itch.io

The hand-drawn style looks lovely, and the narrative intro has a lot of character (although I noticed a lot of typos, but I wasn't sure if this was because of the protagonist's age). I would've loved to see the ending but I got stuck at some point, looking at the comments I saw that there were doors you could apparently go through, and yeah overall having more indications of what you can / can't interact with or jump on would've gone a long way in making the level easier to explore. (for instance, just having an "E" pop above the character's head when you can open the door, and giving platforms a different color instead of having them gray)

Another small tweak, having a pause menu when you press escape instead of exiting the game would be great, it's a bit abrupt otherwise and I lost some progress that way (although I'm glad I didn't have to go through the intro cutscene again). 

So overall this looked interesting and would've loved to get to the ending but couldn't, still a cool setting nevertheless :)

The graphics and sounds work pretty well and there's a lot of content for a week-long jam. I felt like the camera wasn't really centered on your character though, and when you moved your mouse to the left, it didn't go as far as if you moved it to the right, which was a bit weird.

I would say the biggest point to work on would be that I think the narrative could've been better implemented? For instance, the first levels teaches you that tears are okay but you just start gunning down anything that's crying, which felt a bit rough and against the point. You could for instance have used your own tears as weapon to calm down the enemies, or erase / "dilute" bad memories? Same for anxiety, after you beat the boss you're told your speed has been increased and that feels a bit random, whereas something like "you've been freed of your worries. You feel lighter and faster" would've really added to the narrative. What you got right now isn't necessarily bad, but I saw a lot of untapped potential there. Still pretty fun overall!

What stood out to me was all the visual flare and polish you put into the game, despite the simple pixel art style, there's a lot going on visually, and I love all the small details you took the time to add! As mentioned before, having a single switch buttons instead of two would've been great. I would've also loved to see a bit more mechanics and interactions between the characters other than just turning off lasers, but what you achieved within a week is still pretty cool!

I played this on my own and the controls took some time to get used to -- although I am extremely thankful you took the time to add controls pop-up because the keybinding wasn't very intuitive, and I would've struggled a lot more if it weren't for those tips, that's a 5/5 in game design right here ;).

I like the stealth mechanics and how you have to use the small brother to trap the guards with boxes. Graphics are simple but the post-processing add a lot to the whole picture and the game is pleasant to look at. I also like how you built a small narrative with the thumbnail and would've loved to see that expanded because with things like an intro cutscene. Only real problem I encountered is that the webgl version was stuck in an endless loading screen after the 3rd level so I couldn't complete the game, which is a shame because I would've loved to see the ending. Great work!

Hey, you know everyone can see you're just jumping from one game to another and leaving quick comments, right? There's barely one minute between the one you left on my game and the previous one. If you can only afford to spend one minute on a game, then please don't rate it, you're doing a disservice to everyone in the jam taking the time to give a fair rating.

Graphically, this is really cool looking, both the props and the characters. The first level kind of overstayed its welcome, especially when you have so little lives, and you have to start over from the beginning if you die. The shooting animation also does not play if you hit space quickly, you have to hold it for the animation to play, which is unfortunate in a fast-paced game like this. 

One of the funniest games I've seen, the sound effect and little hearts especially really add to the experience. It gets a bit repetitive after a while though, both gameplay and music-wise, but the length was alright. It was also a bit hard to get the characters when rolling over them, the collisions felt a bit fiddly. Nice game overall, and again a ball of fun ;D

A pretty unique mechanic, although some of the levels feel kind of unfair because of the controls. You made the graphics way nicer by adding a lot of lighting effects and particles, that's pretty cool, the music is also nice.

Looks really amazing, especially the way the other fishes swim around you! Unfortunately I feel like there isn't much to do? Maybe having an objective like gathering food or something would've been interesting. Also, you could've added some aquatic ambiance sound for an improved immersion

The game is looking pretty nice! There should be an indication that you can interact with the shop by pressing e in-game, I didn't know about it when I played and missed out on the whole point of the game. More variety in the enemy types would've been welcomed. Well done

First off, the creatures are hecking cute. It's pretty funny to run around and gather them all at the beginning, although if you fall in a hole I feel like it's really hard to get up. I like how the music for the boss uses the theme of the first one. The camera is a bit weird and there should be a controls tab to let you know how to attack the boss, and what each Fonfi does. Still a pretty fun game :)

Nice little game, I bust out in laughter when I got run over by the car. There could be a little more diversity in what you have to do, and obstacles, but all in all, it's a game that's good and polished all around. Nice job :)

