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We can't, unfortunately - the sound effects used in this one are from libraries that don't permit distribution.

Just about every jam entry from Vela can be described with the following words: "the madlad actually did it." This time might just be the zenith of the madness, because "let's make an MMORPG for the jam" has been a running joke for the last six years. And yet... the madlad actually did it.

I had to give this one a try after seeing a bit of it in the WIP channel. I wasn't expecting to find the character's wish so relatable! The presentation is very cute - there's plenty of potential for a larger game here if you choose to make one.

Thank you! I've just posted an update which, I hope, alleviates the clunky controls you mentioned in your rating.

This has been addressed in version 1.1.0 - you can now roll under stairs by tapping down once rolling.

A cute, charming, and beautifully-drawn platformer. Also really difficult! I noticed that you can abuse the "energy recharges between rooms" feature the same way that you can in Celeste, and the similarities between the two don't stop there. I didn't make it all the way through this one, but I'll come back tomorrow and give it another try.

I really enjoyed this one! I love the use of rotation and squash-stretching in the sprites, it makes the characters look really fluid. The music and sound effects are all really well-done, too.

I had what felt like a galaxy-brained moment when my only pole was knocked down, and I maneuvered the last two people into lunging straight into each other. That made me chuckle. Didn't make it much further, though - hopefully I will make for good bacon.

Having the gameplay take place on the surface of a torus is very unique! The idea of having the story be told as you do it is clever, too, but in practice, my story ended up with about a dozen pages of the words "Branterin did shiv a bloke" over and over again. Quite often, the pen couldn't keep up with how quickly I was getting into combat encounters.

The babble-bloops used by each character are quite cute, and I honestly found the writing quite endearing. Part of me wanted to know what those stories were!

It honestly doesn't take much for a horror game to spook me, but this one was pressing all the right buttons. Admittedly, I didn't get very far. I think I found one note outside camp before I got stuck in some trees and couldn't go any further.

I couldn't figure this one out, I'm afraid - I tried possessing either the old woman or the lumberjack, but nothing seemed to happen. That aside, I do like the idea of video recordings talking you through the game - and maybe adding a bit of wry commentary - but the camera angle you chose wasn't as flattering as it could have been.

Thank you - really glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you for the detailed feedback! The number of comments about the platforming has been a bit of a wake-up call, honestly; I thought platforming gameplay was something I "just knew" how to do, but after this, I think I need to take a closer look at what works and what doesn't. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what you describe as "squishy" is the fact that it takes a couple of frames for the character to get up to full speed, and back down to zero again?

Really glad you enjoyed it despite all that. Thanks for playing!

I love the way that the gameplay sections happen on the pages of the book! The art is well-done and extremely cute, too. I don't have a huge amount of experience with beat-'em-ups, but I enjoyed this one, even if the gameplay was a bit repetitive. All in all, a really cool entry.

Thanks, Danny! The more games I make, the more I realise that a big advantage you get with a longer development time is the opportunity to rebalance things. If we weren't in such a hurry, I'd definitely have tweaked things so that the Cloudwarden and the Fuzzballs aren't as murderous as they are. :D

A full version could be interesting. Would it be one piece of folklore built over the course of multiple levels, or a new bit of folklore for each level, with the outcome of one level subtly influencing the next? Another potential project for the pile!

That'd be an interesting sort of marketing tactic, I suppose...!

You're not alone in thinking that, it seems, so maybe I need to take a closer look at how my platformers control. Anyway, I'm glad you liked the rest of the game! Thanks for playing.

Thanks! The music was a bit of a tough nut to crack: I eventually just listened to some Sonic music and said, "alright, now let's just do something that sounds like that."

I'm not sure what to think of the platforming. During development, I thought it worked well, but it seems like a good number of people are finding it harder than it's meant to be. Maybe I'm just too close to it to realise that it's not as accessible as I'd like?

First: the art is really cute, as are the sound effects.

Maybe it's because I only went on a couple of dates, but I feel like more could have been done with the calls; the fact that the caller never reacts to my answers makes the whole conversation feel one-sided. Also, it looks like the game doesn't scale properly? The window is quite small when viewed in 4K.

Admittedly, expanding the calls would have ballooned the scope, so I can understand why you didn't go down that route. And having a roster of folklore characters like this is really fun.

