itch.io

Very cool concept!

I cannot enjoy most of the modes because the block randomizer stops at some point, only showing pink blocks (and fortunately still flames and skulls).

EDIT: I appreciate how you departed from PICO-8 aesthetics on this entry (not sure since when you did that but I like the new font, etc.). I saw you had a PICO-8 prototype though (surprised it’s not a SUGAR prototype but it was nice to get a super lightweight car to play with my PICO-8 binary). I’m surprised it was already so polished! And it didn’t have the pink block bug so it was quite nice to play even with just the standard mode.

The chain combustion even slowed down the game from 30 to 15 FPS!

Cool aesthetics and animations, although a few feel a bit clunky (not taken alone, but in relationship to the other fighter’s sprite or to the ground, it’s probably just some sync / root motion stuff). Are they hand-made based on martial arts move pictures? Impressive variation of moves, especially the low, mid, high and back kicks!

Nice cinematics between boss phases too. However for the 1st two bosses it was almost the only time they “hit” me, see game design feedback below.

Game design issues:

• too easy to chain stun the first 2 bosses by spamming punches or kicks, or a combination of both. 3rd boss starts getting interesting, but then it was a bit late to learn proper counters, so it became all hit-or-miss (since there is no low/high guard system, either just guard and get grabbed, or block and chain counter attack from there). Enemy grab doesn’t seem to have a startup lag (or a very short one) so there’s not much do dodge it. Also, fighters sometimes overlap in position (hitting doesn’t push them back enough, and there is no forced collider separation when both fighters reach the edge of the arena as in Street Fighter, etc.), so it becomes hard to see what the opponent is doing (esp. with silhouettes). So in the end there are many moves and animations but not enough incentive to use them all depending on the situation.
• all stat gauges start full therefore there is no point in exchanging stats (unless you lost many HP)
• speed affects ALL animations (but not gravity), resulting in ridiculous moves at very low speed. It’s still possible to beat the first bosses (but very slowly), but it must be too tough to beat the last one. That said, since it’s stats exchange, it’s the player choice to sacrifice such an important stat (but I’d rather have it affect walk speed and roll distance only - or only slightly attack speed). Anyway, it does look really funny to watch though, and could be like the ultimate challenge to fight at low speed. Since gravity is preserved, air attacks end up with character sliding on the ground and finishing the attack as if still airborne

Suggestions:

• tutorial: demonstrate block by making AI opponent auto-attack

Cool entry! I tried both playing looking at the timeline and looking at the ball, the second option is more challenging but I appreciate the animations better.

I like how it’s just hit or miss, no tracking of exact timing for perfect score, since I don’t feel like optimizing my performance for a jam game. Also it’s nice to heal after a good strike (although I didn’t need it when I did a focused run).

To be continued! Sounds like we’re teaming up with not such a good guy but we have common interests, uh? At first the floating head reminded me of Katamari Damacy’s king, but it looks like it’ll be getting deeper later…

I found the second level shorter, but it makes sense because it was also faster (in tempo), so more intense.

Also, clever use of the same character animation even when the ball goes a different way, to reduce budget, as the eye focuses on the ball anyway.

UI issues:

• no full keyboard/gamepad support (must use mouse to click Play)

Accessibility issues:

• button mash is not great inside a rhythm game, it would probably be keener to have some repetitive beat challenge instead: you could press any time, but pressing at correct (high, but not too high) tempo would fill the gauge faster. This way you can succeed the challenge with timing skills. Seems like you prevent “cheating” by alternative Z and X by the way, which is actually quite clever to avoid exploit multi-input exploit, but with a faster tempo beat challenge you’d just allow alternating Z and X since some people like tapping this way (it does work on normal beats though).

Progression issues:

• no save after close and restart game, and Level 2 is blocked from the start so I couldn’t test the Level 2 once more

Wow, how could I miss this! Oh, I see. They were all released in 2024! (and I barely checked my itch release notification emails during the past year)

Looks like I got a lot to catch up. But it also means the dev managed to release those games at a very high frequency, cleverly reusing the framework… I’ll remember it.

I’d probably just give up and thought the games are broken if I didn’t know they were made by Hempuli! But knowing this I’ll try a little harder!

