itch.io

Short and sweet, but made a lasting impression on me. Maybe it's just playing it late in the dark of my room, but the role reversal was uncanny in a really compelling way — the mirrored text and the crt visuals hit hard. 

If that unsettling feeling was what you were going for, I maybe would've made the movement speed of the escape faster, but also ramp up the intensity, to really make it feel like you were being hunted.

Well done, you clearly have a strong vision 💙

Fun concept, though I do wish there was a bit more player interaction — either more movement to make kiting enemies more interesting or trying to make readjusting your setup mid-combat more of a strategy.

Well done, always love it when I can play a game where a weaponized animal can go on a war path to pursue love 💙

This has the makings of something great, even if it so clearly draws inspiration from Hades.

If this was fleshed out to have more content surrounding the themes, character design, and art mechanic, it's something I could see myself binging in one night to beat it.

The presentation is almost too good considering how loosely I think this fits the jam's theme. I won't dock my rating for it since I can't be certain (and it's not against the rules per se), but I can't shake my hunch that at least some of this was done before the jam began. If not, well then crazy good job. If so, still crazy good job lol.

The art rater gave my Sophia with even bigger badonkadoos a 1.9 / 5, so in other words, art is dead 💙

I had fun with this! A few levels in I thought it was going to get boring and it was just sorta toggle zoom, see if you could screen wrap, and repeat — but then the complexity ramped up nicely! 

The music and the visuals reminded me of Celeste's Mirror Temple, dunno if that was intentional, but it definitely set a mood haha!

My main suggestions would be to add a faint outline to indicate the zoom level so you can keep track of things a bit easier, reduce some of the visual noise of the background, and to make the character move faster. As adorable as the little fella is, I got places to be, switches to hit, and mazes to navigate!

I think that if you were to continue expanding on this idea, I'd like to see a way to adjust where the zoom happens. That would really add a lot of depth, but probably also make the level design very difficult lol.

Really well done, for how many levels there were for a game jam, I found myself going "aww..." when I reached the end because I wanted more 💙

I had a lot of fun with this! It was relaxing yet still stretched my brain muscles.

Would've loved a few more tools to work with, such as copy/paste, multi-select, or maybe even some origami or cutting mechanics.

Also seems like some mechanics went unused, as all of the models were based around 5 unit lengths and the customers seemed to like my submissions even when I botched it lol. I'll just have to eagerly await the full version so I can see what you had planned :)

You took the theme quite literally but still managed to make something unique of it, well done 💙

This one is incredible, feels criminal to play it for free.

The abilities are genius, and the unexpected ways they synergize are really clever.

My only real complaints are the controls on some of the abilities and the checkpoint system. I think just having a little extra feedback like a warning glow or a tiny bit of screen shake when you can't pan any farther would go a long way to help me understand when I've gotten to the edge of the screen (it also felt weird to have to reclick the screen on especially long pans). The checkpoints mostly just feel unnecessary, this game is more like Celeste than Dark Souls, so I don't think a run back adds to the challenge or experience in a beneficial way.

Hope to see you in Mark's "Best of Game Jam 2024" video 💙

Excellent concept! I think it really captures the theme well while still being unique.

The controls leave something to be desired. I would sometimes fail because I tried to jump with W instead of Space; there's no reason they can't both be jump. I also think TAB or Q or something should also open the map because M was out of place by itself. The mouse shouldn't pan the camera — WASD should. I had a few frustrating moments where I photographed the wrong object or I would overshoot the object because panning the camera was too awkward.

It's possible the game would be better overall if there just wasn't a map or a camera mode at all, and it instead was always focused on the player. Take photos by holding right click to activate a camera reticle that freely moves within the screen focused on the player, release right click to capture. Place objects by left clicking on the screen, and have a hotbar to select the object to place. The same controls could be used for both the camera zoom and the hotbar.

One thing I really liked that I didn't expect to was just the hard cut from one level to the next lol. The satisfying door shutting sound, the character teleporting to a brand new area, and the suddenness of it gave me an exciting feeling... I don't know how to explain it.

I enjoyed the puzzles overall, I can't believe you were able to make light-based puzzles in such a short timespan. Well done! 💙

Much like has already been said, great job on the visuals and polish!

I get pretty far pretty easily — to the point that I'm questioning the difficulty curve. The page description mentions it, but it just wasn't really noticeable after the first area change, which mostly just acts as a head start. That could mean the dragon's faster, the platforms are farther and fewer between, and maybe debris falls more often or with less warning (though I'd be careful with those since they're more frustrating). But I'd just make it become challenging faster.

I think my favorite part other than the presentation was naturally learning how far Gobba could fall before being stunned. I think you could lean into this more and try to design challenging sections where you have to intentionally fall a bit.

A nice touch would be to make the dragon's chomping volume change based on how close it is, or some other indication of how safe you are.

Great job and I love your take on the theme, an extending ladder, very clever! 💙

A bit too buggy to play for long (potentially user error, hard to know for sure with lack of tutorial), but the idea is definitely there!

So the obvious suggestions are:

• a tutorial, or at least instructions on the controls (for others playing, it's click and drag with mouse & spacebar to drop a marble; you have placeable pegs in the bottom left corner, and the small black circles change the size of marbles that hit them)
• fix music (seems to mute after going to another level or something)
• fix progression (I couldn't move on to the next level even after capturing the correct-sized marble, or I couldn't spawn a new marble when there were multiple baskets)
• better feedback to the player on if they were successful or not, such as labeling the marble size and a little victory screen on a completed level

More subtle suggestions:

• add an onion skin / afterimage of your last marble's path and a ricochet indicator, so the player doesn't have to place new pegs quite as blindly. At the moment the game feels more like trial-and-error than calculated decisions.
•  being able to launch the marbles with a bit more control would add a whole other layer of fun/depth, much like Peggle.
• right now you can move pegs in real-time while a marble is active. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does kinda break the difficulty. I'd either remove it or lean *really* hard into it. I had fun trying to juggle the marbles to get some trick shots.

If any of my ramblings don't make sense (i.e., they actually do already exist or something), my bad, but also consider that an extra indicator of the need to clarify things for the player.

Nice job coming up with a really unique take on the theme 💙

Wow I really love this!

• You really nailed the cute arcade puzzle visuals, especially with the score counter and her little moments of panic!
• Music is fun and fitting :)
• The Take a Chance mechanic is a great way to add variety and suspense, but also it really helps with the early game to build back up to decent weight! Love that hidden replayability factor.
• I also really love that the pieces retain their physics, it adds a fun operation-like mechanic where you can nudge or even fully extract a polyomino if you're careful enough!

I do have two minor criticisms:

• I appreciate there being a way to rotate polyominoes precisely, but it being on the mouse wheel makes it rough to input, physically.
• I think I would also prefer to be able to click to grab and click to release, instead of having to hold it. This would also eliminate the above point.

Great game, I could easily see this becoming something I play in waiting rooms and the like if it was on mobile, or spending a few hours on the PC to go through a proper campaign / set of levels.