Thanks for the message. Does it lag on specific moments or is it laggy all the time? Is your machine high end, does other webgl games laggy as well for you?
Thanks a lot!
Liked the idea, but there are some things that frustrated me, so I'll try to give some constructive feedback if you wanna continue this project or expand the game :)
The colors yellow and blue didn't ring any bell to me, didn't tap on any common knowledge that would help me learn which of them make large or tiny, so I kept using the wrong projectile, shrinking when I wanted to scale and vice-versa. I think green to grow and red to shrink would make it easier to learn and the game more readable. Green is commonly 'good' in games, and 'red' bad, so good to grow and bad to shrink I think would make more intuitive. But ideally, the guns could have different shaped guns and projectiles, like a "+" and a "-" for projectiles and like a big crossbow for "+" e a tiny laser gun for "-", this would help a lot too.
On the first level with a box, there were no clues that the box would also be affected by the projectiles, so I kept trying to stack the two boxes on the starting size, and it was really janky. Got so frustrated I almost quit haha but I ended up completing that level stacking the box, to later learn that the box could also scale and shrink. The physics with the boxes are a bit janky. The box slides and it always moved more than I intended to move them, and many times I had to reset the level for tiny mistakes that I didn't feel was my fault.
I did not finish the game as I ended up a bit frustrated, sorry. Maybe I'll try again later
Despite these details, I think the game is cool, there are some cool puzzles with these mechanics. Solid game, great entry and congratulations!
Yeah! You are the first to use the keyword 'metroidvania' here in the comments, I think! I pursued this experience intentionally, really glad it worked for you! Thanks for playing and for the kind words.
I'm probably not going back to expand it in the future... But there are indeed opportunities for new mechanics, so who knows :)
Thanks for clarifying, maybe I should make the enemy interaction clearer. For now, I can give tell you how to advance: when you put an enemy inside a bubble, you can grab them with your tongue, and that's how you defeat them. I can make create like a hit if players get stuck, thanks for bringing it up!
And if you didn't grab any enemy, you only got one gum item, so your tongue was still short. If you are willing to play again, I'd love to know how your experience goes with that new information about how to defeat the enemy. But don't worry! I know you might have other stuff to do and other games to play!
I also uploaded a full gameplay video on youtube to maybe help players who got stuck (as we cannot update the game itself haha)
Again, thanks for the time.
Simple yet elegant and interesting!
The only reason I didn't finish is because I pressed 'q' and for some reason the game just froze forever. I had cleared like 10 levels or so? Idk. But if it was not for that, I would have kept playing.
Some points that made my experience a bit frustrating:
This sells the scale experience in some way, but it is very frustrating to retry a level, forget some part of the layout and have to collect some idols just to be able to see a part of the map, and then decide: ah, I have to split to go there, let's go back and redo.
Maybe add some way to inspect the level when you are still would solve the problem
This is interesting at the start on easier levels with less steps, creates things to process in the mid of the level, but on harder, where you play for 1 minute to collect the horn just to realize that you should have done things differently and was not your fault, was a small point of frustration to me
I sense there is a sequence of priority directions, but I cannot tell that, and sometimes you just expect to split a certain way and It doesn't, and then you see only then that you have to plan your path again
But look, I took the time to write all these feedback because I really liked the game! I wanna see it get better in the future. It is a know genre, but the twist is welcome and charming, and the project well is executed, with simple but clean and readable graphics, a great atmosphere with the soundtrack, sound effects and style of animation. Great entry! Congratulations!
Thanks for playing and for taking the time to give me some sincere feedback! :)
What do you mean with "the same problem"?
The bar looking half full is not a bug, but it was a bad choice of the visual design of the hud, you're not the first to point that out, thanks a lot! Might be the first and easiest issue to fix.
About the feel, does having a bigger tongue made the interaction more interesting? Like after collecting 3 or 4 gums on the level. Did you manage to finish the game? And does shooting a bubble gum ball feels bad for you too? If you have the time to elaborate a little I would be extremely grateful!
Again, thanks a lot for reaching out and taking the time! :) I appreciate it, and even if I don't return to update the game, I can learn a lot from these feedbacks.
I liked it a lot! See a lot of potential
Some problems I felt: the controls on the right seems buggy, sometimes it was hard to change between mode 1 and 2, you need to drag in a rather strict manner to get it right. It would be a lot less frustrating if a single click worked, like in the vertical lever. Also, took me a while to realize that the vertical lever was also an element i had to interact with, maybe it was because, before you interact, it is not super clear that is a lever, and if you compare with the mode switch visually, the mode switch is clearly ui in the way we are used to, and the lever is like a super detailed sprite, it is quite a huge contrast.
