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Thank you! I'm really glad you liked it. Loved to watch your gameplay on stream.

Ooh, I see! Makes sense, then.

Thank you! Telling the player about which ending they got was kind of a last-minute decision, as my original plan was to just leave the player in the dark  to give more finality to their ending. Game design dilemmas, haha. Really valid feedback!

Thank you so much!

Interesting game! Overall, I really liked this game's artstyle, soundtrack and concept, especially the stress and energy meters - a good mechanic to show how some options are sometimes less viable, despite good intentions.

I guess my only criticism are the caution and knowledge meters, as I didn't quite understand their impact. Were they mostly a mood indicator, instead of a gameplay resource?

This is immaculate, I loved it. Everything works together really well here - the main character's arbitrary task to collect petals displayed as a gameplay objective, the soundtrack's build-up as the mountain is climbed, and overall, the writing behind both characters' dialog is just... great.

You really know what you're doing, honestly. I have almost no criticisms - this is a great little narrative about trust, ambition and support, and it fits itself perfectly within its gameplay. It kind of reminds me of Celeste, in a way.

If I have just one piece of advice, it would be a small Godot trick - you can switch to 'Characters After Shaping' in the editor label (inside the 'Displayed Text' tab) to avoid having text at the end of a dialog box suddenly jumping over to another line, while the characters are being loaded. It's just a little visual improvement.

No problem! It's a really good game overall.

Really liked this one. It's simple, and it's short, but it's effective - like a sword. Polished to a brim, and really impressive for someone just getting started with Godot! 

Speaking of which, are you a gamedev veteran? Maybe I'm assuming too much from the narrative, but I don't know, this game seems really well-made for someone just starting out.

This... This is actually a really well thought-out game. If you ever need help from a programmer, shoot me a message - I really liked your writing, and the only thing hampering the experience, really, were the lack of proper assets and overall polish. This has great potential!

Really liked this one. It's simple, and it's short, but it's effective - like a sword. Polished to a brim, and really impressive for someone just getting started with Godot! 

Speaking of which, are you a gamedev veteran? Maybe I'm assuming too much from the narrative, but I don't know, this game seems really well-made for someone just starting out.

Overall pretty polished game! Couldn't find the last donut though...

Fun game! Loved the artstyle and overall visuals. I did wish for a higher difficulty option though. I was really vibing with the song, but the notes appeared too infrequently sometimes!

Thanks! Baroque Brawl is probably my favorite of the bunch, excellent work!

Is there somewhere we can listen to the soundtrack? I love it so much!

Really cute game, I think I needed that. Thank you =)

Thought provoking to say the least. I would argue however that the examples cited all have a certain assigned explanation (humor, dread, sadness) which do point to the fact that even this nonsense does need to have a certain impact (perhaps not intended by the developer, but an impact nonetheless) on the player.

Which yeah, that might sound redundant, but what I mean is that "pure nonsense", which simply confuses everyone and doesn't evoke any other emotion or theme, perhaps is not an interesting place to explore. As you yourself said, excessive nonsense makes the player numb to the whole thing. I wouldn't say that the developer needs to have a rational explanation behind everything in the game, but I do think that they need to have a purpose. Maybe the purpose is simply aesthetic/emotional, as in "I think it's more impactful that way" or "I just found it funny", but it's still a reason to do it.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not really sure what you mean by "nonsense". Your examples may not make "logical" sense, but they still make "artistic" sense - you've identified an emotion that resonated with you, and the nonsense cited contributes to that experience. It's a piece of the puzzle, an ingredient of the cake, the product of an artist's mind, like any other.

If you suddenly discovered that what you saw was entirely generated by IA, and as such, the nonsense you saw was just the result of a glitch in the system, would you view it with the same eyes? I'm personally in the camp that the player's experience is all that matters, not the process behind it, and even I would feel at least a bit disappointed by that. I guess I still need to know that what I'm seeing is intentional. "Pure nonsense", as in someone just randomly putting stuff in, may be impactful or enjoyable, but it will never resonate with me as strongly as feeling connected with another human through a game.

Well, that's up to you! Personally, I like to think the two remained great friends, Sarah and the friend stayed together, and the protagonist eventually met someone who reciprocated his feelings, roughly a year and a half later.

Thanks! Making this game helped me a lot to deal with my feelings back then. I'm glad you've found it beautiful =)

Loved the concept, the soundtrack and the writing! These kinds of synchronization puzzles are always very creative to tinker around with, and everything comes together nicely as a themed package.
My only gripe with this game is its fail state - I think the game would benefit from a 'planning mode' where characters can move freely, and then an 'execution mode' where all actions fire at once. As of right now, I have to keep doing multiple runs to make them move correctly, which can take a long time. For a jam game, though, I can understand the lack of such a feature.

