itch.io

this took me a few plays to sink in, but i'm glad i gave it time. you handled the challenge of shrinking down a game like this to a small resolution well. fantastic audio as well. i love the 1-bit graphics. it's pretty easy to tell what things are and i like the creativity in your creature designs. i think a game like this definitely relies on prior genre knowledge but with that, it works well. great job!

Thanks so much for your time and thoughts! An info feature is in-progress at the moment. I had no idea sfxr was a thing, that looks great. We definitely did not have time to do anything for sound or music so this is good to know about. I'm glad you enjoyed it conceptually. Theres still so much we wanted to be able to have happening in it but couldn't get to in time for the deadline. Thanks for playing!

I really love the overall vibe of this. The music is great too. I felt like a weak spot were the controls, i felt like i wish I could have been able to jump just a little bit higher or farther, and it felt hard at times to get over certain enemies, especially since i couldn't hit them with the characters weapon. It was challenging, but I liked the mysterious feeling to it. I think the graphics could be slightly improved with some additional foreground background distinction, but I love the style. Good job and I'd love to see more!

This was a unique experience, though it didn't feel very metroidvania-y. It's an interesting concept for a game though and I'd like to see more if it grows from here. 

I really liked the interesting texture to the graphics. I think in terms of criticism i have nothing new to say that no one else has said. the most frustrating moments were not having enough ingredients to make potions in the middle of encounters, leaving me without any mana and my only choice just being to die. The combat was interesting though, I liked the crosshair aiming system. It was also interesting how the knockback propelled the player, so I could choose to get hit intentionally to ease navigation through the level. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, so perhaps something to think about. I like the eyeball bosses! Good job and I'd love to see what it turns into if you get a chance to polish it a bit more.

(that has to be the most relatable death sound effect i have ever heard in my life. fantastic sound design choice imo.)

I have mixed feelings about my experience with this. I absolutely love the graphical style, it has a strong late 90s pc indie and/or ps1 vibe i enjoy a lot!

The combat does not feel great though. I very much disliked having to collect the double jump again after dieing to the boss so after trying a few times i gave up. It felt very difficult to fight the boss because its choice of attack was random and if it did the grab at the wrong times and place it felt impossible to avoid. If the grab box was more fair I wouldn't have minded as much, but i felt like it would successfully grab me when the actual graphic of it's arm was nowhere near me. By the end I just had to hope that it would do its ground slam attack enough times, but it didn't happen for me.

The graphical vibe of the game alone is enough to have a solid jumping off point, but the gameplay needs work. Great job submitting something though and I had a fun time trying it. I look forward to seeing how this game grows post jam!

i love the vibe. kind of wacky and surrealist. the overall game feel could use some work. i was a bit confused by the world design. There were moments where i felt like i was entering a door and then would be teleported to the start of the same room i just left. There was also a time where i feel like i went into a door on the right and came out a door in a different room to the left. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not. I did hit a point where i just went into what i thought was a door and then started falling forever. There are overall a lot of touches to it that i appreciate, but it felt very rough. I love the lil worm guy! A++ worm!!

This was a really interesting entry. I liked the concept and I felt compelled to see it through to the end. I feel mixed about the art. On one hand, the background design is excellent and almost has some watercolor paint vibes, but the design of the foregrounds and platforms led to a lot of very confusing jumps. Overall, the art and music gave the whole thing a surreal vibe, especially combined with the way the levels would suddenly morph (and i mean that in a good way), like i felt a fun discomfort at climbing a tower and then suddenly jumping on solid clouds. The actual mechanical feel definitely needs polish, but you are aware of that, and my game needs it too. Great job just finishing an entire experience. I had a fun time with it!

ahhhh this is so good! I'm so happy you included a save game. I got very far in it, but have put off rating games and need to keep going. I'm absolutely going to finish, and would love to see more. I finally got the blaster and that classic metroidvania moment of empowerment feel was very nice and very present.