I did it on second run… with rank D! (yeah…)

Interesting use character swap but since boss basically stops blocking after 1st kick, the 2nd character is really used as a support then you just swap back to the blue character. Felt like there could just be a button to kick as in traditional fighting games, since there are not many other changes (just the special effect differs). But I get how 2 characters vs 1 was important to match the narrative.

Really good flow, it felt good to learn to hit as much as possible, dodge at the last moment either back or sideways depending on the type of enemy attack and hit area, esp. dodging the fireball with the right timing (although on my 1st run I just a phase where boss was charging fireball and melee attacks at the same time and it was very disturbing, maybe a bug?).

Not sure how I could optimize to get a better rank, as I pretty much swapped to 2nd character and back to 1st efficiently on my second run. Maybe pick the right character for the most effective special (but the tutorial was a bit fast on the special and didn’t let us try so I didn’t remember which one was better to deal damage vs recover health or something?)

Finally, I was disturbed by the boss phases, apparently both teams got healed? But I lost track of enemy health at some point and couldn’t remember if I was already in 2nd or 3rd phases and at some point it felt like it would never end, then I died (and didn’t have time to check my progression before dying). Maybe some text or animation to indicate we’re moving to next phase would help the player get an idea of where they are, and encourage them as well, telling them it’s not endless.

Anyway, a very good flow and not many deaths, maybe a bit repetitive at times but a solid entry nonetheless.

Phew, just started it, it’s fun to find out the rules but the minimalistic animations didn’t help at the beginning (what’s going on? is the flag gone or confirmed? do I need to do something else?)

The second stage reveals it better, although I took some time to understand the exact rules. I guess some memories of Bonfire Peaks helped.

Interesting mechanic though, eager to see what it will lead to.

Always a little voice in my head saying “Hey, why don’t you make a game like this? Stop spending time/money on art and animations!” but last time I tried, the game design wasn’t that great and it couldn’t just stand out on its own. And sometimes I just want to make that action game…

Anyway, congrats for making a web game that doesn’t blow my CPU to 100%, it just takes around 10% of all my processors. Is it a ClickTeam Fusion export? Even the Godot web builds I’ve been trying recently had that issue on laptop! (but SteamDeck / more powerful computers were fine)

I was eager to play this Zelda Oracle style boss rush and it didn’t disappoint! I also enjoyed the Mega Man-style where you choose boss in orders and unlock weapons accordingly, but with a pair of melee/range attacks instead.

I died a few times in Jam mode and many times in Hard mode, forcing me to try observe boss patterns and weapon properties more, trying different boss orders to find the right weapon for the right opponent!

New Game+ last weapon unlock was cool too!

My feedback by category:

Balance issues:

• ice block is cool to destroy red boss’s spear and preventing it from spamming projectiles in second phase! But it doesn’t work on any shinigami’s attack, making blue weapon less worth against the last boss
• green boss feather attack seems to give a huge hitbox to each feather, was hard to dodge. I had to move away farther instead of just staying at 22.5 degrees which would be more efficient for immediate counter-attack
• in some placements, it’s very hard to dodge the Shinigami’s scythe even if you keep moving
• generally speaking, it’s hard to dodge stuff at the last moment, but in a genre where dodge is mainstream feature, going back to the roots with simple top-view controls without dodge is also refreshing and challenging. It forces us to predict attacks more in advance (or use ice block on projectiles)
• green weapon felt weak, probably due to spreading of damage across the many projectiles… Probably well balanced in a full game with minion battles, but in a boss rush with only one target (with the exception of Blue boss spawning minions), it doesn’t cover up the lack of power

Aesthetics issues:

• hub has imperfect BGM loop
• to allow smooth motion, characters move with sub-pixels, but they may also stop on sub-pixels. To avoid fix you may snap characters who stop moving to an integer pixel. But it’s not that terrible in an action game; in fact, Shovel Knight uses continuous motion allowing sub-pixels even on stop position, and I never noticed until I paid attention.
• I thought the ending cinematic was featuring a camel but considering the setting (and reference to Zelda Oracle’s opening cinematic when Link arrives to the temple) it must have been a horse

Player feedack issue:

• if you stand where the boss weapon orb will appear after defeating boss, player character silently picks (no SFX, no FX) it and player may miss the fact they got a new weapon

UI issue:

• cannot press start to go back to main menu and select different difficulty level. I think I selected Jam difficulty by accident when doing a “New Game+” with shinigami weapon unlocked. So I had to close and restart the game, but then I lost my save and shinigami weapon unlock! See “Go further” last suggestion.