Super cool entry, although I'm glad I didn't have to download anything because I low-key thought there'd be bitcoin-mining malware inside of it lololol. Visual presentation could be a bit better though, I think the thumbnail especially is not drawing a lot of people in

Haven't got a chance to try it out with my friends but the bots really get the job done, the secret updates are pretty funny too though I'm not sure if they do anything gameplay-wise? I think you could definitely expend this into a full marketable game with very little effort :)

Really cute and nice game! As a lot of people said, faster scrolling speed, and not being able to scroll down if you haven't finished the panel's minigame would be pretty good quality of life improvements.

Another thing that'd be cool is to have the audio evolve with the story, to match the changing ambiance and environment, for instance having the piano being replace by a music box when night comes :)

The art style is pretty great, love the diversity and emotivity in the facial expressions at the beginning (having a similar cutscene at the end would've been great, but hey, deadlines). I think the audio tracks were a bit too simple, but I appreciate the efforts you made in making them yourself, plus they fit the theme.

The gameplay is your bread and butter 2D platformer, which works, I only wish there was something more to it, maybe having sections where you have to drop one of the kids to make progress, like with a switch or something? Right now, I don't feel there's a lot to make it stand out gameplay-wise. Still, the graphics were great and I had a nice time :)

A good concept gameplay-wise, although there are some parts that feel a bit unfair. For instance, in level 4, the platforms appear only for 1 second while the enemy walks over the button. That's reaaally short. Pressing space while on a button with the mudblock also does not instantiate a block, it might be a collider issue. I thought it was kinda funny the enemies were spheres :)

The text for the UI can also feel a bit cluttered at times, consider having a panel, or some kind of textbox (you can also look for different fonts, as avoiding the default one can really help you stand out).

So overall seems like you had a lot of good ideas design-wise, but the way it's executed could use some polish and playtesting to make sure everything flows smoothly. Still, submitting a finished game on this jam is no small feat, congrats :)

Wow, that was seriously great. I love how much you're achieving with so little, the way you told your story really reminded me of Limbo / Inside. I'm a bit disappointed by the ending, thought there would be something more to it, but hey, that means you did a good job at immersing me into this universe ;)
There's one or two puzzles that felt a liiittle bit too fiddly, where I felt like I had to die and retry until the physics decided to work in my favor (the one where you have to launch yourself across a gap with the red block especially), but other than that, really cool concept. I'm having a hard time seeing the connection with the theme, as I didn't really feel anything getting stronger at any point, and this is a world you're very much alone in (although within the narrative you built I think it's a really good thing). Other than that, I really got caught in it and would love to play more. Definitely a super polished entry, and one of my favorites so far, excellent job :)

The first thing that struck me is how expressive the art is, with only a few images you managed really set a mood and have unique characters that stand out from the rest. I think you could really lean on that notebook / handdrawn aesthetic to have the UI and background be more pleasing, right now they're a bit bland (maybe you can split the fight in 3 parts, one for each enemy, and for each new one you turn the page?). The overall theme and message is very wholesome.

I think the main thing that could be eventually improved is just making the game more "gamey", right now it almost feels like a visual novel. Maybe there could be an incentive for choosing a specific message? Right now I felt like you could just click and do whatever, as long as you're switching up friends things were okay. So introducing things that force you to think more about your words would be great.

Simple and wholesome. I think it's too bad the enemies are just enemies, feels like they're here for gameplay purpose only, as jumping on / killing seemed against the overall narrative to me (although I did notice you tried to make it feel as "friendly" as possible through the signs). Having an option to reason with them somehow and show them grouping up regardless of differences is ultimately the best option would've been a great way to set your game apart, as of right now it feels kind of like a default platformer, although I'm sure you learned a lot making it :) The school on fire ending was a bit surprising, in a good way, and it would've been cool to have it be more expanded, and not just a cutscene.

As previously mentioned, the overall movement feels a bit too slow and floaty, it's too bad you forgot about enabling pixel perfect graphics, as it muddles the overall look a bit (especially the icons). The graphics and music fit well together though, even if you didn't make them, you did a good job at creating something coherent. My only remark on that would be to add a skybox or clouds in the background, even a gradient, because as of right now, just having the sky blue is a bit plain.

You really nailed the visual and audio aspect of the game, really love the doodly style, how the different strokes look, the best use of minimalism there is!

