itch.io

Saw the OST release on Mittsies channel, immediately put on top of my to-play list. Fantastic game! How do you even describe this genre, bullet-hell rhythm puzzle?

It felt very hard, even on normal. You can't tell half the time what's even going on on the screen, you kinda have to tune out all distractions and focus on dodging green & running patterns between machines... But the story made it all worth it, lol.

Also, the vibes. You don't even have to start the game, it just oozes with style from the main menu alone. Excellent animations, banging soundtrack (but then again, it's Mittsies, what else would you expect?), tons of self-referencing artistic themes. And the girls, yeah. though it's a bit disappointing they don't feel as memorable as the ones in Helltaker.

I think I had a weird issue with dashing? Like, if you spam spacebar, sometimes the girl dashes once, pauses for a few frames, then dashes again, and other times the girl dashes twice without pausing.

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, the background ended up not great. I spent way too much time figuring out the spraycan tool in aseprite, so by the time I've imported it into the game and realized the contrast issue there wasn't much time left to fix it. It was either redoing it from scratch (not enough time), dimming it down (which looked ugly), keeping a pure black background (boring) or leaving it as is.

Thank you!

Nice entry!

I quite liked the aesthetic and the premise, feel like there's a lot of opportunity to expand it further.

The hidden tunnel effect was very cool. The graphics overall were fairly crisp, good use of lighting and particles! Only downside to me was that it was unclear what exactly the decorative objects were - they have names in code like "icedFountain", "controlPanel", "deadHeater", "engineHolder" and the like, but they didn't associate with anything for me (maybe due to perspective). Nice touch with the parallax effect on arches.

The sound design was great, it perhaps contributed the most towards building the atmosphere!

I felt the game could use more variety or challenge. Once you figure out what each item does, and what combinations can be crafted (both don't take long), the game boils down to slowly wandering the halls, applying correct item to the obstacle, or backtracking if you don't have the needed item. Maybe it would've helped if the game had enemies, or more crafting combinations, or more memorable locations (all tunnels look kinda same), don't know.

There's a broken .lnk file in your game archive that points to a file that only exists on your PC, might want to remove it for future releases.

This is a very nice game!

I think my favorite detail about it was the autumn leaves particles, it's a small thing but does a lot to bring out the atmosphere.

Great choice of music & art, it looked and felt very consistent and in tune with the game story and message.

The difficulty was ok, it didn't take more than 10 tries to complete any of the rooms, so I never felt stuck.

In some cases it was very hard to see the spikes, as they blend into the background or the decorations, and you notice them only after you die on them once or twice. Same issue with hearts in some rooms (example pic attached, heart blends with cloud and spikes blend with fence). Perhaps it would've helped if the spikes had more visually distinct features, or the decorations were not as saturated as the foreground elements. Also a minor thing, in school levels the paintings have very high contrast against background, which is similar to floor platforms, and at the same time the lockers obscure the white/brown floor lines, so it becomes somewhat hard to see at a glance where you're supposed to land, you kinda have to stop and think for a moment. There was also the issue of not being able to see where to land due to camera positioning, but that's been mentioned by other reviewers.

Overall a pretty good entry!

Okay, that's certainly an interesting concept. Nice idea with the dimension switch too! Platforming mechanics aside, I feel it could've worked better if there was more interaction between the storyline and the gameplay. Like, maybe the dialogue going on in the background as you collect the cards, or advance through the level? Or maybe the level responding to the dialogue? It feels like the two exist apart from each other.

Kinda disappointed the art is AI-generated. It looks appealing and clickable, yet the levels are made from plain white boxes, and the character uses isometric perspective instead of side perspective so their feet don't line up with ground. Ends up looking like a bunch of 3rd party assets thrown together... I'd suggest you look for an actual artist, or at least take more care to keep it consistent.

Pretty good entry! The visuals were very nice, the art was quite detailed and readable, loved the style of it.  Sound design was great, it did a lot to convey the atmosphere!

It was confusing that you have to double-press E in order to interact with some objects, and it was also confusing that some objects will only reveal surface-level information after you've triggered a corresponding script step. Like how the safe can be seen only when you're supposed to find it, while the game sets up an expectation that it is a regular closet, and you need to find a prybar or something to move it or crack it open with.

