itch.io

Oh, this may have been misleading - by iframes here, I meant a brief invulnerability period after taking damage. As is, I can take damage multiple times in quick succession. Most games will give the player a small window of time to receover after taking damage. This goes a long way towards making the game feel more fair.

Thanks for playing, I'm glad you liked it! This feedback is all super useful, there are some things in here I knew about before shipping and some things that definitely slipped my mind. In particular,

- I suspected performance might become a problem, but I only have my own computer to test on, so hearing from other people is very useful. The fire area in particular has a heat shimmer effect that's probably a bit too much. I'll have to set up some graphical setting presets at some point.

- For the cameras, I was experimenting with a new way of handling cameras this time around, it ended up being a lot of individual camera fine tuning and never quite got to where I was happy with it, but having the camera zoom out for certain sections is a good idea, I'll add that to my list. 

For SMVM I'll probably be scrapping the current level design and just focus on polishing up one area, but I'm glad to hear that you liked the general flow and the way you weren't really restricted in how you could approach it, those were all intentional decisions which I'll carry forward into upcoming levels. I'll also be reevaluating boss difficulty at that point, which is always tricky. Originally the first boss was so easy just because the player has really only learned to jump and shoot at that point and I didn't want it to be a bottleneck, but with a more polished area before the boss I can teach the player more mechanics and potential attack patterns before they even get to the boss.

Again, thanks for playing and for the feedback!

Wow, this game is surprisingly long. I like the simple graphical style and while it did take me awhile to get used to the room transitions (and the persistence of objects beyond the edge of the screen), it did eventually harken back to the olden days of PC gaming. Some of the puzzles were fiendishly clever (the one where you have to stack the three statues comes to mind...), and I liked that the magic rod wasn't about attacking but was about manipulating the environment.

Some feedback:

- The more and more this game began to sprawl outward, the more I wanted a map. I also started to lose track of my goal as I progressed. I think after I dropped down the 2nd waterfall I was just sort of, "...what am I even doing now?" There just felt like too many directions that I could have gone to keep track of and it felt a bit overwhelming.

- Someone else mentioned this, but the music didn't mix well with the artwork, it would have been nice to keep that super low tech as well (don't get me wrong, the music was really good, it just didn't fit the classic theme). Also the lack of beeps and boops held this entry back as well.

- A minor nitpick, but some differentiation on butons that require something to be placed on them rather than just stepping on them / reset buttons as well as doors that open permanently vs. doors that only open when a switch is pressed would be a nice polish detail to add.

Overall the game was very impressive for what it was, and I was always amazed that it just kept going. I ultimately wasn't able to finish it just  due to the immensity and my own inability to figure out what to do next, but I think it's a very solid entry and displays a lot of potential. Nice job!

I did the same thing with the skeleton. :P I'll have to go back and play through again later without getting myself stuck.

I read other people's comments, then went back and found the unlocked onsen and the two trial areas. I thought the trial areas were really fun, especially with the check point so close. It kinds of reinforces one of the comments another player gave that this game feels more appropriately like a Celeste-style game, a series of rooms each of which is its own challenge that need to be overcome in sequence. But yeah, with the trials done and the extra enegy under my belt, I was able to go back down and defeat the Oni. Good times!

Wow, a very difficult game! I was unable to make it past the Oni. Anyway, I've been a fan of this slowing down mechanic since Megaman 11, so I was happy to see it used here. Landing on the arrows is a really cool idea and very thematically appropriate. The controls were generally easy enough to control, my jumps were controllable and my character moved at a good speed. The music was also nice and picked up in intensity at the right moments.

Some feedback:

- Checkpoints please. It was a nice touch to unlock a shortcut to the boss, but the run back was still a bit annoying, especially with that big hole you have to fall down and climb back out of (where the sword is found). I really wanted the lady who talked about her onsen to offer me a checkpoint then and there.

- The game needs iFrames. The amount of times that I got knocked between arrows and spikes in rapid succession or bounced between oni boulders was pretty frustrating. 

- A nice UI touch would be to put some sort of indicator closer to the player to show how much longer they have on the time slowdown. A bar abov ethe head like in Megaman might not be the most appropriate, but I didn't really want to look up at the top left of the screen while focusing on whatever I was slowing down time for. The time slowdown also felt like it depleted very quickly, I think a little bit more leeway would have been nice. It looks like it can be upgraded to more bars later, but I never made it to that point. :(

Overall I think it's a really cool concept and the theme is a fun one to explore. There are a lot of neat little touches here too, like arrows sticking into the walls. If you're going to continue it I'd focus on ramping up the difficulty slowly rather than going full speed ahead with it, but I'd be happy to give a future version another play. Nicely done!