I felt like maybe something, undefinable, unfortunately, could be changed about the camera or movement. It was very fun, but I'm a bit susceptible to motion sickness, and something about it was really triggering that for me. That's more of a me thing tho, I don't know if anyone else had any issues, and I play other 3d games. Certain ones just do that to me.

One slight annoyance was it felt really hard to avoid being hit by the bonk enemies, and it would have been nice to have a way to do that through skill. tho perhaps my skill was lacking.

Overall a fantastic experience and it's especially impressive the scope of content you were able to achieve in this time!!

Me are die! fun little self contained experience. The whole thing was like a mini puzzle of figuring out where to go, and how to position yourself. The only thing is it seemed like enemy spawns were a bit random? Or moving to different areas of the map? I would plan to take on a part of the area in a certain way and then the next time I restarted they would be placed differently so I couldn't enact that strategy. Pretty good overall for what it is.

This was really cool, a bit more a puzzle platformer than a metroidvania, but it did have semi non-linear pathing and navigational upgrades. It was also nice how you could progress through later areas in different ways depending on which powers you already picked up. The quick swap system made for some very challenging rooms.

I must admit, my skills were not up to par to finish, but I enjoyed it conceptually, and had a good time dying like a hundred times. What makes that work is that you included modern considerations like starting over from the room, and having the quick teleport to the last room of an area.

I can tell so much little bits of polish went into much of the experience. The graphics are well done. Minimal and appropriate, without distracting from the gameplay. Your incorporation of the theme is nice too. Overall, great job!

Weird, I totally thought it was the opposite. I must have gotten the wrong idea somewhere or misremembered something. But just looking up some screenshots of well known 2d games, your advice seems to match up. I kind of didn't feel great about the graphical style overall and want to try something a bit different for the full version, so assets are going to get redone anyway. At least everything but the dog, which got the most time and I'd like to make a few tweaks too without scrapping entirely.

Thanks so much for playing. I haven't gotten that feedback yet about the graphics so I appreciate it. I'll experiment with that a bit to see what happens.

It's very clear a good amount of thought went into the design of this. The theme is incorporated very well too. It's very thoughtful, I'd almost call it a puzzle adventure more than a pure metroidvania. I liked as the complexity increased I needed to do planning to optimize my trips around the area. I had to think about which potions to bring with me on the way to my next objective, to prevent repeated trips. Downsides I'd say is the way it feels to control the character, its very floaty and slow and I found myself wishing I could move faster. The graphics could use some work as well, but the solid design of the game sells the experience. Overall it was pretty fun and this would be great to expand upon.

This game is beautiful, it clearly has a lot of work put into the art and music. I am in agreement about the wall jump from Mr. Orangutans review however. Overall the feel of controlling the main character really sapped a lot of fun for me. I had a hard time getting through it. The controls overall need the most work. It clearly takes a lot of inspiration from Celeste, and the controls will be essential for that style to work. That said this has so much potential to get better. Great job on just finishing something too!

so this game definitely has a lot of thought put into it. It's an interesting story, and there are lots of inventive things you do with the way the environment changes (the gas effecting the rest of the environment, especially how it interacted with the other chemicals). However it needs a lot of polish imo.

The controls are kind of awkward and I felt like i never really had enough space to work with to make the movement feel good. I sense you were going for a more semi-realistic feel. The slow movement speed, jump movement, and the stagger on walking down steps did not feel great overall. I also was unable to finish due to a bug. After falling into the area where the floor gets melted, I got hit by an enemy, which somehow flung me to a completely different room, where I died quickly due to the confusion. Upon restarting, I was in a room which, due to the unceasing gas falling from the sky, meant I could no longer progress in the game. One last thing, is there some sort of bug with the music, the music track seems to have some very loud static going on through the whole track. 

Some additional positives though. I love the voice in the game. Especially when Dr Kimmy mentions the big boi. I like the metroidvania style progress of opening up sections of the lab. And overall with some movement changes and polish this could be very good.

