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That was so much fun. Making decisions in real-time can be very exciting and this game certainly was. Figuring out how the items combo'd while being under threat of attack was a fun amount of stress.

The items being simple on their own is great. So combining two at once is just complex enough, without being overwhelming. I like the inclusion of the sunglasses. It is not obvious what they do mechanically, if anything at all, but there is this space for the player to wonder where they could be used and what they might do. Or at the very least the player gets to equip them, knowing they may do nothing, but feel extra cool as they slaughter another poor banana. Or get the final hit on a big tough enemy.

There is some cheese strategy with how the action timer works. If you have the boots equipped and either nothing in the second slot or something that does not affect spd, then you can let the bar fill up really fast and at the last second throw on the heal ring. Then remove it to go fast again, repeat. I think this let me face tank any of the enemies I encountered. It is interesting to think about if that is truly unbalanced or if tweaked with intent it could be a fun thing to discover and exploit. If there were any tougher enemies, faster or stronger, then that measly five healing would no longer work.

Well, I had fun during and after the game here, haha. Keep up the great work!

What a cool and fun puzzle platformer. I think I was able to learn everything through a proper amount of trial and error. The aerial combo puzzles were very exciting to figure out and execute. They were rather tight in terms of timing, but I was able to do them after a handful of attempts. Some of the movement physics felt a little jank, but nothing too harsh. Something about launching yourself with an explosion is so much fun. Lends itself to all kinds of cool dynamics. Aerial trick shots being high on the list.

Wonderful lil' jam game. Keep up the good work!

The premise is very cool. I can imagine a movie scene with two characters back to back fighting off a horde of enemies. That evokes a really fun fantasy. I also like the mechanical concept of controlling multiple avatars. The RTS genre gets a lot of its cool factor from that, at a much larger scale.

I had difficulty controlling the characters. I found my brain twisting into a metaphorical pretzel trying to switch between something even as simple as two adjacent rows of keys and which mouse button to press. An extreme comparison would be like trying to play with two separate controllers. Chaotic, at least for a game of this speed. I wonder if something like a button to toggle between the characters would work better (for me). I would be able to keep my fingers on the same keys for moving left and right. Having the "switch character" button be convenient would also be a consideration. Spacebar or right click jump out at me.

I like the simplicity of it too. Scope creep and bloated ideas are especially bad for a short jam. I tried to be better this time around, with mixed success. Arcade style games seem to be a good approach. Short, simple, elegant, quick to pick up and play.

Congratulations on completing what you were able to. 72 hours always turns out to be such a short period of time. Keep up the good work!

Neat game. The lava abilities are pretty cool. Seems like a lot of design space for puzzles and challenges from those simple mechanics. Keep up the good work!

I appreciate the kind words. Happy to hear it is not only interesting, but fun even. Thanks for giving it a try!

Thanks for playing! That is supposed to be the tab key. I should probably have an alternative, like a letter key or something much more obvious. I would be delighted if you reviewed my game.

At first I thought I was going to have to play the tutorial every time I died, but I was pleasantly surprised that I just had to get good and beat one real opponent to get out of that cycle.

I got to 900pts before I called it quits, perhaps a weak score. I only played it as a reflex kind of game. I did not even notice, let alone consider, anything in the environment as cues for what stance my opponent would end up choosing.

After reading your dev log on the Punch Out inspiration I absolutely love that concept, in theory. It is certainly a neat way to create random background variation AND opponent variation. The fact that you can generate these cues and then kind of just iterate through them at varied rates to have the opponent change their stance before finalizing it, is a cool way to make them feel more alive. (Although your implementation could just have them changing stance randomly, wiggling their katana until at some point they get to their calculated final stance, accounting for any modifiers rolled.) But I feel like I would have to do a lot of studying and data collection through trial & error just to discover the modifiers. Then I have to be able to do this calculation in my head before each new opponent strikes. Seems very difficult to do from the player's perspective. Perhaps it is actually simple and I am just blind.

