itch.io

Hi! Can infact confirm that while it's possible to use movement tech to skip puzzles, it's not exactly necessary - we didn't want a situation where a puzzle requires a really tight jump to be completed - this is good feedback though, as it lets us know that the visual cues we gave to the player in a few maps might not be enough to drive the point home, so we'll iterate on more beginner-friendly design that eases the player into the mechanics more gracefully in a postjam version ^^

Thank you SO much for this incredibly detailed review! Yeah, Basement Dweller is something a lot of people are having problem with, but honestly I think from perspective of feedback, it's kind of a happy accident that it's like that? It helps us see what makes the other levels tick, and what makes BD less inutitive, so we can avoid the same mistakes when creating longer experiences in the future - the general consensus seems to be that BD should have been two levels, or in the very least, should have had a checkpoint in the middle (which is what we're planning to add to allow for longer levels without sacrificing enjoyability!) 

We've also been going over solving the input system, currently considering either splitting the input, or using relative orientation between the camera and the selected face to determine if the block should be extrudable through mouse movement or player movement (looking at a block straight on makes movement controls more intuitive, but standing to the side of it does make it easier to use mouse controls

With the hub world we're planning to keep that structure, but greatly streamline it so that it feels less like a disjointed puzzle, and more like a proper "level select" screen akin to Quake's or even Talos Principle's - people just don't seem to like solving puzzles to get to the levels, which is entirely fair!

Oh that's a really fun take on the theme! I like what you got going there, a few notes though:
- I think it'd add to the challenge and the comedy of the game if the rat was able to get bigger than 100%, making it harder to dodge obstacles and forcing you to take breaks from climbing
- Having other types of obstacles to force you to jump off would be a great way to tutorialize the scale down mechanics! I really like them, but if I haven't looked at the description, it'd never come across my mind!
- I feel like the game drags on a bit, I was expecting to be done with it around 200-300m mark, but it just kept going - this would be fine to me with additional gameplay diversifiers, but it's kind of monotonous after a while :p

That being said, I really loved the whole Silent Hill-esque presentation, the PSX graphics, sound effects - I'm especially happy to see you've got ingame instructions on how to play and audio feedback for hovering over menu buttons! Great job, overall :D

Pretty nice idea! Didn't really get the "Eureka" moment there, but that's primarily because it felt a little trial and error-y, to have an eureka/aha moment I'd need to have more data points that I don't just gather from trying random combinations :P

From a UX standpoint I'd prefer to have some more fluidity in the gameplay (it feels very disorienting to lock in your combination and have it reset, instead of letting me tinker with it by modifying bits). It would help reduce the trial and error feeling as it'd let me modify my answer more cleanly and make adjustments based on intuition and previous data points.

I did really like the take on the theme though, and these are mostly notes on how you could improve the experience! 
I think the concept and execution are quite clever, and the simple graphics make the objective non-ambiguous, so overall, good job on this one :D

Pretty fun! It gets a little repetitive after a while, but the cute artstyle and solid movement it's a nice game for at least a couple of minutes :D maybe adding some extra gameplay mechanics or making more involved level design could add more playtime?

Update: Just read the theme notes! That makes more sense now,  but that movement still feels very much so not intentional :p perhaps giving a bit more feedback (sound effects, slight physics adjustments) to the climbing happening would make this feel less unintentional?

Pretty neat concept! The platforming is quite decent, and it's a fun short game - I would have preferred to have some sort of reminder of what each form did, but it's a nitpick really - my main criticisms here would be that the player can very easily bypass the game by just running against a wall and jumping, which seems to keep me stuck to the wall, but lets me climb up it, which doesn't feel intentional :p 

Other than that, it's a pretty nice entry, especially for a game made under 48 hours, and I had fun playing it to the end!

I really like this! The combat is nice, the music is great and the difficulty scales pretty well! It could do very well as a standalone release especially with some improved graphics on the UI ^^
Great job!

Ah got it! Used to seeing audio settings in pause menus for puzzle games so didn't think of checking that in main menu :p also thanks for including a Linux build: D

Pretty nice game! I like the way in which the seasons grow, and it is quite a pleasant experience - graphically it could use some improvements, but I think it's a really fun take on the theme that could be potentially developed into a pretty unique farming game :)

Liked this a lot! Probably one of the better takes on the player scaling mechanics I've seen in the jam.
The lack of audio settings does hurt a little bit, but I still really enjoyed the puzzles, and the character controls quite decently too!

