It think decreasing the jump's speed and height would make the controls feel near perfect, and would also reduce the time the character spends offscreen. Also, having some different animations for when you jump or hover would add a lot of character to the game!
I really really like the concept, though I think it could definitely use some more time in the oven.
I think a tutorial is definitely a first priority, because the game is kinda impossible to play without reading the description on the game page first. I would have also liked to see more of an ending than just some text on a laptop screen. Maybe even getting to see the date of your final match. Though I understand that's a lot of work to get done within a time limit.
I also would often get contradictory preferences. Like my character would both like and dislike glasses for example, or they would love both a beard and no beard. It makes it confusing trying to select people.
The portrait art is really nice, and I think you have a great interpretation of the theme. Hope you keep working on this!
I absolutely LOVE the aesthetics of this game. Everything from the cold open into the title screen, to the lack of sound effects save for the cold ambience of outer space, to the tension created as your ship hurdles faster and faster through danger. It all works together to create a really cool vibe that's coherent with the theme of your game.
Only thing I'd change is the sound effect that plays when you crash, as the current one hurts my ears a bit.
I'm super impressed that you managed to fit three whole game jam themes into a single game. Nice going!
Pixel art looks real nice and the premise is intriguing. I ran into some issues picking up scrap dropped from enemies so I wasn't able to make it very far unfortunately.
With some gameplay tweaks and fixes, this game looks like it could be pretty cool. Wishing you luck on all your jams!
I like how you can turn this game into a one-button game with the right upgrades (*cough* quad guns *cough*). It's really clever of you to have the two-button controls also apply to the upgrade screen.
Would love to see this expanded on with new waves, enemies, and upgrades!
Super unique idea. I would have never thought to interpret the theme in terms of splitting a binary tree, so really cool concept you have here.
It's nice to play once you develop a good strategy, though I'll admit it takes some trial and error to understand what's going on. I think a big help on this end would be some more visual effects/indicators to help the player understand when things happen. For example, you can have some effect happen when your leaf/water count goes up. Or you can have the roots that increase your resource cap look visually different than the roots that only split and don't give you anything.
Also having the roots autoscroll whenever you select a new path would be a great quality-of-life change.
Still, I had a nice chill time playing this, especially with the music. Keep it up!
I don't know exactly why, but I kind of love this game? Something about the simplicity of it all, and the fact that I never would have come up with this idea myself.
It's neat, nicely polished and runs smoothly (just like a watch haha) Great work!
Y'know I wouldn't have believed that this game was unfinished until I got hit by a bullet and...it went straight through me...
Even then, it was very engaging. There ended up being a lot more than I expected in terms of scaling and enemy variety. I think the all white aesthetic looks pretty cool, especially once you obtain the rainbow beam. Nice work on this!
There a beautiful moment while playing this game where you begin to lose control of the ball, then 5 seconds before the timer ends you just chuck that thing as hard as you can and hope it doesn't land too soon.
Haha I'm a bit attached to the quirky sfx myself, but I do agree on the pacing. The whole game legit just came together in the last hour so I didn't have time to for proper playtesting. It's definitely something I'm looking to address in the post-jam version.
Thanks for the feedback! I 100% agree on all your points, and they were all things I wish I had more time to address, but such is the nature of a jam haha.
Glad you enjoyed it! And keep an eye out for some post-jam updates to the game
Hey there! Glad you enjoyed my little game. This past year's been pretty busy for me, but I'm hoping to scrape some together free time soon to post an update.
Thanks a lot for your continued interest. Stay tuned!
You have definitely crafted the most unique experience I've had in this jam so far. The game is elegant in its simplicity, and everything from the aesthetics to the gameplay work together well to present a narrative that is easy to grasp without being too on the nose.
Despite only consisting of a few scenes, you really use the sounds and limited animation to great effect. Great game, and great use of the theme!
I think the biggest thing this game needs (besides music) is some visual feedback. I can't really tell whether I'm hitting the notes or not, with my only success indicator being how many stars I get at the end. Indicators like a big colorful splash effect or a "Good!" pop up or a nice satisfying sound when I successfully hit a note is the lifeblood of these types of games.
There are some other weird choices that I think are really fighting with some genre staples. Like having the arrows ordered as [^v<>] instead of [<v^>] fights my natural intuition. And the core mechanic of having to wait for a random roll in order to hit a note correctly really detracts from the rhythm aspect.
That all said, I real appreciate you for putting something unique and experimental out there. I know making anything at all happen in pico8 is challenging, so submitting a finished product at all is impressive. Keep at it!
Very nice aesthetics, especially the pixel animations. Platforming is solid and feels good to control.
