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Hey Nano, checking in on your game!

I like the premise and idea of the game, I'm digging this kind of management style games. I understand that you have a lot of placeholders still but if the main workshop screen is the style you want to go for then I think this would work, looks pretty neat!

I've played until I got the ability to brew sleeping water (post tutorial, in a proper playthrough) but something bugged? Timer went from 0.20 to 0.60 and then I keep getting failed to brew despite using lavender and the other herb. I also had a weird bug with fullscreen mode, I went into settings, changed to windowed mode and tutorial put me into fullscreen for some reason. On top of that after tutorial ended it put me back into windowed mode like I wanted lol

Regarding tutorial, I have to say that it's slightly annoying, very handholdy, maybe a bit too much. I don't think you need to explain audio settings to anyone in tutorial, but I'll leave that up to you. But it left me with no doubts about how the game works so you succeded with that part.

There's a thin balance to strike in this game, between managing different timed things and making sure player has always something to do. First thing after tutorial - you start with no items and have to wait 1:30 for one expedition (there's a funny thing about tutorial mentioning that you don't have time for expeditions yourself, but having empty inventory, you absolutely do lol), that's crazy, I'd suggest letting player start with at least some starting items and also let me get more summons over time (i only got to level 3 so maybe there are more, i just didn't get them due to bug). I wish there was more stuff to do beside clicking things to be done and waiting, like maybe minigames you have to perform for those task to finish (example being games like potioncraft or while the iron's hot), maybe not as elaborate, but something to do. And if the player wants to auto complete those task they could maybe use summons to do it for them? Just throwing ideas.

I must say that I really like brewing for the fact that it doesn't tell you explicitly what's required for recipe, you have to research and figure it out on your own, that is cool. It needs some QoL features in UI (e.g. harvest field could change status when it's ready to water/harvest cause right now i need to click it) Idk about the font for Title texts, it's very hard to read sometimes, with funky letters like b or g

Can't think of anything more, in general I like it, I could see myself spending a day with the game, progressing further and further, tho I wonder if just getting new recipes is enough to keep me entertained for long, I feel like you're missing some paradigm shift like many incremental games do. Keep up good work Nano!

I love it, it's super polished, it has interesting spin on the genre, art looks great, bonus perks fit well, i've got nothing bad to say, well done!

Omg the host themselves played my game, what an honor! Jokes aside, thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed :D

Unfortunately we only had so much time to do full experience, we'd rather have finished linear game than demo of unfinished branching world, it is what it is :') 

I tried the game, but I don't understand what am I supposed to do, the door to red pagoda doesn't open and I can't cross the water and that's it :c

I actually found the upgrade, it does feel much better with it, but I still managed to overheat on last bossfight somehow, just for the record

Fun game! Haven't played something like that in quite a while, so that was a pleasant surprise. Music and art is great, made for terrific mood and I was scared the entire time haha. There's some slight design choices that i felt weren't the right ones, but it didn't stop me from completing the game, overall it's pretty solid and definitely a big achievement for someone that just picked up a game engine iirc.

So I for some nitpicks about the design, I wasn't sure what corelocked meant at first, later I realised it's a different name for classic overheat situation, I felt that with how your bosses were implemented, it's just a punish mechanism against players. I wouldn't be against it if your bosses didn't have timed window when they can take damage, if you screw up with overheat you're denied the opportunity to fight. That's my first thought about it, the system probably just need some value tweaking to feel better, but it's aight at the moment.

Thanks for making great game! :D

Thanks for playing! Unfortunately we have no intention of going for SMVM, month long jam already did not turn out in our favor haha

Finally got around to finishing the game! It took me 3 attempts spread across 2 days to get it done, this game is massive! To be upfront, I'm not a fan of the idea that losing power in a game could be fun and your game didn't prove me wrong, even though I suppose I wasn't losing on many hidden secrets (I wasn't looking for any) I just felt like I had to hassle through longer corridors because I couldn't destroy crates or something. But that's kinda the beauty of jams, where we try things we wouldn't do otherwise, so I'm not judging based on that.

Generally speaking I enjoyed the game, combat was definitely the shining part of the experience. I like various enemy design, even though most of them were just shooting at various directions and moving left and right. There were a few "annoying" cases of turret skipping charging phase and shot me out of the sky, or rocket literally waiting for me to cross the gap, to snipe me into the void, but other than that it was smooth. Environmental hazards were nice and I like each region had something unique. One interesting idea I came up with during playing was maybe tweaking movement logic of those flying cylinder enemies to prioritise going on Y axis before X, so we don't have to short hop in order to hit them all the time, that as kinda obnoxious.

