itch.io

Excellent, excellent game.  It had just the right amount of challenge that caused just the right amount of frustration that I *had* to keep playing until I reached the end.  A difficult platformer hits the sweet spot when you see what the game is asking of you and think, "oh, there's no way" (I'm thinking Birds of a Feather) -- and then you practice it until you get it, and it feels very rewarding.  The art was great, the physics felt nice, and I loved the way you did the dialogue in the end scene.  Great all around.

Small world -- I remember Detective Paws, as I was in that jam, too.  I'm looking forward to your future games!

I played to the end -- great spaces and village vibe, I like the colors, music and gameboy nostalgia!  I enjoyed when the tree got called out in the clubhouse scene.  Nice!

I played this to the end -- very fun game!  The level design is really excellent with great design of the challenges, great progression of difficulty, and the music was very fitting.  The boss was very frustrating at first, but was very well designed so that I learned little by little how to be successful.  Great job!

Thank you!  Yes, the boiler room is the sticking point for many people, I now realize.  Were you trying to jump up when the coal shoveler looked down to shovel, or when the smoke was in the air between his view and you?  One player told me that he was attempting to jump up when the shoveler shoveled and couldn't get past it, and that it wasn't a difficult passage once he realized the idea was that he should jump up when the smoke was blocking the shoveler's view.  If you were attempting to go up when the smoke screen was there and it still wouldn't work, then I will try to test this on more browsers and perhaps lengthen the time of the smoke screen.  And thank you for the feedback on the bug on the clothes change and crouch!

Thanks so much for your kind words and for the feedback!  No worries about the stars.  I'm going to make a post-jam adjustment to the coal area when the jam ends -- so that I make the right adjustment, were you attempting to jump up when the coal-shoveler was looking down to shovel coal, or when the smoke was in the air between his view and you?  A few players have now told me they were initially trying to go when he shoveled, whereas the game was designed so that the player would go while there was a smoke screen.  

The game does have a complete ending, and there is perhaps 1/3 to 1/2 of the game left after the coal shoveler.  Thanks again for playing and giving feedback!

I played this one for quite a while, as you've really built out a large playing area, nice work!  There's a lot to like -- nice variety of enemy characters, a nice variety of physical environments, good animations, enemy controllers work well, the directional fire worked well for different challenges, and I like how your music seems to have different variations on a theme.  I also enjoyed the world-building art (multi-screen setups, flowing sewage, etc.), and the sound effects are great, too.  Nice!  I wasn't totally sure if I covered everything in the game, but after beating the big rat and using grenades to open doors, I ended up in one empty dead-end area I couldn't get out of, and also explored the multi-floor elevator area where there was a savepoint and the other 5 or so floors were empty, so I figured I was reaching the "in progress" areas.

Some feedback that I hope is helpful: (1)  the jump mechanics felt a little difficult to maneuver and I don't think I ever totally got comfortable.  When I push left or right while in air, it seems like it gives me a pre-determined amount of horizontal movement, as opposed to allowing me to continuously control my character's lateral movement by holding down or letting off the horizontal keys.  There was also occasionally a bit of a sliding effect when I'd land that I had trouble controlling -- not sure what makes it happen or not.  (2).  I would set up the keys meant to be used frequently (jump, shoot, dash, grenade?) along a single line -- e.g., the common C-X-Z-Shift grouping.  Because the constantly-used control and space (shoot/jump) keys are so far away from the dash, punch and grenade keys, I played this game without using dash or punch almost at all, and used grenades only to open doors.  I would also echo what others have said, which is that I'd love to see up/down used to initiate ladder climbing rather than a separate key -- even if that means you can't shoot downward while standing on a ladder.  Finally, Control+arrow is a preset shortcut on my computer that moves the game off-screen and shows my desktop (I didn't know that until now), so I'd avoid using Control as one of the gameplay keys.  (3) I think "coyote time" would be a good addition.

Sorry to write so much, but I see you put a lot of work into this and I played it a bunch, so I wanted to provide meaningful feedback.  Nice work!!

I played to the end and enjoyed this game -- nice work!  The visuals and atmosphere are great, and I liked the music and thought it fit the vibe well (did you write/create it?).  The pacing of the difficulty of challenges was well done, the level of challenge was nice, and the concept of jump-only movement in this way wasn't something I'd seen before.  Not having lateral movement when grounded took some getting used to, but not in a bad way -- over time I developed the strategy behind the different ways to move through the space, and I appreciate that it's something different.  

