I love the art style. Definitely, a lot of efforts went there, and the result is incredible.
I'm not a big fan of the gameplay. You feel penalized for extinguishing fires, as your size decreases. So if your rage is full, you can just let the forest burn ^^
The mechanics is fun to play with, you did a nice work.
I had a hard time getting into it, as the rhythm is a bit uneven. You barely play when you discover the controls, when suddenly you have a boss fight with new controls.
You did a nice job building a cohesive mood through the art, the sound design and the writing.
The concept is simple. I was rather unimpressed at first, BUT you elaborated a very clever level design with varied traps without introducing too many different rules.
Ahah, I love one button games :) I work in a video games school and this is one the projects that is given to students during their first year.
Anyway, good job on that. The concept works perfectly. It's fun. The difficulty is well scaled. You have a few interesting mechanics that allow you to create nice level design elements. Some of them are a bit underused, but it's ok, it's a jam and good LD takes an incredible amount of time and playtest.
I read that it was your first game, so congrats on pulling this out :)
The critical step to improve is to fix game breaking bugs. Like whenever I grow or shrink, I can no longer shoot, which is annoying. As well, one enemy got stuck between me and my cannon, so I couldn't do anything basically. And enemies can spawn in the wall and get stuck.
One thing that I didn't understand: It seems that the ammo is limited somehow? And differentiated between the two guns? You need an UI to show this.
Otherwise, the basis is nice. There are good ideas, which need to be refined and improved.
Why would I use one ray vs the other? What type of situation do I need to adapt to, to make each option interesting and to create interesting choices for the player?
Maybe different enemies spawn in the arena, or there are various arenas with different layouts...
Anyway, good job :) Keep working on this, and keep improving!
The idea is cool, the art is cool, and you did a very nice job on the UI and on the code. Only one bug spotted: I managed to have two items overlap on the balance, but no big deal. It looks very polished.
On the gameplay side, I think the concept is a little weak at the moment.
For a good arcade game, you need the difficulty to ramp up. If the difficulty doesn't change, either the game is too hard and the player is frustrated from the beginning, or the game is too easy and it gets boring. I was in a second case. I managed to hit the green zone 20 times in a row on my first try and gave up.
You must increase the difficulty and challenge the player like: "How far can you go? How long can you survive?". Think Tetris or Missile Command.
You had many ways to do so: Reduce the time, increase the conveyor speed, reduce the number of items, remove a space from the balance, add constraints on the items you can put... You could even combine those constraints randomly to create variety in the gameplay, like you're playing and suddenly, BOOM, you have half the time and you can only use 2 items.
Hey! Fantastic core mechanics, which, I guess, is inspired by Viewfinder.
I'm going to be a bit harsh, but I want to be honest in my review.
I think you wasted the potential of the game with poor level design.
I can take screenshots of background elements and place them in the level. That's so cool!!! What awesome things am I going to do with this ability? Create platforms. That's the ONLY application you used in the entire game.
There were some potential at some point with the idea of blocking fireball, but it's never forced on the player. And you had one million potential puzzles to create. What if I screenshot a cannon that shoots fireball and use it to kill some enemy, or melt some ice block? What if I screenshot emptiness, and use it to destroy the ground below an enemy? What if a puzzle requires me to make a copy of a key? What if you used the fact that you cannot paste outside of the screen, and have the player "drag" an item with multiple screenshots along a level?
In addition, I would recommend not writing a story if it's going to be generic. It wastes time and resources that are precious during a jam.
But again, let me be clear: I 💗 LOVE 💗 your main feature. You could make a great game out of it, and I truly encourage you to keep working on your concept 😉
Very cool! Nice art, nice gameplay. Very fluid controls.
You did put some challenge here! Both in strategy and execution. You have to figure it the a solution and do some tricky platforming to solve the level.
I love the risk / reward trade-off when you choose to either go big or feed the boss right away. + the gameplay actually changes slightly when you get bigger. It's much easier to eat creatures, but more difficult to avoid attacks. You zoom across the arena trying to zigzag between tentacles, it feels awesome!
The upgrades add a vampire-survivor flavor that is welcome.
Completed. Everything is great: Concept, art, puzzle design... I did have these "I figured it out... oh wait no... what's going on?! AAAHHHH, got it!" moments.
Super polished puzzle game, especially the sound design! I mean, listen to the various screams when the character is falling ^^ (it sounds creepy when I say it, but the sounds are kinda comical)
The controls are fine, until you meet breaking glasses, where you are often forced to restart a puzzle because you can't execute the solution properly.
The rhythm gradually increases as the game goes by, and the countdown increases the pressure on us as we keep clicking everywhere, trying to not waste anything.
Very systemic in nature, which is a nice thing for a jam.
Please please please, but the UI button to build and hire personal more obvious! I was 100% sure these were stats about how much you earn or stuff like this. I spent the first 5 minutes waiting patiently and clicking on ONE house ^^
