itch.io

Graphics & Presentation:

 The sprite work is solid and elevated greatly by crisp animations [especially the smooth hiding animation] and wondeful use of soft light and dynamic shadows. 

 The mute, dreary level forefront contrasts great against the blues and pinks of the skyline, and I allways appreciate some good parallax. It creates a visually consistent, complete picture with lots of enviromental detail, though I think the game could have profited from some more detail or variety in the characters themselves. 

★★★☆☆

Music & Sound:

 (I'm not a very musical person, so its gonna be diffult to summarize my thoughts in a cohesive fashion; but)

 here is where the game really caught me off-guard. The apparently customly composed soundtrack accentuates the atmosphere of the game expertly.

 The tension provoking, rhythmic gameplay music blends with the enviromental / game sounds so organically, you could almost be mistaken that they were composed into the same track. 

 And then theres the standout Main Menu theme; transitioning elegantly between deep and oppressive piano tunes and angelic choirs that maintain uncanny, sinister undertones. If any fans of American McGee's games are reading this, I'd recommend sitting on the main menu for a hot minute and just listening to this piece. 

 Last but not least, the soundeffects. There is very little to complain about here. Throughout the entire game you'll constantly hear the rythmic thunder of heavy boots drawing near and its just as big a part of a mood setter as the soundtrack itself. Great audio mixing all around. 

★★★★✭

Gameplay & Theme:

 Game runs fluently, controls are crisp, the systems work and blend together well, there were no unreasonable difficulty spikes and I've noticed no major / gamebreaking bugs. As far as gamejam projects go, this is certainly one of the more polished ones out there.  

The jam theme "It's not real" was certainly more grazed than tackled. There are elements of duality in the narrative, and questions regarding the nature of propaganda that sadly weren't explored as thorowly as they could have been - atleast without more development time. 

★★✭☆☆

Its a difficult one if I may say so, the hit boxes are not very forgiving.

I love the character design though. I noticed you can use the peak of your helmet to hang onto ledges, would love to hear if that was intentional or not, or just a side effect of the character design.

Oh boy, it might not be much of a game right now, but what a looker. Thats a strong art direction right now. I can see where ambition knee capped you a bit, with such a short time frame.

Getting the trap door open was an especially tricky one, glad I gave it a couple minutes of stomping though to get to the ninja, just to emediately get sandwiched between two enemies and get inescapably stuck.^^

 I really hope you'll polish it up once the jam ends, whats actually there so far looks and plays great.

A winner is me, making this the first Tower Defense I actually ever beat.

The start is actually really tricky, downing those first two planes without neglecting the infantry took me more than a couple of tries.

Nice to hear everything actually nicely audioed (like, turrets fireing -etc-), played too many dead silent games recently.

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Also comforting to see someone else do something "army related" for the jam.

I'm in love with the little creature [why is it sooo sad].

Though it took me a minute to realize that it was actually crying, and not in fact dribbling a tiny blue ball :T

The all grey esthetic works surprisingly well, you don't see that that often done in pixel art.

Character reminded a lot of southpark, but much smoother animated.

Wished the game had a proper tutorial. I was quite lost at the beginning. It took me a couple days to figure things out really.

All the rewind items you can buy at the store were really funny.

Wished there was more interactivity with all the stuff in the background.

Well, five stars for inovation, can't say I played on of these before. Also the only game in the jam so far I encountered having a 'lore' page, so, bonus point for that.

Games hard, or I'm terrible, so I don't see myself winning a race anytime soon.

Wondering though, is it a legit wound up UFO, or are we racing toy cars here?

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Occassionally I encountered an issue where my alien would drop through the floor, after knocking himself out after running into the UFO.

Yup. Thats the carpet. Thats the one my video rental store used to have back in the day.

It blends surprisingly well with the whole synth wave esthetic. I know its kinda played out by now, but that stuff runs through my veins, love it. My only complaint are the "pills". I know it might be place-holder-y, but right now I feel like they clash a bit with the overall art direction.