Reminds me a lot of A Difficult Game about Climbing and I Am Bread - the controls were a bit unclear to me at first, but I figured them out in the end ^^ very polished game with a lot of potential! I did end up spamming jugs for the most part, since they were the safest option :p

This was very fun! I'm not the greatest at precision platformers, but the scaling mechanics were implemented quite well, and with some polish and a few graphical improvements I could see this as a standalone release :D

This was nice! Had some moments of confusion, for example I thought "down" was supposed to go with the "Gently down the stream" line, and the controls were a bit finicky, but in the end I got it! The vibes were nice, slightly ominous, pretty decent game :D

Great game, good mechanics, clean graphics, nice music - really like the concept you're going for here! I would have preferred the ability to have a one step undo as it makes some of the levels annoying to deal with, but I understand that time constraints of the jam made that impossible ^^

I really liked the puzzles and the core mechanic! The way the game is presented gave me major World of Goo vibes
The design is very clever, and the way in which vines can interact with water and environment feels very thought out
If I were you, I'd take this project on into a full game after the jam, maybe with improved graphics? They're really the only aspect of the game that didn't quite gel with me right, the more detailed vine does clash slightly with the more simplistic backgrounds, so that could be an area to improve later on

Other than that, like I said, I'd be fully interested in getting this if it got a commercial release! Keep it up :D

It's pretty fun, but I find that missing the hook point is really frustrating because the margin of error is really small and the animation that plays staggers the robot midair so it feels extra punishing and not in a fun way :(

When you can get in the rythm it's great, but when you're out of it it's frustrating!! If I were you I'd add slight hookshot magnetism to account for that, making the game feel more responsive and fluid, but that's just my opinion

I like the general idea of sightlines puzzles, but I think you need to rebalance those - the first few puzzles I played through were way too simple, and then they took a hard pivot into being way too physics-based - I think you've got a solid foundation for something interesting here, but I'd see if you can dial down on the physical aspects (the Shift movement and throwing didn't really help either) :p

Oh my god thank you so much! That is really high praise

Reminds me a lot of Dumb Ways to Die but with sciency scales instead of more general minigames! I think it's fun, but it gets boring after a while, probably because it's the same few minigames with very little content variation? I could see this being a fun alternative to Dumb Ways to Die given that the ruler segment almost always gave me a "deer staring at headlights" moment when my brain momentarily forgets how to read a ruler without all the numbers :p

I love gambling!
But no, in all seriousness - this is great! It's like a mix of Tetris and 2048, although it fits the theme more for last year's jam than this one's! That said, please give me more of this, i need this in my life as a wacky rougelike game to spend hours in

I rate this game 11 bugs out of 11 bugs - but seriously, it's really funny, you have a good sense of humor, and the whole sequence with the bugs lifting and casting spells and jumping over balls was just profusely funny to me - my only complaint would be the kind of lackluster graphics, but I would love to see where you can take this kind of absurdist humor next!

I really like the gameplay here! It reminds me of Balatro a lot with how the reactions stack and give satisfying feedback, I would buy a full version of this with money if I could! My only complaint would be that I don't like how tomato is balanced, it's too weak :p

It feels a bit hard to track everything happening, and I've got mixed feelings on the long required reading - it could benefit from a tutorial, or in the very least a safer starting environment that makes it harder to make bad decisions, and gives less penalty for making bad decisions - other than that, I think the visuals and mechanics are interesting, and could definitely see this as a full release, just not as a jam game :P

I like the general concept! I think the gameplay could be a bit more engaging, after a while I just figured out the pattern of "put the shape that fills this spot the best", and then it got a little boring (maybe adding an additional variable to the gameplay would make things more interesting?) - other than that, I had fun checking it out!

Very cool, I am getting major Zachtronics vibes from how this plays out with the conveyor belts and making loops! You've got a very pleasant visual style and the humor with the talk prompts and on the page itself is very fun, great job!

I used NetRadiant, but Rabbit and ember used TB yeah :D

The art is great, and I really like the split gameplay system - I can see this being a really cool relaxing game, but I also think it would benefit from slightly more engagement and/or consequence in gameplay - currently I'm gravitating a lot more towards the potions gameplay, rather than the mouse gameplay, which is a shame because I really like the mouse and I want to like the mouse gameplay but it's not as engaging as the potions section :(  

But really, that's my only complaint! Other than that, amazing stuff :D

I was a bit put off at first by the somewhat simplistic graphics, but the concept is really solid, gameplay mechanics are really polished, and it is a game I could see myself sinking hours into - with or without a shinier coat of paint! :D

The idea is very creative, I think the gameplay is a little bit unclear though?  The combat is a bit clunky (mostly I think because I couldn't figure out if/how I could shoot diagonally), and I die a lot because I get stuck on stuff, but I love the implementation of the fractal layers, the general concept/tech and the music!!

