itch.io

Good game, good color palette that matches up nicely and highlights the character position, clean character movement, clean camera transitions, the movement blocks are elegant and simple, good and simple sounds and a nice background music that doesnt dominate. I like that you have two variations of rewinding, one being restarting a level and the other being restarting the game.

Some minor critiques if you want them:

 Level 3 is likely one of the harder levels due to the falling platform jumps, if you do not jump before it starts falling you will not make the jump from block 2 to 3. Additionally if you touch the sides of the blocks then they will still fall. So long as you keep this in mind when making the jump then it is still easily feasible to make the jump and luckily simply dying isnt a rewind whereas running out of time is.  A good way to fix the falling block issues might be to check the player's y position versus the block's y position and to not trigger the fall unless player y < block y (or greater than, depending on game engine and orientation) or something like that; this would likely fix the block falling when touched from the side issue. As far as the block jump itself like the one on stage 3, theres several approaches and honestly fixing side-on collision might be enough.

Also I dont know if it can happen, but the timer continuing to tick down after touching the portal does introduce some anxiety, I tested it a few times and while I could get the 'rewinding due to time running out' screen to show it would still progress me to the next level; so I dont know if there is a more frame-perfect way to get it to rewind post portal touch.

Anyway good game and aside from those minor points I dont see many concerns.

Thank you for the feedback, most of the pixel art was refined when I did a third pass; the first stage I simply used red/blue/green placeholder blocks for visible collision masking, the second stage I made subjectively ugly level art to piece together how I wanted things visually, and then the third stage I remade the pixel art with the spare time I had to make it look somewhat decent. Between the second and third art passes I spent a whole day finding creative commons - 0 licensed sounds to use in the game so im glad that the efforts I took paid off. Sadly I didnt have the time to do the story I wanted to do, but theres a limit to what one person can do in a 7-day game jam, especially when its their first game jam.

Once again, thank you for the feedback.

Thanks for the feedback, the water sfx currently have a slightly higher priority and are meant to be both the ambient sound and an active sound to help the player figure out there is flowing water as opposed to stagnant water. I will take this critique into account for future implementation of water sfx and will likely dial back the noise level as I wasnt too sure whether to make it more quiet.

Also I do recognize that performing shorter height jumps is more difficult as the player possesses a static up speed whilst jumping and side to side motion, that while consistent, makes it very hard to account for short ceilings or low-laying grinders/lasers; had I more time to work on the project I wouldve likely implemented variable jump height, but likely never wouldve increased sideways motion for various puzzle reasons.

Once again, thank you for the feedback it is very useful.

Really cool game; good and clean art and the different colors between levels is also nice. the time rewinding is done very well here and is one of the better time rewinding ones ive reviewed; music moves backwards, enemies move backwards, player moves backwards; all good. The bouncing on enemies mechanics is also surprisingly fun especially since repeatedly bouncing sends you much higher each time. I observed that it is possible to finish the level without collecting the stars, whether this is intentional or not is unknown. My main critique would have to be that climbing ladders is buggy when climbing the middle but consistent when climbing the sides and entering doors is also somewhat buggy. Anyways, good game. 

Also it seems to be that you accidentally included an additional copy of the zip file of the game in the zip file of the game.

Good game, neatly executed with line rider esque vibes. Basic and clear cut art leaves little room to question what is what. If I had two or three critiques I might add: if you are going to have a coin counter then id recommend having the coins be worth 1 instead of 2 and if you wanted you could add larger coins or different color coins worth more. The reverse direction/slow arrows didnt seem to exist in all too impactful of a manner, at least the way I ran into them which was to simply let my ball roll or fly into them; so perhaps increase the force on them such that they propel you backwards instead of reducing your speed. And lastly simply implementing a smoother camera transition if possible between leftwards/rightwards movement as it currently jumps rather harshly. Anyway, good game.

Procedurally generated game levels are always fun. Game is simple, straightforward, art isnt cluttered, controls are very clean and precise. If I had some recommendations I might suggest to visually differentiate different kinds of platforms from one another unless your goal is to keep it a secret. Additionally the game seemed to horribly bug out visually whether fullscreen or not with no clear cause so looking into this issue, if you are able to experience it, would certainly be worth your time as it causes the game to be somewhat unplayable when it occurs. Anyway, good game.

