itch.io

Loved the speed of it combined with the low gravity! And the fact that you can't change direction mid-air! 

I had quite an issue with my mouse speed though. I barely moved my wrist and it was still very fast. I'd love it if I could play full-screen, too. 

In any case, I spent quite a few minutes playing and would have played more if I didn't have to work. Good job! :-)

Super-fun game and really cool idea! Apart from the minor issues already mentioned by others, it's really good!

Music & SFX are awesome! :D

Thank you so much for your kind words! :D It really means a lot! We had fun making it!

That was my mistake! We're working on a web version and after doing some playtests, I forgot to switch back to the "downloadable" option for the game. Thanks for noticing! :D

Definitely one of the most enjoyable games I've played so far in the jam! I like the speed, the art, the different mechanics (orb that makes you jump again in the air is golden!). Only music was a bit annoying, especially after losing so many times :P

I wasn't bothered by difficulty at all, though I wish I could continue from where I left it last time! (didn't finish it). My only issue was that if you where near the edge of a platform and tried to run&jump, jumping wouldn't work so you'd just run and fall down. This is a common issue in small platformer games, I think, and I'm sure nailing the movement in these situations is hard, but it'd just feel perfect for me if you solved that. Wasn't too much of an issue though, so I still gave 5 stars on design. :-)

Great job, well done!

It is tempting to just try and click more & more! :P 

But yeah, I also agree that some sound and some variation would make it way more interesting. Also, maybe less intense colour changes. After a while I got tired from the black/red flashing.

Well done on submitting though, especially in such short time window!

What a weird one! :D So, it seems like you put a lot of work into this but I couldn't play it for long. The controls are a bit weird for me (finding it hard using w to move to where the character looks when the camera is top-down) and also, I'd like a restart button after I lose, instead of having to run the game again. Also, who made the music for this? Feels a bit unfitting (for my taste at least) but it sounds really good.

Definitely looks fun but it feels as if you guys maybe tried to do a bit too much for the jam. Good work and idea nonetheless! :D

Wow, the concept/story was very interesting and I think quite original for the jam. But as mentioned, there's not much gameplay here. And what you can do, is hard to make sense out of.

Still, it seems like you have interesting ideas so, as you've already said, next time make better planning for your actual gameplay and then add story where you can. I'm sure you'll do great!

And congrats on finishing your 1st gamejam! :D

I honestly like the concept based on your description and those characters look lovely. But I can't play your game as I don't have a controller, let alone someone to play it with atm.

Hey! I wanted to try your game but I see it's a yyp file.You should create a build so we can play it! :-)

Thank you, happy you liked it! 

Happy you liked it! Oh, Gabs did an awesome job with the characters and the whole mood, right? I also enjoyed that so much!

Thank you! We're glad you had fun!

So happy you like the music! :D

That was quite fun! It nees some work on a few things like more art for environment/level desing, but I think it's a good prototype.

I didn't mind having to go back to switch between weapons, though it would be nice if you explained that at the start. But I thought it was fun trying to run back & forth all the time. Could be even more fun in more complex levels! :D I only wish it had some music and SFX :-)

All in all, fun idea and nice touch at the end with the extra message!

Thank you so much! <3

I really love the concept of this game, though it still needs some patchwork, I think.

Most importantly, I'd say maybe speed it up a bit. Like some have commented on the page of the game, jumping & hitting would feel better if they were instant, as soon as you press the button. They idea of switching between 2 different characters while having to go through vairous obstacles as the screen moves, is very interesting and would make for an awesome fast-paced game! The interactions with the objects of the world are also a bit clunky at times. For example, in the picture I've posted, I can't break the rocks with fat even though they're just next to him. For some reason they don't break so I have to press ESC to restart the level, which can get tiring after some times.

I'd also prefer it if the controls were assigned to more common buttons. For example, jump on w & UpArrow, switching between characters on spacebar and q, e, or f for attack. I found that even after playing for a while, I pressed w instead of e or q just because I wasn't sure which one does what.

That being said, the fact that you did all of this on your own and for your first gamejam, is amazing. The atmosphere/graphics of the game is very nice and the ideas for all the different levels are interesting.

It's a solid game, just needs some more tinkering to make it perfect. Good job! 

Haha I did skip some because I wanted to see the whole story but I'll definitely play it again properly! :D 

What a beautiful game! I don't know if you plan on expanding it after the jam but I'd definitely play it with more levels using all the different mechanics/objects you present here!