The gameplay is tedious at times, and the game itself doesn't explain a lot about its mechanics. Took me a while to realize levers are proximity triggered, and then in the next level, the levers were abandoned. I think that the game doesn't fully explore the possiblities the setup has given, and I feel like there's a lot of room for improvement regarding the level design. The visuals are nice, but the music is repetetive, and combined with monotonous gameplay with long waiting times it serves up a lot of irritation. The thing I'm least pleased with is how continous the rotation is. The levels usually tend to make the player go in a straight line, so it would make sense to give the player a tiny freeze window in which they can squeeze in another move in the same direction. It would greatly pace up the gameplay and make it feel less like a chore.

There actually is coyote jump, it's just that it's probably very subtle and you can't tell it's there, but without it a lot of the jumps wouldn't have been possible - I'm not sure if jump buffering is needed in the game, you only control everything with one button, and it's already a bit difficult to manage, so it's unlikely the player will need buffering.

Thanks for feedback, but major disagreement on "bounce from wall to wall" part - the game was made with full emulation of regular controls in mind, plus I don't want to give up flip controls! I think the problem is more in latency and flipping indicators, rather than the mechanic itself. The idea was to make a regular input game with one input - not to mesh in regular controls into a one input convention!

Really fun concept, although I wish it was explored further! I'm really glad you've decided to give the player a bit more agency over their decisions, while making sure it's not just clicking buttons! Please work on this game more, I'd like you see what else you can come up with! :D

Really decent idea for a game, sadly it does not fit the theme of the jam, so I won't rate it.

Overall: 2+ (considered 3)
The pacing is too fast, I'm instantly dead after booting up. Space out obstacles and make the game have easier levels to begin with. I can't rate this game anything above 3 stars, seeing as I'm unable to view a major part of the gameplay, because my reaction time is too slow to get around the first level.

Gameplay: 1
The gameplay starts too soon. Give the player a grace period and IV frames to compensate for high obstacle count, or reduce obstacles. Insta-death in what I'd assume is a rythm based game is not a good idea. It's impossible for me to rate this experience, because it ends as soon as it starts.

Visuals: 2+ (considered 3)
The visuals themselves aren't half bad. The User Interface in the menu is laid out in nice manner, but my issue is with later parts of the User Experience. The obstacles aren't big enough, I feel like the player is too fast, the lanes aren't communicated clearly.

Audio: 3
The audio in this game is really nice. It's not top of the game, but it's definetly one of the better aspects of the game. 

Creativity: 3
The idea in itself is really fun. It's the execution and visual communication which botch those by a lot. I'm not convinced enough to give it more than 3 stars though, because you don't address any of the consequences of the player's actions. It could also be the fact that I'm unable to play through the first level due to its speed.

While the premise of two magnetic characters is interesting, and the art is undoubtedly good, the presentation and execution of the concept lack polish and feel underdeveloped.

The most jarring part of the game are the controls. There's a lot of input lag, the characters take a while to change directions, the jumps don't feel predictable, and the "throwing" mechanic lacks any indication of where the character would land. A simple curved arrow would do wonders, and make the whole experience less "trial and error".

The concept itself feels a bit too simple, and the "two characters" gameplay doesn't do anything new. Try experimenting with the premise of "magnetic" characters. Maybe you could have the two robots attracted to each other? Maybe there are magnetic surfaces in the level, and the robot of same polarity would be pushed away, while a robot of different polarity would be "stuck" to the surface?

The presentation lacks a lot. While the art is really nice, the camera placement is awkward, the environment isn't layered properly and "melts together" optically.

My bit of advice would be to better plan out the team. I didn't like how three people on the team did modelling work, this should've been reserved to one person. There shouldn't be any overlap in a game jam team, unless the game is fully done and needs finishing touches only.

I loved the game, although I would like a detailed summary of the symbolism of the Chicken Game. 
On a serious note, it's a great game with fun mechanics, and the last level really nicely subverts your expectations by throwing in a red herring - great job!

I'm really sorry to hear that! It appears this is a bug which occurs if you move immediately after the game starts, but it's possible to play without that bug happening!

Kudos to you for recording the experience, wow! The way you initially messed up the first puzzle was EXACTLY what we envisioned.

The player is given two buttons - spawn the player next to the interaction-pressed one, make the next jump really hard if you want to miss the floor one. The correct solution is to press only ONE button in this level.

The expected response was that the player would initally press both buttons, seeing as it doesn't cause a lot of consequences - later on, we've given the player another room, but this time, if you pressed both buttons, you'd have to press the floor button. 
Pressing the floor button then causes the PARADOX.
So the player has to identify the cause of the paradox, think about the whole timeline instead of a single level (or two). Genre-wise, the game is somewhat of a CAG (Single Screen Game), because putting both characters in the same environment would be a lot less fun, and would probably hurt the readability. We made it so that instead of room-specific problems, there are multiple ways to solve a level, and some of them will cause a paradox. (Spoiler: It's always the most brute-forcey ones that cause the paradox.)