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Thank you so much for playing! One of our main visions with the design of enemies and combat encounters was for players to have to really learn the enemy behaviors and patterns as if they were really in the world and exploring an uncharted area of the ocean for the first time. However, I think with the smaller length and map of our game given the time of the jam, this definitely does feel a little overly confusing or punishing at times like you mentioned, as we don't have as much time and space to warm players up to how the enemies work than we would if the game was longer. Definitely something for us to look at in the future. Still, thank you so much for the feedback and I'm so glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you so much for playing!

So glad you were able to figure out the dash and finish the game! The charge visual is a great idea to make the dash mechanics clearer. The probe was also added very late into development, so the bugs are unfortunate but make sense. Still, thank you so much for returning to our game and so happy you were able to see it through! Thank you for all of the feedback!

I really loved how unique the mechanics of this game felt! All of the functionality with the cog felt really fresh and was super fun to interact with. Being able to "parry" enemies by activating before hitting them put a really interesting twist on normal enemy combat. Parrying projectiles especially was really fun and encouraged me to try to solve puzzles in ways I felt like I wasn't intended to, which I always enjoy. I also greatly enjoyed the sprite work and thought the narrative elements were placed very tastefully and carefully. I did feel like some of the platforming sections were a bit difficult due to how fast the player moved when launched by certain arrow orbs, on top of the intense screen shake that activating these orbs created. I think tweaking how these mechanics work could make these segments feel a lot cleaner. Great work overall though, really great polish on the project and super fun! Thanks for sharing!

I really liked the aesthetics of this game! I thought the frog had a lot of personality and the sprite-work on the skeleton character was great. I thought the twist ending was very cute too and really enjoyed how feel-good the game was from start to finish. I also thought the dynamic camera movement was very unique and gave certain segments a tenser feeling which I enjoyed. I do wish there were more "metroidvania" elements to the game, like powers to collect, branching paths to explore, and a bigger world map. The game felt more just like a traditional 2D platformer to me. That being said, I still really enjoyed it! Great job on everything and congrats on submitting!

I really liked the unique look and set-up of this game! I thought the opening cutscene was really cute, and I enjoyed the mysterious set up for the world. I felt that the movement felt a little slow and difficult at times due to the large size of the ostrich compared to the world, but I really enjoyed all of the animations! I felt like the character had a lot of personality. I think adding little bits of juice to things like animations when objects open or disappear could go a long way. Small details throughout the environment, like little landmarks in different rooms, could also help the player keep a better sense of the world and where they are, as I found myself getting a little lost at times. Couldn't stop smiling at the overall look and feel of the game though, great work! Thank you so much for sharing!

This game really captured so much about what I love about Metroidvanias! I was very impressed by the size of the map and really enjoyed the lack of handholding throughout the game despite the frequent dialogue - often a dangerous pit trap to avoid! Movement felt snappy and I really enjoyed some of the more unique powers, especially the cloud gust ability that allowed you to jump off of the floating orbs. I also thought that the music and narrative all tied the game together quite nicely in terms of worldbuilding.

One thing that I would love to have seen expanded on is the graphics of the world. Having every environment be made up of one tile set with a solid color background prevented me from being as engrossed in the world as I think I otherwise would have been. Of course, I understand sometimes graphics may not be a strong suit for a team. Still, I think some kind of art in the backgrounds and some small details in the terrain could go a long way and help tie together the already-great world even more!

Great work and thank you so much for sharing!

Hi Lockstedt! Thanks so much for playing and for the kind words! The game definitely has some bugs that need to be ironed out that can unfortunately detract from the overall experience. The dash bug is new to me - could it be that you weren't fully charging the dash before releasing to break the terrain? This mechanic could have been explained better for sure, but this may have been the reason behind this issue. Not sure though. I also think the feedback on the torpedoes is a great idea. Overall, combat could be improved to have more feedback and clarity for when the player is successfully hitting and defeating enemies. The AN and FA rooms are intended to be bait and are part of an anglerfish enemy that lures you in with fake items before attacking, which is why they "fly away" when you interact with them. However, we definitely could have made this more clear, and especially with the game not being longer, it's hard for this understanding of the enemies to be built up like we envisioned. 

Thank you so much again for playing and for all of the feedback! Hopefully once we can get the game updated and get bugs fixed you'll come back to finish it :)

Wow, I was really blown away by this one! Absolutely loved everything about being in this world. The movement felt great and I really enjoyed how each ability really opened up the map in a new way. Was a bit iffy on the charge mechanic at first but it really made me think about all of my actions which was I thought was cool, and it made getting battery expansions feel really meaningful. I know this sentiment has been echoed already by others, but I think the night mechanic felt a little punishing or annoying at times. I do also wish that there were more opportunities and "locks" to use each new power and make the world feel more Metroidvania-y. Overall, though, I really enjoyed this game and would have played many hours more. Great stuff!