Fwiw, the game did not play for me on Mac/Firefox (the opening text rolled out at about 4 characters per second, which meant it took several minutes to end, and then none of the keyboard inputs worked once the game began).  It worked well on Mac/Safari.  I was a little unsure if I'd completed the game when it ended, and I then ended up falling out of the gameplay area by checking if there were additional rooms to the right or left -- the top edges could use colliders and/or an indication that the game was over.  But those are minor issues in an otherwise strong game --  nice!

I played this one to the end and had fun -- nice!  Great palette, the level design was nicely tuned, and the music was great!

Ah, sorry, bigjus, I responded to your second post and was going to add a second response and in the process I accidentally deleted your second post and my response, thinking I was deleting my draft posts.  I don't think there's any "un-delete" function here.  You helpfully mentioned that the jump up at the coal-shoveler in the basement seemed too tight, and that's very helpful feedback, thank you!  I'll add that if he says "get out of here before you get hurt," it's because he saw you, and if it's "I heard that," it's because you ran in close proximity to him.  When you jump up, I'd suggest not having the shift key held: crouch until the right moment, then jump straight up and move left while in air; land on the coal cart, jump straight up again and move left while in air to land on the walkway.  Then hold shift and move across.  Sorry about the deletions, thanks again for playing!

Strong work -- here's what I suggest:

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Ring the bell and go right back up to the top walkway above the boiler.  Don't go across too fast, or he'll see you from the right-hand side as he walks in.  As he passes underneath you, sneak back across the walkway toward the door you came in.  When the timing is right with the smoke, leap down from the edge of the walkway to the ground and land in a crouch.  Then crouch-walk your way toward the lockers and run out.  If you made it past the boiler on the way in, you'll be able to do this, too!

I understand you -- this is great feedback, thank you.  It sounds like you're in the same place as another commenter, above, and I responded with a hint up there if you're interested in trying to get further.  Thanks again!

This was a fun game -- the artwork had a Sega Genesis-era vibe to me, really nice!  The quips after each death added to the fun, nice work on making so many of them.

Thank you for playing and and for commenting, I like to hear people's progress and feedback!  I put a hint below:

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You're on the right track.  From the perspective of the guy shoveling coal, when can he see you and when does his view of you become briefly obstructed?

Thank so much! I'd be curious to know which section got tricky, if you can do so without spoilers.  Thank you for playing -- looking forward to your next game!

I played this game several times and enjoyed the art and what you did with this color palette -- you were able to do a lot with your chosen colors and it makes for a very consistent look and mood.  The parallaxing (is that a word?) backgrounds with wires and fans give great retro vibes.  The bosses here are also great, and it shows that you're skilled at creating them.  The gameplay mechanics are smooth and bug-free.  And I love a game with challenge and this one has it!

I was only able to make it as far as the second boss.  Usually with this style of game and difficulty, I will stubbornly keep at it and enjoy the struggle until I beat it.  The thing that was tough for me here is that in Level 2 (where the bosses begin), there is only a single savepoint at the very start of the level -- at least as far as the second boss.  These bosses are difficult and require repeat plays to come up with a strategy and to get the timing down.  I figured out that it's best to beat the first boss, return to the savepoint and save, and then proceed back through the first boss area and to the second boss -- that way, when I die, I don't have to re-fight the first boss.  But the fight against the second boss is typically over in an instant (it's very difficult), and I then have to make the long trek across two game play areas and one boss area to have another chance at the second boss, which is then over in an instant again.  It wasn't so much the difficulty of the second boss that made me stop playing there -- it was that I didn't get to have repeat tries against it to develop a strategy and get the timing.  Even in a difficult game like MegaMan, e.g., when you make it to the boss and die, you respawn at the boss for as many lives as you have left, and when all lives are gone, only then do you have to start the level over.  So for me, a relatively easy but high-impact improvement would be to put savepoints right before and/or after each boss (perhaps only some of which would refill health?).  Separately, the game looks like it's set up to have metroidvania aspects, but maybe I never reached far enough to see them. 

Sorry for writing a book, but I do so because this looks like it will be a really solid game and I really wanted to play more, and because you've clearly put a lot of good work into it, so I thought the player feedback might be helpful.  I'm optimistic about its future if you keep developing it!  

Great game!  I played this to the end and had fun.  I really like the art you created from the TIC-80 palette, which gives it that classic look.  You also get a lot of life out of limited pixels in your art, which is a real skill.  The user interface elements are great, and the different abilities were fun and varied without being overwhelming.  The fairy was great and the fire ability was very satisfying -- both in how it fired and how it burned things.  It was just a fun and smooth overall play, and I enjoyed seeing some elements here and there that reminded me of NES Metroid and MegaMan.  On my first play, I experienced the issue where I died after getting the water gun (but before a checkpoint) and when I went back to get it, it wasn't there, but that was the only hiccup from start to finish.  Great work!