Well done, one of my favourites!

That is one solid game! I like how it looks and I love the flow-y movement! The difficulty might feel too much at parts but, at least as far as I got, it seemed that the levels are designed in such a way that you have to actually combine the various movement mechanics (i.e. hold down to jump lower/go downwards faster) in order to pass through the obstacles. And their learning curve is very good.

I'd like something more from the audio (mostly music) but I'm probably just too picky on this one! :D The biggest issue I had was that the font was a bit tiring.

Will definitely revisit this after the jam to complete it. Good job!

Just realised, I probably shouyld have commented about the jam here instead of the game's page? ^^ Well, I'm posting it here as well..

Very nice idea & mechanics. You can tell the puzzles are interesting and well-thought and the whole atmosphere is really pretty. Music felt a bit repetitive at times but it also fit the mood well and was really nice overall!.

There were a couple of parts where I got stuck and had to refresh the page because I wasn't even able to die to restart the level, but thankfully the "continue" feature made it so I didn't have to play the whole game again.

At one level (2nd or 3rd from last I think) sound was behaving a bit weird (jumping sound still played after I'd jumped or footsteps sounded without me moving) but it generally wasn't a problem. 

The main "issue" I think might be the fact that if the girl is near you, you can jump and then grab her mid-air. This allows you to jump high and still carry the girl. You can skip a lot of obstacles/puzzles that way and it might ruin the whole point of the game.

Overall, job really well done for a jam game! Haven't played a lot of the games yet but this seems to be one of the better ones, so far!

PS: Favourite level: The one where you had to clear the path for the girl below. Reminded me of Braid <3

Very nice idea & mechanics. You can tell the puzzles are interesting and well-thought and the whole atmosphere is really pretty. Music felt a bit repetitive at times but it also fit the mood well and was really nice overall!.

There were a couple of parts where I got stuck and had to refresh the page because I wasn't even able to die to restart the level, but thankfully the "continue" feature made it so I didn't have to play the whole game again.

At one level (2nd or 3rd from last I think) sound was behaving a bit weird (jumping sound still played after I'd jumped or footsteps sounded without me moving) but it generally wasn't a problem. 

The main "issue" I think might be the fact that if the girl is near you, you can jump and then grab her mid-air. This allows you to jump high and still carry the girl. You can skip a lot of obstacles/puzzles that way and it might ruin the whole point of the game.

Overall, job really well done for a jam game! Haven't played a lot of the games yet but this seems to be one of the better ones, so far!

PS: Favourite level: The one where you had to clear the path for the girl below. Reminded me of Braid <3

Thank you, honestly, it means a lot!

Thanks a lot! Really glad you enjoyed the atmosphere! It's good that you weren't discouraged by the more difficult either! :D

I just played it with my girlfriend. Really sweet game! We're now discussing what we think happened in the story :-)

Haha pretty cool! :D

Unfortunately, we won't be submitting anything after all. My teammate had a health issue 5 days ago and hasn't fully recovered yet, so we weren't able to wrap the project up. I wish him to get well soon and come back stronger.

Perhaps I will sitll polish and share some of the music, or a few things from the design process, just to give you an idea of what we were going for. 

Oh good luck with those! Whenever you have the time let me know if you'd like to disscuss music :-)

Thanks lordvark! How's your idea coming up? I've added you on discord, too!

Update!

I am very pleased to say that I teamed up with SpectralStar and we're working on the concept! Or rather on a story that was born by this concept..

It will be a puzzle/adventure type of game, stylized and relaxing. The story will draw inspiration from historic and scientific facts (specifically the Siege of Melos and the Antikythera Mechanism). However, those will be merely the reasons for our story to begin. The game and actual puzzle solving will revole around the mythological representations of concepts like war, peace, wisdom, etc (there was a God, Titan, or Spirit that represented/personified basically every concept).

There is a rough plan for a 3-Act storyline, but it would be too large for the purposes of the jam, so we will stick with a slightly simplified version of Act 1. We will however, try our best to give you a good idea about how the story would continue.

The most important thing for us is to capture a sort of magical and but keep subtle and relaxing!

I am not sure what is usually shared in log posts like this since it's my first jam, so I'll leave it here for now, but we will probably have another update soon! In the meantime, we would love to hear questions or ideas about what you'd expect to see based on what I've said so far, or just anything really!

Good luck to everyone participating in the jam and see you soon!

Hey thanks for the offer! I'll add you on discord! As far as the music goes, once you have something ready I can check out, let me know! :-) Good luck to you, too!