As a few other have said, I do think the randomness kinda loses its impact once you figure out that you can keep rerolling in place until you need the tool you need, but I'm sure you could workshop it to be more interesting in the future.
Lovely idea, and great execution. I especially enjoyed the fact that each map screen is the face of a die.
I really wish there was more depth to the combat so that it required more strategy. Each encounter really comes down to the luck of the rolls, and so there's not a lot in terms of decision making on the player's end. The only thing I can really think of is the player's choice to heal in the overworld (which in my opinion has a bit too harsh of a punishment).
That all said, this game is very well put together, and I'm impressed with how good you got it to both look and sound within the 50 hours. Nice work!
Simple concept, clean execution. Only took me one round to figure the general strat, but it the game had me hooked nonetheless. Great work using randomness to improve player engagement, which is something not many achieve this jam. Love it!
I got my number so big, the text is wrapping to the second line, so at that point I figured it was time to stop. Really enjoyed the chaos of it all, and I'm usually not a big fan of this type of game. Gorgeous visuals and nice soundtrack, great work overall!
Thanks so much for the feedback! I definitely spent a majority of the time fine-tuning the platforming, so I'm glad you were able to appreciate them. I'm gonna work on better tutorialization and UI for a post-jam release, so stay tuned y'all ;)
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I definitely wish I had a bit more time to create a better tutorial. At this point, I might just put some tips in the description since a lot of people are a bit confused as to what's happening.
Now that's a juicy game! Love all the character you gave to the enemies with all their little animations. The only thing missing is some d12 representation.
Definitely a unique take on the theme. Got me thinking about an optimal drop strategy.
But yeah, this game made my CPU struggle as the container got more full. Maybe disabling the rigidbodies of the dice that have already settled would help?
Man, this game looks clean as hell. Aside from a couple bugs, it plays great too.
Gameplay has a lot of potential, and I'd be interested in seeing how deep you can take the combat. At the moment, it seems that the optimal strat is to just save up money to buy a bunch of instakill bullets while waiting for the enemies to approach.
Thanks! In case anyone in the future reads this, there's actually a platform hidden behind the lower-rightmost saw to help reach that one pickup without needing to walljump.
Glad you liked it! I will admit there's a bit of a bug which applies the reduced friction to your aerial movement as well, making rolling a 5 much more frustrating than was intended. But that's something to fix in the next iteration.
I really enjoyed this one. It's super clean and polished, and it has a good amount of game juice to make collecting coins and bouncing off walls feel nice and punchy.
The design of the game is very elegant as well. The mechanics are simple and intuitive, and there's not much the player has to do to figure out exactly how they work. I like how some of the levels are designed to make the player use their tail as a tool to protect themselves from spikes. I also found it quite clever that the shadows, which seemed like just some visual flair at first, can actually be used to to figure out which objects are immediately accessible in a given turn.
I noticed that the dotted line used for aiming stops interacting with objects after being reflected or going through a teleporter; as in, they don't even detect coins or walls. This might be intentional though, maybe to prevent a halting problem with reflections, or maybe to make planning each dash not too easy. Not too sure, but I thought it was worth bringing up.
Thanks for playing, and thanks so much for such a thought-out, well-written review! I was afraid that the high difficulty and obtuse tutorials would be off-putting to most, so I'm glad you found enjoyment in it.
The "dense" feeling of the levels is a bit unintended; I tried to showcase all the main mechanics in this build, but didn't have time to make enough levels to pace them out. I will definitely be adding levels in future builds to ease the learning curve a bit, but rest assured that the levels I add will be just as satisfying to solve. Thanks again for your feedback!
Nice work on this! I absolutely love the visual style; it's so pleasantly unique! To sum up my experience, I found that approaching this game more like an Into the Breach-style strategy game instead of the classic "find the solution" puzzle game made me enjoy it a lot more.
While I didn't have many issues with the trial and error required to grasp the mechanics, I think a little bit of tutorialization explaining the randomization of the tool order would go a long way; I actually had to check your devlog to figure out why my carefully planned moves for 1-2 weren't panning out as I wished.
I agree that there is definitely a big design challenge in dealing with the randomness. I personally think that right now the RNG dictates too much of a level's outcome. Sometimes the "dud turn" issue is made multiple times worse because you are forced to move out of an advantageous position, causing you to waste the next one or two turns as well. Sometimes it can be fun to try and figure a way to accomplish something despite the setback these situations, but that depends on what kind of hand you're dealt.
At the moment, I can't say that I get your vision for this game quite yet, but I'm intrigued with where you will take it. I definitely can't deny the fun I had playing, nor the satisfaction I felt after clearing all the objectives in a level. Kudos on all the work you've accomplished this month. Keep it up!