Thank you so much for this heads-up!  I couldn't replicate the problem in Firefox but saw it quickly in Safari after acquiring the item.  I updated the game file with some changes to the z key and it now works smoothly for me in Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.  Please let me know if you still have any issues, and thank you for playing!

I loved playing this -- very fun and chaotic, the games made me laugh, and the artwork and presentation are excellent!  The music really fits the vibe and the sound effects are also great (hot dog sound effect is amazing).  The character and facial expressions are also very cool and effective.  I really like the palette, too.  Great vibes, great game!  FYI, I played the browser version in Mac/Safari (Mac/Firefox didn't work for me).

Some feedback that I hope is helpful: I played on a keyboard, and the keymapping was tricky to figure out.  On the hot dog game, it instructs one to push A, and the "J" key works for this.  But on the bomb game, the "J" key is B, and I couldn't figure out what the A key is (I systematically mashed non-"J" keys on several plays when it called for A to be pushed to try to figure it out, but no luck :)).   Separately, when my game ended and I pushed "Restart", it gives me one life ("Z") in the upper left rather than three, and my days sleeping count doesn't reset to 0.  I wondered if maybe this was intended, but because the button says "Restart" and not "Continue," I thought I'd mention it.  It didn't really affect my play: exiting to the main menu and pushing "start" works to start an entirely new game.

Again, awesome work!

This was a creative and fun game -- nice!

I came back and finished it -- great game!  The platforming challenges were fun, the mechanisms worked well, and the story arc was nicely completed.   (And you are of course welcome to direct people to my comment.)

Good luck with the jam!

Incredible work on this game!  The artwork is beautiful and I'm amazed at the attention to detail in each scene -- I can tell that a lot of time and dedicated work went into making this.  The  indoor and outdoor spaces are very complete and the village feel, interiors, and music definitely achieve the cozy vibes.  I really like the animations as well (ceiling fans, the steam, the jump, etc.) and npc character designs/animations.  It's really nice to see a game of such high quality.

In both cases I was stuck and between colliders and couldn't move.  In a third instance, I was in Ginger's cafe and walked to the right, thinking there might be more to the cafe, and I walked off the screen and couldn't walk back, so I had to restart.  An "R" button that restarts the current scene might be helpful in case these or similar issues pop up?

I kept at it because this game is so well done, but on my final play, I was in the library room to the right of the first image shown above, and just couldn't figure out how to access the button on top of the high bookshelf, and the toggle-barriers prevented me from e.g. going back to Grandma or another scene.  I felt like I was missing some ability (a double-jump, an ability to stand on the needle, or similar), but perhaps I just haven't figured out the puzzle yet.

Sorry for writing a book, but this game was so well done that I wanted to provide substantial feedback.  Great work!

Nice work!  This was a very visually interesting game, I really liked seeing how you created platforming and animations from these pencil drawings.  The main character's movement was cool to watch and there's just something interesting about seeing a person's 'analog' drawings in a game.  This was a creative concept, and I played this to the end and had fun.  The final boss algorithm worked well and I loved the projectiles -- nice!

Great job on this, I played this to the end and had fun playing it!  The cool animations (e.g. the robot explosions, shooting, robot electroshock, portal, etc.) made the gameplay more fun, the music was great, and the platforming design was great, too.  And it seems like a small thing, but the way the player takes damage also felt nicely polished and fair.  I would have been happy to play more!

Some hopefully helpful player feedback:  when my character was standing on the ground and against a wall, the jump button didn't work.  So once I was close to a wall that I wanted to jump over or up, I had to first move away from the wall, and then jump back towards it.  Maybe something in the wallslide code is blocking the normal functioning of the jump?  The other feedback I'd have is that if you make the fire button shoot the flame more quickly (shortening the time between when I press the button and when the flame comes out, as opposed to the speed of the flame), it would feel nicer and more responsive.  There was a point where I wanted to jump and shoot a robot at the apex of my jump, and I ended up pushing jump and shoot at almost the same time to get the timing to work.  I know you probably want the raising-gun-and-aiming animation to fully run before the flame comes out, but maybe fewer frames or a faster animation would improve this? 

Again, great work!

Great game!  The art style and colors made this a beautiful game to look at and play, and I admire the creativity that went into bringing these scenes and characters to life.  I played to the end and wished there were more!

