During shader compilation, the game tends to stutter a ton, resulting in a lot stuff breaking. That'll be an issue on integrated graphics like yours, it seems, as they'll take longer on compilation.
I can't really fix that and honestly the game under the hood needs a bit more tweaking, my personal recommendation is to pause the game when you enter a new area and wait a few seconds for everything to load properly.
The graphical problems you reported seem to also be a result of poor compatibility with Intel GPU's.
I'll be sure to make adjustments if I ever rerelease this game in some form, probably have shaders compile at startup rather than waiting until you're in a level.
As with all my jam games I've considered turning them into full games or updating them in the past, but I just don't think I have the skillset to pull off what I'd want to do with this game right now.
I had the idea in my head for a while, but what made me go with it was the idea of "digging", a term for Puyo where your board is covered in garbage and you have to get to your chain to pop it. I also had a mode planned where you would have to race the other player to dig to the bottom of your board, but I never got to implement it
I understood that the connection was loose so I designed the story around the jam theme.
I appreciate a good ugly game, and this delivers pretty well. Reminds me of old Klik and Play stuff.
Though I didn't really find much of a challenge, gameplay was kinda... there and the game ends on a grey screen with some sound effects, I still found it charming and enjoyable.
I think the score and time not properly being implemented is to this games detriment when the focus is arcade-like but the visuals and concept are pretty inventive and the music is great too!
I didn't really see myself getting any powerups from the rocks or anything so I don't know if theres much of a point to mining them, there was a scenario where I got stuck on a singular trap block surrounded by spikes and I don't believe there was much of a way out.
Still, really cute, really fun, would love to see it worked on further and polished.
Building was part of the sandbox from day one, but the concept was quickly sidelined to focus on getting the actual game in a functional state. I wanted to have more crafting mechanics and stuff where you'd be incentivized to hold up a fort somewhere, also segments of the game where you'd be given an objective to defend points on the map, just didn't get the time to flesh it out.
I don't think I'll do too much to change how the game plays other than fixing bugs and cleaning things up, but if I can give building a bigger purpose than setting up chokepoints/defense and traversal, I will.
Your critiques are still valid regardless of your skill level.
Personally I think some of the level design can be tweaked to let the player learn the central mechanics without trial and error, but I just didn't get around to implementing it.
Definitely an interesting arcadey experience but I'm a little confused as to why its labeled itself as a "lowrezjam" game.
Music is a little annoying after a while, and you also labelled the controls as "Right Mouse Button" when the main method of input is the left mouse button.
Art is clear and simple, background was a little distracting, but overall everything felt really nice to control. The sheer variety in challenges showed a real understanding towards the art of moving platforms. If there is one thing I have to criticize is the sound design, not really much going on there.
Also found a fair share of bugs related to collision, would be nice to have a quick restart option, idk if thats in there or if I'm missing something, but I did clip through the floor while respawning at one point.
I like the style and palette, overall idea of a Game Boy stlye platformer is nice, but I do feel the overall game feels a little undercooked.
I think it might be worth looking into platformer feel, and seeing how you can improve the game's physics to make it more refined, and give it a bit more content.
I'd like to see more variety and polish, but for what it is this game does a good job with using moving platforms to its advantage, and its always cool to see a one-button game concept.
I do think some of the platforms are a bit jarring (specifically the fact that they sorta teleport back to the top) and the fact all the levels are variations on the same template does hurt the game quite a bit.
I think if the action was more refined I wouldn't mind the balance of genres, but I'm not sure how limited you are with your engine.
Some small tweaks to balancing to make it so that there aren't a lot of early deaths to combat encounters (as well as a few extra navigational pointers) could go a long way in making the game something more enjoyable. Still, a great time overall, I love me a good silly game every once in a while.
However I feel like the game is held back by the engine, its very hard to tell where to go and what is destructible, not really sure on my goal and such.
I don't think the RPG mechanics mesh too well with the rest of the game, but that might just be my personal taste. I just think it doesn't flow too well.
Its very stylish though. I do think the concept has a lot of potential.
Maybe for the planned easy mode, but the stages are a bit too short for checkpoints at the moment, definitely something on the post-jam checklist though!
One more small critique I have is that the enemy sprites aren't the best, they're distinct, but its a bit difficult to tell what they're meant to represent in some cases. Still a really good aesthetic nontheless.
This game heavily reminds me of Downwell in terms of mechanics and visuals, which is a good thing. The game was decently chaotic, though I feel like everything was a little too slow for my tastes.
The idea of a bullethell where your bullets can hurt you is really smart, and leads to some really interesting gameplay. The enemy spawining system is also super cool.
I'd love to see this expanded into a full release in future, amazing work.
Indeed, I feel the biggest flaw in my game design was not giving the players enough time to learn the game mechanics, which can make the rest of the game feel quite challenging as a result.
Glad you found enjoyment and took your time to learn the game.
The levels are entirely possible, given the right approach, but they're certainly very difficult.
After the jam we'll make the game a little more accessible by making an easy mode, as its clear the extreme difficulty isn't for everyone. Also you are not able to hit enemies just for the fact that it'd make the game much too easy given the limitations of what we had to work with in the time given, this also could be something we change in a post-jam version, with a harder difficulty that doesn't have that feature.
However, I feel the gameplay was a little too chilled to be chaotic, the wall of text telling me what needed to be fitted together wasn't all that useful since I just ended up mashing stuff together to see what worked and I ended up completing the game without feeling to stressed of getting any sort of intense feeling.
Some ways I could see this being fixed is lowering the countdown timer and having it display onscreen at all times.
Also the Final Fantasy music at the end was pretty funny, tha anticlimactic ending was pretty entertainting.
Overall a decent game, job well done, hope you guys polish things up after the jam!
Ayyy first Megaman comparison, and I'm all for it.
Gameplay was intended to be chaotic, we planned to have more telekenetic elements, but they were scrapped due to time constraints. Maybe we'll realize those ideas sometime later!
I will add that the level design here is pretty neat as well, I love the smaller touches that help it bring it together, like the arching background tiles that show where and how to jump subtly.
I love the basic aesthetic, the game overall feels very smooth, but I while playing I felt like the hitbox of the player was a tad too large, leading me to die in places where I felt I shouldn't have.
Also this is a nitpick from personal preference, but I feel like I should have more control over the jump height in a platformer, tapping jump ends up giving me around the same height as holding in this game and I'm not too fond of that, but again, thats just preference.
Overally a pretty neat game, not bad, but very basic.
I believe you misread the tutorial prompt, but I don't blame you, it wasn't all that clear. The key to speed up is D, the game uses the standard WASD + Mouse scheme that a lot of games use.
I'll be sure to allow for different key-binds, controller input and a better default layout post-jam, as well as making the controls generally more clear to the player in-game, because its easy to misread the prompts