I've played sooo many platformers these days that were dead silent, you don't know how much I appreciate one with sound effects right now. The doctor's noodle legs also got a good chuckle out of me. I feel like the Dalek could be a bit more forgiving, you really got to squeeze through some tight places to get past them, not much room for error. 

Well, its official, I've never been worse at any other game ever. Hed to get myself a second pair of hands just to keep up somewhat. It supports my suspicion that I'm the least musical person in the world.

I'm not sure if theres anyway arround that. Perhaps if the notes were marked (dfjk) or if you could rebind the keys?

Eitherway, I'm in love with the game boy esthetic.

I got a lot of genuine laughs out of this one, thank you.

It was nice to get to play a jam title with an actual narrative for once.

The whole idea of going through increasingly early builds of the game is a strong one [may or may not steal it for a future project of my own]

As basic as the actual gameplay loop was, I think I had still the most fun with this one.

By far one of the strongest entries.

Core gameplay loop very similar to another jam entry called 'Rift Boy' ( just in case you wanna give it a looksy ).

The art is beautiful, and morbidly enough the death animation is especially cute.

Its difficult to find something to really critique. The only thing that bothered me was the size of the UI at times, it had a nack of covering up a bit too much of the level, made it difficult to check out certain corners at times.
Beyond that, its only really the missing sound effects.

Beautiful work all arround!

My personal winner of the Jam so far.
The game surpases the masses in both quality and quantity. It shines in both gameplay and visuals. The idea that you squeezed this out in under a week is mind boggeling. Even all the "unimportant" stuff, like having a desktop icon, and a nicely decorated page.

Do your days have more hours or somethin'?

And while I've played a bunch of solid gamers -especially platformers- with gimmicks similar to one of your rewind mechanics, none of them even attempted to have two.

I don't even know what I can criticize - perhaps it leaning a bit heavy on the Portal esthetic, maybe the difficulty curve? Beyond,  I have only applause to offer.

I was about to comment how this clearly isn't your first rodeo, until I read that this was your first jam. All the more impressive.

Strong core gameplay loop, don't think I've played anything similar so far from the jam.

I don't know if its intentional or not, but the fact that the game keeps moving when you pause, and then rewinds to the previous position when you unpause - it might not be by design, but I thought it was a detail that worked surprisingly well with the jam's theme.

Figured out the pool, didn't figure out the helicopter, guess I'm gonna give it another shot.

One of the coolest looking games of the jam I've played so far, also one of the hardest.

Strong esthetic, the pulsing UI adds a lot to the presentation. Very polished all arround.

Wished I could say more about the music, but I only ever get to hear the first minute or so : P

My only real pieces of critisim would be -

consider making the hit boxes more forgiving and consistent. It looks like the enemy's don't actually got to clip you for you to game-over. I feel like the player's hitbox could either be made a bit more form fitting, or the ship scaled down, or taking inspiration from SHMUPS redueced to the actual cockpit.

I'd also consider making the base weapon full-auto, after some rounds I really felt the shooty-finger getting tired from hammering.

Thats a strong core gameplay loop you got there. With some funky chip tune and some crowd clearing weapons / power ups, I can see this to be highly addictive.

There isn't much here yet, but what is here is incredibly pollished allready.

Hope you'll keep at it.

By far one of the most ambitious and impressive jam entries I've played so far.

Solid esthetic and strong gameplay loop, amazing blend of genres.

Though I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to beat the Kong level.

Hey, thanks for playing and reviewing.

Impassable terrain could definately be clearer, though there is currently also an issue where sometimes certain passable tiles can't be selected for some reason, so theres a chance you might have run into one of those aswell.

Glad you enjoyed the art direction!

We totally planned on having sounds, and perhaps even a bit of voice acting but we just ran out of time. Its certainly one of the things we'd like to revisit in the future.

Hey, thanks for the giving our game a shot and the kind words!

The red player colours were a subject of internal discussion, but its something I was pushing for to go better with the 'Red Army' theme. Theres  definitely ways to make it more clear on who's who.