After writing all that above, I have spent enough time thinking while typing, and I can now see some kind of play behavior where I am saying to myself "red guy, deer, cloud, bird... last time that was middle *smashes up key*" If there are a lot of possible combinations that might be easier said than done though. Anyways...

Overall an awesome game. I had good fun playing it and analyzing it. Keep up the good work!

Neat lil' prototype. Got my brain mulling over this concept some now. I was delighted to discover the emergent dynamic of bonking into platforms above you, just to bank some extra time. A fun sort of microgame or optimization tactic. I had also never heard of that book/website, so thanks for the introduction! Keep up the good work!

I was pretty sure the Moon was so close to defeated. But my Archer got hit by a chunky attack, deleting the remaining half of his hp. My Guard even did its lil' auto first aid to bring my Archer back from the dead at 4 hp. But the game said no no no. Certainly a short intense roller coaster of emotions. As I thought I had some cheesy chance to keep going.

The Glitch abilities are a fun mechanic. Felt good to have them come in clutch or absolutely obliterate the last bit of the boss's health. And I do like the enforcement of keeping the entire party alive. Even though it is just the 2 characters. That adds interesting strategy and tension. The cannibalistic class change is an elegant design. Not only does it add discovery and replayability. But for someone like me who kind of got bored of the 2 starting classes after the first battle. I was able to instantly get a new class to learn and play around with. I would say that kept me playing a genre I tend to steer clear of. (I prefer a slightly more active role in combat like Paper Mario or the Mario & Luigi series of RPGs offers)

Had fun, even though I did not actually beat it. Keep up the good work.

The spearman felt a little weird or unfair at first. Because if you walk up to them from the front they poke you pretty quickly. And their spear animation is kind of hard to notice. But if you learn to get behind their patrolling, then they are a piece of cake to deal with. There are likely many paths to solving this. Some simple solution might be to have the spear shaft thrust in front of the enemy's torso. Looks like it is animated to be behind him almost. Or you could have a longer, more exaggerated wind up. And so on. As I am not the developer, I will leave the creative problem solving to you. That is a lot of the fun of creating a game.

The big brute enemies were good to fight. Felt fair and they telegraphed their attack well.

I have a problem with the ninjas. The first 2 encountered seem to come out of nowhere. As the character runs pretty quickly and the screen is small. So you are sprinting along and suddenly there is a ninja 24 pixels in front of you. And they immediately chuck a shuriken at your face. Perhaps there are people out there who can react that fast. Not me. But the like 3rd ninja you encounter. The 1 you get a first glimpse at from a lower level. Now that felt much better. I was able to realize it was there ahead of time. And plan accordingly. So to me the problem could be viewed from 2 angles: level design or enemy design. Depending on how you envision ninjas as a challenge to overcome. Keeping the current implementation and using them as a "see this ninja here, you better remember they are here when you get to that area". Or whatever other clever uses you can come up with. Or giving them a slight wind up animation or possibly a slower shuriken.

There is some room for argument against most of what I just said. The game does seem to be about one-man-army storming a castle. The character does have quite a big health pool. So even if some of the things I said would normally feel unfair. For this game it might add to the feeling of power the character is supposed to have. Running through these rooms, taking all these wounds, but still charging onward. Comes down to your vision of the player's experience.

Perhaps I went a lil' overboard here. But hopefully it can be of some use.

I certainly do not have the intimate knowledge of your game's design and balance as you do. So I do not feel like I could sufficiently answer that question. Thinking back now, I am not sure the "weak shot" has a problem with its range. The close combat just seemed to appear unfair to me at the time. Could have been collision boxes, the fast snappy movement, or definitely my lack of proficiency with the controls and systems.

I appreciate you bearing with my lack of tutorial. I certainly could have tried to explain the game better on the webpage itself. I was just foolishly hoping I could make it intuitive through visuals.

Based on the color palette I used, I probably could have made red orcs. Or something easier to see on the green background.

