Nice idea!
I really like the concept of this, where there are various related hand gestures that related to different movement patterns, it creates a very unique theme and aesthetic for the game. I can image other hands that could be translated into movement, like a Halt for stopping the players movements.
Although, I think that this game could benefit from some finer tuning of the controls. There are a lot of things that can be learned for making fluid and good feeling movement for 2d platformers, and most of them aren't that intuitive unless you already know they exist. There are obvious ones, like there being a strange delay for the jump, but other things like coyote time (letting the player jump for a few frames after they've left the ground) and input buffering to allow early inputs still be allowed can go a long way for fluid movement.
I also think that the flick hands should be consistent in the direction they throw you, rather than the direction the player is facing. Since it would be hard sometimes to consistently use them, but when they do work they are very fun to chain together. You could also repurpose another hand object into having the players facing direction considered for its launch angle.
With mechanics like these though, I think this game could benefit for a more level based style, where the player goes through a series of challenges to beat a course. Similar to how Celeste works. Then you could rank up the difficulty without the player getting frustrated by having to get all the way back if they fall down.
The pixel art is very clean, but it could still use a bit of touching up. I think namely the player could be re-sprited a bit since it is close to looking like its on a different pixel ratio than the rest of the game. The ground texture is also on a higher ratio than the rest. But this is all nitpicking.
Good work! It would be great to see some post jam versions of this!
Cute little game!
This one has a unique concept, and I think it could definitely be fleshed out a lot more into a pretty tricky puzzle platformer. I think there are a lot of ideas that can be stemmed with the idea of moving flowing water around a level, like maybe there is a strength of water which can affect how high a sprout a sprout goes, and possible routing water around a level to get it into specific spots.
The movement can definitely be a little bit hard, but if that is intentional then it can work, similar to hard platformer games like Jump King. Although, i'm not sure if your goal is to make a rage based game like that, but I do think that you should at least pick a side on which you want to do than rather be in the middle of annoying / difficult movement but not leaning into it.
I do like the other feature you have where the player slows down a little bit before falling when entering a new room, since I feel like this could easily be overlooked, but you took the time to implement that so players can get a sense of their surroundings before being thrown straight into the next challenge.
Nice work, It would cool to see it be expanded upon :)
It can definitely take awhile to get used to, but I think it works well once you know it. I'm glad you got the hang of it.
I do plan on adding some more QOL features to make understanding and mastering the mechanic a bit easier, or a more in depth tutorial to gradually teach the mechanics.
I did try to at least have one good shortcut within each level, so going back to get more time for the later level could yield players finding them.
It can definitely be punishing, but the intent is that you basically never stop jumping, I wanted to mimic the feel of bhopping similar to source games. (And another bhop based speedrunning game Hotlava) Although, I did try to tune it to have a lot of leeway, maybe I need to look into adding more of it but less rewards for mistimed jumps.
Interesting idea!
I like the concept of basically being forced to move where you are attacking, or needing to double down on a direction after attacking. Although, I do wish the sword either did damage quicker or there was some other form of damage, since there would be times where I would just want for my sword to do damage so I could dash to it again.
Speaking of other ways to do damage, I think the dash itself is an easy way to add some more. Then it would be a pretty simple 1-2 combo of throwing the sword, then dashing to it for an easy 2 damage. And you can still have the waiting be for larger health enemies. I do think the game is the most fun when the player is allowed to dash multiple times in quick succession, and right now it feels like a lot more waiting around than dashing
Some of your hitboxes could have some tuning aswell, I would find that even though my sword looks like it has fully crossed a pit, it would still drop me into it. Which can be unsatisfying as the player unknowing how far they need to go.
It could also be interesting if the projectile rather could go an infinite distance, and you needed to time the dash to it to whenever you wanted it to be. And if it went too far, you would need to either retrieve it or wait until you get another one back. I think this could lead to a lot of interesting movement and attack designs.
Pixel art looks great as well.
Nice job!
I'm surprised I didn't think about it being generated while the game is paused, but that makes complete sense based on how I have it set up.
The audio bug however, I think may just be a Godot export issue? I left the game open for 3+ hours and the audio never cut out, but after playing it on the html export then it did...
Wow, I love to see that someone has played the game far enough to get an engine this big! And I see you're doing it all completely for free, not consuming any Raw so you can likely just keep spending to get more recipe cards, interesting.
I like the descriptions you've given on your strategies, I noticed that Burst was definitely good for farming up Raw essi too.
How much Pure do you think was this making per second? Was it able to support some of the more costly spells?
Nice little game!
