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Thank you! Glad you liked it!

Getting to the end of this was HARD WORK and I didn't fully understand the ending scene unfortunately. I desperately desperately wished there had been more check-points when I stood on safe even ground, because I'm not that good at platformers. It wasn't too DIFFICULT per say, I could do every segment, but having to then also learn the next one and redo something I struggled with made me very frustrated haha, but I preservered! ( i did try extra-jump mode which did help but really, more check-points would have made me happy to try the challenge.)

Other than that wow wow wow, in 9 DAYS?? Both gameplay modes play really well, the platformer especially is incredible, very engaging level-design and quite challenging. Visuals overall are great, the Onion not fitting into the visual design was really funny, the humour throughout in general carries it quite well and I enjoyed the hints of gravitas throughout even though I was a bit confused by the end so it didn't give me quite the payoff I'd expected. Everything is super juicy and responsive, this is amazing work (again.)

Clearly you do spectacular work all the time, hat off to you.

I'll be sure to check it out! I played the duck game for a little while too, you're just generally very good at juicy gameplay!

Oh amazing, you thought of everything! :D You know what you're doing obviously, I should have checked out your other games before, I was a big fan of your entry to the last wild jam too!

Oh, great to know, amazing inclusion! :D It was only a slight bother in the end!

Amazing visuals, really good atmosphere, and I love the sense of space and progression the landscape achieves. It feels like there is a great variety of different areas that really feel like you're going on a journey, and walking up the hill at the end and getting up to the height of the stars looked and felt great (could have gone on even longer for me!)

The field of flowers! Stunning.

This is a lovely entry, though I'm not sure it does much with the metamorphosis theme. A few bits of feedback if you guys want to keep working on it:

- The flat visuals work great, but I don't think it serves the game that the character and interactable objects can blend completelt into the trees and ohter background elements. I understand that they're all on the same 'level' in terms of distance, but readability for the player to know what they can do is the most important when there are any platform or puzzle game mechanics going on. I'd recommend looking at that again and making the touchstones and boxes just a little lighter or darker than the player, and have the random background trees definitely not block sight of the player. It might be enough to introduce a bit of a gradient to them, a bit of a fog behind the player.

-  pressing Z didn't feel super responsive at times, and I can't tell if it's because it genuinely took a while to work and react or because the game just doesn't sufficiently communicate when an action has taken place. If it's the latter, then a successful interaction should be accompanied by a bit more feedback, whether it's particle effects or a bigger animation. (again, having interactable objects be the same colour means I can't see if I've done anything when I'm standing on top of them.)

- moving a box down a slope was really hard - that doesn't work very well yet.

- I really liked the voice and the language, very peaceful and spiritual. I think storytelling wise, I didn't feel like the game had anything to offer until the very very end when the meaning of the journey becomes more clear. 

Beautiful project!

This is as INCREDIBLE jam entry - what an amazing concept and execution. The mechanics go so much deeper than I'd have expected, with classes evolving twice in various combinations and so many status effects and attacks. Everything works very smoothly, and the feedback on every button and menu is just incredibly polished and feels so good.

The rogue-lite take on this works really well, I got really excited to do my upgrade combos and get new dice added. Every upgrade feels like it makes a genuine difference and I feel like I could make decisions and play specific build if I played again, and it's great to have that level of player strategizing.

I really hope you keep working on this, so I'll leave what feedback I have, though none of it detracts from the game to a degree that would make it any less than a winning contender for sure.

I'm sure a lot of this might be on your list to fix already if given a chance.

- There should be a way for dice to not land in the same position, as when they overlap they're hard to read and click.

- with the later classes, the dice are so dark that it becomes harder to see when they are already used up, or if they have an action I can take. I'd like a bit more readability on those, because it got a little frustrating to click around a bit aimlessly. I know there's icons for it too but the easier to read it at a glance, the better I think. Maybe you can highlight them in another way to clarify what is and isn't available to be activated.