Yeah, sure thing.  So I just replayed for a bit and noticed the fade-out you gave on objects in front of the player, I think it works as long as those objects don't appear in areas that allow combat (currently the enemies are able to chase me into any room so they can still be obscured by pillars that are not transparent because I'm not behind them). 

The doors didn't bother me so much, but having them open up onto an enemy who was then hidden behind the open door was a bit frustrating. I think having the doors felt "texturally nice", if that makes sense. Maybe just have them swing one-way towards the far side of the camera rather than being wide, double-doors. Speaking of which, the walls that separate the rooms also extend very far towards the camera so they take up screen real estate for a large amount of time. I've been looking at how Metroid Dread handles all the dead space on the camera-side of the player lately,, it feels quite elegant, you could consider checking it out.

In terms of the platform I couldn't land on, it was a thin platform attached to the right wall just past a short climbing section (it's only in the 4th room I think, it's not very far).

(sorry I had an image pasted here but for some reason itch isn't letting me upload it...)

Hopefully this feedback was useful!

Thanks for the answer, that fixed it, thanks! Honestly I'm super impressed you even included that option...

Anyway, I'll give it a playthrough later in the day and leave a real review.

Well damn, that was a good time. I was hooked from the opening sequence. The references, the humor, the art, the music - it all works. The attack felt good to use, the feedback was good, I found hidden area with chicken and a very suspicious throne. I even beat a very difficult boss. All in all I had a very good time.

Some feedback:

- I think this game definitely could have benefited from a map. I'll say that I was never lost, but I was also sort of just navigating on impulse - I never really had a clear goal, I'd just find something and then run around looking for the next thing. I think placing the "final climb" behind a hidden wall on the complete opposite side of the high jump boots didn't feel super great, especially since I felt like I got the dash from over there already anyway and there wasn't really anything to draw me back in that direction.

- The final boss was... its attacks were hard to dodge in what I would deem a legitimate fashion. I just stood in on the cheese ledge and shot arrows at it while using the wall to dodge its projectiles. That said, I appreciated the noises it would make when it took damage cause I could definitely tell where I needed to standto hit it even though it was mostly off-screen.

- I never really got the hang of the character's momentum. She felt very slid-y, especially when trying to navigate on small moving platforms, hit shield enemies from behind, or landing back on the final boss's cheese platform after jumping from the wall. Her hit box was also never super clear to me, it felt a fairly bigger than her character sprite (or the enemy boxes were bigger than theirs).

But yeah, I mean I had a really good time playing this game. The health upgrades felt plentiful, the chicken drops were fast and loose, and the maze of rooms was generally fun to navigate even if at times I had no real clue where I was or where I was going. I'd love to see more of a game like this. Great job!

The graphics are top notch for a gamejam, especially the character art and the UI background. I was amazed at just how much depth there was in the UI, even the settings menu had multiple, very complex options. And the characters had backstories! I unfortunately hit a platform that I was not able to jump onto, so was unable to continue my journey upwards, but will give this another shot later.

Some feedback:

- It's been said, but combat sounds and combat feedback would be very helpful. There are numbers, but at times it's not clear if the enemy is hitting me or if I'm hitting the enemy or if there are iframes or other things like that, just a lot of small combat considerations to be made.

- Everything feels pretty floaty, the character jump and fall as well as the enemies falling. I think locking some of the enemies to the platform they spawned on would alleviate that problem, it could get a little frustrating to have several enemies slide down to the platform I was planning on jumping onto, especially when I didn't know if they were hitting me or not at the same time.

- There's a treasure chest near the very beginning that I opened, but it's not clear if I got anything from it or not. Just that it was opened.

- I'm adding this one in because I'm also trying to wrap my head around making compelling 2.5D worlds. Some of the foreground obstacles, while impressive looking, block player vision for a bit too long and become more of a hindrance than the eye candy they're meant to be. I think there's a veyr careful balance to strike here when incorporating elements like this (trying to keep thm relegated to corners or decide on objects that would  logically be thin enough that they don't obscure the entire character model at any one time.

Overall the presentation is very good and from many of the details it's clear that you care about this project, so I hope to see you continue working on it. I'll also give it another shot later on to see if I can get past that jump and explore more of the world / learn more about all those hidden characters in the menu. Nicely done!

I've been trying to playthis game but haven't been able to run it properly for reasons I can't really explain. When I run the file from the zip, it only shows about a quarter of the screen (the top left), and when I run it from the exe it shrinks the screen to about a quarter of my screen size and even though I can hit the start new game button, it doesn't let me control the character.