Good game, the movement was clean, the visuals were simple but precise, and the levels were short and straight forward. The rewind theme was very well done and done in a very literal sense while I had trouble realizing what your exact approach to the out of reach theme was to be.  If you wanted some critiques I only have a few to give and mostly on the animations themselves as the game itself was fairly solid and fairly well done. Animations of course arent the most important aspect of 7 day game jams, at least in my opinion, but every bit helps and were all here to learn. In my opinion, the professor's idle animation is too fast, simply adding duplicate frames, changing his frame rate, or adding more frames with smaller adjustments would help with this and the exact approach you would want may differ engine to engine, artist to artist. Additionally the player's walk cycle seems to be half of a walk cycle as opposed to a full walk cycle; so if that is the case then you did half a walk cycle very well but if its not the case then you might want to look into ways to more clearly articulate the walk cycle's switch from right side dominant to left side dominant. Anyways, good game.

https://itch.io/jam/pb-game-jam-5/rate/737210

First game jam entry; if you or anyone else could provide any form of critique then that would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Good game and simple design without too much clutter with sleek but simple animations. I might recommend having slightly more merciful collision masking with the spikes as combined with ever so slight player deceleration I found myself accidentally tapping the barest corners and dying.

Thanks for the review, I appreciate any feedback I can get. The out of reach mechanic is somewhat built into the rewind mechanic and platforming in general; things like being unable to reach certain heights without stacking yourself or having to leave a copy behind to activate a button otherwise impossible to hold whilst getting through a laser. I spent quite a bit of time making sure the player couldnt softlock themselves though so im glad someone decided to test the limits; all the funnier that you took the time to fill the pool up. Also the music is only present on the title screen since I didnt want to accidentally mask all of the sfx.

Fun game, occasionally had trouble jumping or dashing; sometimes the control simply wouldnt respond. I might recommend having some sort of timer or delay on the intermission screen as there were a few times while playing that I would simply skip the intermission screen accidentally due to mindless button spam a moment before transmission.

Yeah I completely forgot about sticky keys, turned off that hotkey long ago; my goal was to make the game compatible with either arrow keys or WASD style play. Glad you liked it though.

Thanks, I feel like I kinda hit the ground running on the themes and was hoping people wouldnt find them monotonous during play.

Its a good narrative and the art is very well done; the music is good but whenever it 'glitches up' it recalls memories of how a computer sounds when it blue screens and gave me anxiety and made me check my sound several times. So kudos to the sound designer, but curse you at the same time for freaking me out the first time.

 I like that the choices with consequences are functionally endings in their own right, though I didnt explore all of them the first time I got a 'bad ending' I was like "huh... I guess thats the bad ending"; while I dont know how many such endings there are, its a nice style that is seldom used and often when a choice with negative consequence occurs the game prompts you to reload a checkpoint, instead such a choice is simply how the story ends in this game, which is appreciable. Though I do wish I had a way to reload so I could explore other choices faster.

I thought the game would be over after the first set, but all stories need a tournament arc at some point or another.

Good game, the eventual automation of *almost* everything was a mercy upon my hand; though the early game(s) still sets my wrist on fire. When playing this I immediately thought of things like Adventure Capitalist which is a good thing because id say that game/those game(s) are the gold standard for games similar to this one. While this game isnt quite to *that* degree as far as function goes, I felt there was a similarity. I think you have a good game here and the touch of story was funny.

Also please give us a way to automate the last one; even if it costs like 1,000 of the first one (the white one) per tier I would do it in a heartbeat. 

I had to stop playing once it hit dragonball levels of poke-buddy evolution though, wrist hurts.

The art is good, you have a simple yet theme matching tile-set and it is rather clear and easy to see what is what. The concept is also fairly well executed beyond the goal simply being 'out of reach' but the necessity to acquire abilities to make things 'in reach' is fairly well done.

The control scheme is a fairly neutral point in my opinion; im personally not a fan of the placement of the ability keys; however thats a subjective statement which doesnt really reflect in the game's quality other than id recommend finding some better placement for the ability keys somehow; if you found a way to make it work with a standard format like: WASD, Shift, Space, Mouse, and R, E, or F then it would be a 'normal' placement control scheme in my opinion which is what, as far as im aware, most people are used to. 

Bugs wise, most notably, it seemed to be 1 in 3 times I wouldnt be able to double jump and additionally it seemed that sometimes the dash ability wouldnt give me back my second jump, I couldnt figure out whether or not this was because I was jumping off of ramps, but it seemed to occur more frequently when jumping from ramps and was most noticeable when doing the jumps around the "dash to reset jumps" tutorial.

Last thing of note is that some of the saw placement early on is a little merciless given that its before you get any abilities and the player is still getting used to what seems to be a deceleration mechanic, at least thats where I had a lot of trouble in the first two minutes of play.

All around good and somewhat difficult game though.