- Because the mechanics ultimately repeat quite a bit, I think I'd like a way to skip through some of the steps a little bit quicker. For example, I'd like to skip to the next turn without being asked if I'm sure all the time. I'm also not sure that I love having to drag every self-applying effect onto my character when that's the only target for it (like heals, blocks). Maybe just activating them with a click could apply the effect, just to make it feel a bit quicker and smoother.

- I missed at first that the dice could be combined into new classes - I do think the tutorial explains this but I didn't quite get it, I wonder if there's a way to demonstrate this more clearly. I was very pleasantly surprised when I figured it out though.

- My game did _nearly_ crash a few times, I think this happened everytime a particle effect was loaded in, like the poison or fire. The screen froze for a while, and unfortuantely quite early on, so some people might click away at that point. I have this problem in my own games, and, just in case it's any help, I've recently learnt that it's worth having a resource that loads all the one-shot particle effects at game start, creates each of them once, and destroys them on finish, so that they're all fully initialized and don't have to load up when they're summoned in game. That might fix it!

Best of luck in the rating, wonderful entry.

I got as far as learning the dash, wanted to leave some feedback! This game has some great atmosphere and it fits the metamorphosis theme great. The menus and cutscenes are really impressive, and you guys have a great idea for making menus feel moody.

The lighting in the levels is great, and the colours work very well. Backgrounds are very good-looking the way they've been implemented.

If you ever plan to expand, or if this advise is helpful for another project, here are some points I think could be improved.

- The player is in desperate need of more feedback when attacking or double jumping - some particle effect or a more noticeable animation - even just using tweens to make some visual difference. Right now it's hard to see when you do anything and so the game doesn't feel very responsive.

- the life counter is right in the top left corner, out of my immediate peripheral vision, and there is nothing drawing my eye to it when I lose a life. As such, dying can come as a bit of a surprise because it's hard to keep my health in mind. Change this to an icon that visually draws attention when the player is hurt and move it a bit out of that corner so he player can see it more easily to improve that communication.

- I think you're going for someting cool with the narrative voice, I can see you really thought about theme and the yearning a metamorphosis can represent, the insufficiency, etc. The cutscenes and text-frames are cool. But they take ages, I can't move whilst the game is talking to me, and after the first time it got a bit frustrating. I also couldn't really see how I earnt a metamorphosis, it's not really connected to anything but running through a level. What about having the player collect 'information' on the enemy's evolution whenever you kill an enemy, filling up a bar or counter, so that when the player has cleared enemies in the level they are rewarded with a new skill as a sign of a deeper understanding? that way, there is a purpose to attacking these creatures that links directly to our evolution.

- I think the double jump could be a tad higher, it's not satisfying to have to stand at the very corner beneath a wall to just about scrape past the edge.

Nice work!

Thanks for playing! Really enjoyed watching your playthrough!

I quite like the skiing controls in this, once I figured out how to move properly it really had the flowiness of skiing. I think the game would be quite fun if you expanded on it. Right now, the experience is dampened a lot by the audio, both where it is implemented and where it's lacking. The gun shots get suddenly cut off and are quite loud, the music doesn't loop properly, and there is no other sound whilst skiing so it all feels a bit disconnected.

I'd love to see some particle effects especially when doing curves, and just a bit more to make the snow feel like snow you're skiing through! 

Was quite fun to play!

This is a pretty fun and original idea! I was confused by how to build a fire at first, I think in some instances, previously correctly played items didn't become backgrounded and just kept being flung around too so it wasn't easy to understand that I was progressing. The mechanic isn't fun exactly, but I still felt engaged by it albeit with some frustration - it's fun that the game also pokes fun at this, I think the writing and characters were all quite amusing! I liked the art overall.

The game could be improved with a bit clearer visual indication of what needs to be done, and more sound effects and music to further communicate when something has successfully happened. Would have been nice to have a little ending to it, too!

The cold hand isn't easy to see on the snow backdrop so it would be good to distinguish that cursor visually a bit more clearly.

