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Hey! We played your game on Twitch yesterday.  I'm always glad to see narrative games in jams, it is too under-represented :'(

Great entry! I particularly like how each part feels disconnected with its own graphical style while still being part of the same story. IMHO it is well written. Even though some parts of the dialogues feel a bit academic, you obviously understand how to set a tone.

The fact the game kicks you back into the title screen at the end of each chapter is weird. Maybe you can find a different way of presenting the overarching story. 

If there were some kind dōjinshi scene at the time, I'm pretty sure this could've been the kind of game we would've had. And it would've been quite cool.

Keep up the good work!

Played this on Twitch yesterday.

Had a great time loosing it while playing. Love the graphics and audio. The fact you can simply refuse to play the game at the beginning point blank killed me. Really liked the idea of using a stack of power-ups as the health system. IMHO where the game fall short is on how controls feel. Having tight and enjoyable platforming controls is really hard and for me they aren't quite there on this one. It feels kind of unreactive on the X axis and too reactive on the Y axis, resulting in most jumps being a tad awkward. More air control would be nice too. And obviously gamepad support would help a lot.

I'm a fan of the fact you can play the levels as you want in no particular order. That way you can just decide one level is too hard and continue on your merry way. Well... You could do that if there was a way to back out the levels, but you can't. So once you're in a level you can't beat, you're basically soft-locked and need to reset. Which defeats what's nice about not being forced to play every level. But I imagine it's more of a jam oversight than anything.

Anyway, I'm rambling now. You made a cool game. Go over and smooth the controls, give the player a way to exit out of levels, and it'll be even cooler! Keep up the good work!

Played it on Twitch yesterday, and has a great time.

Obviously lots of work went into this entry. The map's huge, the graphics are nice, the music is especially good IMHO, and the controls feel tight enough for all the platforming / battle to be enjoyable. There even are two different endings :O

What more is there to ask? Well, here are some clue about where to go next. Add gamepad support (I think this is already working in the post-jam version). Add a bit of juice here and there, e.g. frame freezes on hits go a long way to make things feel more dynamic. The lasers near the end lack a bit of anticipation for my own taste. And maybe find a way to entice players into looking for the seeds a bit more actively. But all of this is whipped cream on top of an already very solid jam game. 

Well done, keep on making cool stuff like this!

Hey everybody!

We'll be streaming a couple of hours of play & rate on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/paulloz), Thursday night around 9PM CEST. Send us your game and we'll put it in the queue. If we already played/rated your game, don't worry, you can still come and someone else from the team will try it with fresh eyes.

Priority will be given to people present in chat.

Cheers, see you on Thursday.

Thanks for the feedback! Glad you had fun.

There is (almost*) always a slower but easier way to approach obstacles. In that last level, you (almost*) never need to actually bounce across enemies. You can take your time, jump on an enemy without horizontal momentum and turn it into a platform below you, temporize, rinse and repeat.

* I think there's actually one single jump in the last level you can't take slowly.

I *may* have forgot to cap the fall speed 🙈

I don't believe we have blind jumps in any of our levels. We paid particular attention to making sure the player is always able to grow platforms somewhere so they never have to leap into the void (but maybe we missed some?).

We tend to agree, the level design is kind of stuck between two ideas: making you want to collect all the bananas and giving some kind of actual platforming challenge. Both somehow contradict each other and it'd have to be refined a lot to make everything feel more natural in a complete game.

Anyway, thanks for the kind words and constructive feedback!

This is a pretty cool entry. The game loop is fun and the difficulty ramp is in my opinion quite good.

Controls are a bit weird, it'd be nice to have a visual feedback about what tile is actually going to be affected by your actions. Even more since you pick tools up from the tile above the character and use them on the one below.

Super fun enemies sprites, great base to create a bunch of cool levels for a GB shmup (currently it lacks the engaging factor of hand crafted levels)

Adding gamepad support would be really cool to make it feel more like a GB title (using the mouse sure is practical here but takes a bit away from the experience)

Very fun and addictive idle game.
The soundtrack is great and doesn't take you away from the game which is necessary for this kind of experience. The Paperboy look of the city is very cute too.

Some of the options (accessing the bonuses in the bottom right corner) could have been better displayed, it took me a while to notice that they were there.

Great entry otherwise, good job!
(took me 220 days to reach the goal)

Very cute visuals,  reminded me a lot of Kirby's Dreamland, Mario Land 2 and the Smurfs GB game.

The simple basic concept is nice but unfortunately the total randomness of the level design makes it not very enjoyable to play.

I went in looking at the cute protag, cute granpa, cute little bow and scarecrows, listening to the great music theme and enjoying the pastel palette... 

then all of a sudden I've got ripped to shreds by billions of cacti and needles, stuck in unescapable corridors, faced with a 5 pages pause menu ^^"

I think there's a cool concept in there, but there's definitely a huge disconnect betwen the look of the game, the mechanics, the mood and the difficulty.