I'm going to try it from another computer after the weekend, but thought maybe you might have some insight into what's happening or know if it's happened to anyone else. =/

A very Castlevania-y game. Everything about it felt very classic. Finding the tunnel that lead back out from the well felt really good cause I could kind of see it coming. While the character controller was a bit rough around the edges, the jumping itself and the jumping puzzles were surprisingly easy to land. The run felt quite good. Unfortunately, my game didn't play music or SFX, I don't know if that's a bug or if they just didn't get incorporated.

Some feedback:

- The exit transitions were triggered quite far from where the exits appeared to be. This wasn't really a problem, but it was a little disorienting when exiting upwards cause it really felt like I shouldn't be able to jump as high as the game implied I was.

- The in-air attack let me cheese the larger skeletons cause I could sort of just hover my way down while striking them.

- I found the key before I found the door that needed the key. This isn't really a problem, but I kind of wish I had seen the puzzle before  the solution.

Overall a solid entry, the classic feeling is definitely there and the double jump feels good enough to use. If you're interested in continuing its development, I'd give it another play. Nicely done!

This is a cool concept for a game, and all of the decisions and story beats feel  very intentional. The atmosphere was very well done, the silence was creepy and the UFO sounds / camera rotations were sufficiently off-putting. The puzzle clues were also quite well done, giving bot hinsight into the past as well as hints at a solution. As others have said, this was quite well done for a 3D entry - it may have been a bit on  the dark side, but that just served to further the creepy atmosphere.

Some feedback:

- The block puzzles were done quite well, but the pushing / pulling viewpoint left a bit to be desired. I'd suggest either turning the block partially transparent when it's being moved, or til the camera slightly to give a view of the room and block together.

- I was never entirely certain how the marbles would work. Sometimes the cameras reacted to their initial impact, sometimes they tracked them partway into their roll. It was also hard to know if the cameras were looking at me or at the marble, I got burned by this pretty badly in the room after the playground hint (I was certain the camera was looking at a marble but it suddenly turned and spotted me).

- I really like the text for the Falling sphere, but it took me three different playthroughs of that particular area to trigger it. Perhaps  put the sphere above the hole rather than in the middle of it.

Overall this felt like a cool interpretation of the theme, and it did incorporate some Metroidvania mechanics into it, but it felt more like a puzzle game to me. I don't really hold that against it, it was definitely fun for what it was and it set the mood very well for both the mechanis and story on display. Nicely done!

Ok that was a super cool implementation of the theme. I love the idea of exploring what happened in the past to help me in the future. It did get a little bit wonky when thinking about if my character is the horseman returned or whatever and other such time travel shennanigans, but I still enjoyed it a lot. I think what really stood out to me though was just the world itself, the people were all so vibrant and active. I don't know if I imagined it or not, but I swear I saw some people taking turns running up a hill and sliding down it. :P I am slightly upset that that damn cat got my reward though, I definitely saved the cat.

Anyway, some feedback:

- It took me an embarassingly long time to figure out that jump and speed up were the same button. For some reason I was imagining holding the jump button down like a spring coiling up, so I would get right next to what I wanted to jump over, hold down the button for a bit, and then release.I think it wasn't until I had to jump over the bridge gap that it finally clicked for me.

- It was a bit counterintuitive that people were telling me to visit the hotels but the ability to use the hotel doesn't show up until you reach the big rock. I explored everywhere else before going to Mountain City (as any normal player obviously would) and so I was a bit lost when 1) went through the cave and nothing happened and 2) eventually got to the big rock and felt like I couldn't do anything else. I figured it out in the end though.

- I ran into a game breaking bug at one point that forced me to reset. As the horseman I died just after Uphill City and respawned in the ground under the hotel. I wasn't about to get out.

But I did really enjoy this, it felt like a world that I just wanted to explore and interact in. The clean graphics, the amusing people, the thrill of just riding my bike through the desert. Great job!

Sure thing! I'll preface this by saying that I'm a pretty simple guy when it comes to music, if it's not very adrenaline-pumpy I probably won't really notice it. But I went back and played the game again to collect the last few seeds I needed, and the music that stood out the most in regards to my personal tastes was the Karst area (it felt appropriately dread-laced) and the Treetops, which was approaching the sort of beat that grabs my attention.  I do think that in terms of fitting the game's vibe the music does a good job - it's understated and fits the contemplative, slow-paced feel of the game. The one thing that came across as a bit jarring were the UI SFX (like interacting with the save points or pressing buttons in menu), they felt a bit too solid and gamey compared to the subtle music - maybe some windy effects or soft chimes could have fit the game's aesthetic a bit more. Hopefully this helps.