Can't speak for Mr. Walkman, but on my side (art and the smaller portion of the programming for polish and UI) I spent about 4-6 hours a day, and we took around 7 days for most of the work! I think Mr. Walkman easily matched that or more!

Really unique way to handle decision making and politics in a game, I like the mechanic a lot. For ordinary dialogue line after line it would get a bit tedious in something longer but I liked the puzzle sections and thought the writing was quite good!

Nice idea and a good direction for the pixel art, though as others have said it doesn't look quite right when the pixels are all different sizes, the game art doesn't end up looking very consistent though every individual piece is well-designed.  The music was also nice and the game could be really fun! I think the freeze mechanic works well here!

I couldn't really play the game however because the tutorial dialogue would constantly fire up on restart whilst enemies could already come and interfere with me and the timer already went down.This happened so quickly that I could never even really figure out how to deliver gifts at all. I did have a score of one but it didn't show in the end-game screen.

Nice bossfight design, I enjoyed how the theme was employed and the art, especially in greyscale, works really well. The controls felt a bit clunky to me, I found the dash very hard to utilize well and would have liked to feel a bit more feedback on some of the player's movements. 

I wasn't clear either how the altar should be charged up initially so it took me a good while to even get the game started. A bit more tutorialization or just sound and animation to indicate when something has happened would elevate it a lot!

Nice graphics and fairly satsifying combat, the audio design and effects around the coin explosion felt good and the health bars also felt nice and responsive! Would have been more engaging for me with more going on and the ability to shoot in multiple directions but I get that that isn't the game type you're going for.

I think I ran into a bug after collecting my first power up and pressing pause. When I closed the pause menu again, the screen would no longer move up and so I couldn't continue.

Pretty challenging game! 

I didn't get far in this game because I immediately got trapped between a tree and a monster and couldn't do anything anymore haha XD I think the game is still a bit buggy in places which detracts from the experience.

From what I have seen though I think it's a cool concept, I really enjoy the vibe and worldbuilding and the music. When I first started it up I thought our mate there was an enemy, an I think it's really cool to explore a more unique species in this setting. The audio went really nicely with it.

The controls and UI just felt a bit janky overall. I don't think the freeze icon fits with the pixel art, and the text was so large on screen that reading it in a pixel font was incredibly difficult and draining.  Attacking stops all movement, which also feels a bit unintuitive.

I think the idea is great though, it would be great to see it more polished up!

Digging out people was pretty fun, and I generally like the concept! But it would have been nice to have a clearer idea of where to navigate, by having some descriptions of where people got lost, some waymarkers to go by, a compass, or any other navigational tool that also lets you find your way back.

I also wish there was an indication of how close to freezing I am at any point, so I could plan better around when I'd have to return. I don't think being near the fire really reset anything visually, I still had a snowpile on my head!

With some quality of life tweaks I think this would be a neat little game!

Good job on the atmosphere, the death animation is great and I really liked the audio design with its winter quiet!

Interesting project! I think the art direction and design overall are really cool, it felt cohesive, and the audio design was good. I enjoyed playing around with it for a while but I would have needed more of a goal or reward to keep at it for longer.

The freezing feels pretty satisfying, though I think I was mostly just button mashing a bit aimlessly and that felt at times like a lot of work. Agree with other's feedback that some sort of auto-attack would have been nice so that the whole game could get quicker and more frantic and I could really feel more powerful.

And that's more than understandable given that you already got an incredible amount done in that short time! :D

This was lovely, every new mechanic was really intuitively introduced into the game and it had a good level of challenge and entertainment! The graphics work really well for what it is.

This was pretty fun! I'd say there could have ben more audio, especially background music, but I think I'm probably actually glad the popups didn't come with more sound or they'd have made me absolutely crazy.

You truly captured the popup virus experience and all the frustration that comes with it. I really enjoyed story beats popping up as emails in the background, I'd have loved if there were even more of them!

Lovely art and a nice concept! With more polish and a few quality of life fixes it would be a lovely game.