Damn, great vibes! The art is really disturbing, crazy high attention to detail. Storyline shows much promise, I would've loved to see where it goes next.

I had some frustration figuring out the layout of the game map (there are 2 floors... but going right teleports you to the 2nd floor, and yet there is also a window from 1st floor to the 2nd floor - how does that work?) and the rules by which the demon behaves (he can spot me from the first floor when I'm on the second floor... does he do that through the window when he stands next to it?), and died a lot because I couldn't find the 2 hiding spots on the map for a while (thanks for the cutscene skip function btw). But I think it was worth it in the end.

Voiceover was awesome. It was also surprising to see multiple languages and voiceovers (что редко встречается в джемных играх), and of the high quality too!

I thought the game bugged out because it returned to the main menu after the mirror scene, yet the description & narrative mentioned multiple demons, had to source dive to double check it's just Beelzebub. I'd suggest putting an "end of demo version" screen, or making it more visible in game description.

Overall, I think you did an outstanding job here, team, this is certainly a unique entry!

Glad you enjoyed it! I'll definitely need to do something about the wall jumps, I've been getting a lot of complaints about them, and controller support is something I didn't think about, but should definitely look into. Thank you for suggestions!

Thank you for the comment, appreciate it!

Yeah, controls are apparently a common complaint, and I may have overdone the difficulty... Perhaps expecting players to put much effort into playing the game in context of a game jam wasn't very smart, lol.

Thanks!

> I just want to take a second to appreciate the main menu, everything was so detailed and seeing even the points where the bullets fired from were animated was a great detail.

Thanks! TBH it didn't take much effort to animate the main menu at all... Because the main menu is "fake", it's actually a fully simulated level that you have to play through at some point in order to win the game :)

Interesting idea! Wish it got some more polish.

The mechanics were confusing, even with explanation. Probably because there wasn't any visual feedback between the bird and the passcode (or I missed it), so I couldn't tell that the two mechanics are related. I completely missed the moment when I unlocked the first two colors in passcode, and why it happened. Coincidentally, the first 3-color combo I got was red-red-red, so I thought that the resulting change was what's supposed to happen once you collect any full 3-color set.

I think the art was pretty good, you definitely had a consistent style going on with the characters, but their explicitly vector style looked weird against explicitly pixelated terrain.

The game should probably disable fall damage while the cheatcode is active and just limit vertical movement, you get teleported upwards and off-screen and don't fall down, so it looks like the character disappears.

I... didn't like the music choice, it was just a short loop with no variation that got grating after a while.

Anyway, hope my feedback does not discourage you in your future projects, good luck!

> I am wondering if I should remove the down arrow, to keep players on the surface longer.

Ha, don't know about that. First thing I did when I spawned in is jump into the hole in order to check for a secret :)

Pretty cool game, nice concept! Very good color choice, and I liked the relaxing music.

Took me a bit to understand how to spot the "invisible" platforms, but once I did, it was pretty straightforward finding the way. I think I managed to complete some levels in an unintended way by jumping high enough off the platforms below the door, instead of going through bottom edge or platforming.

I ran into a strange bug where sometimes, pressing Space doesn't make the character jump but instead only plays the jump sound, that was distracting. Coyote jumps would've been nice too.

Great submission! The art was clean and pleasing to the eye, reminded me of World Of Goo, and the use of light motes greatly added to the atmosphere. Very good sound design too!

It was pretty clear where to go or what to do, and the platforming wasn't very hard. Copious amount of checkpoints was good, didn't let it get tedious. There were 2 confusing moments for me: in first room, the spikes look like visual effect of echo instead of danger, so it took a few deaths to understand what's going on, and in the long jump tutorial room, there is a mote of light hanging in the center of the screen that doesn't move and hence looks like an unreachable collectable.

Only major downside is that I experienced an input bug where the game would "stick" to the last direction key pressed (e.g. I die while holding D, then release it before respawning -> the character will endlessly run right on respawn instead of standing still; I do a walljump while holding D, then release it -> the character will fly right after ending the walljump), that was very annoying. Also, defeating wizard doesn't count as defeating an enemy, sadge.