Lots of situations where you can't escape the enemies, the very open map and lack of elements leading the player in the level design makes it hard to understand the goal. The fact you've got stats and leveling up in there for a jam game makes me feel like some overscoping occured during development.
Definitely a lot to love in that game but the tutorial didn't explain much besides the basic inputs, before throwing the player in extremely intense situations. Taking more time in the first zones to let the player get familiar with their goal and their abilities would help a lot!

What a nice game! Even though it's not finished I had a nice time playing it. Obviously would love some audio and more puzzles.

Controlling the bug and the plant feels alright but switching between the two is awkward IMHO. I'd rather toggle the controls entirely instead of having to keep a button pressed. Some graphical feedback on what you're currently controlling would also be great (you still have two colours to play with, maybe a subtle highlighting of the bug/plant would be enough).

I had a hard time figuring out the plant could grow in diagonal and the bug could walk on the stem. But maybe I'm just a bit dense. 

Anyway, would love to see this one refined and expanded on. Well done!

Other My Sweet Whomp member here, globally agreeing with my teammate : game just looks gorgeous, the mood achieved is super impressive, especially for a gameboy jam game. The little story and world are super charming too.
I also agree regarding the controls. I feel the jump is a bit rigid, nothing too bad since there is no demanding platforming sections, but a nice jump is always appreciated.

Regarding combat. adding to the pushback suggestion, a short hitfreeze (100ms) some flashing on the sprite receiving the hit, and possibly a subtle hitspark VFX would help a lot.
Regarding the combat mechanic in the game itself, I suppose that the time constraint forced you to get rid of a health system for the player, and I guess it's for the best if the alternative was frustrating deaths getting in the way of narration and mood. Still it makes me wonder what combat really brings in this situation, and if, for another project, it might be a good thing to start figuring out that mechanic before adding several enemies and a boss. ^^ Not always easy in jams when everything goes fast and everything seems equally important, I know too well.

The gameplay loop feels really nice, getting upgrades is satisfying and it's all very easy to understand and play.

It didn't feel a lot like a gameboy game for me tho, be it the gameplay (using only one of the two face buttons), the visuals(tons of sprites on screen, and a rendering look that doesn't really evoke nostalgia) or the sound (more chiptune than GB), there was always something a bit off.

Still, a great entry and a fun game!

Super good looking game, the sprites and charadesigns, as well as the backgrounds all look extremely cool.

The music and sfx are great too!

Controls are nice but it's never really clear why sometimes you pick up a trap and sometimes it hits you (all while using the catch trap button), I suppose it has to do with positioning but the feedback wasn't clear.
It's strange how big the enemy is while her hitbox is super small (and at a weird spot). This made the whole thing not super satisfying to play.

The plant theme is nooot really present too, tbh.

The efforts in presentation still definitely made it worth the effort of finishing the game ! 

I'm really loving what I'm playing, the game is gorgeous, the scenario and dialogs are really good, especially for a jam game... but then there is one design direction that is infuriating to me and makes me wonder what the hell happened to you guys, when everything else is so polished and smart.

The freaking healing mechanic.

It just makes absolutely no sense. The fighting mechanic is fun but it's hard to understand (I had to read through the comments to get that you first see anticipations and then attacks). The thing is that once you understand it, you may very well already have healed a lot after losing a bunch of battles.

And at this point you understand another mechanic : the healing can once empty stays empty forever.

This makes absolutely no sense, it means that in a game focused on narrative, you're now doomed to finish every single fight with a single health point.
I'm fighting the Plant boss now and she is hard as hell. Inputs are dropping left and right and it's driving me mad because I love everything else, I want to finish the game and leave with a good impression but this is definitely impossible now.
A simple fix would be getting rid of the healing mechanic entirely, replenishing the player's health to the fullest after each defeat.
Otherwise it's a damn good game as I said, the initial block pushing puzzles are cool, every character is super endearing, the spritework is phenomenal... I just wish the game didn't start hating the player midway.

Edit : restarted the whole game just to not empty the health can, made it all the way to the Plant Boss, still had to empty the whole can ^^" luckily I managed to beat her right after that ahah. Still kinda pissed :D

Very cute, the idea around the theme is smart too. I wish it felt more like there was a purpose and progression to the whole farming mechanic (what with all the backstory and the JRPG presentation) and it was less of a grindy process but it's still a very cool entry!

Really cute and charming, it reminded me a lot of Katamari Damacy <3

Very good looking game, I love all of the little details in the backgrounds and the enemies designs.

The soundtrack is fire, extremely catchy. I think this is the main thing that kept me playing ahah.