As previously mentioned, the notes you play are not always synced with the audio, and it's hard to figure out when you have to drag quickly / slowly, although when I got things wrong it didn't feel that much like a failure, so that did not impact the experience too much. A lot of emotion in this one, thank you for making it :)

A solid idea for the theme. The graphics are pretty simple but get the point across, I noticed and liked all the small touches you added, like the objects fading out when you're behind them, or the text scaling up on hover.

It took me a while to find food, and I reloaded several times. I think maybe having a minimap could've gone a long way in helping the player figure out where they're at, both location-wise, and food-wise (although that can be really hard to implement). Or maybe an option to zoom out for a moment if you stand still and press a key ? Even an arrow pointing towards the hive would've been super helpful in keeping track of my position, it's really hard not getting lost, although I guess that's part of the experience of being an ant :)

I think you did a great job at explaining the concept of the game, although one thing that tripped me up is that I figured out leaves were food only like after 10 minutes of playing (since you cannot eat bushes and trees, I thought leaves were also decorative only), so having a list of food at the beginning could fix that.

Regarding the UI, I feel like you can't reassign the number of workers on a particular food? But the windows still shows up if you click on it. Having to type in a number is a bit jarring, maybe having a + and - button on top of that could make things smoother. I'm also not sure if there's a way to get the exhausted ants back to work, I couldn't find an explanation for that.

I feel like I've talked a lot about negatives and possible improvements, but all in all it was still relaxing to walk around and assign workers on food, it would've been really great with small tweaks and QoL improvements here and there. Well done :)

The visuals are cool and full of personality, and made me think about Hyper Light Drifter. I think you could really spice it up and make it go from good to extraordinary by adding some particles, but all in all still great!

I think the mechanics get some time to get used to, but I managed to finish the game. The only thing that I thought was very unclear was what you meant by "retaliate" -- I first thought my character was shooting at the ghosts and it was a bug, but it turns out they were trying to steal my energy -- maybe changing the retaliate visuals and sounds so that they're not almost identical to the shooting animation could help. I like how it's ultimately better to try to bring them two by two, harvest one from each, and then move onto the next group.

The audio ambience is really nice, I think the only thing worth changing about it is the activation sound for the stones, it's twice as loud as the other sounds, and it's a bit jarring.

The pause menu is a bit bugged, pressing escape once does not freeze the game, but pressing it twice does, but since that makes the UI appear, it's not really helpful -- probably forgot to reset the time.timescale here. 

All in all a very stylish submission, nice job

Fun idea, reminds me a bit of Katamari Damacy :) I think having the music progress and build up as you eat more stuff is also neat!

I think it takes a little bit too long to get to the next level, I stopped playing once I reached the car level, it would've been perfect if you halved the size meter. Speaking of which, I wasn't sure of what the attacks and defense gauge where supposed to do? The speed meter filled rather quickly too, and once it's full, if your character is too small, it's really hard to control. Regarding the controls, if you're using Unity, you can allow the player to use the arrow keys to move around really easily by using the axis input system, which is always some good QoL.

So overall, the experience is made a little rough by the lack of explanation from the game. I think having a mini-map that tells you where there's an accumulation of food would've made it amazing, but of course, we've only got a week. Still cool you managed to finish it and submit it!

Very unique concept, although a bit confusing due to the lack of explanation. The voice you used especially was really hard to decipher, and having a simple bit of text showing up at the bottom to go along with it would've been great. Other than that, the amount of expression you've managed to reach with only a few pixels and sounds is great!

Really cool game with a lot of polish that went in, love all the little touches like the heartbeat effect when you're angry / low life, the slime trails everywhere, and how the enemies will go after you if you attack them outside of their vision radius. The explosive birds are also a great design idea, and when you started mixing all the mechanics together it's where the game really started picking up steam for me.

The only 2 critics I have is that 1 - I think I realized the snail enemies protected themselves only for the final level, before that I was kind of like "hmm this is buggy". So making it clearer with either a more visible animation or a color change would've helped a lot and 2 - I think the main character doesn't have a lot of personality compared to say, the birds or the rabbits? It's pretty much a blob that's spiky or blocky, and I think you really have something cool you can play with here considering the defense mechanics.