The trailer looks badass, by the way. Good job with that!

if I may suggest, I think it'd be cool to also add the trailer to this page! I had to go to the Steam page to see some gameplay footage, and for this style of game, this can be crucial

The concept is creative, but there's a reason why most games have you play as the tiny little guy - playing as the ship doesn't lend much agency. I found that the optimal strategy was to simply mash all four buttons, as there's no limit to their usage. As such, the game ended up a bit boring for me. With a bit more design polish and balance, this could become a really interesting game.

The artstyle, music and overall presentation reminded me a lot of old flash games, for some reason. I really enjoyed this game - the panic of getting overwhelmed by enemies suddenly turning into triumph as you become the Hero - very reminiscent of Pac-Man. Overall, nice entry.

While the balance was a bit out of whack sometimes, overall, I really enjoyed this game - its premise has a lot, and I mean a LOT, of potential. Juggling around dice between the 4 patrons was a fun little puzzle that I found quite pleasing to solve. Also, yay for Godot!

Also, yay for Godot!

Very smart and efficient game design. Spinning tiles around and watching those helpless adventures walk around and kill each other was really fun to witness. The background music was a bit bland, but it didn't detract from the overall experience. Great entry.

Despite its simplistic gameplay and lack of audio, its visual presentation is really top-notch. Even the abrupt 'END' seemed very... artistic, in a sense, and very much in line with the game's overall tone. Interesting entry.

It's a good first entry. As people mentioned before, there are a few things that you could've tweaked that wouldn't have significantly increased dev time - namely, changing the player move speed.

Given more time, I'd also recommend adding more mechanics for more zombie-themed flavor - stuff like transforming people into more zombies, increasing speed after eating someone, or some kind of charge 'Aaaargh!' attack.

Very innovative game. While the game is pretty short, I can see a lot of potential were it to be expanded and polished further. Reminds me a bit of Fez.

This game is so fucking awesome, jesus. The artstyle has so much charm, and complements the absurd gameplay really well. And when he starts to sing, wow... that really caught me by surprise. Love it, love it.

9/10 IGN "Where's my meatloaf"

A great experience - the artstyle, soundtrack and writing all lend to a simultaneously introspective yet intense atmosphere. I've never had 'the talk' with my dad - I told my mom first, and then asked her to tell him separately afterwards. Although my experiences don't relate so much to this game's situation, I was still moved by it. I wish I could talk to him like this, but we both still keep our 'jokester' barriers up so much that even touching this topic would be too awkward.

Thanks for making this game.

Ay, thanks! We plan on further updating the game in the future, so if you're interested, feel free to check out our pages here:

https://linktr.ee/lightmancerstudios

Thanks!

Fun and polished. The music is pretty good, the combat feels fluid and all the attacks are really well animated. Overall, I like it.

Alright, after playing it for a bit, here are my thoughts:
- I really liked the rank system. It works both as extra motivation to switch weapons and as a tool to see how well I'm performing.
- Finally managed to pull off that fire explosion combo! I did feel it was a bit underwhelming, though. I'd increase its radius a bit, considering that it's a bit tricky to perform and requires a good measure of planning.
- I'm not sure if it's my fault, but a lot of the time when I'm trying to push enemies off the map with the 3rd weapon, I end up hitting the ground instead. Maybe have it go through walls?
- Is there a way to recover health? Something that kind of encourages me to play in a more "cautious" way is the fact that I (as far as I know) can't heal. DOOM 2016's big thing was its Glory Kill system, and although I'm not advocating for it in this game, something akin to that (such as eliminating a monster while invisible) would be beneficial to it, imo.
- I'm not sure if it's a bug, but sometimes the enemy fired at me even though I was invisible. Caught me a bit by surprise.

Interesting combo rework. It definitely sounds more dynamic. Not dying when falling off is a nice addition, too.

Hey, man. Thanks for the comment. Yeah, given the game's themes, I wasn't sure if I should share it with other people. At first, I wasn't even sure if I was going to publish this at all. In a way, this was just the method I found to process my emotions.

I guess I knew there was a chance you'd see this eventually. But even now, I was still anxious of what your response would've been. But I'm glad you liked it. And I'm glad it had a positive effect on your day.

There are two things this game nails very well - its character art and its writing. Both of these complement each other, making me almost be able to "hear" their voices in my head just by seeing their face, their pose, their clothes and the way they speak. That was very effective.

What wasn't that effective, though, was the gameplay itself... at least to me. I didn't quite "get" the whole resource management system, and so just went with whatever choice felt more appropriate for each character, instead of thinking strategically about the group as a whole. I'm not sure if that was the intended experience.

In any case, I like the general concept - that I care for these characters, and so must make difficult choices considering both tactics and my personal attachments. If the system were more intuitive, I'd have liked it a lot.

The soundtrack/sound effects are a bit lacking, but damn, I love this game's spritework. The animations are juicy, the lighting is effective, the sprites are well-made. In terms of gameplay, I do like the concept, but some powers do end up vastly more powerful than others at times, and without a way to predict or control what I'm going to get, I'm mostly incentivized to just keep shooting regardless of what weapon I have. So yeah, it might need a couple more passes in terms of design... but I still a lot of fun with this game.

Here's my level when I died: