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Amazing! Glad it helped 🙂

Hi, I decided to play again and make some recordings to demonstrate specifically what I mean by inaccurate directions.

In this test, I'm moving directly to the left/right, then changing to diagonal-up and inputting a dash. I'm leaving a slight gap to demonstrate that I'm definitely pressing the diagonal before the dash (presses should be audible in the video). When playing on keyboard, the dash often goes left/right instead of diagonal, whereas on gamepad it is very consistent (I know gamepad is not fully supported, but I noticed it worked).

Playing with keyboard (diagonal is slow to register)

Playing with gamepad (diagonal registers perfectly)

To me, this strongly suggests the issue is caused by Input.GetAxis() smoothing, as Unity applies the smoothing to keyboard inputs but not gamepad.

Input buffering may help the controls feel better in general, but I believe this is a separate issue.

(Sorry if this is obnoxious, I just wanted to be clear about what my issue was.)

A magical game! Really fantastic.

• Love the visual style
• Love the characters and their dialogue
• Love the sound effects
• LOVE the music. 11/10 music.
• Really enjoyed all the little details in the character controls, like the running turnaround and ledge hanging.
• Did not like the camera zooming in and out constantly. I found it very uncomfortable and felt the game would benefit from it staying fixed, maybe at the furthest zoom level.
• The rock walls can be quite hard to see against the background, I think they could have been a bit brighter.
• The labyrinth does get a bit samey, though the complexity of the movement and the mystery of the enemies keeps it interesting for quite a while.

Congrats on such a cool entry.

Fun game! Here are some thoughts:

• Impressive enemy variety, and their visual designs have a tonne of character.
• Overall pixel art is really great (especially those enemies!) but could maybe benefit from some punchier colours?
• Variable-height jump might have been a good addition - I was often frustrated when I jumped up into a hazard when I would have liked to do a small jump.
• Enemy bullets are a bit small and hard to see.
• I enjoy the music, but I feel something slightly more ambient/atmospheric could have enhanced it.

Thanks for making this game! And also for taking the time to play mine :)

Fantastic, one of the best entries I've played. I thought the voice acting was well done, and the player abilities had a lot of satisfying juice (recalling the bucket, and using the dash especially). And the "hard platforming" challenges towards the end were surprisingly fun.

The main critiques I have are:

• art inconsistencies (thought most of the art is great): mixed pixel scales, blurry background and some assets that look flat and unfinished in comparison.
• minor control issues: the slight kickback when throwing the bucket can be very annoying when throwing in midair. The dash stopping completely at a wall when impacting diagonally is unsatisfying and imo should continue grinding along the surface. And the dash/shooting often fired in the wrong direction. I'm guessing the last one might be down to using Unity's Input.GetAxis(), which applies smoothing, and could be solved using Input.GetAxisRaw()

Thanks for making this awesome game!

I liked the visuals, music and atmosphere a lot, and how smooth it feels to get around the world.

Unfortunately I felt like there were a lot of long and similar hallways, and after I got the double jump I got very lost and eventually gave up.

Fixed-angle 3D Metroidvania is something I've wanted to see for ages (my game is also a version of the idea), and I think this does a good job! I love the sounds and spiky vfx, they made even small actions like jumping and landing feel punchy. And it does such a good job with the atmosphere that I didn't mind the greybox at all. The way you use light shafts to lift you while gliding is really cool, as opposed to the obvious choice of wind. I liked how the scale and spacing of the platforms made the layout clear and kept perspective issues to a minimum.
I did have some minor issues with the controls and level design:

• The way the glider combines with the variable-height jump is a bit finicky: intuitively at first I wanted to double tap the button straight away, and even after I learned to aim for the peak the timing felt pretty tight to make it across some gaps. Maybe it could be fudged in some way so that within a certain input window your travel distance ends up about the same? The glider coming out feels a bit limp too. Could possibly be improved by the glider giving a slight vertical boost at the start?
• Use of the wall climb/wallrun seems to be limited to marked walls, which kinda dampens my excitement about it. (There's not that much game afterwards to judge by, so maybe it would be fine. I just think I would be more excited to start looking for places I can use it myself.)
• The section where you run back and forth hitting switches to activate offscreen platforms was very unsatisfying.
• Minor issue, but I found it a little annoying that a chunk of the world is only traversable in one direction because of ledges you drop down. After getting the sword and returning to the starting area, I retraced my steps to check this fork in the path that I remembered and found that I had to run around the whole loop again to get back to the start.

