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Very cool entry! Great sense of exploration and some clever uses of the teleport ability for both secret hearts and to progress through the game. Thankful for the map, would have been a little difficult to figure out where to go without it. Wish there was a little more feedback on attacking an enemy, but the combat is okay for what it is. I did manage to teleport into an area before getting Spit, and got stuck. Here's a screenshot of that location. But I had a fun time with it, great job!

Thanks for trying out the game! And the detailed feedback is very helpful, will absolutely take that into account in a future update for the game.

Thank you for trying out the game! And hmm, I'll look into that! Not sure how that happened

Thanks for checking out the game and for all the feedback! We appreciate the kind words and the suggestions, especially on the movement / combat. And yes, the game will definitely get updated post-jam!

Hey really cool atmosphere and felt pretty nice to control. The hits and dodge feel good. The heal could be a little more clear when you have the minimum energy to perform a heal, and precisely when the heal has gone off and you can let go of the button. 

Like others have said, it was really hard to see anything, once I adjusted my monitor settings it was better. I didn't even realize there *were* spikes in the 2nd room, let alone that I could pogo jump on them. 

Really tried to engage with the first boss but gave up after many attempts. I gave it about 10 tries, the iframes on the dodge help, but just found the fight too punishing and inconsistent. Especially in the 2nd phase, the boss's attack comes out so fast / unexpectedly, if you're near the boss at all, a hit seems unavoidable. I love Hollow Knight and other hard games, and I appreciate the challenge, but this was tuned a little too aggressive for me, especially for such an early encounter.

But I'd love to see more of this game if you continue work on it!

**Slight spoilers**

Fantastic concept, love the 90s aesthetics, definitely a lot of nostalgic imagery. The rooms with the Great Thinkers were easily the highlight. I was excited each time to see the new gimmick and pixel art character. Really really cool. I liked all the unique icons for the different areas too, that was a nice touch

For me, the time limit really hurt the experience. I wanted to carefully explore, read the lore notes, and enjoy the vibes. But the player is incentivized to ignore all that and barrel ahead. I reached the final (?) trash can area with less than a minute. And that area felt really cool and evocative, but I was like "welp gotta stop playing in 30 seconds". I did like that it was a blue screen of death. But it was just frustrating and disappointing. And I didn't feel compelled to play through again, because actually traversing the world and dealing with the viruses was a little tedious. And at that point, the novelty / originality of the world has worn off. The time limit is a bold choice, and maybe it's contributing to a greater design goal / player experience that I'm missing, but it didn't work for me.

But the game still rules, everything is well-implemented and pretty polished. Great work!

Thank you for taking the time to try it! Really appreciate the kind words. Those are good notes, I'll probably put it in some kind of early "sword check" to make sure the player knows the buttons, and I'll have to disable saving mid-death. Thanks for catching that!

Thanks for checking out the game! Yeah you're right about the frog room, that was supposed to be an alternate path, but the jump is accidentally 1 tile too high. And yeah I would maybe make the game a little easier in certain rooms / re-tune the knockback. Thanks again!

I love the world you created and all the different characters were a joy to discover and talk to. The Cactus Guard were my favorite lol. And I appreciate how well you incorporated the Ecosystem theme. 

Being able to buy the abilities and access each area in any order is a fun idea, but also kind of a double-edged sword. The nonlinearity and player-freedom is great, but it's hard to level design around not knowing what abilities the player has at any particular moment. So there was maybe more backtracking than there needed to be through mostly empty levels. ("Empty" meaning I've already talked to the NPCs and collected most of the pickups) 

But it was still very fun to get new abilities and explore more and meet new characters. I had a great time!

Thanks so much for trying out the game, and for all the detailed feedback, that's extremely helpful! Those are all good notes and I definitely want to address the issues you mentioned. If it's not too much trouble, could you describe how you got stuck in a wall? That's the only issue I couldn't reproduce, I tried several things but couldn't get myself stuck. The player character has two colliders that she switches between whether she's crouching/ sliding or not, but only switches to the "standing" collider if there's room to do so. So maybe something with that is causing the character to get stuck

Awesome character design and art, very pretty! And nice atmosphere to the game. The dodge felt good, but the platforming itself didn't feel great to me, you jump and fall very fast. I think tuning that to be slower / slightly floatier, and maybe a little bit of inertia on the left/right movement would help, and match the elegant character design. But the biggest issue is the room transitions look identical to the other walls, very very confusing in places. 

Would love to see more of this character!

Great idea, super charming game. I love the journal, being able to customize it, and having the controls in there is a fun idea too. And just the simple act of seeing a new bug was very enjoyable, I really liked finding the green camouflaged one. I would maybe rethink some of the platforming / level design-- missing a jump and falling all the way to the bottom of the tree was a little tedious. Nice work overall, great vibes!

Hey nice work for not having much time! Cool vibe and fun to control. I really like the rails and dashing was fun. I would maybe either zoom the camera out more or slow down all of the movement a bit though, sometimes it was hard to react quickly enough to things coming from off screen like the end of a rail. And the maybe was really nice and detailed, but because it shows you *everything*, I was kinda just following the map and not really exploring on my own, which takes away some of the fun of a metroidvania. Oh, and those rainbow beam enemies were rad lol, some very cool effects

Very cool game!! Hope yall continue working on it. 

