint is that having the grab key (E) right next to the restart key (R) had me restarting from a checkpoint by accident a few times because I pressed R by mistake instead of E.

I saw that your team is considering expanding this for a Steam release. Even as I was playing, I was thinking this game could easily be made into a full game. Really solid entry here!

Nice game! I like how the palette changes when you switch between animals. I like the art for each of the characters. You especially did really good with the title screen and the cover image art on the submission page. The cover art especially really catches your eye. 

I like the mechanic of switching animals for different situations and that there were different paths you could take. My favorite is definitely the monkey as leaping along walls is a lot of fun. My least favorite is the frog. He tends to slide off the edge of platforms quite a bit which made for some frustration and the controls for the frog were really awkward. 

Overall, this is a really interesting idea for a game. I could see this being expanded on with different levels making use of different animals' abilities or maybe even more transformations. Nice job!

I like the idea of moving the level pieces around to complete it. You should definitely do more levels in the style of that. I think there's a lot you can do with that idea. I also like the music choice.

I did notice a bug where I could combine the blocks if I drag one over the other. I also noticed the rotating platforms suddenly stopped rotating, but the fourth one kept going. Not sure if that was intended? 

Overall, nice job!

Not bad for a first game! I like the art for the tile sets and I like how the character changes into a fish when they touch the water. The player character controls well. 

The game could use more sounds effects and music, though I can understand those being lower priority when you're aiming to make all the assets yourself. I noticed the ladders are kind of buggy. I remember struggling a lot with programming ladders when I first started out. 

Does the game have an ending? I ended up in this room in the level with the moving platforms and couldn't progress at all. Wasn't sure if I missed something. Overall, nice job on your first game and making the assets yourself!

I really dig the music! I could see myself listening to the song outside of the game. I like the color palette and how it inverts when you shift the level. I ran into the checkpoint issue others have mentioned where I'd be respawned right above a pit sometimes when I died. Nice little platformer, though! Wish it was a bit longer. Nice job!

Nice game with a cozy atmosphere! I love the serene music and the art is detailed even with the limited palette. I like how you switched the color palette between the aboveground and underground areas. Using the lifecycle of a caterpillar is a clever way to take on the theme. Nice job!

Glad you enjoyed it! Good suggestion for having more variety in helpful objects. I'll definitely consider that if I decide to expand on this. Thanks for playing!

Fun little platformer. The art is cute and the peaceful music is nice. Is the song original? The frog-changing mechanic is neat, though I found myself using the big frog the most and avoiding the other forms. It seemed like the big frog can pretty much do everything the others can do, but he's also faster and jumps higher. I managed to get all the hearts. Nice job!

Thanks for playing! Glad you liked it and was able to figure things out. I probably should've put more tutorials in the game. There isn't actually a set amount of levels as the game is endless! It's basically an endurance test to see how long you can last.

Thanks for the response. Regarding the download file, just wanted to make you aware that there was an html file available for download on the game's page. I figured that might have been accidental. It's no biggie, though

Placing some dialogue would definitely help with the first segment! It's not immediately clear to the player that both consoles will act differently. I tried activating it again with what you said and it still doesn't seem to work. 

I kept pressing down while like this (I'm on the left) and I tried moving myself and the hostage around while pressing the down key and I couldn't seem to activate it.

I'm using Google Chrome on Windows 11 if that helps.

EDIT: I finally got the console to work, but it doesn't seem to work consistently. I kept having to re-position the player and hostage around quite a bit before the button actually activates it. I'm not sure why.

Cool to see you're still working on this! A couple things though.

I can't seem to progress after the first level. Like with the jam version, it looks like the game still has the issue where you have to be precise to open the last portal with the blue square after rescuing the hostage. I couldn't seem to get it to work at all this time, though. Unless there's something I'm missing?

Also, I noticed the downloadable version you uploaded is just the HTML file you use for the browser and not an executable.

I just wanted to say congratulations to everyone who submitted for this jam! I had tons of fun trying out all the different games and seeing everyone's feedback. Horror seemed like a common genre with this theme and there were quite a few interesting ones, for sure.

I'm really excited about my game getting 4th in Game Design and 13th overall. Sorry if I seem braggy, but I've never done this well in a jam this size before! Huge thanks to everyone who played and rated my game! 

Good luck to everyone with all their future jams and games!

A nice survival game! I like the mix of pixel art with the 3D visuals. The music and sounds when you encounter a monster really add to the intensity of the situation. I think the different stats (health, stamina, flashlight, hunger) were balanced well and never felt too overwhelming or frustrating. I like how you could use the environment to deal with the monsters like shutting the door on them or getting them stuck in the spider webs. The designs of the monsters were quite creepy as well. I couldn't see the entire monsters at once with my flashlight, which I think added to the creepiness.

Having an in-game mini-map showing everywhere you've been would've been helpful.  You could also have more interesting landmarks in different rooms to help the player better remember the layout and navigate. 

I played the game a few times, but only found one crafting table. I think having more crafting tables would also be useful as I wasn't even sure there was crafting for the first five minutes I was playing. Also, I feel like most of my time was spent just collecting things and and occasionally running away from monsters. Even when I was crafting things, I hardly ever felt a sense of progression. I know you're supposed to find a key to escape, but I felt like I was looking for a needle in a haystack. I think some sense of direction would help with that feeling.

I found a small bug. There's a part with what looks like double doors that I was able to push aside and get through even though it said "Can't open from this side" when I pushed it. I was able to push it away from its hinges and get around it.

Overall, nice job with this! I feel like this has a lot of potential! Your team did pretty well!

Constructive feedback is greatly welcome! https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-11/rate/2533571

I just downloaded yours and I'm about to play it right now.