Bugs:

• just before entering Shinigami boss, I lost the blue weapon, replaced with normal one, for some reason. Could not repro. Did I hit the blue fire one time too many?
• when defeated by Shinigami at a certain point (probably at the start of skill SFX), the SFX keeps playing in loop in the hub after respawn, until starting boss again and fight actually starts again
• Shinigami may appear quite offset to the right of thrown scythe target position and that may make it appear more than 50% outside screen

Go further:

• probably due to lack of time, the ending cinematic didn’t show whom the MC wanted to resurrect, although it was hinted in previous dialogues
• ability to pick any combination of melee and range (e.g. using range attack on a torch to replace range attack only). BUT it’s probably easier for the brain to remember the same pair every time, so just something that would be cool in New Game+
• show damage and boss HP bar? Not something that was present in 2D Zelda times, but maybe would be good in expert/debug/replay mode to understand DPS and why red weapon look so strong, or if green weapon is worth it… also for you, the dev, to help balancing!
• add a little message at the end of the game (if finished for the first time in that difficulty level) to tell player they unlocked shinigami weapon for that difficulty level, so players don’t just close the game after beating hard mode
• persistent save for finishing game and unlocking shinigami’s weapon (for the same or inferior level of difficulty, I suppose), so I’m not afraid of closing the game (esp. since there is no way to go back to main menu)

I know it’s hard to get back on jam games to update them, so don’t worry about the suggestions, it’s more important to keep this stuff in mind for your next games! … Although I see you tackle a different genre every time!

Eager to try your other games!

Ah, I see, many things became easier, with a few motion API becoming more obscure in Godot 4 (such as slope snapping) but recently they implemented suggestions we had and so it should be pretty easy to do both simple platforming and more advanced stuff like slope snapping - I forgot to mention it in my previous post but that’s actually a nice “next step” to try as well.

So I downloaded the game manually on Linux, but it crashes on start. Console shows “OSError: Couldn’t find file ‘gui/window_icon.png’.”

Checking the game files, there is no gui folder. I copied gui from another Renpy game, and I could start the game (of course it completely changes the mood). But then BG and character sprites are still missing, so I only see the text.

In other words, all the assets are missing!

Did you exclude them from the build?

Hello, please make sure to tag mac and pc builds with the appropriate platforms (resp. macOS and Windows+Linux). I’m surprised the mac build at least was not automatically tagged, maybe you didn’t upload it with butler? And for pc there’s not much choice as itch doesn’t know the Renpy build name formatting. You only have to do it once per project, any further updates in the same channel will remain tagged.

This will allow direct download from itch app and play instead of manual download and run executable.

Cool 3D shooter boss rush, classic shoot with a pistol and a shotgun. Couldn’t find which had better DPS and used them differently based on the situation.

Some QoL like the “lava” (yellow bile) making you auto-jump in the last level, however in the second level you just fall into the purple pile and it slowly kills you and you cannot always easily jump nor walk back onto the platforms. I liked the extra boss phases too.

I didn’t expect it to end where it ended, but that was already a good length esp. taking death into account. But not too many deaths either! Most of the time I could see where I did a mistake and where I could improve. Exception was when hitting some self-exploding minion out from of my field of view.

Also, it seems that the Steam version will expand on it anyway!

Seems like a good work for one person too. I myself cannot make 3D models nor animate them so I never tried this kind of project!

P.S.: I like attention to details like the heroine’s red nails. Surely it’s not made out of blood, right?

Oh. good to see people working on mods getting interest in original game making!

Not too many levels, just enough to demonstrate the mechanics with a harder one at the end. Sometimes it’s a bit frustrating as air controls are pretty stiff (you don’t exactly cancel an air dash but rather go into the opposite direction which goes too much backward if you do it too early) and I felt like I fell many times on easy sections. But the whole challenge is estimating a good position to start dashing, and then adjusting mid-air if needed, after all.

It’s not possible to dash from the ground which disturbed me on level 3 or 4 since there is a corridor here you can barely jump, yet you are expected to dash through a wall to reach the goal.

It’s fun that the fire stomp burns leaves on the ground, although it would be cooler to just stomp through breakable ground (but then there wouldn’t be any fire mechanic at all - unless you implement ground dash and then you put burn leaves on the ground with a normal dash).