This is a nice break from how many of the other games decided to take on the theme of scaling (including my own) and for that, it is pretty creative! I think this is one of the harder jams to think of something unique and won't be done by a lot of other people, but you guys found a way and put a whole story to go along with it.
The story of this game is great, just having some form of goal or drive I think can help the player a lot in being motivated to complete a game, and feel more connected with it by the end. I do wish the game didn't loop on itself after you beat it though, since I can make it feel a little strange going right back into the start.
The gameplay definitely was unique, although not super challenging, which is a fine thing, since simple games can be a good relax from the harder ones in the jam, and a relaxing theme really fits the cutesy story of the game too. But, I did find myself basically just placing down anything I could, and then just filling in 1 spot gaps whenever a 2 sized log came in. I even beat the last level when I had accidentally gnawed twice. (Somehow G and R were too complicated for me to remember??)
It does make me think how would this game play differently if there was a bit more challenge to it, maybe having a given set a logs that the player must choose from, so they need to plan out their chews more carefully. But, overall the game was still very enjoyable. You definitely don't want something too hard.
There is an amazing amount of art for this, and it all looks spectacular, your artist really did some great work :) Lots of polish on all the pieces and getting the little things to go along with it, like the logs rotating down the stream and all the little particle effects, great polish!
Great job!
Thank you so much for the detailed review!
Having the objects drawn at each scale was basically essential for me, since when pixel ratios are off it bugs me a lot... But it definitely became a lot of work to animate each size the player, ballista, and arrows.
I'm glad a lot of people got the hopes met with scaling the player, I wanted to have a sense of "oh, I bet / hope I can do this", then fulfilling that.
I did try to have each scale serve a purpose, and I do still think there needs to be some more things that makes them more distinct or useful. Making the player gain different attributes was fun, but i definitely made the small player a bit too op with its size, which made puzzles harder to design...
I've already started work on a post jam patch that'll fix some of the weird hitbox size decisions I made, and the scale projectile was one I increased, since it doesn't do any harm being larger.
I'm glad you enjoyed it, I really tried to make some fun moments when the player realizes they can scale certain things.
Hitting the arrow mid air has definitely been a problem puzzle for a lot of people, even though I think people often do it the harder way (hitting the arrow while big and turning it small, instead of turning a smaller one big) Ill make sure to take a look at it to see if I can make it less demanding yet still the same idea.
Cool game!
With the amount of games that are "attach things to some ship and become stronger" it is nice to see one that gets some of the mechanics right, and has some interesting ideas to add to the mix.
I like how this game kind of self balances itself, where often once you have enough stuff you become relatively unstoppable, but in this one you kind of become less strong as you add more objects because it then becomes harder to dodge things. But, you didn't make it so that if you get hit you take overall damage, instead having you lose that section, which is such a smart idea. This allows for the player to get hit, which is honestly somethings a good thing since you want to remove some of the garbage builds you were doing in replace of a clean slate.
I do feel as though the movement is rather slow, I get that more thrusters (I think that is what those were? They didn't seem to always activate..) can make you faster, but it still felt like a bit of a slog at the start.
One thing, that a lot of these games I feel kind always frustrates me, is how difficult it is to place the new pieces onto the ship. Often times I found myself spinning to place a piece how I wanted it, but would accidentally hit it while spinning. I get that playing with the focus on making your ship more compact would prevent this, but maybe explore the idea of the ship not being able to add parts when it rotates.
Having a leaderboard is awesome for a game jam like this, it easily promotes replay ability for simple games, and it did tempt me to try it out... until I read those top scores and compared them to my own. Wow people have a lot of time.
A game like this can easily be expanded out with more things to add to a ship, and more enemy types, maybe even some more game modes. Like one that could rain down a ton of upgrades, so your ship is constantly changing, but there are also tons of enemies, or maybe the upgrades are temporary. Just thinking of some random ideas.
The visual theme is fun and interesting, now it just need some nice accompanying music to go along with it!
Great work!
Nice little game!
For the amount of games that deal with scaling objects to solve puzzles (mine included) I honestly felt as though this one was pretty creative, in which you place down where they are, and can get them back if you retract them back all the way. That allows for some pretty unique levels to be made, although I don't think you had any that required placing the same thing down multiple times.
You have a lot of potential for more puzzles to be made here, you got a few different mechanics in but only ended up using them once, like the white blobs or the one that changes in both directions. I can think of a few ideas that could be made with these already, and you still have room to explore into more objects and mechanics entirely. I would also like to see more levels that incorporate the ability to block other things from growing, since I think that is a relatively unique feature compared to other games within this jam.