It would be nice if the player UI could show ontop of other elements at all times, ratherthan sometimes disappearing behind objects.

I don't know why you chose the conrols as you did, I think it feels a little needlessly different from usual WASD walk + combat. Combat felt a little stiff and unresponsive, I would have liked to have more feedback and knockback here, or a clearer arc for the attack. I think because of that, I would rather have bypassed all enemies than engage in combat.

Some background music would have added a lot!

I really enjoyed lighting the fires for warmth.

This is so good! One of my favourite entries by far! The whole art style is so simple and so charming, the colours are amazingly well picked, everything reads so clearly that you're led through the game quite intuitively. I was never confused, and always knew what to do, and of course it is really polished!

Bit of lag online when building a fire or fighting, as others have mentioned. 

My only feedback is that maybe I'd have liked a little progress bar for harvesting items as I often interrupted it halfway through accidentally.

The upgrade system could also use with a bit more polish so it indicates more clearly when an upgrade has been purchased and if an upgrade is available for the resources you've collected.

I had a really great time playing this. 

Really cool project, I loved the mechanics for collecting clues and putting them together in the end, it made for a challenging puzzle! I needed the hint at the end to get the solution right, but had missed something in the plot that I could have figured out. Really engaging, great music, the art was all cohesive and good-looking.

Awesome entry!

Amazing time! :D

Thanks so much!

I like a lot about this game, and spent a good bit of time on it. The graphics are great, the way the darkness creeps in really feels like being trapped out at night. The stillness of the woods and the minimal audio make you feel isolated and cold out there. Visually, the game gives good feedback to a lot of things and I like the atmosphere and idea overall, and enjoyed carrying woods back to the fire.

I think a few things ultimately inhibited my overall enjoymeny and my ability to try to finish the game.

The nights are incredibly long. There is very little to do for several long minutes but to sit by the fire and wait for it to get light again. Then, during the days, I have no indication of where to look, so I can only venture out into the wilderness with no direction. This would be fine and suits the gameplay if it didn't feel so frustrating to have to sit through another long night, or if I could make a new fire somewhere else so I don't have to venture back to the same place. It's very disorienting, and I understand that that is the point, but it's hard to feel good about exploration when there are no real waymarkers to help you navigate by and it's really just a case of spending a long time waiting and repeatedly trying.

Also felt that it was quite hard to line up with trees correctly in order to get to do the chopping, but I figured out the right angle with time.

I think with a few user experience improvements this game would be incredible, the overall vibe is already really really good.

The concept for this game is really fun and I think you've chosen good, cohesive graphics for it. It took me a while to figure out how to even place a green slope. Ultimately I wish time progressed faster, or could be chosen to progress faster, as it gets a bit tedious after a while. I really wish there was a way to remove misplaced slopes. Sometimes I really didn't understand why certain pieces wouldn't connect, and so mistakes felt very punishing.

Some audio would be nice, and an indicator of where I am placing tiles down as I hover over them!

Pretty fun game and also pretty challenging! The controls feel pretty good and the art works really well for what it is. Would love to see some background art though to elevate it further.

I got frustrated in the third level by the ice platforms seemingly breaking at random, which means some playthroughs seem nye impossible to complete, and you can't really plan for them. I think this feels unfair more than challenging. Some indication of which platforms will break, like cracked ice graphics, would be good, and I definitely wouldn't randomly switch out which ones will break and which ones will. 

Nice art and sound, I think you had some really cool game mechanic ideas here that I'd love to see fleshed out more and improved upon.

I think I couldn't switch the staff again after I'd done it once and thought the rate of fire a bit slow after that. If the freeze-pillar summoning was quicker, and the pillar could be used for cover from enemies as well as propel you up, and be destroyed by your own bullets quite quickly, I think it would add a nice element to combat strategy. As it is I felt combat felt a little slow.

Nice game! The combat felt pretty juicy and I think the freeze game mechanic is cool.