I love Archie! Fantastic character design overall. A lot of what I noticed are probably things the team is already aware of.

There are some slight snags in player state transition that kind of results in awkward feeling behavior. I felt like at times jumps did not register right and the wall jump would switch between sticking and falling in a way that felt un-intuitive. That said, the moment to moment movement felt very good and the animations really sell it. Archie looks so happy to be jumping around.

Near the end of my time, I also discovered I have some sort of air dash move, that unless I missed something I don't remember being told about or unlocking. I felt kind of lost towards the end. After the battle arena the leader of the arena kind of gave me a quest, but I could not discover any additional areas to do that quest.

Last little thing is a graphical one. There are some areas where there are large background set pieces, which are very blurry and kind of distract from the overall unified aesthetic. It would probably be good if those images were imported at a higher resolution.

I love the characters and the world and would love to see more!

edit: I just saw someone mention a final boss so now it's very clear I missed something somewhere.

Also, the concept of one whole exercise is very relatable.

Thanks so much for playing. Finished version coming eventually! I'm very with you on the music not fitting. Kind of just where I went with it on a time crunch. The main song is going to become boss music and the title screen music is going to be used in the save room.

Thank for the review, both here and on your video. That main song totally got a way from me and is going to be boss music in the final game. It was so not what I was going for tonally but that was just like where i ended up when making it. So right about the jump too, gotta get that feeling nicer.

You're welcome, and if you continue I'd love to play more! I did slopes for the first time myself. At first I had an over-complicated separate stair node that I placed over stair shaped tiles. But what I found out is that when you are adding collision shapes to your tile sets in godot you can click to add a polygon collision.

All you need to do is click the top corner of your slope, the bottom from there, and across from that point, and it will automatically make a 45 degree angle slope collision in a triangle shape, and as long as your player movement code allows for sticking to slopes equal to or lower than 45 degrees, it will work. I suppose this would all be very dependent on what your base movement code is like, but the tileset builder allows for slope collision.

I also removed gravity application to the player while on the ground to allow for smooth movement, since I didn't want the player to go slower up slopes and faster down them.

Also very hype to make some genesis jams now. Thunderforce is not a name I have heard in a while but it was one of my faves on the console.

ahh, that explains it. Nice feature to have. But the music was good overall! 

OH, really weird bug I forgot to mention, but you should know about. I thought there might be a menu to switch weapons at first, so was pressing all the buttons on my ps4 controller. I noticed that for some reason the share button would restart the music and sometimes stop it, with it starting again on the next press. Not sure why that's happening, but thought you should know.

don't mean to jump in here but i noticed the nod to Aria and the second I got that sword I was like "oh hello my old friend, Claimh Solais".

Very classic Igavania style! I played through the whole thing. The thing that kept me going the most was finding new weapons. That said, it would have been nice to switch between them, rather than it having to be a full replacement. I kind of missed the spear after getting the next one. Maybe they could swap on the shoulder buttons or something similar feeling on keyboard.

I like the sound design, and the music (I even downloaded Genny VST to play around with myself).

The combat encounters I think could use the most work.

Skeleton of Infinity Knifes are rude and i do not like them much. But I realized they were pretty easy to tank. The wizards are just those, but this time they float and can shoot in more than one direction. I think there may be some ways to explore more memorable encounters beyond just, there are more things to fight now. In general, add an attack pattern to any enemy that can keep firing. Even if it's slightly randomized. Having a few attacks to dodge, then a change to get a hit in would be a big improvement. Could have a random roll for like 1 - 3 attacks, iterate a counter, then start an attack delay timer for a couple seconds.

The weapons, while nice to have a variety, did not feel super impactful when the health of the enemies scaled as well. I was taking out the large soldier type enemies in two hits with the spear, got the next weapon, and found the same enemy type was taking 3 hits.

I noticed there was slowdown when loading any of the rooms with lots of enemies, and the transition from one room to the next was near instant. Perhaps adding a short buffer with some fade in would be helpful to hide this. 