Visuals were very consistent, character looked nice, sounds were okay after you got that fix we talked about. Unfortunately I still don't hear music :'( I wish you went a bit more with backgrounds, maybe added some crosshatching or other lines to fill platforms to make areas even more distinct with the limited palette that you had. There was one place where I couldn't distinguish ladder from platforms around it, somewhere in a section with lasers, that's mainly why I'm suggesting some sort of fill texture for platforms. Oh also magenta lines for moving platform rails was a bit jarring.

Level design is great, not much to say there, amazing job.

tl;dr Great game, fun combat, well done!

I was actually very pleasantly surprised by this game! Visuals - while simple - get the job done and audio side is very well selected for the game. Only small issue would be stacking block breaking sound being a bit jarring at times, but it's really minor. Map design is top notch honestly, at no point I felt lost, there were moments where I felt like I outsmarted the game by getting stuck, only to be proven wrong by giving me new abilities. Camera felt a bit wonky at times i felt, can't quite pinpoint why, I think maybe because those zoomed out sections felt nice and the going back to the cramped beginning wasn't as satisfying.
Also, that ending hit different, I felt it in my heart. Great game! :D

Thanks for playing! I definitely agree with that last point, in my mind it's not really a metroidvania, but it's the best we managed to deliver, there wasn't a lot of time for branching level design, just wanted to say that, but I'm glad that you enjoyed your stay! :D 

Wow, just wow. I had a great time playing this and I didn't want it to stop. Aesthethically this game is amazing, audio especially, it was so engrossing and chill, SFXs were all matched greatly too. Only graphical nitpick I can have is that background in some situations was a bit too saturated and obscured gameplay, but not enough to bother me, just noticable. Gameplay was simple but satisfying. You didn't have a map system but personally I didn't feel the need of it, but if I were to go for 100% completion I'd probably expect it to be there. The fact that there's a dedicated meow button is very charming :)

I really, really like this entry, good job team!

Hey what a nice game! Looks nice and consistent, good progression and alright combat. For the art, I like the characters and environment, I just kinda wish you went more crazy with colors, could work with a dream world, right now the purple wallpaper is very empowering. I like that you tried adding stuff on walls too, like windows and portraits, but there wasn't too many of them and it kinda looks like random stuff dotted around. I was very happy to see charging enemy, nice to have some refreshing stuff, slimes and ravens were alright too, classic chasing drones, red ravens were slightly obnoxious to fight against with how much hp they got. Movement felt good, no nitpicking there, glide was fun, small form too, good job on that! Overall I enjoyed it and I appreciate the honesty in the end section haha

Very interesting execution! Firstly I must commend you for making each room look unique, that made it possible to somehow figure out where you are without a map of sorts. Unfortunately, your main mechanic kinda scrambled all those rooms so it was still hard to navigate. I get the puzzles, I had to read solutions in the comments to get the dash, but I never got anything past that before I got too frustrated. Windows XP sound was funny, but for a while, had to mute it later haha. While I guess it wasn't my cup of tea, I still think you did well interpreting the themes and making metroidvania, so good job on that!

Thanks for playing and for pointers!

Game looks absolutely stunning, really enjoyed rockman astronaut jumping! That being said I found level design to be quite confusing and I feel like i did sequence break more than I should, after realising that canceling wall grab into jump gives me a lot of momentum and height, not sure if that's intended. Didn't encounter any in game bugs which is a huge plus!
Very nice entry, also I'm kinda curious, with how pretty the background art on itch page is, why did you go with pixel art, a fully drawn game with your skill would be soooo good i feel. Anyway, great game, keep it up! :D

I could see myself buying this game on steam honestly, very solid! Art is straight up gorgeous, music is very nice, only sensory part that i can nitpick about is that some sound effects are ear drilling (i'm looking at you big bad guy lazor). I enjoyed the initial time puzzle with scrolling chain of platforms, later puzzles were few and far between so there wasn't as much theme related mechanics as i'd like, but i still think the mechanic you made based on theme is very solid. It just later on turns into pretty regular double jump dash driven platforming. On my playthrough I only encounter 2 bugs which you might wanna look into, both of which are related to sliding stone door lol. First time you find one it's obnoxiously loud compared to the rest of the game, and also you can take damage from it as you're entering into final boss arena if you jump into ceiling where it comes down from.
You got a new fan sir, I'm looking forward to see more games from you in the future! :D