Just played through this, it was pretty hefty! I think there are a lot of cool design choices in here especially in regards to the powers. There are also a ton of collectibles, and while I didn't find all of the Seeds, I appreciate that they give the player a lot more to do in the game (one of the seeds made me figure out using box pulling to create platforms before it was ever required in the game, so that was cool). The art around the Great Tree was very cool, and the characters that did exist all had unique and interesting sprite work. I also saw that the characters each had their individual personalities, with Apsis and Kitsune being standouts for me (I mean, I didn't like Kitsune's personality, but it certainly stood out).

Some constructive feedback:

- The game provides a lot of rooms and routes through those rooms, especially when your abilities open up, and that was really cool. Zooming through an early room with the rope ability or by wall climbing felt really good. That said, no room outside of the Great Tree room never particularly stood out to me or made me remember it and say "I need to come back here later." The zones each had their own color and sprite art, but I never really felt a big difference between the rooms and zones since they on the whole all seemed to incorporate all of the movement mechanics anyway. Perhaps picking a few centerpiece rooms and really sprucing them up / making them feel special would grab my attention a bit more.

- There is a lot of story here, and a lot of characterization. It's cool that you leaned into the story telling so hard and introduced so many characters, but it was a little bit hard for me to follow just because there were so many names thrown at me all at once. Like I said above, Kitsune stood out because the personality was very strong, and Apsis made me smile, but the other characters sort of blended together because they just woke up and gave me their power.

- It wasn't super clear to me what I needed to get the disabled mushrooms and wall vines working. I already thought that I had the powers for each of those, but then there was a nother power that upgraded the Nurture ability I already had. Trying to figure out what I needed to do to finish the game ultimately ended up being less of an subtly guided exploration and me just opening the map and seeing which rooms I hadn't explored yet. This worked out alright because I ended up getting some extra health and power upgrades, but it made that final power-up feel not as rewarding as it could have.

- I usually only do 3 ieces of big feedback like this, but it was a big game and the other thing that I felt detracted from my experience was the lack of enemy types. There were so many rooms to explore but they all had the same two enemies, and this goes doubly so for the Strength challenge rooms. Designing enemies is a lot of work so I can't fault you too much on this, but it was just a thought I had throughout the experience.

Anyways, it's a very big game with a lot of moving pieces. Lots of writing, lots of rooms and environments, lots of cool and well implemented abilities. Overall I was quite impressed with it and felt like I had finished a complete package when I got rid of that final corruption. Very well done.

Wow, this is such a cool concept. Like a mystery Metroidvania. Unravelling the clues and the abilities I'd need to navigate the ship was really cool. I was a bit lost at first, but I eventually got it figured out. The abilities were a good mix of traditional and unique to this environment. Every room was recognizable enough, once I figured out what was going on I never really felt like I was getting lost, although some sort of map would have been nice. The music was appropriately atmospheric, and the hit effect on enemies made it very obvious when damage was being done.

Some feedback:

- While the concept of unlocking abilities and then learning how to unlock them later remotely is super cool, its implementation was fairly frustrating for 2 reasons. 1 ) the code text would disappear too quickly. On multiple occasions I'd have to make my way back to the same terminal to get the second half of the code and I eventually pulled out my camera and just started taking pictures of my monitor real quick, and 2) typing the codes was pretty tedious once you had more than 2. It would maybe be nicer if your character just remembered the codes once collected and you could choose which ability you want to unlock.

- That fire room was BRUTAL. I like the drama of it all, and thank you so much for putting a checkpoint in there, but still... I wish the fire's speed had been consistent throughout, it was pretty frustrating having it speed up behind me when I wanted a moment to recover. I also encountered a fairly big bug by going through the vent at the end of the chamber rather than going towards the terminal, it kept spawning me inside of the big fire wall and I'd have to spam re-enter the vent on spawn to get out of it.

- Combat didn't feel super great. I do like that the character's weapon has some range to it, and unlocking the lasser weapon later feels satisfying to use (although I don't know if it deals increased damage), but I was never certain if I was going to knockback an enemy or stun it a little bit when hitting it, so I never knew if I needed to prepare to retreat or if I could fully engage.

All that said, this is a super cool concept with some really cool ideas and I enjoyed my time with it. Great work!

This is a very solid first entry. It's got some rough edges, but you've got a lot of fundamentals implemented in here. The next step is to polish them up. In terms of the project, I thought it was super ambitious. I was surprised you had one boss, let alone three. The map was deceptively large and looped back on itself in interesting / unexpected ways (the secret passage after the 2nd boss stood out in this regard). The jump movement was predictable and easy to control for the most part, and there was a good amount of feedback and SFX so that I usually knew what was going on in a combat encounter.  The special effects on the third boss were the standout for me.