I was a bit confused at first by the stairs and slopes (I know, especially ironic after what I did in my game...) There were some sections that I could go down like they were slopes, but not up. But the height of each block made it seem like stairs.

I hope I have not piled on too many negatives, really its a group of small nitpicks. I think overall the game has a great unified feel to it, and lots of potential to grow into a great "love letter" of sorts to the Igarashi era castlevanias! If there was more content I absolutely would have kept playing way longer than I did, as I was definitely hooked on finding out what would come next! Great job overall!

Thanks so much! I definitely want to spend more time on the enemies, to make it clearer what their supposed to be, and to just have better designs overall. They got the least attention of anything during the jam development time. They are humans, but filtered through the imagination of the dog, within the context of the dogs story within the "real" story. That sounds pretentious but its hard to explain without being spoilery. There will be a full game though! Thanks again!

Thank you very much for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed it and I will be continuing it!

Thank you so much for playing and for your thoughts! All of those features will be part of the final game. You are the first to mention movement speed so thank you, you've given me something to consider. There will be a run powerup, but I will consider upping the base movement speed too. Definitely will have to do deeper playtesting as I move towards a full version. Lots of little quirks of the general movement feel to tackle. I'm glad you appreciated the music. I come from a music background and making music for my games is one of my favorite parts!

Thank you! 

Thank you for playing and for the feedback. It certainly is strange that a dog would not realize that they could just jump over the stairs. Dogs are mysterious creatures in that way.

Thanks! I didn't even realize that bug was happening until today because i only tested it with a controller. I forgot that happens commonly with HTML games. I hope to have a full version out at some point.

Thanks so much! I hope to have a full version out at some point.

Thanks so much Cryodawn! I always appreciate your comments. I think it was partially playing Moon Spirit that made me want to take a shot at making a quadrupedal protagonist! Hope you've been well!

Thanks so much! I haven't had a chance to play other entries yet since I'm at work but I saw your name and was excited that I recognized you from Go Godot Jam! I appreciate the feedback. I think I want to add something to make it a little more obvious why you can't climb stairs right away. The whole joke was like, dog powers, and if you've ever seen a puppy learning to use the stairs you'd get it. But its not that obvious in retrospect. And possibly silly in general to gate off something like that. I'm glad you liked the little touched, and noticed the bit crushed guitar (I was having some fun unleashing my metal-head side last night, last minute making the song). Thanks again! 

A fantastic name!

Thanks for the feedback! Both of those issues can be attributed to amateur dev-ness that I hope to remedy in the full version. I was not sure how to program knockback in terms of the math needed, and I did notice the odd jump behavior, which I think might have to do with how i coded the update method for the jump physics. By the time its finished my goal is to actually understand what all the math involved in the physics means rather than working from a tutorial and guessing. Thanks again for playing!

Thank you so much! I wish I had had more time to add more content, and plan too post jam.

I checked the page again and the person I got the dog bark from never gives a name for their dog. If you mean within the context of the game, I imagined it more like the dog is named whatever you want them to be.

You are totally right, just fixed that.

it is very frustrating working a full time job because i just get to think about this until i get out of work tonight. Last night I ran into some snags with the method i was using for hidden walls so want to clean that up, as usual i thought of a solution to try after i'm already in bed for the night. Then I want to get enemies responding to players attacks and vice versa, and I want to build a rough version of the first area so i can actually start working towards taking all these pieces and making a game of it.

Luckily I work long 4 day weeks so today is my Friday and I don't have to worry about getting to bed early. Even better is I've secured some holiday time off in the first week of march so I can pretend game dev is my full time job for a little bit. Good luck to everyone today!

Character controller, minus one ability left to implement, placeholder sprites created for basic mapping out of the areas and essential objects, game progression and area flow planned, and a prototype mechanic experimentation map. Hoping to add that one last ability tonight, then move forward with basic enemy ai so they can actually interact with the player.