The game has a lot of potential but it falls in a bunch of level design and game design pitfall... the platforming feels off because the inertia is weird (not very megaman-y), the level design is riddled with little things that made me scream, like the collisions right over the character's head before a long jump, the enemies spawning out of sight after a jump, etc.

I'm being a bit harsh here but it's mainly because there's a lot to love otherwise, it just requires some tightening of the mechanics and LD!

EDIT : I just played through the postjam version and finished the game.
Controls feel waaay more tight, this is really great.
I'm a bit conflicted because I enjoyed learning the game and the levels, and I'm happy I beat it.
I still feel like a lot of things in there are vestiges from the past better left untouched, like multiple minutes segments between checkpoints, free fall segments inbtween instant kill spikes, that Fireman boss with patterns that feel like they're beyond human reaction time...

In any case, the mood is great, the quantity of content in there is super impressive, and a lot of things feel very satisfying (sometimes after feeling frustrating for 15 minutes but still).

Just one thing : I have still no idea what this has to do with the Plant theme :D

Really excellent animation on the plants shooting peas, the mechanic of killing the enemies with plants is fun too (we did something similar in our game), it needs some tune up but good job!

Super impressive how many mechanics you got in there, especially for an actual GB game!

The game looks really nice too, I really love the boss charadesign (though 5 hits is way too much for this kind of fight :D)

Hey, sorry I missed the stream. I watched three of four games in the VOD. Thanks for playing ours (Kid Monkey)! And no worries for not finishing, you were right in the last level which can quite demanding if you try and do it quickly. Cheers.

It mostly have to do with combat/enemies/sword swings. I'm not a big fan of the fact neither your body nor your sword make "tangible" collisions with the enemies. It leads to me as a player often missing a hit and going straight through to the other side of the enemy. Does that make sense?

This could very well be a conscious design decision. If so I guess it just doesn't suit me (and there probably are people who like it better this way). Otherwise I think I'd try to give the hits a small amount of pushback to see if it feels better or not.

Really neat game. Loved the graphics, the music tend to be a bit repetitive once you've played 5+ minutes and the base movement speed is a tad slow for my taste. I also saw a couple of issues with layering where big rocks and stuff got rendered above the player when they should've been under.

Had a blast playing the entire thing, though. Great work!

Very very nice. It looks and sounds so good, the ambiance is perfect. I have a couple of nitpicks about how the game and controls feel, but it's globally a great entry. Well done!

Kirby's Dream Land is indeed a big inspiration of ours!

I think we lost our focus a bit during the last few days of the jam. We decided very early on to go without checkpoints and only design short levels so it wouldn't get frustrating... And then went ahead and designed levels that are probably too long.

Thanks for the kind words!

Amazing game. The sprites and the colour choices are so cute! The vegetables mechanic and some of the tiles threw a strong Doki Doki Panic / Super Mario Bros. 2 vibe at me. Had a lot of fun playing it through and through. Well done. This is one of my favourite entries of the jam so far.

An interesting mechanic. The game is simple enough to understand instantly, but it's actually really hard to score high. It got me into that "just one more try" zone. A longer musical loop really would've been nice. But apart from that: a cool idea, well executed. Kudos.

Cool little endless runner. I really like the colour palette you went for. Controls feel nice, maybe introducing some randomness into how the obstacles spawn would alleviate the fact you can just learn the pattern by heart to score quite high. Nevertheless, kudos, keep up the good work!

Nice puzzle game. A bit slow for my personal taste but still a solid entry. Keep up the good work!

This is extremely cool. Every time I see one of your game I am amazed at the level of soul and polish you put into them. I had an amazing (although short) time playing. Cheers!

Very cool. The ominous music and the sprite work really give the game its own unique atmosphere. I found it a bit frustrating that as soon as you fallback and one of your dude gets off screen on the left for a split second it dies. But apart from that I had a great time playing. Well done!

The little ninja is really cute, and the controls feel right. I think the levels tend to be a little too long which leads to the game becoming quite frustrating.

This is SO CUTE! I love that little cloud fellow.

The game is kinda hard to control however. I think it wouldn't take a lot of tweaking to have something that feels a lot nicer. For instance, I'd like for the momentum to be killed when the player die. Zipping back at light speed when I spawned back often meant I kept dying several times in a row and it felt quite unfair.

Keep up the good work.

Nice little game. Loved the small dude and the chill music. There are some control issues (for instance the menus only answer to arrow keys while you can move around with WASD). But overall I had a nice time playing :)

Wow, this is really cool. It's neat idea, level design is on point and the animations for the plants are so nice. Well done! One of my favourite entries so far.

Cool game. Shooting and running quickly across the levels feels very good! Well done ;)

Hey, thanks a lot to all participants!  

Now to play the games ;)