Some other feedback:

- As has been stated, the movement is pretty slow. Backtracking took a long time, and missing the double jump in the second boss's room was particularly painful. I also think the amount of distance you gain from dashing before the jump is not obvious at all, nor is the speed boost itself. 

- I got locked into the shield position while facing away from one of those projectile shooters and took like 2 1/2 hearts worth of damage before fixing my positioning. It wasn't super intuitive how to drop the shield and turn around.

- I'm sure it's been said before, but some explanation text as you get new abilities or in-game control guide would be super useful. I stubbornly smashed on my keyboard until I had all the controls figured out (I didn't see the controls on the web page until after I had finished the game).

Overall though a very impressive start. You've got blocking, double jump, wall jump, these are all not easy to pull off. They're not perfect yet, but now that yuo've done them you can start refining them. Very nicely done, keep it up!

EDIT: Oh, I remembered another thing. Pleeease give a skip option on the opening text crawl if it's going to be that long. I got stuck at some point and had to restart the game and, oof... At the very end I found out holding the attack button sped up the text, but a "Hold X to Skip" or something is always appreciated.

I'm pretty much in the same boat as others. I figured out the controls by looking at the game's page, but even then after interacting with the white square I was quite lost on what to do next. I tried going back to the big church but was unable to climb back up the vertical shaft (one of the ledges is so narrow that it wasn't registering me as on the ground so i wasn't able to jump off of it), so...

One suggestion I can make is to add some dampeninging to the camera, it was a little disorienting to have the camera moving up and down to mirror your player's movements.

Anyway, the aesthetics were qutie nice, the writing had the right tone for the atmosphere you're presenting. The effects on the demon/exorcist attack and dash were also nice. It definitely has a classic vibe to it, so if you want to continue working on it the presentation and writing are already going in the right direction. Good luck!

I can't really seem to get past the first screen, and at some point when I go into one of the buildings the game just resets. Am I missing something? I'd love to give the game a longer, more thorough playthrough if possible.

Feedback from what I was able to play so far:

- Presentation is really good, the music is calming, the darkness suits the storytelling (although maybe a bit too dark or could use some small light sources elsewhere). I see you have Forest Assets listed as an external asset, but a lot of this looks like it was lifted straight from Monument Valley (a great looking game and any aesthetic that tries to imitate it is okay in my book, but these look like the actual assets).

- Items make different sounds when you pick them up and I was never really sure what was what. The story text listed a lot of different items that need to be collected, Mushrooms, Magical Herbs... I was never really sure what I was looking for.

I don't have a lot more to say than that. I'm intrigued by the concept of a Monument Valley-esque Metroidvania and would love to see what's on offer, so let me know if there's something I missed. Thanks!

Just jumping in to say that you can always bind Dash to both. I personally prefer shift, but Attack on LMB and Dash on RMB as a secondary option wouldn't feel that bad (as long as there're no other actions that require me to take my hand off the mouse).

I love the concept behind this game and the aesthetic is super appealing, especially  the main character and background designs. Unfortunately, I didn't get very far - the wall jump did me in, especially when I struggled with a very long vertical climb only to drop off the other side and discover I didn't have the key I needed. I would love to see what this game can become if you stick to the vision though.

Some other thoughts:

- The attack animation takes a long time to come out. If you're going to pair it with attackong on the beat, then it needs to be almost instantaneous or the feedback isn't very clear.

- The beat also needs to be pretty clear and high tempo (or enemies need to be balanced around slower music). The music itself was appealing, but it didn't have a strong bassline to drive the action, and a lot of times I'd wait to sync my attack up with the beat just to be punched by an approaching enemy.

- Others have said it, but the wall jump is really hard to get good at. It requires you to stop holding the direction input when jumping and then entering the direction input while in mid-air, but if your timing is even a little bit off and you accidentally hit the direction input before the jump input you'll send yourself downwards. This made doing long, vertical climbing sections very frustrating as the key inputs never felt entirely intuitive or smooth (and eventually my wrist started to hurt...).

But yeah, a rhythm based action game with the kind of graphics and overall presentation shown off here sounds super cool, and I hope you keep up with it if that's what you're interested in.

The art that's there looks really, really cool, especially the background art. The dialog after the miniboss got a chuckle from me. Since you specifically asked for feedback on controls, I'll give you my two cents in that regard.

- Movement: Seems fine, feels responsive and the speed was good.

- Jumping: You've got variable height jumping in and that works great. The two things that stick out to me right now are 1) no coyote time (being able to jump if you press the button a few moments after moving off of a ledge) and floatiness. A lot of games will increase player fall speed (or gravity's influence) to make a jump feel snappier on the way down, you may want to experiment with this. I don't know if Godot has this function, but leaving a line trail behind your character while testing will allow you to more easily visualize the arc and feel of your jump.

