itch.io

The wait was worth it, that was phenomenal! Highlight of the jam for sure.

I really thought I wouldn't be able to make it past the third levels/ atmospheric layer(?), but once I realised that the flip move converted any momentum, horizontal or downwards, into upwards velocity it made me appreciate the movement way more. It's got some subtle complexity.

Being stuck on the ground layer in the web version really does a disservice to how great the later sections look. Huge shout out to how the sfx for jumping through droplets changes during these stormy sections, such a lovely way to convey the mood switch. And that finale with the music rising as you descend back down was beautiful. Such a simple recontextualization of the game thus far and it works.

The sudden appearance of an arrow ui felt a bit jarring, even if I understand its necessity. Freaking arrow jumpscare, haha.

Cool! I'll do that tomorrow when I'm not tired.

I tried to play it on browser, but it didn't run very well on my device. So, I did as the description recomended and installed the executable version. Unfortunately, it seems you only uploaded the exe file, which cannot do anything without the accompanying pack that actually holds the game's contents.

It's a shame, because the concept is cute and I wish I could experience it properly.

No, no, they're not angry. Just disapointed.

After only having done 3-day long jams, this was like taking the weighted clothes off for me.

None of the minigames grow more difficult over time, Earworm just has a 10% chance of sending 5 notes instead of the usual 3 or 4. I considered decreasing the timer over time, but that felt too artificial also I ran out of devtime. I'd have to make different variants for each game but by that point I might as well just make more games.

The Call of the Void seems to be the game people struggle with the most so I am definitely tweaking that in the future. Until then, the call shall remain irresistable.

Thank you. The rhombus in the Earworm minigame is meant to be spacebar/enter. I know it would've probably been better to stick with just the arrow keys, but it bothered me having only 4 out of 5 notes of a pentatonic scale. I take full responsibility for the consequences of such decision.

Fun game, though with the sprites being shrunk by this much the aliasing is not at all easy on the eyes. Solid blocks of color would've probably been a better choice in this case.

I do partially echo the sentiment about the timer being too short, but only for the middle lock. I still managed to open them all, though. Hope I didn't doom all of humanity with that.

The wording in the page description is rather unclear, so it took me a while to understand what I was supposed to do.

It's fun once you get it, though the UX of pressing escape, moving my mouse to click in the corner and then moving it back to the center to click in the spinbox is way too many steps for my linking. A single key-press to bring up the spinbox and set focus on it would suffice. It would also be nice if the game remembered what your last brick count was every time you wanna start a new round, rather than always defaulting to 2.

Additionally, either I don't understand binary search that well or there seems to be some sort of bug whenever the number of rows is higher than one. Sometimes, only bricks in the same row get destroyed even when higher or lower rows should've broken as well, and from that point on every subsequent destruction acts inconsistently. This is unfortunate given how the game really shines when the brick count is high.

Finally, I'm not so sure this really fits the theme of Forgotten Knowledge. You're not really forgetting or re-discovering what the right brick is, you're learning it for the first time through the method of binary search.

Yeah, maybe I should add another note to the page description about that. Something like "controls vary between minigames, but both Mouse and Keyboard are required".

Thank you. As for Call of the Void, you have to use left+right / A+D to steer the person and stop them from falling.

Oh, so THAT'S how triangulation works. Much like melo_toni I felt lost at first though that may because I skimmed the explanation expecting to figure it out on my own (I didn't) but once I understood that the compass was measuring from the pov of the landmark the whole thing clicked.

Interesting mechanic and a cool twist on the wildcard, though without the little blurb in the description stating that all maps had been lost this feels less like rediscovering forgotten knowledge and more acquiring new knowledge. But that might just be a matter of semantics, really.

Excluding exactly one room, I found the dash move seems rather useless when you can cover the same distance much more safely with double jumping and the rather long coyote times the game offers. There were also some unfair obstacles hidden behind screen transitions.

There seems to be a massive bug that causes The Book Worm(tm) to shoot off out of bounds as soon as the game starts, rendering it unplayable. As per the jam rules you are allowed to submit game-breaking bug fixes (which this DEFINITELY counts as), so I highly advise you to take this opportunity. For now I will reserve my judgement.

8) No new content may be uploaded after the submission deadline (no music, no polish, no tweaks). The only approved changes are GAME BREAKING bug fixes. Please include other bugs (e.g. doesn’t play in full-screen, etc.) as information on your entry’s page.

I'd say this counts as game-breaking (a trial-and-error game that won't let you trial-and-error sounds pretty broken to me), so that's a relief. I'll submit a fix in a bit.

Oh no, I know exactly what's wrong. The game is supposed to boot you back to the main menu, but I did some last minute menu work and wound up changing the filepath of the main menu scene. Problem is, the losing code is like the only place where I used a direct path string, so it tries to load an invalid path. This sucks.