Anyway, if the objective was to learn Godot 4 2D physics, that seems like it was a success! If you’re interested in pushing arcade games further, you can always try some dynamic height jump and airborne acceleration next. Or, if you fancy ragdoll and organic physics, you could try a truly physics-based game with joints, momentum, etc. (I have myself barely touched this, it was only for aesthetic cloth motion and it didn’t work out so well, so I wouldn’t be able to give you advice beyond general physics concepts).

Thanks!

If you fancy Sonic fan events, I’ll try to have some demo of my next fan game (Super Sonic Heroes) ready for SAGE 2025.

Interesting, back in the days of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, we had troubles beating the bosses at first, then after understanding the patterns, execution was not an issue anymore and so we could beat them at 100% and it sometimes felt a bit boring when replaying the game as we felt no sense of danger. The solution in later games was to make execution much harder and requires better dexterity and timing skills… but I had never thought about going the opposite way, turning a boss battle into a pure puzzle! This way it completely assumes its non-replayability and focuses on problem-solving itself.

I admit I thought there would be 2-3 bosses where you would have to reuse the same skills but they would have different effects, however I understand that it must be complicated to pull that off… In the end, the one-boss experience was still fun!

It’s a lot of trial-and-error and some exotic effects are not predictable, but I like that most of the combinations can be guessed. This way, after 2-3 attempts the solution appears clearly (at the end it was mostly counting the number of turns of delayed effects to get the right timing).

The delayed meteo reminded me of Golden Sun 2’s Dedalus’ missile attack.

One remark on game size though, I’m surprised it’s 1.5 GB unzipped. I thought it’d be because of HD artworks but considering the artifacts and the size of the native window, it shouldn’t be that big/hires… So it must be the number of animation frames then. The monster idle animation seems to move body parts but maybe it’s actually integrated with fullbody frames, making it bigger? I thought flat colors wouldn’t be that big though…

Anyway, congrats, I see you don’t have many games but they seem to be interesting puzzles! I’ll try the other one later!

P.S.: wow, mentioned just below CrossCode on itch recommends? I just saw it was released in 2018!

No problems!

Ah, I see. It mixed the beginning of katana “bure-do/bureido” and end of English “ade” so it didn’t appear obvious to me (I was thinking that it would me more thematic with “fist” but then I remembered that the master was named “Phisto” already! If his first name was “Me” it would be even funnier… also, there’s this Jedi Master named “Fisto” https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kit_Fisto).

P.S.: Apparently in Swedish, “burade” means “caged/locked”. In Japanese it could be “bura-de” (with a bra). But I think I’m going astray with this one…

Excellent entry!

It’s really shonen-style battle with reversals and last-second moves, but on top of that memories from the master and the thematic around historical arts really make it complete! (and the post-ending joke too is the cherry on top of the cake… I was really expecting something there)

It did sound parodic but at some point you really get into it, too. How is he going to win this?

I spot a “Kenji” that remained instead of “Finn” and didn’t understand for a moment, fortunately color was blue so I deduced it was Finn.

Just a question, do you pronounce “Burade” like a Japanese or English name?

In the tutorial text the buttons did not appear, fortunately they were written at the top-right of the screen. The shield (mouse right button) worked correctly, I could also swing the bat (mouse left button) but for some reason it would never make the projectiles bounce back. Maybe I need a very specific timing? I tried to get the projectiles inside the hitbox indicated by the bat hit FX but it didn’t seem to help. After a moment the game reset, probably my HP had reached zero.

Otherwise, very cool art style, I’ve played a few battle rhythm jam games succeed, it’s a clever way to get a dynamic game quickly but at lower budget as it takes place in a smaller scene, and level design is replaced by rhythm design.

Minor remark on zip: Tiny-Talk-All.zip has a basic character sheet Tiny-Talk.png (on white BG) but not Tiny-Talk-All-Variations.png (on alpha BG), so I just downloaded it manually.

Either way, adding -All.zip for all your fonts made it much faster to me to download all your fonts from the MEGA Bundle sale, thank you!

Sure, I’ll check the Once Upon a Time version when it’s out then!

Looks like you’ve been adding more comments on my games and even some YouTube videos, and in fact, on Unsatisfied, you gave positive feedback on a specific line of text in the game that you liked, which was great!