- Dashing: I would think about how the camera interacts with the dash a bit. Right now the camera remains behind for a really long time and then snaps to the player very quickly which givs the dash a bit of a whiplash effect. Also, even without proper animations, just rotating the character sprite a bit can make a world of difference for a dash's presentation.

- Attack: Seems it wasn't fully implemented, but even as is its behavior was inconsistent. Sometimes my weapon would just move downwards very slowly, and sometimes it would move forward very slowly, I was never sure if it was reacting to my directional inputs or was just inconsistent.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I really enjoyed the art style, and hope you can overcome whatever was holding you back and continue working on it!

Ah, okay. Makes sense. Yeah, the toe getting caught on things, I need to figure out how to get past that. Part of it is just adjusting height on the wall grab colliders, and part of it is pushing players up over a ledge if their momentum is just right. Will keep noodling at it!

Whoo boy, this is a meaty game. I'm at the Scavenger King atm and will continue playing later, but want to get some thoughts down while they're fresh. The art is very good and there is a ton of enemy variety already - the sound effect the machine frogs make is top notch. There's just a lot of overall polish all around so far, which is really cool to see in a gamejam game. The echo transposition ability is very cool for puzzle solving mechanics, and from what I saw of the Scavenger King so far, its tells are very well implemented and the fight seems very balanced and fair.

Some initial thoughts:

- The echo as a combat mechanic doesn't feel super great right now, or possibly I'm using it wrong. It feels kind of strange to dash away from enemies to damage them. With the shield enemies in particular, I felt very passive and cowardly the first several times I fought them. In the challenge room I finally figured out I could down bounce off of them which felt better, but right now I just never feel sure that I'm using the echo correctly (in this regard I was very surprised to see a purchasable item that interacted with your echo damaging enemies because up to that point it had seemed quite hard to use on the current enemy set).

- I think the short attack range is okay for the feel you're going for, and I like that you can up its range as a sort of risk reward mechanic, but  it gets a bit troublesome when chasing down enemies paired with the character's fairly quick speed. I ended up making a lot of baby steps towards  enemies that are walking away from me for fear that I'd run into them while trying to attack otherwise. I don't really know how to address that, was just something that stuck out to me.

- The healing mechanic is interesting, but it's a lot of set up for a relatively small amount of healing. It feels odd to have to charge up while an enemy approaches you, dash away from that enemy to create an echo, and then run back towards that enemy to get your heal. I like that it ties into the theme and is definitely unique, but I'm wondering if there is a smoother implementation.

Anyway, I'm enjoying my time with the game so far and will come back to it later today. It seems quite massive, Is there a way to know how much progress I've made? 

Thanks for the feedback! I definitely agree with your feedback - the scope was rather large and things ended up feeling way less polished than I would have liked, but on the other hand I don't really regret that decision for this project because it allowed me to throw a lot of ideas at the wall and sort of see what I liked very quickly, For the SMVM I'm going to (possibly counterintuitively) really narrow down the scope and focus on polishing up one zone as much as I can. I'm also going to focus on making the enemies and combat feel much better overall. I'll probably revisit the air/electricity level because I enjoyed those mechanics the most, and the boss fight's original, way too difficult for a gamejam implementation was very fun for me.

 In terms of physics, are you able to describe a bit where you were getting stuck on walls? Do you mean in some of the tighter spaces where you're trying to move through quickly? Getting the movement controller feeling better and better is always a core goal of mine, so any feedback here is super useful.

Again, thanks for playing and for the feedback.

Wow, I didn't know if anyone would actually play through on the harder difficulty or not. That's cool that you did. :D I agree with the timer comment - In retrospect I probably should have just removed the timer and said it was a Classic themed-game, but so it goes. Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!

I'm not sure how your jump is implemented, but if you're interested I found these videos to be super useful for learning more about jump intricacies.

Rigidbody 2D: Improve Your Platformer with Forces

Custom Physics: Ultimate 2D Platformer Controller in Unity

Wow, there is a LOT here. I'm not done yet but need to call it for the night and want to get some of my thoughts written down while they're still in my head. Will add more once I play more. The visuals in the first area are really nice, love the spinning wheels in particular. Also got a kick out of the little devil lookin' guys who aren't even enemies. The premise is super intriguing and I'm excited to see where it goes. There's also a lot of dynamic camera work here that keeps things very interesting.