Glad you liked it. Thanks for playing!

Great to hear! I was worried difficulty creep might have set in by the end of development. I have had the game idea tucked away and it is one that has stuck with me. Now that there is this lil' prototype I can reference. I may 1 day look to iterate on it. Thanks for playing! And commenting!

I beat the game. But I am not sure how many levels I might have accidentally cheesed through pushing multiple blocks at once. Or certain blocks not going their full distance and getting caught on corner collisions. Perhaps that was intended, or accounted for in level design. I do enjoy solving puzzles. So that was fun.

I do not think I fully understand the intention behind the angry red circles. Going back it looks like they prevent you from pushing any blocks they are turning red. During my initial playthrough I just went around and turned them all off. So to me they felt useless or pointless. Perhaps I missed something about them.

Now what I really love is a wacky use of a core mechanic for something unexpected. And I was pleasantly surprised to be kicking ice blocks in a boss battle at the end there. I did read the description about there being a boss. But I forgot or dismissed it apparently. I suppose I was more focused on crushin' some puzzles.

Overall, I enjoyed my time here. Keep up the good work.

Looking at the screenshot GIF with the larger variety of enemies. I think the game would be more fun if you got to that point faster. The 5 minutes it took me to get to wave 6 was a little boring. And when I got to the more interesting enemies. I had taken way too much silly lil' chip damage from the flies. And died to the first real challenge I faced. All the enemies look like a lot of fun to play around. And I really like the compact hectic arena feel. I think the slower nature of projectiles and enemies lends to a more methodical positioning of your character. Which is quite intriguing. Perhaps feels a little more RTS/RTT than fast twitch bullet hell... that might be a weird stretch. Almost making decisions in a sort of slow motion, gives you just that much more time to think your movements through.

I still had fun playing, and analyzing. Keep up the good work.

I have saved the kingdom! I had fun figuring out how best to deal with each enemy's attack. Although the boss almost got me before I learned to make him whiff his attack. And then to go for a strike or 2. The jumping felt a little clunky at times.

Congratulations on making progress in your game development journey. Keep up the good work.

I really enjoyed each pet having a special attack that gave them a unique playstyle. Of the pets I got to play as, I think Shroomy might have been the most interesting and surprising one. Although that run only lasted a couple rooms. I wish I would have had the skill to get the high ground and rain spore destruction on any who opposed me. Dealing with the frogs is kind of brutal. Especially when there are 2. So many bubbles to dodge. The basic attack felt a little bad, in the sense that you had to risk getting extremely close to an enemy, just to try and hit them. The game does seem to be rather generous with invincibility after getting hit though.

I had a fun time with the few runs I did. Keep up the good work.

As a strategy game it felt like it ended a little too quickly. And might be too abstract to really understand the consequences of your choices. I am really intrigued by the almost boiled down RTS direction it has going on though. My strategy started somewhat sound, in that I would place the initial orbs to hold a line of defense as far out as possible. But then it rapidly devolved into spam clicking just to try and get down orbs wherever I could, behind the ones breaking. Perhaps I did not take enough time to try and understand the systems better.

Certainly an interesting lil' experience. Has a good level of polish to it. Keep up the good work.

Thanks for playing. And I really appreciate the feedback.
Commands now automatically assign, in order, when selected. It does feel a whole lot better to interact with now. Great suggestion!
Having played a lot while developing it, I was worried the game could be confusing or difficult. So I might have ended up making it too easy. Almost boring perhaps. There are more rows to play through. And each row destroyed slowly speeds up the game to a maximum.

What a fun and tight experience. I found all of the screens to be a good level of challenge for me. Was in a pretty consistent flow state. Except for 1 of the screens with the anti-teleport fields. My brain forgot I could jump off the crumbling platforms. I tried way too many times to teleport just before hitting the spikes. Silly me. Keep up the great work!

I appreciate the play and the comment. Music was planned, but that is certainly the area I have the most to learn. Perhaps I will try and put something simple together in Famitracker. So that the Levels are a little less quiet at least.