The second problem I felt is the difficulty and complexity. You have only one upgrade at the start, and after you buy it you unlock like 10 all at once, with the game running. It was hard for me to try to manage the movement and also try to plan my build reading everything super fast. After reading them, I also felt that some of the options were not that helpful, so it looks like it is just creating noise and making the choice less fun. When I focused on the upgrade that allowed me to gather resources on mode 1 the game became a LOT easier, with other upgrades first I lost every time.
Also, the upgrade cards could use some icons for the costs. It ends up making artificially harder to parse the information, because on the right, there are no names for the resources, so you have to understand the icon, read the upgrade costs to see a matching name, and than understand the cost (I thought the water was some kind of gasoline? Haha). If the cost line were like [wood icon]x 10, I would have understand the information much faster. One test I would also make is to bring the controls and resources to the left and move the upgrades section to the right (swap the panels). I think it would feel more natural for left-to-right readers. My stuff is on the left, future stuff is on the right.
But I took the time to write all this because I really liked the concept. It has a very simple control scheme, but can create some tough decisions and dramatic moments. It is a bit unbalanced rn, but with the right balance and some improvements to usability I can see it becoming really fun and immersive. Congratulations for the entry! Very impressive project
Cute game and visually interesting. Love the bill cipher reference at the end haha
I didn't find the main mechanic very 'good' to use though. It is a bit buggy and finicky, and the game seems to require specific weird interactions to advance. Like in the one you just gotta keep bumping him up with different speeds until you accidentally solve. I didn't find these parts very fun because it is unpredictable and you just gotta keep testing and spamming actions until you get it right for some reason. It could be fun in a more sandboxy and experimental environment, but in a puzzle game it ends up being a bit frustrating for me.
Also, I unfocused the game and the soundtrack seems to have disappeared, don't know what happened, but seems like a bug.
But very solid entry anyway. Again, visually very charming and stylish. Congrats
Cool game (pun intended). Very polished and complete for a jam game, pretty impressive.
They main complaint I have is it is a bit hard to see the spikes (fire and ice on ground), they are very hard to spot before they activate (and maybe they could be more visible while active too). So sometimes I would plan a path and start, just to be caught off guard by a sneaky spike growing under my feet when i change state. The frustration is even bigger in ice spikes glued to ice blocks, where you don't have much contrast to differentiate a thing that kills from a thing that you need to be near.
One improvement that would make the mechanic easier to understand is to have a different visual for each temperature 'level'. When you light up on fire, you can melt 2 ice blocks, but you don't see any change in the state of your character midway. Let's say when you are in full fire, you have the current visual, but after melting one, you get a bit smaller and more red than yellow, and then, if you melt another one, you become a regular stone again. This would communicate better the 'resource' of temperature, and usually these kind of feedback are very welcome in puzzle games, makes the mechanic easier to understand and easier to read at a glance (now you gotta memorize: "oh, I already melted one block, so in the next, I'll be back to stone")
Another tiny worry i have is that I don't feel the theme of the jam in the game. Sure, thermometric 'scales', but you don't even see a scale in the game or anything like that
Other than these small gripes, the game is great! Gorgeous, feels nice to play and have some cool puzzles to solve, with well presented mechanics and twists.
Nice litle game!
It is not super original to change boxes sizes, but limiting it to three sizes and having different properties like the small one being pushable was interesting.
There are some puzzles that ended up being solved in very weird ways because the physics allowed some strange interactions. Also the camera is really slow, it stays behind a lot, specially when you fall down.
Other than that great game, good length for a puzzle game too, nice work!
Before I forget: the non full screen game is unplayable because the left ui panel stays in front of the game
The game is hard to understand. When you lose you have no clue what happened and what you could have done differently. This is a very important pillar in game design. If we do not understand what are the consequences of our decisions we don't learn and end up just confused.
The idea of assigning the characters to objects and being able to organize them in a board is nice, you can end up creating layouts for your convenience. I did not reach a point where I would 'scale things up' though. Maybe you get new workers?
I just felt like micro managing two units to be able to survive with some unclear rules to follow. It did not create that kid of fun of managing many units, creating strategies and allocating resources in interesting ways
Very simple but cute game!
I had a hard time using the rotate button, and saw now real interesting decision in picking the constructions. Maybe I didn't understand, but they are free, right? You can just use a bunch of them
One thing that was frustrating me a bit is a lack of visual information for the area of effect of things (their hitboxes). You have to make some guesses when positioning the pieces, and then keep adjusting to remove some holes or unwanted spaces that you can only discover when a food goes there. Maybe making the visual fit better to the hitboxes and have some extra vfxs telegraphing sizes would make the experience smoother
It is very cute and satisfying to create a route and then it is great that you need to change the route for the new slime size when it grows. Great entry overall! Congrats!