Some feedback from my playthrough so far (I'm in the modern era atm):

- The grapple is still a bit much to get the hang of, I feel like I'm just kind of flailing away with it and just hoping on some of the more precarious sections (I'm looking at a particularly narrow tunnel over a bed of spikes). I think a safe space (or a series of safe puzzles which teach you the different ways of moving with it) to just sort of play around with it and experiment with how its movement works would be a useful addition.

- I think presenting the whole map at once is fine, but it is a bit overwhelming on top of all the other visuals going on in the game. It would be nice to pause / darken or blur out the screen behind the map when it's open, and maybe even put a slight vignetting effect centered on the player to help focus in on the area immediately surrounding you a bit more.

- A bug I encountered was on the first boss when he uses whatever hellish filter he uses, I killed him while he was in that mode and it persisted into the next world. I saved my game and reloaded which resolved the issue, just a small bug to be aware of.

Anyway, I'll continue my playthrough tomorrow. Seems like there's still a lot of content to explore!

I am all in on this game's soundtrack, it got my adrenaline pumping and ready for some monster slaying. I wish there had been more monsters to slay though... The mechanics themselves have a lot of potential, the first time I used the echo attack I thought it was super cool, and rewinding recent events opens up a lot of potential. Finding armor upgrades felt good, and there were a lot of neat touches here and there - I really liked the flame aura ability. It wasn't used much, but just like the echo stuff it has a lot of potential, and the way it lit up the wall hangings was very satisfying.

Some feeback:

- The jump was pretty rough, it felt very uncontrolled a lot of the time, mostly due to its relative speed. There was also a section where I'm pretty sure I was wall jumping to get up to a cage even though I hadn't unlocked that ability, but it was somehow the intended route?

- As mentioned above, I wish there were more neemies to use my cool echo attack ability on. When I tried to use it on the archer enemy, he kept knocking me out of the attack animation and once he was defeated I never really got another chance to use it on him. And with the final boss, he teleports after you land a hit which means you can't use it on him either. I wish he'd stick around a bit longer just so Ic ould use the echo attack on him.

- It's a bit of a nitpick, but from a level design perspective it was kind of silly to unlock the wall jump just to go up a wall in the same room and get the fire aura. Maybe it was because of the jam's time constraints, but a bit more exploration or backtracking to get the aura would have felt nice.

Anyway, a very solid entry. The audio and visuals were spot on and running around / dodging through lasers felt very good. Some creative skills scattered throughout and a mechanically compelling boss fight show that this game has a lot of potential. Nicely done!

Hey, thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you enjoyed it! I definitely want to go in and smooth out a lot of the harsher edges, especially around the character controller and the camera transitions. I'll be focusing on that for the ongoing SMVM.

The infinite wall jump is cribbed straight from Megaman X, although I never really got it working perfectly - there are a lot of little movement values that need to be set just right to make it feel really good, and right now if you jam on the jump button you'll just rocket up the wall which... isn't great.

Thanks for playing!

Well that was an experience. :D Very creative, very creepy, a lot of me saying "what the heeeell...". I very much dug the atmosphere and the waning light was thoroughly dread-inducing, as was the weird grumbling that would occur as you went lower. Definitely A+ for atmosphere. The Recoil Jump was a fun mechanic to get used to as well, it was much smoother than I expected it to be when I first got it.

Some general feedback:

- The checkpoint noise was pretty intolerable. I kinda didn't want to go to checkpoints and ended up turning my volume down because of it.

- The gun reloading / fire rate felt inconsistent. At times I could unload an entire magazine in rapid succession whereas other times there was a bit of a delay. It kind of made fighting the enemies unpredictable and a bit annoying as I just found myself firing while running backwards as they chased me and not knowing when my next shot would go off.

- The Recoil Jump was cool, but when I first got it didn't work for the longest time, it would just make the screen shake. I finally ducked and it made the little ability icon appear next to my  ammo count, but I was pretty confused for awhile there.

- Finally an odd one, at first my character wasn't turning when they'd move to the left, they just sort of backed up, but at some time during my playthrough they started turning properly. I'm not sure what happened but figured it's a small bug worth reporting.

I kinda flew off the edge of the map and there wasn't a reset option so I haven't beaten the game yet, but I'm going to go back in later and finish what I started. Exploring the map was quite fun and as bardycreepio mentioned below the level guides you fairly well despite getting darker and darker. Very nicely done.

Very well done. It was short but sweet. The movement felt very good (slide jumping was particularly satisfying) and the power-ups all had their uses. There was a fair amount of enemy variety and the two bosses I fought were well made. The writing was pretty good too, a lot of call-backs to classic games that are always fun to see. And those enemy death screams, I smiled every time I heard one.