But for the others, you ignored my suggestion and kept posting very generic one-line comments, which again made me wondered if you actually played/watched every video… It’s not a problem that various people come and post short comments, but when the same person serial-comments with one or two words of every work of the same author (and that person is not a close friend), it gets a little weird.

Honestly it’s not critical if you can’t find the right words to express your thoughts - but if you only want to post quantitative feedback to say that you like or didn’t like something, but don’t know better words for that, rating is just fine. On itch.io, there is the rating button at the top-right with a star icon, where you can give a rating and commenting is optional. On YouTube, it’s Thumb up (or Thumb down if you didn’t like it). These sounds like better options when you want to support a work by helping it stand out on the website thanks to the promotion algorithm, but you don’t have any qualitative feedback to add. This also reduces my notifications which can add to my mental workload (I don’t receive notifications for ratings on itch - I just check the average ratings of a given game when I want to).

Again, I enjoy seeing new people give me one-liner like “That game was cool!” but when it’s the same person every time and they never said they were dissatisfied with anything even in my worst entries, the satisfaction starts wearing out and the value of the congratulations starts dropping. So, better use rating / thumb up in that case.

Now, if you really want to learn how to write good qualitative reviews, have a break from posting comments and look at how other people do it. For instance, try to read the top Steam reviews of various games, especially those of medium and big length. There may be very deep and detailed. You don’t have to go that far but if you really like the games you play, you can probably find at least one or two sentences to write about them.

Of course, don’t go the opposite way either: writing paragraphs for the sake of writing paragraphs. If you don’t know what to say, a few lines, or even a pure rating without text is fine.

I’m surprised to be the first to comment on this among the 4 jams to submitted to!

Nice structure and lore with poetry told by the Jester! It’s even more Once Upon a Time VN Jam-like than my own Once Upon a Time entry.

Impressed by the very different routes at the end, although this seems a huge amount of work if you keep working on the game! The first 3 characters are likeable in different ways, strong in their archetypes: the straight paladin (I like the “unintended humor” he triggers by being so serious, like the one in Honor among Thieves), the jester who knows more than he pretends (he embodies the concept of “Chaotic Neutral”) and the scientist (perfect analysis power applies to body structure as well? Who knew Heroes’ Sylar could have been a professional masseur?)

A few bugs, that you probably noticed already:

• Landslod sprite becomes huge (head cut) at some points (when MC is surprised, after arrive on castle and maybe once more in the city?)

• Landslod sprite is sometimes on the left

• Landslod sprite confused not loaded due to typo in “confused”

• Credits line partially cut

The page says:

“Once Upon A Time VN Jam” is a three-month game jam running from October 1st, 2024 00:00 (UTC+2) to January 31st, 2024 23:59 (UTC+1) held to create fairy-tale-themed narrative stories.

since we moved the deadline from Jan 3 to 31, it’s now 4 months.

Is the 1 month just a grace period, or is it really 4 months?

Very nice! Clever use of the single picture (the hero slime can be seen at multiple places, as in the old adventure books).

I like how the shortcut makes you go back but not too much and you can go on from there (a metaphor for “there is no shortcut in improving?”).

Each slime seems to represent an emotion or state of mind in the journey of progressing toward the top. I thought they’d be more dialogues with each of them but I suppose that has to fit in 1000 words including the branching!

Also, I can’t believe I’m the first one to post here!

Glad to help!

In the same theme, I noticed Ludum Dare 24 (2020) game Phone Tree of Despair (https://jezzamon.itch.io/phone-tree-of-despair) was re-released with a web version in 2021! (the old real phone server was down) It needs a microphone though.

Or, if you prefer more “dynamic” AI there was Event[0], I haven’t finished it myself…

Oh, I like the concept and dual view! Looks like some Wario Ware challenge for DS!

Could be a competitor for Mech Jam as well?

Still got perf issues with web builds, which cause embedded view to be a bit slow and fullscreen to be very slow (so too easy… but too long to wait for next hit).

Is the music beat supposed to match when asteroids strike? If so, because of the slowdown it got offset. But there is still some margin to hit the asteroid anyway.

Design-wise, I appreciate that missing an asteroid means it gets destroyed and there is one fewer to care about, creating some auto-balance of difficulty. Reversely, the more you hit, the more often they come back!

I didn’t play much, but I liked the mood and humor (and the two only foxes).

It was hard to throw the carrot into the first basket (compared to what I’d expect from a wholesome game like this). But I admit playing the web version with some lag didn’t help.