My favourite part was when the copter said "it's shorkin' time" and shorked all over those guys.

I genuinely got really excited when I saw an enby character and tried to give them a shork, not realising that their colours only display when they've already been shorked.

My spellchecker doesn't like this comment. :P

Oof - I normally remember to put coyote time in my platformers, I don't know why I missed it this time. Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing! I'm glad to hear that you went back to try different routes - I was worried that people would get to the end once and then move on.

I was a Mega Man fan when I was a wee lad, so while it wasn't intentional, I'm glad you found them comparable! And yes, D4yz went all out on the character art (as usual); there are two separate idle animations that you might miss entirely! Thanks for playing.

I ended up playing this for much longer than I was intending! I love how elegant the controls are: they're perfectly themed to the character, super simple to pick up, but with a decent bit of nuance to them. The music almost makes this into a comfort game; the kind where everyone is trying to murder you.

Art and music are spot on, and I like how the game made me put a bit of thought into setting up my shots to meet each request. The menu animations are a little too long for my taste, but that's about the only criticism I have.

I was hoping there'd be some sort of gameplay mechanic where you use your footprints to lure the hunters into a trap, but try as I might, I couldn't get it to work - I found it easier to just sneak up on them from behind and slash them to bits. Still, a cool concept, and the control scheme works really well!

Perhaps London Stansted isn't so bad...

Congrats on your first entry! The shadows work well in giving the levels a sense of claustrophobia, and it's quite fun to swing away at the lizard people. The music is a bit monotonous, though.

10/10 Fiverr simulator. I failed on all three attempts on my first try, so I went back for another go, and it wasn't until then that I realised I was supposed to be copying the look of the statue I was shown, not the customer that walked in. After that, I managed to get on alright. The gameplay is simple, but the presentation and the context make it all work.

An ambitious game - I can see the Zelda influence straightaway! I really like how fluidly-animated the main character is. Sadly, I didn't get very far in; I figured out that I can use the ghost to get past ice blocks, but not what to do with that knowledge.

I had a bit of trouble getting my head around the controls, so I just resorted to headbutting the enemies on the first level. I like the dialogues between Curupira and Caipora in betweens levels, though, and the anime art is nicely done!

I'm kind of surprised that people are complimenting the music so much. It's an eight-second loop of a different pad for each level! But hey, sometimes that's all you need.

The main menu effect was a bit of an afterthought, honestly - I knew something like it was possible from seeing framebuffer effects on PS1 games, and I had the idea of using viewports from Raffaele Picca's talk at GodotCon 2023, so I think I had it done within an evening.

Thanks for playing!

You know what, one of my playtesters even suggested having a visible border on the voids. I thought, "nah, it'd look stupid", and moved on. Just goes to show that playtesting doesn't do much if you're too proud to listen to the suggestions you get. Thanks for playing!

Nice entry! I really like the hand-drawn graphics, and the music gives it a very sobering, "staving off the inevitable" feel.

I only had a quick look at this, so can't comment on the whole game, but I liked what I saw! The typing effect adds a nice bit of flair.

Absolutely fair comment regarding the title screen, I'll change that. And I suspect there's some sort of input lag that I need to account for so that people have an easier time jumping on the beat. Thanks for playing!

Thanks! The last two levels - four and five - are indeed quite frustrating, and perhaps more than they should have been; I even had playtesters telling me as much. Learning to admit that you need to change something with the deadline looming is a skill I haven't quite mastered yet...

That seems to be the consensus from a lot of players. I thought the window was quite generous - most levels have a beat every 0.4 seconds, and the window for jumping is 0.2 seconds - but I suspect some sort of input lag is causing the window to actually close a lot sooner than it should. I'd like to come back to it after the jam and see if that can be rectified. Thanks for playing!

Thank you! Looking back, I think a lot of the frustration comes from feeling as though you've jumped to the beat, only for your player to do a tiny hop and smack straight into a void. Maybe if there was some sort of crouch-then-jump mechanic, the player could know ahead of time if they had got the input right or not, and reacted accordingly...

The title screen effect was inspired by a talk at last year's GodotCon, covering the various things you can do with viewports - it's a very versatile feature. Thanks for playing!

Thank you!