I agree that this feels somewhat like an aim trainer. As if the player is shooting these rats with a hitscan cork gun. Instead of whacking them with a mallet.

I think an interesting approach to your idea would be to focus more on creating the feeling of using a mallet to whack these rats. One way that could be done is to have a collision shape be instanced or enabled whenever, and wherever, the player clicks. Then inside the rat's collision handler, it just needs to wait for the mallet collision shape to enter it. Instead of waiting for the cursor to click inside it.

Not only would this feel more like a big ol' mallet striking an area. It would allow the player some more leniency on when and how they can use their only action within the game. The action only occurring when the cursor is clicked inside a rat's collision shape creates an experience that relies more on precise twitch movement and reaction. Where as if the player could just strike some area whenever (or with some cooldown between whacks), that would be more inclusive of varying skill levels. And add some potentially fun and interesting sort of chaos to the gameplay.

I also think increasing the scenarios where a player can use their action(s) can lead to a deeper game naturally. For instance if a player can affect an area with their whack, there is the possibility to try and hit multiple rats at once. There is added risk reward to this. The player could hit multiple normal rats. But now there is the chance to also whack an explosive rat on accident.

Last little game design ramble. A useful way to think about your game is to ask "If there was no goal, would my game still be fun to play?" So essentially, does your game have some aspects of a toy? I feel like my mallet example would help to, somewhat, facilitate this concept. In my imagination I could see a player having some fun, although perhaps just a short few seconds, simply whacking around on the screen. Even more so if there was some "juice" added, in the form of a cool animation, some dust particle effect, a loud thump or thud sound effect, etc.

I hope that ramble comes off as constructive & conversational and not condescending or in anyway negative sounding. The fact that you were able to make a fun lil' polished experience in 72 hours, or less, is awesome. Hindsight is 20/20 after all. After the jam ended, I felt that my game's design could have been more solid from the get go. And I feel the gameplay ended up lacking because of it.

I really liked the art, animations, and overall aesthetic as well. Keep up the good work.

What a really cool concept. Makes me think of the RTS genre. But your game is a novel design when compared to a more traditional RTS. Something like how Pikmin is to say Starcraft. Although your game is obviously focused more on puzzles than combat strategy/tactics. (Well at least novel to me, I could easily be unaware of similar games) I think puzzles certainly fit the side-view 2D perspective you chose for the game. Better than combat or some other more involved challenge(s). Although that sounds like an interesting idea to explore.

I will say the controls were a little unwieldy at times. I was able to get to 2-1 before I failed to keep 6 cats. And went to try and pause the game. Pressing esc quits the game. Whoops. Back to the controls. Making long jumps felt decent. But trying to do smaller more micro management was finicky. I think I noticed I was having some difficulties because the camera would move with the cats. And therefore my mouse would move with the camera at the same offset from the cats. So when I would try to get them to jump or move to a specific spot. That spot would not be under my mouse after the camera moved. I think that is what appeared to be happening.

Really nice aesthetic. I had a good amount of fun. Keep up the good work.

I do enjoy a good boss battle. I was able to do a little bit of a cheesy strategy by going between the floor and the bottom floating platform to easily dodge the laser. And completely ignore the aerial bombs. Although it was fun to discover that about the AI and exploit it. It is fun seeing what kinds of games people are designing when they have no required constraint on the gameplay. Would have been cool to see more bosses. Or perhaps a second phase. Of course one can only do so much with such limited time. I really enjoyed the exclusive focus on fighting bosses in Titan Souls. So I am getting that sort of vibe from your game.

Nice use of the limited palette. Although I did find it hard to see the BOSSCAT's lil' orange bullets. Especially when they were getting mixed in with the extreme amount of particles coming out of my big ol' gun. Overall I had fun blastin'. Keep up the good work.