Some feedback:

- The first boss's implementation was very impressive with the legs, but I initially felt a little frustrated by the lack of counter play. I felt like I couldn't really get close to him because both of his attacks were close range and had very big hit boxes. I eventually figured out I could dash through him to get a few quick hits in, but this would end up putting me in a corner which also wasn't ideal. Maybe I'm missing the intended strat, but I strugged much more on this boss than on Death himself.

- There seems to be a bug with oneof your map connections, two rooms (big central room and lower right room) are physically linked bu the map shows a romo in-between them. There also seems to be an exit to a room that I aws never able to access no matter how much I explored. Is it a bug or is there some trick to getting down there? OH YEAH, and what was the deal with the room with the nuclear bombs?! I made it through but... what? 

I got the hero emblem but it didn't actually seem to have an effect, enemies still took the same amount of hits to kill. Is it used elsewhere？

Anyways, other than those things, I enjoyed my time with the game. I did a lot of back tracking and exploring, but because the movement was so quick and smooth, it still felt good, and the Death fight was very fun. Nice variety of patterns that felt like you could get a real sense of mastery over them. Great job!

immediately got Castlevania II / Zelda II vibes from this. Overall I had quite a good time. The music was simple but catchy, I particularly liked the cave and temple music - I was nodding my  head along to the tun but still felt that ominous dread. The controls felt good, jumps were tough but usually fiar. Collecting coins always feels good, and the chest coin fountains were particularly satisfying. I tended to skip the weaker enemies and just focus on whichever enemy would erupt with the most coins. :D 

Some pieces of feedback:

- I really liked the Stone of Returning combined with the shop mechanic. It made it super convenient to go back, purchase upgrades, and get back into the action. That said, I think the design would have felt a bit more Metroidvania-y if the town had served as more of a hub zone that you  returned to naturally rather than teleporting. As it was there was very little in the way of backtracking, especially in the latter half of the game (which, given its distance, I understand why the Stone was necessary).

- I don't know if it was a purposeful decision or not, but having variable jump height would have been nice. There were some rooms where I'd launch myself into ceiling fire or ceiling spikes because I couldn't control the height of my jump. 

- On the wall grab, I think it still needs a little something. The character's jump is so high that waiting for velocity to slow down means I could be pressing against a wall for quite awhile before I'll ever grab it (and inadvertently jumping straight into enemies when I wanted to grab the wall below them). I think some secondary checks around time pressed against the wall or something might help with this - it's really just because of the extreme character jump height though.

Oh yeah, and before I forget, the final boss was a good time. Once I figured out the safe zones I made short work of him, and the ending cut scene / post-credits scene were *chef's kiss*. Very good job!

A very well done entry! It was polished, visually cohesive, and felt great to play. There were a lot of little details that I appreciated. I laugh when I saw the first laser enemy stretch upwards, and I smiled the first time I got hit while underwater and heard the filtered "grunt" noise. The zones were all very distinct and it was cool that they each had their own thematic item pickup.

A couple pieces of feedback:

- I'm not entirely sure if the vines were tightly balanced around finding every pickup in an area, but I thought some of the pick-ups (particularly in the city) were a bit tediously placed, requiring multiple loops through a jumping puzzle if you fell down. I was also constantly afraid that I had missed a pick-up somewhere and would have to explore all over the map to find it. This fear of missing a single item (even though it never actually happened) made me pretty anxious while playing.

- The little floaty enemies could probably approach the player's center line a little bit faster to get them into shooting range a bit more easily. They stay just above or below the shot's hit box just long enough to make them more annoying than they should be, especially in tight spaces.

Overall though a very impressive entry, just packed with details and visual flair. Very well done!

I tried to play this a few times but I kept getting stuck on the invisible terrain and wasn't able to make a lot of progress. It's a shame because I was enjoying the movement, the pole jumps feel very fluid. I particularly liked the little edge grab pose. The idea of switching between the foreground and background is a really cool concept, I kept seeing places in the background that I wanted to go to or could prepare myself for ahead of time. Seeing the big castle poking up over the top of the wall was very cool and made me want to get up there.  The lack of any sort of music or sound was a bit disorienting, hopefully you can get your soundtrack in after the rating period.

Thanks for your feedback! The camera issues were never-ending. I'm glad I tried multiple cameras per scene this time around, but they definitely take a lot of finessing. There is an "unstick" button in the pause menu for situations like that, but it's not super obvious. And yeah, I'm gonna strip out almost everything for the SMVM and try to really nail the character controller and combat/abilities. They were fun to ipmlement but nothing is polished to where I want it to be.

Thanks! I'm glad you gave it another shot. :D

oops, In my exhaustion i uploaded a broken build. reuploading now =/