I thought I had obtained a carrot in my inventory in the first cave but I still had to pick one from the ground anyway.

Web game didn’t catch up/down keys so I accidentally scrolled the page on jump/harvest/throw.

Ah, I don’t see a standalone version so I guess I won’t be able to test a faster version, unless I switch PC.

Really fun to play, I love the “Hey!” sound and the BGM mixed with radio voices too.

I would have liked having some extra visual/audio feedback on arresting suspect, retrieving a key from an ally and above all getting restored at a CCTV, since you can do it only once and it’s critical that you are sure you did it correctly. Fortunately there is no penalty in Hey-ing repeatedly.

Also, I thought the white characters were suspects too since it’s the same “Hey!” sound but in fact they are allies, not part of intruders count (but since the Hey action can affect multiple entities at once, I guess there’s not much choice here).

Finally played almost 2 years later!

I like the chill mood and retake on chess.

My main issue was that outside Pawns, the AI is rather good meaning it won’t go onto squares I threaten… which also means it’s hard to destroy all the enemy units (it’s not that easy to force a certain unit into dying by threatening its current and all its future possible positions, except slow units like the King, and pawns, esp. on a board that’s mostly empty). Fortunately the AI did a mistake, but it’s a bit hard to tell how long it will take to do so. If the enemy side also had some “king” I suppose it could be faster. But it’s also funnier to just eat all the enemy units.

After doing a stupid mistake I restarted the game, but this time the first level has a full row of pawns to fight! It was too long to kill them all (and the animations are slow and unskippable, which wasn’t an issue on my first run as I kept thinking, but against an army of pawns it’s not really interesting), so I gave up.

Otherwise I like the ability to pick new units… it seems you should get the high stars, but pawns are also useful to cover their own range. Plus high stars are limited in later game due to limited slots.

Maybe you took part to later Magical Girl Game Jams too? I should check the 2023 entries as well!

Reading the titles of the books on the shelves was really fun! Although the mood of the game itself was more serious.

I thought the choice would be about sacrificing something from your current life (choose between past and your new life), but it wasn’t the case.

I would have liked to have the choice to check the book before making my decision, but I suppose that would remove the suspense!

I also had to shoot by holding Shift, although at least after pressing the key with a “?” in the top position it read the Help manual.

Tested on Linux Ubuntu, Wine worked! But it didn’t work directly when pressing Launch from the itch app for some reason, got some errors. Had to open terminal > wine abas-game.exe

Thanks!

Second run after update! 17mn 9sec… At first I didn’t download the update (itch app seems to have a bug and not show Update button, just Launch on the Downloads window and doesn’t warn you it’s an old version!), so at least I could train on the older version before doing this run.

The Moss Garden was very interesting, and much more “puzzly” in its approach (more control, smaller steps to move the snails precisely).

I had a few issues though, and esp. with the screen where you indirectly guide the glass ball with a single snail through some labyrinth. If you accidentally push the ball left first, then right again, it may fall into a corner and get stuck there. If at least my character could kick through the wall tile I would unstuck myself, but I had to reset completely.

Still some crazy Unity physics when snails can send the character or glass ball flying, but since in the Moss Garden it’s useful to make yourself spring up very fast or push the glass ball forward, I didn’t complain!

EDIT: oh, just realized I was commenting on the devlog… no wonder I was the only one commenting here! Well, as long as you can read it…

Oh, this one was very interesting regarding going around limitations! The mask on the Church on everything but the window to show just the outside with the moon, the extra stains on The Witch’s clothes (apparently stains are drawn and not programmatical but that seems allowed to add such small changes, like facial expressions, good to know), the gray filter become removed over time…

I tried both endings. There is not much change in the middle of the story, it’s all progressive… which is okay for such a short story (plus you had multiple branches, esp. the 3 background stories at the beginning, making you hit 997 words already).

I kinda missed The Grim’s sprite on the main menu (another clever trick to avoid using an extra sprite) so I had to imagine it myself (it was not that different, I suppose, although I imagined it quite bulky, more like a Cerberus guardian, at the beginning).

Ending 1 is quite the sudden change of pace, I now imagine The Grim like Elias in Ancient Magus’ Bride. Also extra effort from the VA for the deeper voice!

Just started the game, note for dev: flag “win” build also as Linux (in fact it’s a Windows+Linux distribution, Renpy calls it “pc” although it’s not too clear), and flag osx build for macOS.

I’ll write my full feedback after playing the game on the jam entry page since I’m myself a participant.

Oh, right. Don’t worry about it, creating big levels like this is still a good experience to have (hm, unless you mostly copy-pasted… as I did. Was fun to adapt the level to hide emeralds though).

Yes, I use Discord, I sent you an invite (you can remove your username now if you fear spam)

Oh, thanks!

Yes, that’s the fan game effect. At the same time, most players will not really look at the other games, so while it’s good to get followers, you still need to release an outstanding product after that. That’s what I’m struggling with at the moment, trying to work more on polished original games. I hope I can make them look more like yours, or some of the most popular original PICO-8 games I have played (many limitations but many animations and SFX to liven up the scene). Maybe I need to squish my sprites more? :)

You mean you used another engine before? I see that this one is also on Construct 2, and previous games use Construct 1. The only difference I notice is the use of the Cosmic Engine (which seems to be a Sonic-style framework for Construct 2/3).

P.S.: I said I was working on original games but I just announced my next fan game in development “Super Sonic Heroes” today anyway. It’s hard to stop…

Oh, it’s very polished! I came from Sonic Origins Pocket Edition, but I may prefer your original games which have a smaller scope but where you pay attention to the details!

I’m not super at ease with the reverse shot thrust + auto fire. I’d rather choose when to shoot and thrust (as in that indie game with witches I forgot the name of, or Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime with a certain engine). Although I understand you try to make games with simple controls that can be played on mobile.

Audio: very chill, I like the mood.

Eager to check your other creations!

Oh, nice! I only recently discovered Sonic Pocket Adventure (would have been of great help to know it earlier while I was working on my own 8-bit demake…)

I suppose there first stage doesn’t have all chaos emeralds and they will be scattered across the future stages, Master System / Game Gear style.

The game is working but it has many small issues. The physics/platforming issues in particular are the most important to fix first. It’s cool that you made the full stage, but I’d recommend polishing physics first because it may affect your level design testing.

Physics

• when rolling, sprite is a bit above ground. You need to adjust the sprite/collider offset when rolling. In my own game I consider “crouch” and “roll” both “compact” states with smaller colliders, and for which I offset the character center appropriately (I’m just following the Sonic Physics Guide)
• no variable jump height (pressing jump button just once gives you full jump; I don’t know if Sonic Pocket Adventure was like this, but from what I’ve seen it tries to stay close to classic Sonic on Genesis)
• Super Peel Out is incredibly fast, I rushed to the end of the level. I don’t know if it’s the original speed value and it just looks very fast in Green Hill because it was made for Sonic CD, in which case you may want to balance a bit
• there are other differences with the original game like being hurt or bouncing off enemies going pretty high, but to be honest I like those: it helps escaping spike pit, and also to chain bouncing off enemies. I could chain bounce over multiple crabs and chameleon enemies thanks to that, almost Sonic Adventure Homing Attack style! Pretty cool!

Audio

• BGM loops only after fade out. I don’t know if Construct supports BGM Intro-Loop but ideally you’ll use that for Green Hill, to get a perfect loop

Flow

• Breaking bug: stuck on Green Hill result screen, the number count down reached 0 but I can still hear the cash register SFX playing indefinitely and I cannot progress to the next stage.

Keep up the good job!

Oh, I didn’t expect that much work on presentation! I didn’t even know you could show a progress bar covering the full screen to color a picture! (I suppose it’s a rectangular mask that moves to the right?)

Nice onboarding accessibility settings (from npckc maybe?). Keyboard nav is weird, but I know it’s something to solve on Renpy side…

Moving the game quick menu to the top allows to unlock the 4th line of text in the dialogue area, smart! (I should really customize the dialogue box in my next game, after adding the background it looked ugly in our entry…)

Letter = monologue + linear is a smart choice to make it fit in 1000 words while having enough perceived content.

Scrolling BG while reading also puts you into the world.

Was it indended that it scrolls so fast to the character’s head, then stop?

Credits used centered text like classic credit roll, I’ll remember this (for a change of my usual About page).

Typo:

• “I could have asked for a better family” -> “I could not have asked for a better family” (otherwise it’s a bit funny and breaks the mood)
• “as your sister that will always love you” -> “who will always love you”