You've gotten plenty of other comments in regards to the awkward combat, zoom-level, and empty space, so I'm not going to repeat those criticisms.

I really liked the atmosphere of the game, the music and the background art did a lot of great work contributing to that, especially in the second area. And I enjoyed the all the bespoke world interactions--different types of switches, doors, moving platforms, pushing boxes, etc. I think there's a ton of potential and I'll definitely check out future updates!

thanks so much!! I really appreciate that 🙏🙏 yeah I'll definitely put in key rebinding in the future! 

That wasn't intended, sorry about that! The player is meant to come back up through there. After you get the slide, you can go west through the forest to progress. Will fix that after the jam is over

Hey really fun! I got very excited when I realized yo we're golfing lol. Great concept and fun to control

Really nice job for 4 days!! The jumps feel nice and the long jump is especially fun, has a nice arc to it. The chase sequences were an exciting surprise, but gave up at the 2nd one lol. Tuning a chase sequence is definitely a tough balance

Thanks for trying out the game and for the detailed feedback! It helps a lot. Yeah the visual weirdness with tiles / blank spaces was definitely just running out of time towards the end. (same with control rebinding) And I appreciate the notes about the combat, will definitely clean that up after the jam

Thanks for playing and for the kind words! Really appreciate it!! (and your music rules)

Hi mellorine! 

I'm a pixel artist and hobbyist game dev. I adore the feeling evoked by 90s sound samples, anything around SNES and PS1.  And your music captures that feeling perfectly!  I especially love Inside the Mind Palace, it's so good. 

Please take a look at my work on my twitter: https://x.com/ryankeeton and my bluesky:  https://bsky.app/profile/ryankeeton.bsky.social

If you're interest in working together on MVM, I'd like to talk more! You can message me on bluesky if that works for you!

Thanks very much! And I appreciate the feedback on controls, I agree. Should have made the movement quicker / more responsive, good to know for future platformer games

Thanks, I appreciate it!

Thanks very much! Glad you enjoyed it

Shooting feels very good with the sound effects + screen shake + knockback! And really clever idea of having that minigame in the middle of the main game. And maybe I didn't play long enough but I tried each weapon for a few minutes each and only ever got 1 enemy on screen at a time? Cool idea though for sure

Nice use of both themes, good work! The floating rats flying back and forth across the screen made me laugh lol

Tusk has a hard life :( lol. Nice style, I like the industrial atmosphere! Made it over to the next screen with like a hundred little guys but then ran out of power. Would like to have seen a little more from the game, maybe if you didn't run out of power as quickly you could explore a little more. But I know you said in your other reply you didn't have a lot of time to work on it. Very cool though!

Lol well I'm glad you were still able to get through the game without dashing! I should have put in-game instructions but ran out of time. Thanks for your feedback and kind words!

Ohh lemon shark my bad, no i heard the line and just did not make the connection lol! Yeah the character design is great! For the boss, yeah I think I respawned, the boss dialogue line played, but the boss did not spawn.  And what I mean with the enemies is a couple times an enemy would get "stuck" and stop moving where I could still see it, but not shoot or interact with it, and therefore not be able to defeat all enemies and remove the boulder to get the next area. But then hitting the Delete command would clear them, trigger the next dialogue line and allow me to proceed

Nice job! Shooting is fun and the sound effects add a lot of good feedback. I enjoyed the silly story intro. Wish the enemy bullets were a little slower / more avoidable, because just popping in and out of cover felt a little tedious. But I did appreciate the boss fight just having infinite ammo so I could focus on just aiming and moving. And the tomato king blowing up made me laugh lol

Fun to play! I always like a customer service style management game. I appreciate the sound effects, especially the ice sound, made it feel nice to click around the game. And I enjoyed catching lemons on the title screen lol

Let them make lemonade! Great concept, fun arcade game. The cards at the top added some extra strategy for sure. Wish there were some sound effects / more visual effects to make it a little more satisfying to play. Love the tiny little lemons you shoot lol. Great work incorporating the themes especially :)

*garbled noise of bravado* Very rad game! Made it to the boss fight, got 2 sails destroyed and then I think I died? Really enjoyed the world yall created, the characters and the atmosphere. I appreciated the voice acting and the 2D character art is beautiful. I was reminded of playing Echo the Dolphin as a kid. I've never tried anything in 3D in GMS2 so this was very cool to see. I had a few bugs with enemies not dying properly, but I used the Kill all Enemies command to proceed. And I would recommend raising the HUD higher on the screen, the dialogue box hides the health bar, which was really a problem during the boss fight lol. And I don't think I saw the lemon theme incorporated? But overall great work!!

Thanks for playing and for the detailed feedback~~! I agree with the slow speed, could have made it snappier

Sounds good, thanks!

I read the other thread expressing concern about the first theme being announced early, which makes sense. Should we treat the first theme as optional / inspirational and the secondary theme as required? Or will be both themes be required? Just want to make sure I understand before the jam starts, thanks

Hi, to make sure I'm reading the rules correctly: Late submissions will still be accepted up until the deadline time on March 18th ? Thanks for the help

lol makes sense! Thanks for explaining further

Sounds good, thanks for the reply! :)

Hello! Could someone explain the "Metroidn't" theme to me? Is it like a subversion of Metroid or Metroidvanias? I'm sure the themes are open to interpretation, but didn't really get that one