Overall, a strong entry. And thanks for playing my game too!

Loved it!

The way the world steadily opens up just by extending your battery and ribbon is very satisfying, it reminded me of A Short Hike (though I'm sure other games too).

The world structure - being able to see most of it from far away and figuring out how to get there - is very satisfying and elegant. The visuals are wonderfully cohesive, and it's cool to see stuff like reflections mixed so seamlessly with the low-res style. Very creative use of household items too, for some reason I especially loved the bottles rolling in the bathtub.

Just to nitpick a little:

• The game feels quite punitive, especially at the start. Having to worry about both the battery range and the timer means you are constantly being reset. I came to enjoy the battery a lot, especially making it to a power point right as you run out. But the timer kinda remained an annoyance (though it was somewhat satisfying to repeat sections and master the space).
• The controls are mostly great but could be polished: aiming gets messed up when you're close to walls, especially on the right hand side. It's also frustrating not being able to aim very high, not sure if this is to limit progression or camera problems. Stabbing the pin into walls could feel a bit nicer too - maybe an effect at the hit point or some bend/wobble or something. Thinking about this ability in Mario Odyssey. Maybe it could also stay at the angle you stab it, instead of changing to the wall normal? idk
• Small bug: Playtime on the save menu shows total minutes/seconds, instead of remainder
  

Anyway, fantastic entry!!

Great art, characters and dialogue system! I like how you can go back to the lake and treat Frank kinda like a therapist and how the ending implies you figured out exactly what happened. Clever.

Edit: the game is now "finished"! Hope you enjoy.
The game is playable but very unfinished. I'm planning to update it after the deadline, so check back in 24hrs for a better version!

Wow! I used this pack for a prototype about a year ago and it was already great. Came back to grab it again and your remake is incredible!! You've gone well beyond Link's Awakening IMO. Thanks for all your work on this!

Love this game. Made it to 68000 :)

Still enjoying the game! Another thought: it could be really nice if when the correct colour shows up, it would show the corresponding correct positions for the sliders, as well as where you placed them. You could see for example "oh, I picked a yellow-orange, but it was more of a red-orange."

I think this game could be really great for training colour intuition, and that kind of display could be better feedback than just the numbers.

It's really fun!! Some feedback:

- I consistently overestimated the brightness of colours, possibly because they flash against a dark background. A more "middle grey" background could maybe help players estimate better.

- it's nice how the sliders fade out while you're not touching them, but I think they could stay very slightly visible. I would often go to tweak the colour very slightly, but I had forgotten where the slider was and messed up my colour.

- the game froze (I think) after I completed the daily. Playing on mobile. Shows "10 of 10 84%" and a big 76% in the centre. Can't press quit.

This also happened to me! If it happened to anyone else and you still want to do the fight, go to "AppData/Local/natur/progress.ini" and change the line
staf="1.000000"
to
staf="0.000000"

Finished it, loved it. Best part: frog, so satisfying

I was waiting for this, and I'm enjoying it so far! Just had a few issues that you might want to know about:

• I couldn't install the game through the itch app
• after losing my last bit of health by falling in the water, on the "you died" screen the cursor was still locked in the centre
• after I leaving the stick bug area, I wasn't able to make the jump back from this little ledge. (maybe this isn't a bug, but I couldn't figure it out)

Keep up the great work <3

I loved it! Thankyou for making it

Thanks for playing, and for your nice comment!