I'd love to see a version where you have more variety / powerups for your own attacks too, but considering the time you had, I'm impressed you managed to make something so coherent all by yourself. Kudos to you! Really cool game :)

You've managed to make me as stressed as I would be during an actual math test which I hope is what you were going for lol. I'm personally not a fan of math puzzles, so it didn't resonate too much with me, though regardless of that I think it's a really original take on the theme out of everything I've played so far :)

Echoing the feedback so far, the time constraint is really tight, even if that's by design. One thing I'd do is maybe start with more time, and try to adjust it to the player's performance? Like if the player succeeds in less than 10 seconds the max timer is reduced by 10 seconds, and if they're taking a long time next timer is extended. But I hear you if you're in a "the stress and frustration is supposed to be part of the experience" mindset

I didn't read the page description before playing the game and was a bit confused to be thrown into the action just like that, I find it always useful and good QoL to have an in-game tutorial, although obviously it's not always possible due to jam constraints. Bringing this up just in case

Thanks for the extensive feedback, especially on the game feel. I get the impression we have a somewhat similar approach to game making, where the gameplay has to stem from an idea / narrative rather than the other way around. I focused way too much on that for my last jam and my game was pretty frustrating to play lol so for this one having a good game flow and feel instead of a potentially interesting idea was a priority (especially considering the base loop, clicking and looking at stuff, isn't especially riveting). Glad to see it paid off :)

It's also cool you brought up the UI because I never had any remarks about it, but I can see how personalizing it has a lot of potential added value.

Do you have anything I can use to reach out to you? Itch doesn't have private messages and I don't think I've seen you on the BTP Discord

Hey, thanks for the feedback and ideas! The camera switch was a last-minute addition because people complained about not being able to delete the mothballs if they fell behind the bed, but I think using the angle switch to reveal hidden unexpected parts is a great idea which I'll definitely look into if I keep working on it!

As for the secret ending, you can achieve it by ditching the hamster (not just the ball, the ball then the hamster), then ditching the anime block after it starts moving around. Once that's done just rate the island and retry the level :) Feel free to give it a go if you feel like it!

Thank you for your comment; happy to see people enjoying the overall writing and not minding the fact that Cubotron was made in 5 minutes in paint lol

I hear you on the UI, in my first iteration it wasn't as dense (only the main panel with the main goal), but while looking at people playtesting it I noticed they were confused about / ignored some features, so I kind of added everything that seemed important to highlight on the starting screen. Thinking about it now, it would probably be better to have a tooltip show up in appropriate situations instead (tooltip for when a cubotip first appears, tooltip at the end to let you know you can get a different ending...) but I definitely wouldn't have had the time to do that.

Same goes for the audio, I'm French and while my written English is pretty good I can't bear to hear my accent, so voice acting is out of the question xD I did think about adding a typewriter effect with unique sounds for each character though, which will definitely be a thing if I keep working on that game

Again, thanks for the feedback, do you have anything I can use to chat with you? I noticed you weren't on the BTP discord

Hey, thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed it! Actually, making the game procedural was an eventual to-do, but it would've taken a long time. So I had to choose between lots of content, but not as much personality, or having one room that's really polished. I do think splitting the objects into blocks and making it so that their positions can be shuffled was a good and achievable inbetween though, a bit bummed I didn't think about that!

I really like the art for this one! The character is really cute and the animation reminds me of Paper Mario. Being able to choose your color palette is really cool too. Unfortunately I'm stuck to the scene where I'm supposed to show the pictures to the boss, the character cannot go right or left, even if the walking animation plays. That's a shame because I really wanted to keep playing! :(

It would've been super cool to have some sort of comment from the character for every piece you've finished, to help the player feel more connected to them, because I think there's a lot of potential here. 

Hope you will submit a build where this bug is fixed after the jam end, I'll definitely be playing it :)

I like how you built a small cozy atmosphere with a lot of small things that add up to more than the sum of their part (the doodles all over the level, the simple guitar strums, the character blinking...). Gameplay-wise, it's a really simple platformer, but I like how you used that to enhance the narrative here and there, like falling through block to symbolize failure. Nice little game overall, wish there was a bit more going on, but hey, less is more, and it is telling an important story ;)

Hey, I played your game, and even though it's far from being finished, I wouldn't call it a failure either :) The dashing effect looks nice, and it's easy to tell you've spend a lot of time on the dialogue system, with the typewriter effects, the sounds, and the character expressions. The pixel art is cool too! Don't feel too down about not having made it, take this as a learning experience, and next time aim for a smaller, but complete project. You got this!

Hey, yeah seems like we've made pretty similar games lol. The writing in yours is really great too and made me chuckle a few times.