I think the background music didn't really fit the theme, it was a touch too cheery for having to defend a dying flame at night against monsters. I also think the difficulty progression could have been more significant, as I seldom had need for the freeze mechanic, nor did I ever really have to move from one spot.

Could be a lovely project to expand upon!

Reeeeeally pretty game. A lovely little experience.

This was really fun! It got super frantic but felt very skill-dependant and I definitely got better everytime I played. I really enjoy the simplicity of the challenge and the freeze mechanic once I figured it out added a lot of strategy to it. 

I think the game is really fun as is, and if you wanted to polish it some more I'd only really be looking for a bit more sound and animation, even if it's just fades and bounces! I'd love to get a bit more reaction to plopping on a new scoop of icecream, giving the customer their cone, or the customers popping up in the first place. More idle movement on screen would make it feel more alive.

UI was all great and pretty self-explanatory. Really good job!

Really beautiful looking game with great sound and UI! I kept playing a little past the season so it definitely has appeal as a pretty cozy game. Everything runs super smoothly and satisfyingly.

I have some considerations more than feedback as I'm not sure that my comments fit the direction of the game.

- I kind of wish there was a different tool for taking down existing trees and plants, that way, I wouldn't need to click on just a tiny button with the shovel to get rid of the snow. Later on in the game this can mean I accidentally misclick, and whilst it makes the game a little harder I don't know that that feels satisfying, exactly. I'd rather switch between tools more quickly and find the clicking and selecting more forgiving on the snow, at least - on the trees, the small buttons work great.

- Fruit is so easy to obtain that I never even really considered what good this currency did me, I was on such autopilot creating new plants. As a result it doesn't really feel like I'm working towards anything or ever struggling for resources. On one hand the game is very pretty and cozy, on the other hand I am constantly doing something and I think my brain was waiting for some payoff to that that it doesn't quite get. I was missing some sort of sense of accomplishment for having collected lots of fruit long beyond me wanting to buy more decorations. 

- I wish the snow particles would speed up or increase in number after a blizzard warning! Everything in the game is so polished I expected more visual payoff to that and it would be so pretty if you added something more here.

This is pretty fun! Some good graphics, and freezing time in a bullet hell shooter is an interesting idea, though I at first didn't quite realize it was a mechanic and thought the game was a bit jittery in places XD 

I'm not good at bullet hells so I didn't try any more after a few failures but it was pretty smooth to play and the UI looked great. I wish there were a bit more indication of when you or an enemy is hurt, there currently isn't a lot of feedback to shooting anything and that doesn't make it as satisfying as it could be, and leaves me a bit clueless as to how well I'm progressing.

I liked this! Great aesthetics, I really enjoyed walking into the ship everytime, i think that transition works well and creates a great sense of safe haven. I think you should expand on this and it could be really cool.

A bit of background music would be awesome, and I would have loved more visual indication of how far the rocks are along to breaking, as initially I wasn't even sure I was doing the right thing with the drill. 

Movement in space doesn't quite feel fun exactly - it could do with a little tweaking I think to feel more skillful than slow and frustrating, especially with rocks flying away from you as you drill. 

The quest system was really cool and you had some nice writing in the game! I'd love to see other threats out in space. There's a lot here, and I think it's an awesome take on the theme.

I had three goes at the game in hopes of figuring out the second time but still didn't get anywhere with it unfortunately. I think the concept is really cool and there are some good bones here! I couldn't figure out if there was any indication where food might be found or if it's purely luck, and got frustrated with that uncertainty. The controls don't always feel very reactive, often it took me several clicks to thump or burrow, and I don't know what the thumping does - will happily play again if I can get a hint!

I think more communication with the player would be helpful. For example, an indicator how much time is left til dark, or some indication what that bar under the player does, because I don't know. The first time I played I also already had a root in my inventory but don't know how I got it. It would be nice if something could indicate more clearly when you collect a root, be it a sound or a more noticeable popup or effect. 

I'd also recommend making the number in the top right a darker colour so it better contrasts the snow!

The Game Artist's time to beat is 7:20! :D Let us know how fast you made it!