I downloaded this game some time ago but never got around to playing it until now. As such, I don't know if these critiques are in any way relevant to you currently, but I thought I'd share my thoughts regardless.

Firstly, I would like to say that while I enjoyed how the hover and the dash are linked to the same action/button, I wasn't a fan of how the only way to cancel a hover without dashing was to let it time out. Not only did it reduce the hover's utility as a tool to maximize air time (given that the player loses horizontal control while hovering), but it also reduced the moves' utility as gap cleansers due to how Ase would "sometimes" not dash because I let go just a second too late.

My suggestion would be to have the hover always transition to a dash when the player lets go of the button or times out, unless they press an additional input to cancel it, such as jumping or even crouching. That way you could keep the hover's fixed momentum trade-off without running into the aforementioned issues.

Secondly, it never felt right to me how magnet-jumping didn't reset your ability to dash/hover again. My intuition always told me it would, and I always had to consciously remind myself it wouldn't. Then again, one could argue that's just a me problem though, since I had no issue with magnet-punching not resetting my ability to jump again. Something to consider.

Thirdly, though perfectly understandable given the constraints of a game jam, I feel it was awkward how there were paths that required magnet-punching/jumping on enemies to proceed, only for them to not re-spawn if you messed up the jump. I admit, this last one is my pettiest point.

Thank you.

Thank you for the kind words.

In regards to the "floatyness", that might be because, in order to avoid cheesing with mid-air flips, I made it so your luck depended on which direction your velocity was headed, rather than your input. Perhaps I should make aerial deceleration faster to compensate? Maybe even add an air dash move? I'll have to work on that if I ever make a post-jam build.

In the game's current state, the trick to switching luck while airborne is to stay at a standstill, then press both jump and the opposite direction at the same time. Some good 'ol coyote time would probably aid in that as well. You can never have enough coyote time.

Rest assured, my pinkie shall have its revenge in the post-jam version.

"Back" on controller and "T" on keyboard. Says so in the page description. There's even a fun glitch that lets you explode twice if you press reset when the timer runs out.

My heart is unclouded and my actions are just.

Clearly, the lack of sound is a metaphor for how coins don't have ears.

At least not when you're looking.

Solid foundation, but I wish there were more choices to make as a player. Perhaps instead of stacking, the attack/defence cards had to be manually activated and lasted x amount of turns? Or tiles that offered one of multiple options with equally helpful outcomes? More things like Food and Fate cards, where the player has to consciously decide when to use or not use them.

Randomness in game design is an interesting balancing act.

Though the world may disagree, and even laugh behind my back, I know my heart says the truth: a coin IS a type of dice!

Ok, but seriously. I'm glad you enjoyed the game. I initially struggled to find level elements that suited the mechanic, but I think it all changed when I introduced the mirror / luck inversion. After that everything started falling into place, more or less.

Update:

I went back in slow mode and got all the collectibles.

I am at awe that this game was made in 48 hours. The amount of tech you can pull off is insane! Throwing a dice, kicking it mid-air, dashing into it then finishing of with a dice jump is such a fun chain to pull off. I even managed to get 2 of the hidden collectibles!

If I had to critique something (aside from the frame issues which you seem to be aware off in this comment section), it's that the default keyboard layout is... really bad. Mapping dash to shift is making my pinkie hurt. Had to switch to my PS4 controller for that last level.

Definitely a real head-scratcher. Undo functionality would be appreciated, but a jam game's a jam game.

I'm sure this would be a lot more fun if I weren't playing it by myself.

Oh? This is the first I've heard of this happening.

I realise now that I could've gone ahead and added prompts during the 3 hours I had spare and it probably wouldn't have taken that long. The change of color/face during flipping, for instance, was added after initial submission. No reason prompts couldn't be as well.

Hindsight is a cruel thing indeed.

I figured that most people would use literal dice for their games, so I decided to explore a different instrument of luck.
Plus, it's easier to work with 2 sides than 6 XD.

I enjoyed it.

Though another critique I had (which I was actually editing into my last comment just as you replied) is that I feel like the long-distance cyclops monsters should fire in spurts rather than streams. If you get spotted by one, you either take it out first or it beats you to a pulp before you can react. Having some breathing room would help.

I'm too keen on how every time you pick up a dice it overrides whichever one you're currently holding. It'd add a more strategic angle, in my perspective, if they were placed at the end of your deck. As is, you may as well ignore your current loadout for all it's worth.

Ah, thanks!

Lovin' the juice in this game. My only qualm is that the redo button only keeps track of my latest move. By the time I realise I even need to undo, I'm already 5 steps deep into my f*ckup.

I tried multiple times to reach the end, but the game kept either crashing or breaking in ways that made it unbeatable. Overall, neat concept, even if the effects of each dice position are a bit obtuse.

Yeah. I thought about adding a button prompt whenever you were near interactable objects, but never got around to implementing it. Figured the page description would suffice, guess I was wrong.

Oh hey, a fellow Snail's House fan!