itch.io

this was super cool! the time trials were very hard (i didn't beat the second one) but i thoroughly enjoyed this. the thrust kick off of walls was a great way to replicate the feeling of a rocket jump without the drawbacks of a rocket jump. i wish it gave a bit more consistent vertical velocity, there were times where i didn't look down quite enough so i couldn't reach the ledge i was trying to get to. also, i got the wall run before i realized i missed the second gun and because the wall run is so sticky i couldn't actually use the thrust kick to successfully climb that ledge. shooting wise, the first weapon felt like it could've used a bit more kick to it, the orange dudes took so many shots to kill. but otherwise the movement and shooting felt great.

also the soundtrack is great!!

This game won't run for me because it's packaged as an HTML5 build

It worked for me, I played through the end. It's pretty short but I think you have the right idea of what makes a metroidvania. I would've liked to see more puzzles and platforming segments. There wasn't much feeling of tension because if I died I would immediately respawn nearby. There were some collision problems running along the ground too, as if the character was colliding with the sides of the floor tiles. 

yo this game is fucking awesome. the vibes are immaculate. the background music is fantastic especially. i haven't made it too far in but I will absolutely be playing more and have already sent it to a friend that would enjoy it. super super cool!

if i had any critique, it would be that the buzzing sound when entering an incorrect command is really loud and kind of disruptive to the vibe. i think a softer sound that blends more with the music would be nice.

that said, i stopped for now because i hit a point where any command i entered gave me the "no items nearby" error, so i think it was bugged? i'll be giving it another go soon though.

This game is really hard , I gave up after three game overs without knowing if I made meaningful progress. The precision needed for some of the grapples is really high, and with the game over mechanic i ended up not wanting to have to do really difficult sections again to get back to where I was. It might be a personal preference thing, but I'm not sure having a game over screen works to your advantage. Using the grapple and jump in combination was kind of awkward to me just due to the keybinds. I kept accidentally grappling instead of jumping and vice versa. Skill issue on my part maybe :)

That said I liked the art, the character sprite was cool especially. Also the sound/music was really good. The gamefeel was generally pretty nice and I think there's a solid basis here.  I think the level design was based around some cool interactions between the grapple and jump. With a more gradual difficulty curve I could see it being super fun!

also don't be so self deprecating in your game description ;)

I wasn't really sure how to use the second ability, so I wasn't able to finish it. When i used it i got launched off the side and got teleported back to the start. I thought the jump orbs were a cool idea though and it made navigation quite a bit more interesting than the platforming on its own.

For the player character, I'd look into increasing the gravity scale when jumping, and increasing the amount of air control. If you were using Unreal's CharacterMovement component, both of those should be sliders you can play with. 

The music was really nice and I liked the floating island vibe, but I think a little more work on the technical aspect of the game would do a lot to help.

focusing on the map design, i think you have quite good intuition for how to make metroidvania maps accounting for different abilities and introducing natural backtracking. making the incremental upgrade your fall height is a really cool idea actually. i was initially confused what the red bar across the screen meant but it was quite cool getting further in. i think with improved movement physics this could be a really awesome exploration focused game.

i think you have the right idea for what makes a metroidvania, i like that you incorporated backtracking and even with very simple art you were able to convey what type of ability you needed to cross something. i think combat needs a lot more work, i found it very difficult to hit the pigs without dying. increasing the range and making the hitbox line up with the animation more would help a lot i think! it was actually kinda fun just dodging them though, they moved fast enough that it was nice jumping over.

if you improve combat you have the rest of the building blocks for a metroidvania though! :)

the pixel art is excellent, especially the character animation! i loved the visual effects and color palette. the audio is fantastic too, the sparkly jump and shoot sound effects are very charming and i think the presentation of the game is top notch for what i'd expect in a jam!

i got lost after getting three keys and the super sprint, and without a map or notable landmarks it got quite hard to navigate. i ended up not finishing the game because i felt like i ran around the map twice without finding anything new. it was a little frustrating thinking i had a red key but two different reddish shades of doors weren't opening. i also had to play the game in a small window because the camera zooming effects were really disorienting even at half my monitor's size.

the movement generally feels tuned quite well! the acceleration feels pretty good and i like the triple jump with how the last jump is the most powerful. the super sprint was fun and i would have liked to use it more. there's a couple things that got in the way of movement feeling especially fluid: hanging on the walls to do walljumps felt too sticky and occasionally i wanted to jump up a wall but i hit it too early and it killed my vertical velocity, but jumping off the walls was far less effective than the triple jump. also, hanging when you slide down the bottom of a ledge felt like it hindered my speed without me ever noticing a place where it was intended to be used in platforming. these were more on the nitpick side though and i think the movement was like, 95% of the way to being fully shippable.

really it was just the camera zooming that made me stop playing though, im not normally someone who gets nauseous playing games but it was bothering me quite a lot (and the greasy burger i had an hour ago probably didn't help 😭)

edit: i reposted this on the actual jam feedback because im new to this and didn't realize that's the proper spot for it :)

i LOVE the art in this, especially the backgrounds and character portraits!! super pretty especially the rose castle. 

mechanically, i enjoyed the grapple, it was pretty intuitive and there were a handful of rooms that used it in interesting ways. the teleport mechanic was cool but felt like it needed maybe some levels that really focused on it. for combat, i quickly ended up relying on the projectile as it was just as powerful as melee and far safer. i didn't even try to melee the final boss. figuring out a way to encourage both more equally is probably the first place i'd start if i were to iterate on the game's design.

i liked the concept of the story as well, focusing on less obvious emotions works to the fairytale vibe's advantage. i would definitely be interested in seeing this expanded out more!

lastly, noom is very cute.

thank you so much for the kind words! we actually broke the grapple mechanic for a bit earlier today so depending on when you played it may have been during that few hour period where it was busted 😅