I am an enjoyer of puzzle games. This one did not have me straining, but I did have to do some thinking and experimenting on some of the later levels. I am a big believer in constraints breed creativity. And the limitation for this jam did not help me in coming up with an idea for gameplay. So the fact that you came up with a solid idea and design really shows you have some good game design skills.

The funky track kept me going each lil' loop. I cracked a big silly smile when I noticed the white cat with their smug face nodding up and down as it moves. Nice touch. Overall a fun lil' experience. Keep up the good work.

I love this game idea. I really enjoy strategy games. The tower defense genre mostly seems to be focused on planning, with a little bit of action/reaction during a wave. But adding in a mechanic where you have to constantly manage your towers to keep them in peak condition adds an RTS element that is really cool.

It could be interesting if there was more risk to using time as a resource. In this implementation of the game, the time resource technically could have been any resource really. Like if I gained 1 water every second and could use 10 of it to cooldown overheating turrets to keep them warmed up but not melted. That would be the same mechanic with a different aesthetic. Although that would not account for the manual aging of turrets... Just thinking "out loud" about how your use of the limitation is sort of like an abstract version of any resource that is arbitrarily gained over time. Perhaps that is a little food for thought, or not very useful. Not saying your use was bad by any means. Back to the more risk thing. If the player could temporarily sacrifice their grandfather clock's life as extra time dropping their time resource to a negative value. That is then restored if the player lets enough time pass to get back into a positive value. There could be some interesting risk reward dynamic there. Like should I go into time debt so I can deal with the current state of this wave and hope I do not take any permanent damage in the process. Okay, rambling done.

Fun and enjoyable lil' experience. I suppose like life, it was only inevitable that I was going to lose to the ever increasing spawn rate of red blobby dudes. Keep up the good work.

I appreciate the kind words. I checked out your live review. It seems you were playing Bubbly Tim's Time Bubble Trouble. Afterwards, you accidentally rated my game instead. Looked like a little confusion with the tabs you had opened as you were moving towards ending stream. Thought I should inform you, so we can get Bubbly Tim the rating he deserves. And I would enjoy seeing you play and review my game.

I was hoping things would be somewhat intuitive, even with just trial and error. But there being 2 types of timers and a negative button being on top of the tan colored timer adding time to it. That surely is a confusing UI setup. If you left-click the button, I have circled in green, once or twice. You then should have enough time to get to the flag before the "death zone" activates.

Took me a few reloads of the game to understand what was happening. But I got there. I think I have a sufficient amount of time stored up for a little snooze on this comfy island. I think you had a good direction towards the limitation. Of course given the power of hind sight and unlimited time, one could create any game. Here are a few of my thoughts you certainly did not ask for. I had interpreted the limitation as time being a sort of currency. Something the player can spend or use up for gameplay. In your game, if the player had a way to spend some of the time they gained, that could be interesting. Either on upgrades to get more efficient or "powerful". Perhaps an interesting iteration to the gameplay loop would be the player has to spend/lose some of their time to do various actions. Such as tilling a new crop spot. So it becomes a real-time strategy sort of experience. Do I think I have enough time stored up to till and plant a few crops in time for my other ones to grow and keep me from game over-ing? Or play safe and just wait.

There was some issue with plants dying in certain spots and then I could not plant a new seed there. Appeared to be something like that. Besides the rather tight timing at the very start of the game, it seemed to play close to as intended I think.

Overall I had a fun lil' time eating bunches of fruit. Keep up the good work!

I think your use of the limitation is quite interesting. The faster I can get through a tight little platformer level, the more of a reward I get. To then hopefully go even faster with my new shiny upgrade. The concept of repeating a set of levels randomly is intriguing. It would be cool to expand that idea so that there are perhaps a few large levels. Significant parts of a level are unreachable at first. But as you get some upgrades. When you go back to a level, 1 extra air jump could get you to a new area/section. Since going farther out takes time, maybe these "advanced" areas have ways to earn more time. So when you get to the goal you get more of a reward. Small ramble aside. I really liked the animation on the jump. Controls felt good. It was a little difficult to see some sections before it was too late and you fall into a sudden spike. I think 2 of the levels could be cheesed with just the default double jump to go over top all the spikes. Perhaps that was intended to be discovered for speedrun sake. Fun lil' game. Keep up the good work!