A very fun and addictive game, nice!  352 was my max.  The procedural generation keeps it interesting and didn't produce scenarios that felt unfair, especially with some practice.  It was also great that practicing the game made for better skills, higher scores, and more fun -- I always think that's a good sign for your game design.   

The one difficulty I had was that when starting a new tower on an island,  it sometimes would "red-out" the option and not let me build, even when there was open space, no island obstruction, etc., while at other times it would allow me to start building at the edge of a tiny bit of land, e.g., with a gap below.   When it prevented me from building, the red tower would sometimes float /flicker down behind the island, if that's helpful info. 

But that didn't happen too often and was a small issue in an otherwise fun and engaging game.

Really nicely made game, and I had fun playing.  Nice palette and the the minimalist artwork and sound effects were great.  I like that you got creative in coming up with new mechanics that players probably haven't seen before and created some fun challenges from them.  I had no issues getting the mechanics to work based on the in-game sign descriptions.  I played this to the end twice, although I only got to 11 or 12 stars before the end sequence each time.  I liked the final sequence as well.  

I didn't realize at first that the checkpoints were checkpoints and avoided them due to their resemblance to spikes; as a result I thought for quite a while that the game required you to run the whole thing without dying.  After figuring it out, I thought perhaps more frequent checkpoints would be nice and wouldn't detract much from the challenge.

Fun game!

Yes, recommendations for a few of your favorites would be awesome, thank you

Great game!  I'd never seen a nonogram puzzle before this, but I got hooked.  It was a fun and funny game and I enjoyed your pixel art -- it's a real skill to make so many items within the limits of a b&w 12x12 grid.  Loved the style of the ending sequence/credits, too.  Thank you for making it!

Nice!  I played this game as far as I could make it -- I eventually reached one of the later rounds that had the disappearing rotating black/yellow platforms, and in the second screen up, there were two horizontal floors but no way to get from the bottom floor to the floor above (neither in the visible or red dimension), so I stopped there.  I had fun playing, and the unusual mini-character enemies that avoid you if you stand still but kill you if you walk/land on them presented interesting platforming challenges that I liked.  It almost made the player the one who adjusted the movement of the enemy, rather than the typical platformer where you watch the given pattern and adjust to it.  The disappearing/rotating platforms also worked nicely and it felt like there was a lot you could do with it.  The background art and visual effect of the circle were also really nice.

Some feedback that is hopefully helpful:  (1) On several respawns, I ended up spawning in the ground with just my head peeking out and had to restart.  I think it happens when I'm holding down a direction when the respawn happens?  (2) The sides of walls are semi-"sticky," and it made it feel like I was hitting my head on an invisible barrier when finishing double-jumps at the edges of platforms.  In Unity there's a "platform effector" option that gets rid of the stickiness -- maybe Godot has something similar?  Another result of the stickiness is that one could spam the jump button on walls and climb right to the top, which in some cases means a player could bypass the actual challenges you created.  At one point I saw something peeking out at the upper left corner of the screen, and climbed a high wall and found a giant treasure chest in the sky :).  (3) Maybe it's just my personal taste, but I would avoid having the gameplay challenges cross the horizontal and vertical screen-shifts, as it makes it easy to be suddenly killed on the next screen, and very difficult to adjust the red circle to the speed of the screen-shift.  It felt more frustrating to me than a platform challenge, but I could see how others might disagree.  

Nice job, glad I checked this game out!

Great game, I had fun!  I really like this concept for an arcade-style game -- it's a nice mix of familiar and creative.  I played all 30 levels and the mechanics all worked very nicely, I liked the different enemies, and it had nice music/sound, too.

In terms of (hopefully helpful) feedback, I'd say the balancing could use some tweaks.  One can make a ton of progress in the opening seconds, but once more than one enemy launches, the difficulty goes up very sharply.  As a result, I learned that in many cases, it's better to cover a lot of ground right away, and if more than one enemy gets loose, to just die.  One can generally defeat the round quickly after that, because the progress carries over.  Choosing a free life upgrade, together with point bonus lives, is more than enough to make this a workable approach (on my first try at the game, I finished with 14 spare lives).  Perhaps shortening the pre-enemy period, or erasing progress at each death, together with less frequent release of enemies, would smooth out the difficulty?  I wasn't able to make the extra broom a big advantage, but maybe I just needed work at it.  The extra life was too valuable to pass up, because of that opening pre-enemy time for each life.

Again, awesome game!

I played this to the end, it's a very creative game, fun to play, and the gameplay was smooth and well done -- nice!

This is a very cool game!  I've had a lot of fun playing, great vibes, cool artwork, and with platforming challenge to make it fun on repeat plays.  I like the synergy names, too.  I've gotten fluent enough with the gameplay that I can play continuously through until the end of the timer with no deaths and no missed items.  However, while I figured out one challenging-and-not-immediately-apparent aspect to the gameplay, I'm clearly missing another one, because I max out at around 17 synergies in the timer.  Alas, I think I may have to retire after failing to figure that out!  Great work on this!

Very cool art, such wonderful textures you use as backgrounds, etc., too.  Not sure how you did that envelope, but it's also excellent!  Really nice story that hits home!

fun game!  I liked it well enough in the core levels, but it really shined in the difficult levels.  I'm one of those stubborn people who sees difficult levels and can't let it go, so I kept at it until I beat all the difficult ones (whew).  you tuned this nicely by showing only the path of the eye until it hits the player (not after) and only for a moment.  i also liked that it required both thought/strategy and quick movements of the player.  nice!

Nice! I played this to the end and defeated the final boss (which was my favorite part of the game -- I thought the way you structured it was creative).  I enjoyed the NES vibes here, from the chiptune to the injury-bounce to the change-up in colors of the tileset in successive rounds.  I liked that you created many different styles of enemies, too.  I was an avid coin-collector in the opening stanzas, but after a while it didn't feel like it advanced my journey, so I laid off a bit -- perhaps that's why I didn't get a full % in the final calculation (or maybe there were secret areas...).  

Some feedback that I hope is helpful:  I thought the arrow could be a bit more quickly responsive to the push of the button, as I spent a lot of time trying to hit the shoot button as soon as I pressed jump so that it would fire when I was still in the air.  I also thought "coyote time" on the platform jumps could help the feel.

Nice work!

Love the graphic profile and palette, and the bounce to all the movements -- it feels very visually polished.   The mechanics are nicely responsive and make it fun to move around in the world you've created.  Nice!

I played it until the final (?) round, where I pushed on the button with the trophy symbol and "???" below, and it caused my browser (iOS/Firefox) to crash (I tried this twice, same result both times).  Some other feedback that I hope is helpful: when I started, the map launched me with the second stage selected.  I pushed left to go to the first stage and completed it.  It then sent me back to the map with the third stage selected.  I pushed left to do the second stage, completed it, it sent me to the fourth stage on the map, etc. etc., so perhaps a stage variable needs to be decremented by 1?

Would be fun to play more -- nice work on this!

I had fun playing this, I enjoyed the art, the music was fitting, and it I liked the signs enough to risk my hide repeatedly trying to read them and then run for it. Some kind of achievement for score levels would be nice to keep us climbing!  As others have noted, I'd add an instruction about the double-jump somewhere.  Nice work!

I played this to the end and it's a fun game with a presentation that engages you easily.  Controls are nicely intuitive and everything ran smoothly.  Feels like you have an architecture on which you could add any number of additional items/rules for new challenges, too -- nice!

Nice work! I played this to the finish, great artwork (love the Metroid vibes on the bubble platforms), great music, and the item mechanics and puzzles worked smoothly and were fun to beat. There was a good amount of gameplay, too.

It's also an unusual game in that the principal challenge of the game (and cause of almost all my deaths) was overcoming the momentum in the character controller.  Small movements can be done under perfect control, but pushing a direction for a bit longer gives you a long continuation of momentum after you let up on the direction key -- longer than what I typically see in platformers.  Jumps have to be hit "flat", so that you're not pushing in any direction on or before landing.  I could see that this could frustrate some of your players, as it's not what platformer players are used to, but perhaps that's just a convention and not a reason to change (after all, over time I adjusted to it and it made the game more challenging, and challenge is good).  In any case, I thought I would mention it in case that's helpful feedback!

Nice work!!

Fun game, nice work!  Beautiful and creative artwork, as I have seen before from Jaylus's games, and very impressive for the short amount of time you had.   The puzzles ramped up nicely in difficulty and it feels like there's room for many puzzles with the mechanics you made.   Nice!

[These comments are on the prototype:] Fwiw, I played in the browser and found that placement of cards was very responsive *if* I moved my cursor away after dragging and dropping (dragging and releasing the left-click on a valid spot would not turn the card into an icon until I moved the position of the mouse again).  The game also crashed my browser (both Firefox and Safari) and created warnings about the amount of memory being used.  I realize you warned me about reliability of the web build, so that's on me, but I mention this in case it's useful feedback.

Again, great game, nice job!