One thing I tried with mine was to have some interactions between items when you throw some things, and I think you could've really benefited from doing that too, especially with the cat (first thing I threw out, I have no regrets. I kept her bed though, it was the only soft place remaining in the house without a couch). But the "psychology test" approach you took is super interesting!

Another thing, you might want to find ways to speed up the text for people who just want to get rid of the stuff. Like setting the visible text to the string's length if the player presses space again.

Otherwise, the art is great, the lack of sound and music is too bad but I didn't mind that much. I had a really good time

I see a lot of comments mentioning the intro being too long, but I thought it was fine? The writing was good, and I was intrigued by the lore. One thing, I found the transition from the narrator to the player's simple dialogue style pretty jarring. As this is an RPG maker game, the gameplay was pretty bland, but I didn't mind that as the art style is great and colorful, and the intrigue was interesting enough to make me want to carry on :)

The installer was unnecessarily complicated imo, I hope you'll find a way to figure out how to have your game launch from an exe or web browser, it's easy for player to lose interest if the process to get to play is complicated (for instance my game for this jam has like 90 browser plays but only 2 windows build download lol)

All in all, yeah, it seems like your project grew way out of scope for this jam, as I'm not sure 2 additional days would've been enough to get everything done. I want to emphasize I think your stuff has a lot of potential story-wise, and it's more about getting the skills to have it told as smoothly as possible. I still enjoyed it, and I'm sure the next one you make will be even better :)

Wow, the smoothness and game feel with this one is THROUGH THE ROOF! Your unique art style of pixelated 3D really helps setting your game apart, and dashing through stuff is just plain fun. I could really see this becoming an arcade game a la Downwell, with upgrades you can buy once you reach a certain height. Instead of looping the combo sound every 10 hits, I would have a different "max combo" sound play after 10, things would feel even better this way, but that's pretty much the only thing I'd change about your game, the scope and delivery were perfectly handled, I'm amazed :D

I really like the concept, and the puzzle / platforming was fun (especially after you introduced the jumping mid-air mechanic) and not too hard. I was also surprised by the amount of content! The graphics are pretty simple but not ugly to look at thanks to the effort you made in properly lighting the scenes.

My only real gripe about the game is how you restart a level, it should've been done automatically after 2~3 seconds instead of having to click the button (or maybe you could've mapped it to a key, would've been faster too), and the reload could be faster (although the animation is cool). Also, the text rotating when the character is facing left could've been easily fixed. But honestly, that's just me nitpicking, I had a lot of fun with the game, and played all the levels, which is usually pretty rare

Ca fait plaisir de voir d'autres français / québecois participer, super jeu de boîte dans l'ensemble ;D

You put a lot of efforts into building a calm and relaxing ambience, and it really shows :) I understand it's more about the experience than the gameplay, though I feel like it would've been even better if you added something to give feedback for every part of the loop, maybe magic sparkles, or some ripples, stuff to give it a bit of wow factor and make it even more immersive. Regardless, I'm a bit more relaxed now, so your game definitely hits the mark :D

That's probably one of the wackiest interpretation of the theme I've seen lol (and I mean that in a good way :) ). I like that you have different levels of tolerance, it adds the bit of variety the game needs. One thing I would've added is something to reward the player for dancing for a while, maybe like a grooviness meter filling up, or a combo system, anything to make the experience more engaging. Or maybe comments bubble popping over people as they dance / run away from you, that could be fun :)

In any case, it gave me a good chuckle, nice job!

Really wholesome and relaxing, even if you didn't create the assets, you did a wonderful job putting everything together with your narrative. The music especially is super fitting, and the interpretation of the theme is really unique :)

I think the game could've used a little more polish on the dialogue interface, there are many animals out there and it would've been nice to know which ones I can / can't interact with, the "speak" text was a bit finicky (for instance reading the comments I guess you were able to interact with the chihuahua barking but I just couldn't ). Maybe adding an outline to the animal model if the raycast hits it? And also using a big box collider instead of the character's model to give more leeway to the raycast. Also it would've been great if you could click again to show all the dialogue at once (and make you give it up at some point? ;) ), the text speed felt a bit too slow for me, but I stuck through. Finally, having a prompt to give you the choice to give up control or not could really add to the experience, because just clicking to say yes doesn't really feel like giving my consent lol

That was a lot of possibly negative feedback, but that's only because I see what you were trying to go for, and the potential for this narrative is great! I'm just writing this in hope this will help you iron out the project, really cool experience nevertheless :)