Fun game, I dig the graphics and audio, there was some backtracking in exploration, so that's nice, fun movement, especially climbing felt just right. Most of issues (aside from few minor bugs I encountered) I had was with combat design. Layla is solid overall, Zeke's parry is super satisfying, but the fact that he cannot attack in air kinda makes him not as useful against regular monster, where elevation changes (and also bats, he cannot hit bats most of the time). I didn't try fighting with Thissa besides punching one snail, but with that short of a range I wouldn't want to try again. For the boss fight, it lacked some cues to realise what to do, but once I understood it was pretty nice.
Very solid game.

Very well done project! Catchy music, nice map, good amount of upgrades to keep me interested till the end. I don't have much to complain about, just tiny nitpicks that are probably personal preference. Player's jump is very floaty, which isn't exactly an issue, just makes more vertical levels kinda slower. I was surprised at how slow skeleton projectiles were, but the fact that you can reflect them is awesome, love that. Player dying and respawning them with full life in the same room makes death kinda pointless, I'd imagine it's probably for the sake of easier bug handling and just streamlining experience, but that's something to think about i guess. Cutscenes and boss fight were fun (unfortunately I bugged at end boss and didn't see ending, basically i killed them and got hit by slash projectile soon after, respawning just kept the fight going indefinitely). Art style is simple but clean, what's more important is that the game is consistent in it's visuals so that's a plus. I wish there were more landmarks in world, because all rooms feel rather unremarkable (except for skill unlocks and altars, duh) which basically forces me to use map every other room to see where i'm going, but the fact you have a map is already a huge win :D

Great game, hope to see more from you in the future!

Thanks for valuable feedback, especially with the background, i'll make sure to work on that for future submissions! :D Some of features we just lacked time to get those to be in game, welp. Glad you enjoyed!

It's possible, it's close to dodge button so might've fat fingered and hid hud by accident haha. About the engine stuff, still pretty impressive, iirc that's still working with raw c++ but using some helper libraries, right?

Interesting submission, didn't really feel like a metroidvania to me, I guess the definition is not really set in stone but having access to all progression mechanics from the start is probably the best i can point at.

Putting that aside, really enjoyable game. Some mechanics could use some polish or redesign, like for example digging out hole on top most layer without gathering all resources basically cuts off that resource field. I feel like explorers could automatically mark first found spot for convenience sake, they're really cheap so it doesn't feel like waste tbh and right now you kinda have to follow them to find what you want.

Artwise, chicks are cute but UI is veeeeery rough, but servicable. One major problem i had was constant flickering of tooltip on research button, trying to access it required lucky click which isn't very fun. Music was nice, I think fitting for a relaxed gameplay like this one.

I must say the writing didn't disappoint, I was expecting gold and that's what I received :D Sorry if I turn out overly harsh, but I think pointing out things to help fix for SMVM might help a lot. So for starters I didn't get to enjoy music, webgl version is heavily stuttering and I couldn't run windows build (crash after first dialogue).
I like characters spritework, especially the frickin flip on dodge, my only issue with animations is that they're not matching with actions very well, mostly character movement speed with speed of action. Bossfights were cool, I enjoyed final one more than the first one, it was a bit hard at times to read what Isla's nemesis would do next and there's a stunlock potential if you get knockback'd into a corner.
At some point my UI also disappeared, not sure why, but it didn't bother me too much, maybe other than the fact that i didn't get to see if there's oxygen indicator (if there's not, pls add, i had to figure out the hard way it exists lol)
No arguments about theme usage, Fishing is there, nuff said, also castlevania vibes, great stuff. Also huge respect for not using pre-existing engine but rather writing your own stuff, for that time frame i think it's great

Truly epic

Thanks for checking out the game :D

Thanks for checking out the game, really appreciate it! Bugs aside, I remember having long conversation about being able to jump while aiming on controler, while i'm not a fan of controller myself, I added up arrow/up tilt on analog for that purpose and it kinda worked, but i realised this kind of thing falls down to preference a lot, i guess just adding remapping would've been better

Quite fun, I liked the Jump King-esque gameplay, but I felt like level design wasn't accomodating for that, couldn't quite find where I should go with my abilities. Looks and sounds are minimalistic, but fitting and well utilised, cool game!