But, I can see how the time constraints hinder the ability to create more levels, and you managed to introduce new concepts despite it. (Also camping during a game jam... thats probably a huge factor, although cool.)
The controls were a bit unintuitive, I didn't figure out that placing would always be below me until awhile, even if it may seem obvious. I prefer having number keys for selecting things, so providing options could be something you would look into.
I highly recommend having some form of menu for you game, to house basic things like options for sounds and skipping / viewing levels. It is a bit of chore work to set up, but they go a long way for the user experience, you always want players to keep playing your game, and weather that means they mute the volume or be able to skip a level when stuck, you give them the tools to do so.
The visuals were very nice though, there was a lot of juice for such simplistic movements.
Good work!
Nice, well polished work!
Definitely a unique take on the theme, I don't image ill be seeing anything else like this within the other games, and I think this is a harder jam to think of some out of the box ideas.
Having each size play roles in and outside of the players size is interesting, where the skills can be useful to use even if you aren't in their specific size, like the various dashes when needed. I do like how the sizes also have semi different style gameplay, but I do wish there was a bit more disparity between small and medium, since they are essentially the same. The only main difference I found with medium is that you don't really have to be in it for that long, you can just switch by it and throw a dynamite. The one size that felt like it needed to be in a lot was the large one, so maybe the design was that it would be more difficult to get closer to enemies when you weren't using the small and medium sizes as much.
The boss was a great change of pace, and added more complexity. I would like to see some more enemy times or variety requiring players to adjust and think about their size more. Maybe an enemy that gets smaller as you hit it, requiring to be killed in all 3 sizes. Or just general more attacks other than proximity, like having some shooting projectiles. You could have the large size be able to deflect them too!
All of the visuals were super clean, works well with the simple style, good use of squash and stretch to get a lot of animation out of having no actual animations.
My only nitpick would be that the music doesn't loop, but finding good looping music is difficult.
Good job!
Wow, thank you for the extensive review. I am surprised I was able to hammer all these levels out in one day...
I've definitely have gotten a lot of experience in making game jam puzzle games, and I've mostly learned that making something simpler is most of the time going to be better. I also got pretty lucky with this mechanic, since it worked very well within a puzzle setting. You know you got a good concept when making levels isn't too hard. But, I was scraping for some ideas near level 14 and 15.
I love your idea of changing effects and sounds when the player is different sizes, and I'm honestly surprised I didn't think of it, since I made the ballista sound change pitch depending on size.
I do plan on having at least a post-jam update, there are a lot of small bugs that can really effect the game experience.
Wow, I love seeing a response from you, I've followed a few of your tutorials and you have revolutionized Godot for me.
Changing the arrow mid flight is definitely a more demanding puzzle timing wise, but everyone I've seen tries to do it the harder way by making the heavy arrow small, instead of scaling a normal arrow to be heavy and falling onto the target. I'll likely look to see how I can make it simpler, but I can do that for a lot of levels.
I'm glad you enjoyed the game :)
Cool game!
I like the idea on this one, and it is honestly quite similar to a idle type of game I had thought of before, so I love to see that the idea actually works pretty well!
I like how progressing in this game works in an interesting way compared to other idle games, where there is a element of randomness with the rockets, but being able to share resources between your planets , and having the per second count be a sum of the planets is very cool. I like how effectively other planets wont be able to recieve as much help from others, just due to where they are positioned relatively.
Because of this, it would be cool to see how the planets move, and having certain windows be better moments to move resources to that planet, since they are so much closer and thus a higher chance to hit them.
I do think the beginning of the game is a bit grindy though, clicker games I think usually work well when the beginning is rather fast, and there are leaps in progression. I don't imagine ill get any huge leaps in progression past when I got to the first few planets.
Having other planets does open to the idea of having them have different behaviors, where maybe they have different upgrades that can help other ones, or have other different types of modifiers that make them harder to sustain. Maybe one that excels in sending out other rockets, but ultimately need a lot of resources (from a nearby planet) to get them going well. Transferring resources between planets in an optimal way would be a fun meta game to solve and figure out.
I do wish you could zoom out a bit more, since I didn't even know there was another solar system until I read some of the other reviews.
The art of this is absolutely adorable :)
Great work! I'll be playing it in the background now for the next few hours.
Wow, that was awesome!
I was initially a bit perplexed by what this game would be, especially when I just spawned in and didn't exactly know what I would be doing. But once I started to see how the bullets began to stack upon eachother it hit me with such a good feeling of "Oh, this is awesome."
I like how this game plays very back and forth on the "Wow, I am getting hit by everything" to immediately being "Wow, I cant get hit by anything" and that kind of realization is nice to see knowing that you've been on both sides of them.