Nice game! I wish there was some hint on how to use the cheatcodes - I only discovered that by accident while trying to be cheeky and poking the web game with browser tricks (because I thought the cheatcodes bugged out and didn't work).

The sound design was okay. Wish there was some background music, the game was very quiet. The art was fairly good (I dig the minimalist aesthetic), though the colors felt a bit harsh. Character walk animation felt too slow with relation to how fast they were moving.

Not sure how I felt about the underground tunnels, they were sometimes long and winding with nothing exciting going on (character speed hack could've helped?), but it was surprising how much hidden stuff there was on the surface.

Good work!

Very cool entry. The art was great, I quite enjoyed picking up on small UI details like the shadow from the window, or the control consoles. Good background music and sfx too, I think you nailed the sci-fi feel with these!

I felt the difficulty curve started out very steep. I played the tutorial, and the first rule was something along the lines of "No House Grumio Fragites"... "There are ships coming from all directions, but I haven't even found where the tutorial text is! How do I tell apart a frigate and a shuttle by picture? Their features look way off from how they look in the 'book'! Also, how do I tell which faction it belongs to?" Yeah, it was a bit overwhelming. I think a more slow-paced tutorial would be good here, or maybe additional in-game explanation. I didn't figure out until much later that shuttle and frigate have different engine shapes, or that the big blip with inverted crosshair is for frigates (it was similar in size to cruisers), or that there's a window on the left with information on ship size & faction (which is also apparently can be falsified). It was also a bit awkward having to dart the eyes between cargo manifest and scan results - those are in opposite sides of the screen, yet you have to check cargo fast and often (later because of that and scanner speed I just ignored the scan feature and sent away every ship with suspiciously low cargo weight).

Then the difficulty curve normalized, I even managed to buy an upgrade... But by the time there were 8 or so rules it started to get impossible to track all the rules, and I just couldn't earn enough to combat the monthly upkeep. Made it to 15 rules, I think it was, before blowing up.

Anyway, this kinda looks like a wall of negative feedback, but I actually enjoyed the game very much. Great work, team!

I tried playing the game (Windows version), but unfortunately it just crashes for me whenever I press the Start button (blank error window with "Fatal error", no additional info).

Is it just me or not? May be related to an outdated video driver (Adrenalin 21.30.24.05 vs Adrenalin 24.3.1+ that UE recommends), but that's not something I can change at the moment.

Nice short game! Great choice of art & music, ended up very atmospheric. The puzzles were very simple, but I guess in this case it just gives you a sense of solving puzzles without having to think hard about it, so the game ended up quite relaxing. I quite enjoyed it.

I had a little trouble figuring out how to enter numbers, before realizing those squares are input boxes that are supposed to be clicked.

Alright, that's a pretty simple game, but surprisingly addictive! Great job on sound+visuals, the game just oozes with style. The difficulty curve was good, and despite how the bosses don't have much complex behavior behind them, I found myself developing little strategies on how to best increase damage output and take less damage.

I had a lot of technical issues trying to play it though (game not fitting on a 1920x1080 monitor, fullscreen not adjusting resolution/not centering, couldn't find how to escape laser selection menu, game not closing from Alt+F4, resize ability did not appear to work).

Unfortunately I couldn't progress past the wall jump where there were spikes on top of a wall, it just kept killing the character whenever they attached to the wall. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but in the end it wasn't fun having to walk for half a minute from the spawn point to try again. Overall the wall jump mechanic feels extremely unpolished with how vital it is for progression, with seeming random attachment/detachment and acceleration.

Fairly good atmosphere though, and great choice of the name!

Thank you for feedback!

> I didn't find the debug option, unfortunately.

That's... unfortunate, perhaps I didn't make it intuitive enough to discover. It's in the final room of Frozen North location. The game ending with the pedestal is just a red herring; there is a graphical "glitch" in a corner of the prize room that you're supposed to enter and unlock the second half of the game.

> the movement felt a bit difficult

Yeah, it can take some time to get used to. I tried experimenting with a zoomed-out fast-moving feel inspired by Super Meat Boy, and use a split-room camera instead of the usual follow camera. It worked out great in some situations, but maybe not so in cases where precision is needed.

