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The fem and masc colours for the magnets are switched?  I didn't even notice that! Is it meant to represent gender non-conformance? If so that's great!!!

Also wanted to add that I loved how level 2 had a masc magnet couple, level 3 had a fem magnet couple, and how level 5 had a magnet wearing both masc and fem characteristics (Having both a moustache and a bow) while the other one had none. Only realized it after my third playthrough of the game. It's nice to see some queer representation in any game I play! (I would assume that's what they are meant to represent. Can magnets even be queer? Do they even have notions of gender?)

P.S. Also the fact that their eyes tracks the mouse is great too.

Very original and interesting mechanic! Shame that there are only 5 levels and 3 of them are basically tutorials, but the last 2 levels are pretty fun! They are challenging, but not unreasonably hard, and require some planning to solve and not just brute force, although level 4 is slightly longer than it strictly needs to be. I love the sounds and the music, they are very relaxing and fitting for a puzzle game. The sound effects perfectly matches with what the magnets and the level is doing on screen, with the soft and cute footsteps and the equally nice whirl that happens when the magnet the player is controlling switches. The animation is very fluid and the visuals are very clear and cute. It's a very nice little puzzle game with a great central idea, lots of polish, and thoughtful level design. My only criticism was that I wished there was more levels, otherwise well done to everyone involved!

P.S. I really appreciate the fact that the game allowed me to revisit any levels I wanted and keeps progress even after I closed the tab, really made replaying the game for this review much easier!

Pretty fun arcade game! The fact the friendly fire happens for both the players and the enemies gives the game a lot of depth that other GMTK game jams where they have two characters are physically connected lack, especially the ones where they basically act like a single character. The friendly fire really makes positioning matter and requires some thought put into it, and the player can't simply charge up to every single enemy and spam attack. My favorite feature that comes as a result of the friendly fire is making the enemies hurt each other, the easiest way of doing this is baiting a melee enemy into the line of fire of an archer enemy. Melee enemies can also hurt other enemies as well, especially the ones with a long attack charge up. Speaking of the enemies, the AI is simple, but still challenging in many cases. It's is easy to deal with one of them but when there are several enemies with different weapons and attack patterns, navigating fights against them is incredibly fun! Allowing the players to pick up some of the dropped weapons is cherry on top of an already great game. The art is great, the animation is clear and fluid, and sound design compliments the visuals and gameplay well. No complaints from me on the overall presentation of the game. Overall the game is very well made, the only few problems I have with the game is it freezing after I press retry and I have to pause and unpause to unfreeze it. Hitboxes for the melee weapons feels a bit bigger than what their sprite shows, and I'd prefer if they were slightly smaller. Getting two bows makes the game a bit easy and takes away much of the depth the melee combat has, but this is a minor balancing issue as it is unlikely that the player would get two bows in the first place and the enemies are still strong enough to eventually overpower the player. These problems are minor and you've done a great job making a very well balanced game that also has plenty room for mastery and fun!

P.S. you should join the GMTK discord (https://discord.com/invite/pd4rQKU) and post your game there to get more people to play and rate your game!

I'm glad that you took the time to get used to the controls, something I should definitely work on for this game is a tutorial if I ever come back to it. The game could be much easier to get into if the elements of the game were introduced one-at-a-time rather than reading the word vomit that is the description of the game and having to take in a lot of information just to start playing the game. But its great that you had fun with the game in spite of all that!

Thank you! From the very start I tried to make the controls simple to counteract the inherit difficulty of controlling two character that move independently of each other, so I'm glad you were able to get used to the controls and find the fun of my game. UI readability is undeniably a significant problem with the game just can really stand out as the weakest link that drags the entire game down. Every time a commentator points out how difficult the UI is to read my regret for not spending enough time on the UI increases. So if I make another version after the jam is other the UI is definitely the number one thing I will need to improve.

Just like the other replies, I totally agree on just how obtuse the UI is and doesn't really fit with the doodle art. I'm glad you love the theme of chemistry and how the mechanics ties into it, and I'm glad you found it fun. Thanks!

Thanks! When I heard the theme for the GMTK game jam announced, I knew I wanted to make a game were two elements are closely connected mechanically and not physically because I wanted to go in a different direction from I imagined many other people would take their game. I was inspired by how real flamethrower work. And yeah, if I ever come back to working on this UI will be the one of the first elements I need to improve.

YES! I'm very proud of the core mechanics but I agree that the UI is the weakest part of my game and it's my fault for neglecting it, I definitely should've spent more time on it.

Thanks! I see that you invested a fair amount of time into the game judging by your high score so thank you very much for giving my game a fair shot despite its obtuseness and lack of in game instructions.

I didn't have time to put in in-game tutorials so all of the instructions are in the description so it's great that you enjoyed the game at least a bit without instructions!

