itch.io

Such a simple but well done cozy game - I was sad to stop, but I needed to rate a few more games before the deadline, but certainly one of the ones I want to return to.

Oh, and I loved the sound effects. Nicely done.

I liked the gameplay idea of only controlling your mirror for a limited amount of time, that was a nice approach to the mirror agent.  Unfortunately I'm not that adept at platformers and got stuck on the first jump puzzle (jumping from block to block to block) so I couldn't evaluate the game past that. 

I liked the take on controlling two objects at once, and where in many of the other games it would take me a while to get to terms (or never get to terms) with controlling two objects, in your game it felt very natural right from the start.

I did have a little trouble making use of the cannon, and I think this was a combination of it being a parabolic arc and altering where it was aimed as I moved forward and backwards (or maybe I just didn't ever understand how to aim it) so I ended up relying entirely on the sub's torpedoes for damage. 
I got confused as to how to eliminate the barrage of incoming fire that appears from below the map - and that ended up killing my sub and ending all my attempts at progress.

My skill set was woefully under what was needed for the first level of the game (I think I successfully reflected the minotaur's attack accurately back onto them once, and never survived more than 15 seconds) so I don't think I could give this a fair shake. I realize having different difficulty settings is rough to squeeze in during a game jam, but it would be lovely. I thought the UX was pretty damn good, especially the smooth options menu.

Wow, very nice polish on the UI/UX, everything from the shaders to the buttons to the card interactions. Well done.

I was surprised and delighted to find a character creation section in the game, and enjoyed the wanderings.
Also, having done some minor (less than 60 second) narration in a previous jam, I know just how hard that is to get right, and so congrats to getting some excellent dialog in a jam.

Sadly I got lost in the post-swan maze, and so after wandering for 10+ minutes I had to move on to the next game.

Man, I really liked all the little touches you managed to get in -- the watery sloshing of the health, the shader effects, the way the enemies stuck to you when they "bit" you. Lots of little polishes are really nicely done.
Concept wise, I do love that the player is their own worst enemy - bullet hells are not my forte at all, but I love that effect, of realizing that missing or firing too much is going to come back and haunt you in the end.

Fun cozy game - I especially liked the muted almost talking noises that happened during the level transitions. I would be tempted wonder what the game might be like if there was a "par" for each level, where you had to clear the level in N shots or less - maybe for some of the more advanced levels? But then that would go against the cozy nature of the game (and really, what would be the point if you could just restart any level)... in any case, the game designer part of me wondered what sort of pressure could be applied but still have it be cozy.

Loved the sound effects - unfortunately bullet hell games are not my particular skill set, so I wasn't able to progress far in it, but I did appreciate the complexity of having to keep track of three different dodge states.
I noticed that the state change was only cycling in one direction, which means that to progress I just needed to watch for it and scroll the mouse wheel in one direction - there's something odd about having a bi-directional control (mouse wheel) that seems to only ever need to be moved in one direction. I'd experiment with either switching the control of this to a more simple form (tap button X to re-sync) or to have the color cycle to a random state, so that mastering the mouse wheel would make for faster transitions for the player.

Oh - nice observation about the controls, I'll put that in my post-mortem notes (along with seeing if I can provide better controller support).

I love the art style in this game, and the advancement of the puzzle complexity was great.
I would like it if after the first couple levels your player "earned" the ability to see the numeric angle they were setting things to (or there were art changes when at specific angles, like 45' or 60') because it was a little laborious to walk back and forth between laser and mirror to make minute changes... The walk back and forth is ok for the first couple levels, but it might be a nice quality-of-life to earn that visual feedback later in the game.

Nice steady progression of mechanics, and I liked the use of your own corpses to solve puzzles. Music was nice too, found myself jamming to it.

The music is my Achilles heel - more so because although every other member of my extended family can play an instrument (heck, my brother even got a degree in music) - I am as poor a musician as I am skilled as a programmer. I can tell you if I think a song is in a major or a minor cord, but I can't tell you why I might think so. I love how music affects me in a game or a movie, but I could not begin to pick which and where to place song in a game.

As for the pink background - as a programmer I always start with something loud and in-your-face when working with others, to make sure they see it and immediately go "aha, programmer art, I will replace that ASAP." So I did the same with my first solo project to help spur myself on to change it when I had the time... but you know how it is in a jam, I simply ran out of time. By the end I'd realized I didn't mind so much the pink background. If I wasn't going to have any other art, I was going to let the color choice be as loud as my protagonist's rants.

Thanks for giving my game a whirl.

Oh, that's a good idea. That's going right into my post-mortem notes. Thanks!

That's always the problem with jams... there's always more to do, and never enough time for everything you wanted to get in there. :)

I love the reload animation - sadly I don't have a young man's reflexes anymore, so I didn't survive long enough to buy that crucial magazine upgrade size.

I liked the look, especially the wispy fog VFX playing underneath the track. I would have liked just a little bit of countdown before the cars could go (the AI cars always started instantly when the scene changed, and I had to catch up). It might be nice to also cheat the AI cars stuck in last place and teleport them to just offscreen behind you with a boost of acceleration to keep the contest closer.