Hey, another game with different types of arrows as metroidvania abilities, nice! The visuals were quite nice at first, some issues with super fast parallax going on, later it got quite monotonous, but not bad. I felt like the travel path of arrow didn't feel right, it was falling way too fast, I had to always aim higher and hope it'll land. Unfortunately I got way too many softlock to get far into the game. First I fell through the ground after taking damage from skeletons, then I kept locking myself under sheet of ice, after unlocking ice arrows which seemed to freeze some "invisible water" down in caves, a bit unfortunate. Good attempt tho!

That entry surprised me, because though it doesn't look very appealing with art asset mash up, the gameplay itself is actually quite solid. It was mostly self explanatory, maybe with exception of that spike magic throw, i didn't realise i can do that till later. Pogo jumping section was my favorite! Oh, and you could also add a health indicator to your player character, because I didn't realise I can die till I did. Great game!

Visually stunning game and it felt good to play it too! Goblins are super strong and I avoided them as much as possible, very nice entry!

Cool art and music! Combat mechanics "work", but don't match up with visuals kind of, I can't tell how far I'm reaching, enemies don't have any feedback that they got hit, etc. Also I couldn't help but notice the hp bar being just plain Unity slider, I personally also use sliders for that, but uh, change the visuals so at least it doesn't have the handle haha. Nice entry!

I drove around admiring scenery and sound and everything. Not much else I could find tho, when I approached the big chrome ball thing at the beginning I got UI popup with 3 circles and button labeled "button". Most of the time I felt like I'm gonna get chased by some horror creature, if you were going for spooky vibes then you've 100% achieved that, cool entry!

It looks and sounds really good, but gameplay wise I have issues. I don't like how you're only able to dash and attack while on ground, when you can't hit wolves and ghosts unless they're leveled with you. Dash is only useful for faster moving horizontally, i tried crossing gaps with it and fell. Also hitboxes are kinda off, especially on boss fight.

I restarted the game twice, the only way I could realistically go was into a pit that I couldn't jump out of, softlocking myself. The spritework and sounds are nice, but I can't seem to get any further

It was fun swinging the sword and hitting monsters with it :)

Ah, main menu continue worked! Went back and finished that sequence. My initial issue was that i was stuck on hind legs, kept taking damage from the swarm of ocean creatures and didn't see the opportunity to climb up to the upper legs. Now I managed to stay on upper legs most of the journey and it was nice! But then I think quit button also didn't work haha, not a big deal tho :D

Thanks for playing! :D

Hey there, I wanted to check out your game, but all of the popups on the screen were placed off screen to the far left, so I only saw top right corner. I think dialogue box was also cut a bit from the bottom. I tried playing it blind but couldn't figure out what to do with stuff that I can pick up. If it helps, I was playing on 2160x1440 resolution

Hey, that's a nice ominous vibe you got going there, nice game! The controls were okay, I didn't have any issues with them except for bindings, but as soon as I stopped hovering over interact button I was okay. Hookshot was a bit tricky to land sometimes, but that's mostly on me. I avoided combat as much as I could, but I wonder why you made some enemies attack you on sight and some just passively being there, is that an oversight or just fungi people vibin', minding their own business? The boss at the end was also kinda a spam fest, land as many hits as quickly as possible, don't care about the damage taken aaaand it's over. All in all, very enjoyable, good work!

Finally got around to play this entry! I must say that there are no bits that stood out as incomplete or not fitting into the game, it feels like polished, final product, I don't think I can say the same about any other game I've tried. I had some issues with jumping kept moving sideways after i'd tap a direction just once, but there weren't too many situations where that'd be an issue, this game is certainly more combat focused than platforming focused. Bosses were definitely the best part! After seeing others play the game I went and chased all optional bosses to try myself and they delivered! One design choice that I found questionable, was the ability to melee and range attack at the same time, don't get me wrong, it's not bad, but at that point you could've put that as part of the same normal attack, because from optimal play standpoint there's no reason not to spam both at the same time. Buuut I'm nitpicking, game's super solid, it was fun watching it evolve over the course of this jam. Hope to see more awesome games from you!