itch.io

Hi, thanks for playing!

The bug was noticed too late sadly, but the patch should be out right now if you want to try it out. Shouldn’t have more issues from what I’ve tested.

I hope you’ll enjoy the rest of the game!

The game has an idea but doesn't help the player achieve it in any way sadly. There is no way to know the size of the level or to know where you are (a minimap could help maybe)? 

It was only after playing the game 5 times that I could figure out what the red blocks do, or how the "bubble meter" depletes. Some cool additions that would improve the game is a pause menu, or something to restart the level, or having the "jump" button on Space like the usual conventions.

Congrats on finishing the Jam and good luck for next times!

Very simple concept but the double jump could be used more I feel like. Honestly for a one-dev game, it's pretty nice! 

Overall, there are a few things that I think could make the whole experience way better without too much work (try them on your next game and tell us how it went): 

- The game is themed around two-colored  worlds, but both the enemies and platforms are in the background's color. Maybe make every platform blue in the blue world, but the enemies in blue world are red. Some enemies are spikes, some are circles, and there are at least 3 shades of red used for enemies making the whole thing not very recognizable.

- The placement of the whole scene is a bit weird: we don't see the sky part of the blue world when not jumping, but when jumping the red floor is completely hidden and I landed on enemies/empty spaces I didn't know existed. To fix this it might be wise to have the camera be a bit less zoomed and fixed in place? or moving in another way I don't know. Also it's very easy to have a square out of the screen, and basically lose the level like that.

- The enemies could have cleared trajectories, maybe dotted circles showing their start and end positions with dotted lines in between? It's a detail though.

- There is a bug that I haven't seen mentioned in the comments before me: If the red cube picks up a diamond before the blue one, it sometimes locks itself in place: the blue one could go forward but not the red one.

- Something to quickly restart the game might be helpful, maybe pressing on the R key reloads the scene? Or add a pause menu, that could be nice too.

All in all, the idea is cool, some misc changes would improve the experience greatly.
Congrats on your submission, and good luck for next times!

Thank you for playing!
I'm very happy to hear that everything went smoothly and that you enjoyed the more tense parts, those were a make or break for sure from a design standpoint!

A big thank you for your kind comment and good luck for the rest of the Jam!

Thanks you so much for the review!

As ETN said, the level select screen and overall cropped screens should be fixed if you play in fullscreen (the blue square one, not the grey one) or play on the desktop app directly, we'll do better next time.

As for the ghosts, they DO speed up over time by some amount which, like the base speed, depends on the level. On some level they are a constant threat that doesn't speed up a lot, on others they start speedless but start chasing very quickly. It wasn't made clear enough and i'm sorry for that.

I hope you still enjoyed the game, and thank you for playing!

Thank you for your very detailed review, it's been a pleasure to read it! I'll try to answer quickly:

The level you've been stuck at (level 6) is easily doable but quick response is necessary, You need to click the orb on the right in the first few seconds of the level, the torch will light up and the wall block you, but it'll come back in place after I think 6 seconds, so you have enough time to get to the final orb. It's meant as a simple yet clear teaching that: Torch can be lit up / Torch move walls that have the blue lock on them / Those walls can come back to their original position after a time.
Sorry if that wasn't clear enough. (Also I advise running in fullscreen mode, we didn't know itch.io's formatting beforehand so it's messed up and can crop the game if it's not in fullscreen).

Don't worry, come back rating us when you can, it's kind enough to want to rate back the game already!
Thank you very much and good luck for the Jam!

EDIT: I played the game on another computer and it appears that if the game is lagging out too much, the wall doesn't come back in place in time... This is fixed if you play in computer mode (with the .exe file that we made available to download). We'll make sure to not repeat this error later, sorry about that!

Thank you for your review, I hope those didn't bother you too much...

The level that made you wait was entirely my fault. I thought that a level breaking a bit the game's fast paced rhythm would be a good idea if it traded it for the "what's gonna happen, am I going to get to the end in time?" part. It might have been too long of a wait though.

The outline part was both a workaround for people with resolutions that crop the screen (it's our first Game Jam, we aren't familiar with itch.io presentation at all) and a way to make it clear what and where the goal was, I can understand how it looked like an auto-lock though.

Thank you for rating the game, we'll do better next time thanks to those reviews!
Good luck for the Jam!

That is one great game!

The concept of block spaceships building over time in a tetris fashion is already interesting, but the fact that detaching pieces is how you save yourself AND you get attack bonuses is incredible.

If I had to give some (constructive) criticism and/or ideas for upgrading the game, I'd say that:
- the laser sounds are slightly annoying when you have 5+ blocks shooting, maybe randomize a bit the pitch or the sound itself to add variety?
- the difficulty increases nicely, but it feels like once you break the ship for the first time you can't recover: the pieces fly everywhere and are destroyed, and the enemies are still coming faster than before.
- this could greatly benefit from having more blocks that come later: double lasers? flamethrowers? shields that have to be placed strategically to be actually useful? grenade launchers? the possibilities are endless
- good job with telegraphing in advance where the pieces spawn. The same could've been done (to a smaller extent maybe?) to the enemies for clarity purposes.
- if the pieces spawn ON your ship, they might not be collected sometimes, in the rush of the action it happens sometimes.
- it would help if the enemies flash a little bit when being hit by a laser, for simple feedback purposed.
- a pause menu would also be welcome.

Great concept and very nice potential for upgraded versions, don't abandon this idea, you can do a lot with it, maybe in later Game Jams, who knows.