Haha, thanks a lot! And congrats on your result for Droidvania, well deserved!

Great feedback, thanks!

Positives:

• The shooting feels very satisfying
• The art style with solid colors and black outlines is very nice.
• The music is mostly pretty good.
• The story is quite good and mysterious. I like how the characters speak so casually, it gives the game a unique voice.
• Seeing friendly versions of the enemies in the town is a nice touch that builds the world.
• The "!" icons for pits that you will die in (rather than go to another screen) really help.

Negatives:

• The platforming doesn't feel that great, and especially the way the shooting interacts with it feels janky and isn't very fun. Needing to focus on aiming to help your jumping is a bit much IMO. It's a good idea though. Maybe it could be better with some changes.
• The first music track has a constant ringing sound in it which is quite painful.
• The level design is not great. A linear world where you have to run end-to-end every time you get a powerup is not what I look for in a Metroidvania.
• I fell out of the world a few times. Once when going up the long wall on the left hand side, I was shooting to push myself against the wall when I switched screens and went through the wall. And once when I was descending that section, I jumped as far as I could to the right to try and get down faster, but I went off the right side of the screen and the screen change didn't trigger.
• The instant respawn after falling in a pit makes it quite easy to die again straight away.

Overall though, nice job!

I like the story setup and vibe! The music and sound effects are great. I loved the robot who wonders if "hammers aren't very good for fixing things", that made me laugh. The way the hammer charge is actually used to go back and solve previous puzzles (instead of just passing obstacles) is great.

Some areas for improvement:

• Text speed is way too slow and unskippable.
• Character movement feels too slow.
• When you turn around, your character seems to change position slightly (and so does your collision box).
• Control mapping is strange. I wanted to use the hammer with my right hand (moving with left) so I ended up with my hands overlapping.
• It's strange how after the hammer charge fills all the way up, you actually have to hold it a bit longer to make it work. It should work as soon as the bar is full.
• Using the rising platforms for a boost only seems to work if you jump right at the start of their rise, so you just have to guess when it will go, which doesn't feel satisfying. I would study the moving platforms in Celeste for an example of this feeling nice and consistent. https://twitter.com/MattThorson/status/1238338581971603457
• If you touch the spikes, it's very easy to lose all your health before you can do anything.
• The game went to a black screen multiple times for me, so unfortunately I couldn't finish it.

Hope that doesn't feel too negative. Nice job!

I think it has potential. Music and character art is nice.

Main suggestions:

• You should put some screenshots on your game page! I had no idea what to expect until I booted it up.
• Control mapping is pretty weird. I want to be able to use my abilities while moving, so I ended up with my hands crossed over, using A/D with left hand and Q/E/space with right hand.
• When you flip gravity in the air, your momentum also flips and you go insanely fast. I would consider making it zero out your vertical speed, or using constant fall speed, same as VVVVVV, but that might be hard to make work with jumping.
• The rooms feel larger than than they need to be. I think it could feel less sparse and easier to understand if they were smaller

Nice job!

Cool game! No need to be sorry about the length.

I like the atmosphere and the partner mechanic, both remind of Ico.

Camera controls are tight. The attack is a little strange, how it seems to sweep downwards without much range (though there isn't enough combat so far for that to actually get annoying).

I love the little details in the level design, like the bent bars.

The interior sections can be difficult to navigate due to the untextured walls and flat ambient light.

It would be good have some sort of voice or feedback when you press control to make your partner stay/follow. At one point when I was separated from her, I pressed a bunch of keys to see if they did anything, and ended up with her lost inside a building.

Overall, really fun and promising!

Love it! Possibly my favourite jam entry.

Fun to explore. Looking out for the tiles you can pass through is fun and just subtle enough. Lots of powerups. The abilities are all really clever and a good fit for the game. The minimal jetpack gauge is great. The mini-challenges all make good use of your abilities. The level teaches you slowly about how to use the abilities before you need them for something really challenging. The way the boss combines use of bouncing bullets with the jetpack for a kind of bullet hell experience was really satisfying.

