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I like the colors you chose for the character, enemies, and environment art. They all work really well together. I also  like the mechanic of using the explosions to propel yourself over obstacles. I did find it quite difficult to hit enemies with the grenades because of how high the trajectory was. Also, my landmines got stuck in walls a lot. It's a good game though. I really enjoyed it!

Thanks for playing! Yeah, I definitely wish the game was longer too, as I had a lot of ideas but it took me a while to implement them. For example, figuring out the shader effect to have Boxboi appear as a shadow when "behind" the wall and appear as normal when behind the gate took me almost two days to figure out (first time using a shader). I'm not a very experienced game developer and this is the first game jam I've ever participated in. I learned a ton from this experience though, and next game jam I'll hopefully be just a little bit faster. :)

Thanks for recommending these! I'm playing through them now and I like what I've seen so far.

I see a lot of people posting their games on here (which is all well and good, I've promoted my game too).
But I'd like to know if anyone has played any really good games from this jam from other people that still have less than 10 ratings. If the game has a few more ratings than 10, that's okay too. I just want to see what great games I haven't played yet because they're hiding under the radar.

I'll start - I posted this one already in the discord, but at the time of writing this, it has 7 ratings. I think it could use more. :)
https://itch.io/jam/acerola-jam-0/rate/2582880

Just finished your game and gave it 5/5 in all categories. It deserves it. Everything was so polished! The sound effects, gameplay, art, and lighting were perfect. Love the little dance and music at the end when you beat it and that your final time shows. 

Also, as someone else said, having to swipe as you're being chased by an angry ghost is so stressful (in a good way). Great implementation of tension with breaks in between.

Totally agree about the music. It was my first time making game music so I kept it super simple, but I'm excited to make more varied stuff in the future! 

Love that you noticed the levels were interconnected - wasn't sure how apparent that would be. I even made sure that the pieces of the box strewn on the floor were all where they should be when you later encounter a copy of the second room... Probably unnecessary, but I would have noticed

Okay this game is incredible! I got strong Portal and Antichamber vibes (both of which are games I love). The cube splitting mechanic looks so good and is a really satisfying puzzle solving mechanic. I can tell a lot of work went into it. It also matches the theme of the jam really well. The narration is well done too.

I could see this becoming a full game if you decide to keep developing it. I would definitely play more of this.

Woah, what a flattering comment! So glad you liked it!

This game looks incredible, the character is really cute, and the camera movements/angle changes are really smooth. Also it felt like a good progression of difficulty - though toward the end it got too difficult for me and I wasn't able to finish it. I definitely felt the stress as the enemies gradually caught up with the little character jumping helplessly in the water. I wonder if a small dash ability in the water or something would give players a greater sense of control. Or maybe items that could be picked up/earned and dropped as you are swimming to temporarily distract enemies.

I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make the name a pun. :) I love 'em too! 

Thank you! I can't take too much credit on the art though. The environment was mainly free edited assets - art is not a strength of mine. Glad you enjoyed!

For a second at the end, I thought the game knew even more about me. But it was just coincidence.

This game made me think of 'Papers, Please' and 'Inscryption' (especially the sound effects). The stamping animation and sound effect is really satisfying. I just couldn't... stop... stamping.
The biggest jump scare for me was probably not an intentional one.

Thanks for the feedback! I fully agree that music loop is pretty simplistic and the gameplay/themes could have been expanded more :)

The hand-drawn art style looks amazing! 

In more ways than one ;)

This is one of the first tower defense games I've ever played - and I enjoyed it! Love the art and graphics, and watching the foxes safely traverse the landscape after I set the items up. Nicely done!

Thank you! :)

This game is really cool! Can't believe how much you got accomplished in 2 weeks! Love the art style, music and journal/options menu. The wall jumping controls took some getting used to, but once I figure it out, it was fun jumping around the city. Amazing work, and as others have said, very unique!

I REALLY like the music and the lighting, as well as the snappy controls. The wings upgrade is fun too. Nicely done!

Thanks for the compliments and for the thoughtful feedback - especially the suggestion of adding coyote time/jump buffering! I've heard of that technique/mechanic before but it completely slipped my mind. :) 

I definitely noticed that the player movement and jumping in your game felt really smooth, but couldn't put my finger on why. That was probably part of it!

This game is awesome and I love the hide/show mechanic! I wouldn't worry about the number of levels, I think it's an impressive amount of content given that it's a jam game. I could definitely sink more time into this one!

I love the art and how well the game suits the theme of the jam. I also appreciated the controller input - I switched to controller from keyboard after a little while. I played for about 10 minutes, but couldn't seem to figure out how to use the echo ability reliably. Is there a trick to aiming it?

This makes me so happy to hear :)

Glad you enjoyed it!

Love that the art for the game was all painted. Very creative, I don't think I've seen that before!

I love the atmospheric music and smooth progression of difficulty. I also appreciate how polished the game feels. Thank you for making this!

Thank you :)

The music sounds great! You did amazing work on that. What did you use to compose it?
I like the variety of attacks/abilites that the boss and players have too!

I love the art/colors and presentation as well as the assortment of weapons! I found myself slightly wishing the character could jump, but maybe that would have made the game too easy. Nicely done!

Thanks for playing! Nice to hear you were caught by surprise a few times. Yeah, I had a bunch of ideas for more levels, but burnout hit me hard toward the end of the two weeks. Ah well

I used the Godot game engine to make this game. I've also used Unity and GameMaker in the past. So far, I've enjoyed Godot the most out of the engines I've tried, but it's very much a personal preference thing. 

I spent a lot of time agonizing over which tools to use in the past, trying to choose the "best" one. But I think what matters most is just starting to make something. 

My advice is to find a small existing game you can copy and possibly add some of your own ideas to (I made an Asteroids/Space Shooter clone for one of my first projects). It may be less exciting than making a whole unique game from scratch, but there are a lot more resources and tutorials available if you get stuck. 

Game development isn't easy and it takes much longer than most people generally expect to do things that might seem simple from an outside perspective. But it can also be an incredibly rewarding experience. Good luck, you've got this!

Thanks so much for playing and for the nice comment 🙂

I've been learning Ableton over the past few months, and would really like to put my own music in this game 🙂 Will see how it goes. This is my first game jam!

Thank you so much for making this! I just wanted to let you know that I used some of these in my free space shooter game, which can be found here. I included you in the credits.