I cannot think of too much to say really. You made a quality game that used the limitation almost as stated. Great gameplay loop of dodge and shoot, choose a useful little upgrade, and repeat. I will say that I was caught off guard when I shredded through my time after upgrading to shoot 2 bullets at once, for what appeared to be the cost of 2 individual bullets I think? I was expecting to shoot 2 for the price of 1. I suppose your use of the limitation could have been more innovative or unique, but that is just subjective really. And certainly not a requirement. I really liked the simple pixel art and the pixel perfect rotation of the sprites. Fun lil' game. Keep up the good work!

Although it was difficult to properly play through some of the puzzles. I was able to understand what was meant to happen. And the puzzles utilizing a bunch of missiles looked like a lot of fun. I think your use of the limitation is rather unique. I was mostly thinking of how time could be used essentially as something to spend or use up. Currency, ammo, health, etc. Despite the technical issues, I had fun. Keep up the good work!

My first play through I was a little confused. My second attempt, I realized the memory gaps on the music sheet are not necessarily exact in terms of height in notes. So it became a lot of fun to speed through the "remembered" portions and then be faced with the uncertainty of guessing and falling back down a few times. And also trying to guess when the next memory portion starts to slam it out. I feel the use of the limitation was a little lacking. If I could spend some of my time to remove a wrong note on the next line, to make guessing a little easier, that would have been a fun push your luck sort of dynamic. Do I spend a bunch of time trying to remove wrong notes so I can play faster? Or am I too low on time to risk that. The spend time to remove wrong notes above could be limited to bringing it down to a 50:50 so that there is still risk and reward. Anyways, I enjoyed my time with the game, keep up the good work!

I was almost able to defeat the sorcerer with punches, but got orb'd to death. Was rather fun frantically running around a dungeon, mostly naked, on the hunt for epic gear. I think the limitation could have been used for a less optional mechanic. Or maybe had more uses. The amount of hotkeys I had to keep up with added to the chaos, in a sort of fun way. Overall an enjoyable little experience.

I really like the RTS genre of games. So being able to micro turtles around was really fun. Being able to click and drag to box select the turtles would have been nice. But for a short game jam like this, one cannot expect everything.

Fun concept. Awesome art. The mechanics felt good and fair. The level design felt nice and diverse. Although I found myself typically trying to funnel every single turtle through the shortest route. Keep up the good work!

That was a good level of challenge for me. Got close to the green square relatively quickly, but wanted to place more towers and just mess around more. Almost lost (I think) because of that, my road got pretty shredded temporarily. I love when things get to a silly level of chaos quickly. Especially in game jams. I feel the game would have benefited from having hotkeys for quick selecting the purchase-ables.

Overall fun experience. Cool concept and nice execution. Keep up the good work!

I did not get to eat any cookies either.

The concept of the game overall is pretty interesting. I have to say I was rather confused on how to process the visual information, provided through the maps and even map icons, into something useful to help me decide where to place my missile. Each map icon having one of the four key things to pay attention to kind of confused me with the different shaded gray circles possibly meaning each of the four things or only one thing (and then where is everything else?).

The gameplay for me was pretty much playing a half dozen times trying out different things and seeing how that affected my score. In the hopes I could decode what exactly was better and worse. I am not exactly sure how much I understand still. But even that was still kind of fun, I do like puzzles and trying to figure out how things work.

Honestly though, you had me intrigued. For your first game jam the overall product delivered is really cool. Keep up the good work!

Title says it all.

If you have read the rules and/or played any of the games and have some form of feedback, this is the place to put that.

Pretty cool idea. I like the very constrained resource managing, gives of a puzzle vibe. Had to restart a handful of times to get a setup that allowed me to get further than a couple nodes.