Thank you Gia! Yes, I'll be looking at the 'Melian Dialogue' to find inspiration about those questions/answers. I have lots of stuff in my head but I hope I'll sort it out and make something nice out of it!

Introduction

Hi everyone! My name is Harry and I am actually a composer, but I find this theme interesting and I thought I'd share my ideas in case anyone with the skills but no concept in mind, would like to join in. Once the jam starts I'll post a music track (hopefully a main theme or something like that) to help set the mood.

I should note that lordvark's topic here was quite impactful and it is what made me started thinking about the wars in ancient Greece. However, I think I would like to highlight different subjects and I decided to throw this here as a different topic instead of a long comment on lordvark's devlog. That being said, you should check it out because it seems promising. I'll probably take a shot at composing something for that as well. :-)

Genre

So, I'm thinking of it being a puzzle/adventure game, most likely 2-D and with little or no need of animation. I haven't  figured out the details yet, but the idea is that you solve a few puzzles (probably something maze-like.. I'll try to become more specific in later posts but I would also like some help here!) and after you've solved them you have to answer a few questions (their answers may or may not play a role in the progress of the game - I'll explain later). This session of sorts, happens 3-4 times during the game and the completion of each one drives the story to the next chapter.

Philosophy

What I would hope to achieve with the game is firstly, to make it as a beautiful, artistic experience as possible (that's also the reason I'm thinking about 2-D and little -if any- animation). Secondly, I would like to ask the question of what drives wars and hostility among humans in general, and after exploring all the usual suspects like greed, or primitive insticts that we have yet to evolve from, propose (or rather, imply) the idea that death and mortality are the main reasons humans stick to those previous traits. Here is where the question-answering comes in. The player will be asked questions (by some God persumably) regarding the events occuring at that time (and maybe even unrelated ones) and every time they'll get closer to the answer. That's why the player's answers may not play a part at the progress of the game. They can be just a list of answers for the player to pick the one they feel resonates with them the most. There can even be a choice like "I think I'm not ready to answer something like that yet..". In any case, after answering the questions the story progresses by showing something related to the "correct" answer happening near the player. For example, people stealing what they can while their town is being burnt down (implies greed). Afterwards, the scenery changes and more puzzles have to be solved (probably more difficult every time) until the new series of questions comes up.

Now, I realise this is probably going to be a short game and since it's a gamejam we won't have the luxury of carefully sculpting all those ideas, so the most important thing is that it's a relaxing experience. It might seem like I want to do answer some great question or something like that, but my intension is actually to make the player ponder on a few things while drinking their coffee and waiting for the next puzzle, or pretty picture. I think once I post the music I have in mind you'll get the feel I'm going for.

Some concept details

My main inspiration came from the wiki entry about the siege of Melos Gia posted, but since that is a historic fact I wanted to see if I could somehow add the mythological element there. So, I thought I'd turn this into the classic story of ancient artifacts that predict destructions, plagues and all things evil, by bringing on the table the Antikythera mechanism. If you don't know what that is, you should take a few moments and check it out, but it's basically an ancient astronomical tool that was used to predict astronomical positions, eclipses, etc (bet you know where this is going!). Now, this doesn't classify as mythological either BUT, it is estimated to have been invented some 200+ years (at best) after the siege of Melos, so placing it at the same period is kind of mysterious.

And here's where the mythology comes in! It's pretty basic and I need to think about it in more detail but, the idea is that the Antikythera mechanism is actually a creation of some God, who gave it to humans in order to help them. In our game, the Peloponnesian War that was going on at the time was actually a game of Gods and one of them decided to help the humans escape their fates and the mechanism was the key. In fact, for all we know he or she has been trying for many years but keeps on failing. Our player tries to figure out what the God is trying to explain to them, but sadly, the only way for them to understand the answer seems to be to experience it themselves *SPOILER ALERT* you die at the end! :-P 

What will follow

I'd like to elaborate more on how the story evolves but it has already taken me SO much time to write all this, because I was having a hard time putting my thoughts in order! Besides, I need to see if there's anyone interested in helping me bring this to life!

In any case, I'll definitely post some music and I'll probably work on writing the whole story at some point.

If anyone is interested or has any questions, please let me know because I feel I didn't explain a few things very well. If you ask me I'll know!

Good luck to everyone else taking a shot at this! And thank you Gia! Even by brainstorming about this I've had a ton of fun already! :-)