Having tested the game *a lot* I will also agree with you on your second point. Having to fire into the ground gets annoying quickly.

I was just about to comment that this clearly isn't your first rodeo, until I saw in the description that this was indeed your first game jam. All the way more impressive. Looks, sounds and feels like a "proper", released game in every aspect.

Strangely addictive and somewhat meditative.

I feel the next step for that game would having you actually sort movies by title or subgenre.

I've noticed that about a week into it customers were exclusively renting tapes, never returning them, no idea if that was a bug or not.

I think the issue is definately somewhere on my end, I just can't figure out what it is exactly. Thanks for going through the trouble anyways!

Thank you a lot! I really appreciate it.

Absolutely impressive getting an entire, narrative driven game out over the span of a week. A good one at that. I really dig the art, and the setting, just wished there was more interactivity within the scenes.

Sprite quality and animations are superbe. The background in the first chapter would look amazing with some paralax. Shooting is really satisfying.

A lot of the enemies fire their projectiles too high for you to shoot down, but too low for you to duck under. In combination with the high projectile speed, and their ability to shoot you off screen, I feel like enemies are bit more dangerous than they need to be.

I feel like the platforms in the earlier jungle sequence could be more evenly spaced to help learn the timings / distance on jumps better. Theres also a leap of faith one where you have to jump onto a small platform, but doing so moves the platform out of your field of fiew, and with no other objects on screen at that point, it makes it really difficult to gage whether you're going to overshoot or not.

Not sure what to tell you what a million other people propably haven't allready.

The game impresses in both quality and quantity right now, its nuts that all of this was achieved in about a week.

The sprites are great, the impact on land satisfying [though i feel the sound is a bit too ear ringing on short drops / hops], the death sequence is eery, the ending just wonderfully timed.

Though I have to wonder why a clocktower would have so much water running through, or is it rainwater leaking in?

Thanks for sharing! Appreciated.

I will definately keep an eye on this, the setting got me hooked.

I hope you don't mind me asking, but what programm do you do your illustrations in?

I can't pretend I've beaten your game (fuck that lake of acid!), but my god its an absolute looker. You / your artists got mad talent. Especially if you made all those assets truly over the last week. I also wanna voice my appreciation  for having an actual narrative, which tends to be the first thing to get the axe in a lot of these gamejam projects I feel.

I think there is a lot of potential here, with some sound effects, some better feedback on hits and some less punishing platforming, I totally see myself playing this "properly".

Oh, and I'm in love with your character design.

I don't know whats up, but trying to download this results in an error for me everytime. Is there a mirror? Any other source for me to download this from? I really wanna give this a shot.

Of all the games I got play from this jam so far, this one impressed me most.

Its like a really neat blend of Shantae, Alladin, and Prince of Persia.

Sprite quality, animations, sounds, music, controls, core gameplay loop, that stuff feels like it could deserve all a "proper" release. It even got a story intro, which a lot of jam-games don't bother with. All thats missing is some more enviromental variety and maybe a UI thats a bit more thematic with the 1001 nights setting and/or easier to read at a glance (bit heavy on the big numbers right now).

I really hope you'll keep working on this, feels like you're 95% there.

Interessting, looks like you might have discovered a new bug or two, thanks for reporting, I'll add it our list of stuff to look into!

And thanks for playing and commenting ofcourse! Really appreciate it.

Thanks for dropping feedback, and for giving our project a chance!

I really dig the protagonist, reminds me a lot of the Doom Marine. His flickering textures and derpy little running animation gives him a lot of charm IMO. 

Gameplay loop is fun, though the difficulty ramps up quickly and a couple screens in theres not much room for errors.

Above all the game would really profit from some funky chip tunes I think.

Thanks mate, honestly! Its our first project, and I really appreciate it that you gave us a looksy and a comment. The lack of feedback on attacks is definitely something we wished we could have adressed aswell, but, ya know, deadline and all. Its something we might revisit in some post-gamejam update.