> The music was good as well.

Thank you, it was my first foray into soundtrack design, was tons of fun!

Good entry! I really liked the paper aesthetic, animations and backgrounds were very well done.

Had to push a post-jam update to fix a critical bug that breaks sequence progression and makes the game unplayable... Which is ironic, because [spoilers].

Also, turns out web build acquired some minor issues (text misaligned, music looping from wrong position). Nothing critical, but I'd advise playing native Windows build instead.

Edit: Please ignore "Press G for dash" text in tutorial area, you don't receive dash until later in the game.

Thank you for your kind words!

The recipe book is a good idea, I think we should consider it if we keep working on the game.

The dialogue popups from plaques are a common annoyance, yeah, wish we could fix that before submitting.

Glad you enjoyed it!

It's a last-minute workaround we had to put in due to an issue discovered way too close to submission deadline... Though I must ask, why does it upset you so much? Being fullscreen does not stop it from being a browser game, nor does it cause technical issues on a well-maintained machine. I don't understand why such a triviality would stop anyone from playing, when this game jam is all about creative expression over technicall correctness.

That was quite fun, I really liked the main mechanic of bouncing laser to hit the backs of your enemies!

The particle effects looked great, and pixelated style as well, but it felt to me that the camera shake was overdone. Enemies often come in groups, so you end up firing laser for long times, and the camera ends up shaking almost always.

Ooh, great take on the limitation - slowing down makes the light go out, and in some levels lack of light pretty much leads to certain death. I like it.

Nice tense atmosphere in this game! I really liked the overall idea of hiding under furniture from the spotlights.

The only issue I had is that sometimes the camera wouldn't snap off from the door fast enough.

Fun little game! Sad to see it had to be scaled down, imagine there could be a lot of interesting interactions around the movement mechanic and fish theme.

Controls are surprisingly responsive for how unorthodox the movement is.

Sweet little piece! A very heartwarming message, and it's great to hear that you've enjoyed working on it so much.

Great game! It's quite a feat to both learn new engine and end up with something so polished.

I think the part I loved the most was how the ambience would change with the weather, as well as the death effect.

Very cool ambience. The game looks and sounds great, underwater character movement feels good (not counting movement at water surface), and I can tell a lot of work went into the level generator. I really liked how it all works together.

I think there may be something wrong with the junk placement generator. Sometimes there's no junk on the map (or on entire half of the map?), sometimes junk falls out of the air, and sometimes junk is embedded in walls, but can still be picked up if it's close enough to character hitbox. I couldn't complete the first day despite trying multiple times, there's just not enough junk to collect before running out of air.

Great job for your first entry! Visuals are very good, sound design too; I really liked the atmosphere, and the overall idea behind it, though I didn't manage to finish the game.

I didn't quite get what the cameras are for. They almost always show only a small snippet near an edge (pic), and my brain just doesn't connect what's on the monitor with where it's supposed to be around the sub. Also, there may be a bug with the sonar? At one point it just stops responding to spacebar, despite being 'good'.

Impressive work! I've got somewhat lost a few times, but managed to finish the game in the end.

I really enjoyed the atmosphere, both the opressive music and the overall vagueness of visuals/story. Character movement felt quite solid, and the tutorial part was very well done!

Feedback regarding rough edges:

- Respawn timer is very long? When I first died, I though the "dark water" just makes you invisible, because you were still alive and could keep moving for a few seconds. You can also "die" multiple times, thus extending respawn timer.

- The character could really use coyote time for the first jump. Without it, the second jump can act as coyote jump, which gives the impression that double-jump sometimes bugs out and stops working.

Very solid game! It didn't feel overly hard (I only died to water once, by missing a jump), but the simple visuals and music of choice work very well together with the mechanics and theme. Really liked changing backgrounds and occasional decorations, they kept it from getting stale.

Interesting concept, if little rough around the edges! The music changing to muted when going underwater was a really nice touch.

Nice simple game! I really enjoyed the randomized upgrades idea: sometimes the RNG would roll very high values, which changes the pacing a lot.

The text is hard to read, as others have mentioned; perhaps a slimmer font, a brigher red/more orange-y color, and/or double spaces between words could help.