It's also fun knowing that you can theoretically control where every new bullet is going to be, so there is some level of planning how they get added, but I found myself not really planning much after it got crazy enough. It would be interesting to see how this plays if the player had to think more about how the next layer of bullets would be added. Then they would think about how it would react with the other layers.
It is also so cool that after awhile you can start to see the patterns the bullets move in, and dodging them you can basically find a consistent path you can track since they will keep repeating themselves. Although, I did find myself sometimes just barging through since they didn't deal that much damage, but I think that is a good thing rather than this game being extremely hard to dodge everything. I like that you made the smaller projectiles deal less damage as you went, because dodging all of those would be probably impossible.
Switching between the two types of gameplay is also nice, since having the moment of "okay, now get hit as much as possible" is a good break in between the hectic normal gameplay.
I'm not sure how this game could be expanded out post jam, but I think there is a cool idea here. Maybe with some flexing of the core design of the game itself.
This was awesome! And a very creative take on the theme. Nice job!
Nice little game!
I really like the idea of amassing a giant ship throughout the game, and eventually just shooting out bullet hell waves of projectiles, and this game definitely does let you get there. Even if it got relatively laggy at the end, I still think it was fun.
I do wonder how this game would play differently with different control schemes, I didn't find myself ever trying to dodge other bullets unless I was at the beginning of a core stage, otherwise my strategy was basically just hold down space and spin. I think the game could be adapted to one of two different mediums (obviously there may be more, but these are just what I had thought of)
1. Having the map camera be fixed, and the player can move from edge to edge of the screen.
I think that this would help with the general disorentation, and allow them to better fly themselves and manuever to attack and avoid enemies, since they are always going to be on their screen.
2. Having it behave like a normal bullet hell game, where you only shoot upwards towards enemies.
While this would reduce a bit of the complexity to movement, I think it would pan out well to making the player feel as though they have control over what is happening. You could create some more enemy types that force / encourage the player to place different ship parts in different places. Like maybe an enemy that always spawns at the bottom of the screen, so having some guns facing downwards has an actual purpose.
Adding new pieces was fun, and I liked seeing that there were a variety of types to add, instead of just one single bullet gun. The idea of the almost melee type weapon is very interesting. I think there are a lot of different ideas to explore here.
The pixel art is very clean! I just wish the UI elements were made to match it.
Nice job!
This is an awesome little game!
You took such a simple concept and polished it so much that it became extremely satisfying to just amass a giant sword and essentially just swing it around randomly, getting kills with the effects is a great feeling.
I think there is some benefit to having the controls display somehow within the game, as opposed to only on the itch page. Even just the buttons written on the sidebars would do fine because there really are only 2 things the player needs to know. But also a small tutorial at the beginning would do a lot to get players right into the action of the game.
After awhile, it does become a bit of a mindless collect gold -> swing weapon, and strategy isn't a huge factor into what the player does. Although, there are a few things like the shield guys that take atleast a little bit more planning on the players behalf, but the frequent and random spawns hinder the amount a player can plan ahead. And this design works fine on its own, and is very fun to play anyway, so if your intention is just an action game then disregard my next paragraph.
It does make me wonder though how it could play it the movements were a bit more methodical, not slowed down to the point of where it is a puzzle game, I think the action pace of it is one of its core strengths. But if you had asked me anything that I had done during my run, I wouldn't be able to tell you other than "well, I just ran around and clicked every once and awhile." Maybe these could be split into different modes, one where chaos and little thinking is preferred, and one where a little more methodical approach is needed.
Anyway, this is such a fun game to play through, and trying to get a high score is very fun. And its very nice to see people posting high scores, that is always a good sign of people enjoying your game :)
The artwork is very cute :) I do wish the gameplay art and the title screen / intro are were more consistently themed though.
Great work!
Love seeing such an extensive response off of this!
I really think this game has a lot of potential to be made into a fully fledged game. It obviously could go well into the theme of games like Getting over it or Jump king, but this one would have a unique take on it by being that you built the entire structure you need to climb, rather than having an awkward control scheme.
I like that this game came to you with your own personal journeys, it can definitely help create an emotional attachment, as well as just boost general motivation towards creating it.
I look forward to see where this game will go, if you decide to continue working on it :)
Thank you so much! I got sort of lucky that it was a lot harder to get boxes stuck against walls because you could always resize it out of it, but I always think that a reset or skip button is essential in Jam games where problems and unexpected behavior are bound to happen, I know this game doesn't always do what is expected with its collisions.