Interesting and relaxing puzzle game.
Some feedbacks: It is hard to predict how much the level will get bigger or smaller, making it hard to make a fun decision. This lack of information ads up with the fact that the star have a weird hitbox. You can grab it from under the wall if it has a small part out. These two together end up adding unnecessary trial and error to the experience
Nice game. Quite relaxing and easy to understand sokoban style puzzle game.
The main frustration for me was that there is no way to know beforehand what will be the order of pieces unlocked, so you will always fail the first try, and then need even more trail and error until you can memorize the order. Only after that you can try to come up with a solution and then execute
Thanks for the detailed feedback!
- Yeah, the 3 effects seems to be the biggest design problem at the moment. Will have to solve that first if I keep working on this project, thanks for bringing that up
- The 'last use' feedback is there, the bar gets red when you can't pray before it breaks. But maybe it is too subtle and not solving the problem properly. Will think about a solution
Thanks a lot for the time! Glad you had fun :)
I see. Thanks a lot for the feedback! Maybe it is indeed a lot to memorize. My attempt was to make the aesthetics of the charm make it easier to remember. 'the one with the boot' is the wind charm, the original plan was to have a clearer vfx of the area cut (the pray to attack in a circle) a clearer vfx of the pushback (a strong wind) and then a particle vfx that would play in the feet of the player. So the package 'wind charm' would be easier to remember. But I guess the limited time implementation is lacking this thematic glue for each charm and each effect goes scattered into the player's memory.
It will be an important thing to get right if i continue to support this game and your feedback was very important! Took note and will see how I can solve this issue. I wanted to maintain the throw effect, as there is potential to create more depth, but let's see
Very very cute! Simple but well implemented game. A different take the 'puzzle bobble' mechanic that has some depth. Good work!
The worst thing that happened to me was i pressed esc one time to pause, and the game returned to the main menu, making me lose progress :(
Other that that, great work and great game. Amazing project for 72 hours of work
Great game! Left some positive feedback in the comments already, so will leave some other here as well. I wish it helps.
I felt the up and down arrows kinda hard to get the timing, they have a shorter time to preview and a different preview time than the side arrows, making it rather confusing. I think the game would work great only with the side arrows, and focusing on making the timings more strict or something. If you wanted to add a twist, maybe another kind of cue. Maybe a huge line circle that shrinks and you have to press space or down. This would be different than the arrows but still have the same preview time.
The main menu has an empty button? Below the play, there is a space with nothing for some reason. Maybe some cut content? Or a bug?
As a side note, does the arrows timer system syncs with the dsp time of the audio system? Or they are currently running independently and you hope it doesn't desync? Because there was one occasion I felt it was a bit off
Other than that, really impressive project for a 72 hour jam! Congratulations to all!
Good work for a 72h game jam! It has its charm.
On the concept, I think it is too similar to undertale, I have never played myself but I could sense it is kind of a copy. Anyway, it is a lot of work to create all these systems, so it is a huge implementation effort, congratulations.
There is something weird with the player's hair when moving sideways. It looks like it has longer hair moving vertically and shorter moving horizontally
The battle enter is too sudden. There is few time to understand: "ok, a random battle is starting". Pokemon and Final Fantasy does it very well, but locking the player movement, starting the music before the battle and then using a simple screen transition would make it feel much batter already.
The charm explanation after picking them disappeared too fast I couldn't read. I guess it's a bug. Also, I think I couldn't use them? Nothing new appeared during battle. But it is hard to tell if it works or not, because I couldn't read the effect.
I didn't understand the lever puzzle. Maybe you have to pull them in a certain order, but it lacks feedback for the player to understand what is happening, that the lever is returning or something.
About the battle, the patterns are a bit too fast to dodge, you have to memorize them, and they feel more unfair than hard. And during attack, you use white to communicate a 'hitbox' and then, when the attack ends, the field area square gets white too, so you feel like it could be a hitbox, so you think twice before exiting to pick a choice. Maybe all the hitboxes could be red, and to indicate the attack state, you could make the enemy animate, have red colors or add some red borders to the entire screen (just some ideas). To make this right you should probably do some playtests and watch other people play.
Well, sorry for the many feedbacks haha. Hope I could be hlepful and you use to make the game better and to learn a lot! Congratulations on making it! Huge effort for a 72 hour jam o/