Congrats for finishing the GameJam, and good luck for next times!

Very very interesting concept!

I feel like this is the type of game idea that very easily could become a full game. Super high potential for acceleration ramps, attracting other objects, 3-heads magnets,  bridge building, movement in fluids, working with rotations, etc...

Sadly, the game itself is a bit empty right now, no sound effects nor musics, no pause menu,  backgrounds are all the same... but I still enjoyed the game thanks to its originality and concept even if very hard to control, that's how you know it has great potential.

Also beware, we can VERY easily get inside of the walls! 

Come back to this idea in a few years, this can 100% get some prize for most creative puzzle if done correctly.
You're on the good track!

Congrats on finishing the Jam and good luck for next time!

First off, congrats on making your first Game Jam!

You asked for all feedback possible, so here I go.

The game is quite short, but for a first game (and alone) it's impressive you already were able to do all of this in 2 days.

Visually, it's simple yet pretty clear: We know what is an enemy, what is a power-up and what is a platform. The red dots that damage you at the start might need a bit of change in some way though, I thought that they could be destroyed by hitting them, but I ended up taking damage instead. Nevertheless, props to the fact that you added the boss' blinking when it gets damaged, it helps with clarity.

Since you used Unity, make sure to have the Boss' music loop onto itself in the Audio Source (there's a checkbox for it). I outlasted it with my first battle (I tried to fight it without any power-up because I lost it before the fight and didn't know there was a bossfight there) and the void is a bit weird. It's a simple change that makes a lot of difference!!

The powers are diverse, inventive and pretty clear to understand, so props to you for that! Though I feel like adding something to represent a cooldown (character blink / charging bar / color change / sound effect / etc...) could add a lot. I spent a majority of the battle spamming my mouse button because I didn't know when I could attack again.

For polishing, adding a small picture in the "Win" screen, a pause menu, the character looking the other way when moving to the left, or a main menu could add A LOT to the game's feel. Some invincibility frames could've been welcome, and/or something to telegraph the boss' attacks before they hit you once. After seing them we can clearly know which attack is coming thanks to which leg is moving (that's a nice touch though, thank you for that), but it feels like you have to get hit the first time since you don't know the area it'll affect... Maybe some semi-transparent overlay right before it hits to know? it's just an idea though.

Also, maybe adding some pictures, or more presentation in your itch.io page might help people want to play more of your game (I know that it's a tough UI to understand how to setup the page, don't worry it'll come with time).

Overall, some good ideas for a first game, there is progress left but with what you did there, I have no doubt that you will be able to do even better next time!
Congrats for your submission and good luck for next times!

I'll put here what I wrote on the main page since apparently, this is where you should comment... woops!

Pretty solid game overall!

The music is nice (even if a bit repetitive in the long run), the sound effects are too, and the visuals are simple yet clear to understand. The enemy bullets especially are well contrasted I like the fact that you balanced the shurikens (pretty powerful) around your own capacity to hit the enemies' bullets.

The Spike mechanic is pretty interesting, I thought at the start that it might be "one press of RMB will bring it back entirely) but the control that your method gives is nice too.

It looks like the enemies can get multi-hit by the Spike, which is a good thing, but I feel like I got multi-hit on my end too (it might be me missing a hit though, I don't know for sure). Maybe more invincibility frames could help with that?

The level diversity is quite nice, especially with the breakable environment. I feel like maybe more levels could've been possible especially since you have a pretty large grid-based area at your disposal, but with the enemy diversity it doesn't feel repetitive anyway.

Nice of you to put the player in a "training" zone when they start the game for the first time, it's a very good touch that not everybody would've thought about.

Beware of two small things: The font makes it look like it's written "PPE" instead of "PIPE", and the chest (and power-up) can be pushed too easily so I accidentally pressed E and went into the pipe instead of collecting the power-up several times.

The impossibility to pause the game without leaving the current level is to me the biggest problem right now, otherwise, very good game overall, especially for something done in only one day. 

I feel like that was everything, sorry if that was too much to read.  Congrats on your submission to both of you!

Pretty solid game overall!

The music is nice (even if a bit repetitive in the long run), the sound effects are too, and the visuals are simple yet clear to understand. The enemy bullets especially are well contrasted
I like the fact that you balanced the shurikens (pretty powerful) around your own capacity to hit the enemies' bullets.

The Spike mechanic is pretty interesting, I thought at the start that it might be "one press of RMB will bring it back entirely) but the control that your method gives is nice too.

It looks like the enemies can get multi-hit by the Spike, which is a good thing, but I feel like I got multi-hit on my end too (it might be me missing a hit though, I don't know for sure). Maybe more invincibility frames could help with that?

The level diversity is quite nice, especially with the breakable environment. I feel like maybe more levels could've been possible especially since you have a pretty large grid-based area at your disposal, but with the enemy diversity it doesn't feel repetitive anyway.

Nice of you to put the player in a "training" zone when they start the game for the first time, it's a very good touch that not everybody would've thought about.

Beware of two small things: The font makes it look like it's written "PPE" instead of "PIPE", and the chest (and power-up) can be pushed too easily so I accidentally pressed E and went into the pipe instead of collecting the power-up several times.

The impossibility to pause the game without leaving the current level is to me the biggest problem right now, otherwise, very good game overall, especially for something done in only one day. 

I feel like that was everything, sorry if that was too much to read. 
Congrats on your submission to both of you!