itch.io

Oh, there should be background music and SFX on things. Walking, rolling, enemies, enemy attacking, placing pieces, etc. I'll take a look in case something broke, but that's pretty strange. Thank you for the feedback!

Ah, I see. Thank you for your feedback!

It's not you at all! I'm not sure why at the moment, but seems like there's a pretty common thing that causes the game to crash instead of showing the victory screen.

Wow, what an incredible game. Opening onto a cutscene blew my mind. The controls are super tight, the platforming felt really fun and the right kind of challenging, stuff like using the dash to navigate the gap between the spikes and so on were executed really well. Just...absolutely incredible showing, and doing this in a week is pretty amazing. Literally the only problem I encountered is I got locked in the room after beating Gordo.

If you have time to say more, what was it that you had to figure out about the controls? Like, what pieces were or something else? (There is definitely a paucity of proper teaching, in terms of the aims of the game)

So, starting off on a strong point: game has no bugs, and is playable which is a good standard for jams. Loss screen, and (hopefully) a win screen. I didn't end up finishing the game because I got to the last level and just did not want to deal with the skulls. :P

I really liked the game. I think the cute-morbid aesthetic was pretty charming, and I think it worked well with the mechanics and difficulty.

The difficulty was pretty bearable. The obstacle in the first stage is a little hard to see so I (and my wife) both died there before we figured out what was hurting us. Overall though, I think it was a pretty reasonable difficulty curve. The (presumably) last level with two skulls firing out of the wall at the same point made me stop playing, mostly because I didn't know how I was supposed to deal with that. They didn't seem to be blocked by terrain, boxes, and the ol' reliable "jump on their heads" move wasn't working for me.

The music was simple, but nice, and the SFX felt on-theme as well. Overall, it was pretty good! Good job!

So, starting off on a strong point: game has no bugs, and is playable which is a good standard for jams. I could lose but I don't...think I can win? But that seems to be by design like old arcade style shmups (R-Type, Galaga, Ikaruga, etc.), so game accomplished!

1. I found the movement...a little unenjoyable. The ship felt ungainly, which I think is because the speed was lerping instead of being immediately responsive. It made it feel like a big, heavy ship instead of the small fighter-craft it seemed like I was supposed to be. Coupled with the momentum being imparted from missile collisions, it made moving around feel not entirely like it was in control.
2. I sort of reflexively avoided the first power-up for a couple waves, because I just assumed it was a weird enemy in the middle of the screen to spice things up. A minor effect to show it's beneficial, or some other solution, would probably go a decent way.
3. Enemy variety was a little lacking. By about the third wave, it felt like I'd already gotten enough of a grasp of the game to not be at risk of dying, or really needing to think much. (Sidenote: eventually, I realized you can just cheese the game by sitting in a corner and shooting diagonally across the spawn line.)
4. There's a bit of a weird bug where sometimes missiles would just get stuck at the bottom of the screen, and idle there forever, unless something rammed into them.
5. I'm not sure if this was a bug or I don't understand how the gun was supposed to work but neither clicking nor scrolling the middle mouse seemed to do anything. It wasn't a detriment to gameplay, but worth mentioning if you plan to continue working on this.

Now, the good stuff!

1. I think the concept of 'assembling' the ship is pretty great! Shmups are kind of a dead artform in general and most modern interpretations don't let you literally put together a larger ship like this.
2. The firing arcs were very well-done. It being done on the player and enemies is really nice, and helped add some interest to movement.
3. The feeling of progression was nicely done. Playing to mow-down waves and get the next shiny ship part was pretty fun.

EDIT: I actually forgot, but the SFX were really loud on my machine at first. I ended up cutting the volume to 10%.

Just to note the two bugs I ran into playing: I play on an (admittedly unwise) ultrawide, which messed with the UI pretty seriously. Couldn't see the main menu properly, or the elevator buttons as the top and bottom got cut off. The other thing is there's some sort of lock when you get too close to doors, which stopped me from moving around afterward. Had to go through the door and back to regain control.

We had some issues with interacting with things. Not sure if it's distance to the doors/NPCs or if there's a deadzone for interacting with them, but some kind of pop-up, outline, or other indicator for when you can do things would help. Personally, I also found swapping between left-click/mouse a little awkward (I couldn't use Numpad Enter) since it meant I had to move one hand to a different spot. I'm also...not sure if I finished everything? There wasn't a final screen or anything, but I did seem to do everything for Amy, Emily, Mateo, and Jamie.

Now, the good stuff!

1. I think the art style is very charming, and personable. Everybody felt unique and expressive just from the visual designs and the minimal color palette on the building itself was nice, and let the characters stand out.
2. I thought the characters themselves were pretty fun. There wasn't a whole ton of dialogue, obviously, but I very quickly realized I don't really like Mateo but I still thought the Mateo/Emily pair was cute; Amy was suitably child-like; and Jamie was there too. Getting people to feel anything in such a short span is pretty impressive.
3. As somebody who spent probably above-average time playing old-school "escape the room" flash games and dating sim VNs, the similar vibe is pretty fun. I think the concept is pretty solid if you cared to try and flesh it out, maybe making it more of a...progression to get access to more parts of the building by picking up things around the place, solving individual storylines, etc.

My final thought is while I enjoyed it, I'm not sure how the theme tied in to the gameplay.

Thank you for the feedback! For clarity, you didn't have any sound when you played the game? No music, no enemy SFX, no player SFX?

Thanks for the detailed comments! I agree with basically all of it, haha.
EDIT: I misunderstood part of your comment before. Watching my wife play through it, looks like there's a bug with the victory screen sometimes where the game just...ends instead.