And I thought the way the small amount of text appears in the corner to tell a bit of a story was really classy and injected a lot of character.

The only points of criticism I have are that the music can get repetitive, and the platforming around spikes can sometimes feel a bit sloppy (maybe because of their collision size, or maybe because the jumping/hovering is not quite precise enough for some of the challenges).

Great job!

Cool game! It's pretty rough, but the setting and vibe are super interesting and diffusing into walls is great. To me it kinda switches the game between being a platformer and a top-down game, and you have to reinterpret the level in your head.

I love how open it is right from the start, how you can just wander in any direction and find something interesting. Reminds me of Zelda 1.

Some thoughts:

• I think the game is a bit too unforgiving, and it wasn't clear when I hit a checkpoint that I would return to.
• It's not clear which enemies can hurt you while you're in a wall. I couldn't figure it out and I always felt like I would randomly die.
• The transition in/out of walls feels too slow. I think speeding it up a lot would improve the feel, and also prevent some of the times when you can't get out of the wall without being caught.

Overall, nice job!

Thanks a lot! Hopefully I'll be able to make more of it sometime.

:D Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing!

Fun game! I like the setting and the vibe, the music especially. The controls are quite good. So is the level layout - I liked exploring and I liked how after I got the powerup it continued along the same path before looping back to the previous area. I made it to the end (assuming that's the gold floppy?)

Some suggestions:

• The download is not marked as Windows, so installing through the itch app didn't work.
• Some kind of feedback on enemy hits would go a long way. For the ones that take more than one hit, it's difficult to tell whether I hit them or not.
• Attacking while jumping feels strange. It's kinda like it stops your jump half way, then gives you a little boost afterwards. I would expect the jump to continue the same whether you're attacking or not.
• After I died, pressing R to return to save point didn't work.

Nice work!

Cool visuals, music, setting and concept! I like it quite a bit and I felt immersed in the world, which was a little surprising for such a minimalist style.

I got the bounce but unfortunately wasn't able to finish the game. I was trying to move between two rooms where you flip back and forth, but there was an enemy right on the boundary which I couldn't avoid.

Some thoughts on things to improve (mainly control things):

• The character takes quite a while to stop. Strangely this is not an issue on gamepad. Perhaps a result of using Unity's Input.GetAxis() (which uses smoothing) instead of Input.GetAxisRaw()?
• It's hard to get your full jump height if you clip the wall before the top. If this wasn't intentional, it might help to create a PhysicsMaterial2D for the character / level and turn the friction to zero. (Just a hunch)
• Variable height jump would be good, though there weren't actually any places in the game where I felt I needed it.
• Making the controls always left/right made it more difficult for me (though in some ways it's fun). It was mostly an issue for me in the part where you fall back and forth between screens.
• The idea of falling back and forth to gain momentum is kinda fun but also very unintuitive to me.
• Returning to the beginning of the game after each hit felt a bit too punishing.

Sorry if that's a lot! It feels like the game has good potential!

Hi! I got stuck. This is what I did (in case it helps):

1. Started the game and immediately went left, ended up on the world map.
2. Walked to another level (the one where you get the wrench).
3. Got the wrench.
4. Got one other thing, but I took it in a hurry because I was about to be attacked so I don't know what it said.
5. Figured I couldn't get any further, so I went back to the map.
6. Wasn't able to walk back to the first level. My character kept turning around.

* SPOILERS*

Loved it! Controls, atmosphere and music are excellent. The morph ability is very versatile. I like how the fire before the boss is already lit so you don't have to choose.

Some suggestions:

• The way the spear attack moves you forward isn't really useful and often gets you killed. One thing to try might be to always apply knockback on a successful hit to either the enemy (if it's small) or you (if it's large) so that you don't end up overlapping it.
• Enemies being the same colour as their environment can make them hard to see, though it sometimes made me slow down and observe carefully, which could be good.
• Might be good to start combining enemy types in the same room before the boss.