I'm glad you find it fun, it was one of my main goals of from the very start to make the attacks satisfying to use, and it seemed to work from the responses I got so far!

I tried making the controls as simple as possible, but there is something inheritably difficult to get used to about controlling two characters that move independently of each other. However they are easier to control when close together and the flamethrower combo + the double score encourages this play style, but retrieving the gas still often requires separation so I completely understand your frustration. I didn't really notice it while I was playtesting because I was pretty much already used to the controls, so having playtesters be able to point out things I've never noticed about my own game is really helpful!

You could technically play it co-op, have one person on the mouse and one person on the keyboard. Obviously co-op isn't intended and I actually think playing it this way might actually be harder than controlling the two characters on your own, but its an interesting idea and maybe I could make the game much more co-op friendly if I tweaked it a certain way. As I mentioned before, the UI was slapped together in ten minutes and I regret not spending more time on it, the doodle aesthetic is also kind of last minute but it worked out much better and I'm glad you liked it!

Wow, just wow, this game is insanely well made! The art style is nice and clear, the animation is incredibly fluid, and the sound design is excellent at supporting the animation! This game perfectly combines puzzle and combat elements, the ball and chain crucial to both solving puzzles and defeating enemies. The puzzles and combat would be great on their own, but this game seamlessly combines them into what is perhaps the most well designed and well balanced game I've ever played in the GMTK game jam. The puzzles are simple in design but well executed, making it more fun than other more complicated puzzle games. The combat is very varied and dynamic, with the player's tactics changing depending on enemy placement and the environment, and I always love games where the player is constantly switched between powerful and powerless. But what this games does the best are its levels, each level is different from the last and all of them are well designed and are very well paced. Trying to point out everything I liked about each level would take forever, so instead I want to talk about level 5 just as a way of highlighting the excellent level design of the entire game. 

In level 5, the mines are introduced with 4 blocking the pathway of the player, just intuitively it is pretty clear the to remove the mines the player needs to throw the ball and chain at the mines, introducing a new mechanic for the rest of the game without any text telling player what to do. Then eventually the player comes across a gate with mines behind it, and soon an enemy walks into the mines and explodes, opening the gate in the process. This gives the player 2 critical pieces of information: First, that the mines can be used in your favor and do a lot of damage against enemies, this is helpful in later levels when encountering much tougher enemy that can only be defeated using mines; Second, to warn the player that this isn't just a puzzle level and there will be combat. The player continues on until reaching 2 mines blocking their way, when the player throws the ball and chain at the mines, enemies suddenly pop up and the player is forced to get close to them in order to get back the ball and chain. This was really a surprising ambush even with the warning provided beforehand, it sits up a very interesting and unique combat scenario testing the player on their knowledge of the mines, as their ability to recover from a disadvantage.

Pretty much every level is designed with a quality on par with level 5. And I love it. The levels are never too easy or too hard, death isn't frustrating, and trying to speed-run the levels is an ABSOLUTE BLAST!!! The only thing that gets in the way a little bit are the buttons, they can be buggy at times when the game expects the player to use the ball and chain to press a button while the player stands on another button. Throwing the ball and chain often unpresses the button the player is currently standing on, but there aren't really that much buttons so it doesn't really affect my opinion of the game. Another thing I would change is to make it clear that the direction the ball and chain is thrown is based on movement and not mouse, I got a bit confused for the first minute of the game because of this, maybe change throwing and picking up to keyboard keys rather than mouse clicks could help clear up the confusion. But maybe it's just me since no one else seems to have this problem. This game is excellent at everything it does and what makes it even more impressive is that it was made ALL IN 48 HOURS!!! I can't imagine how good this game would be if you had more time to work on it! Well done on everything!!!

I really adore the weird aesthetics of the game, just the music and visuals and everything seems to fit together in a very strange but cute way. But if I had to name my favorite thing about this game it would be the skating physics. It seems to be programmed from scratch, which is really impressive for a 48 hours jam game! I love how the skates sway when you make Heather turn left and right to match her direction. And how objects, especially Heather's head, would roll down slopes. It's pretty nice, even if how the game's controls are a bit obtuse. I didn't fully appreciate the physics system until my second playthrough of the game because I didn't get the controls. Neither the game or the description do a great job of explaining it, so that would be my number one problem with the game. And I also wish the circle of balance was larger, so I could play the game properly without putting it in full screen. Besides that, this game was a unique experience and the physics system is great!

(P.S. It doesn't have anything to do with the game really but I love the character detail of the trans pride flag attach to the skate on the cover and the title screen, that and the body separation mechanic makes me wonder if this game was inspired by The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories. If not you should totally play it! It has seriously one of the best transgender stories in gaming!)

I really really love just how over the top this game is, in just a few minutes the player turns from a singular ship to what is essentially a gigantic mech with size and power on par with the boss. Collecting dead enemies or just enemies in general I've seen done quite a few times with other game jam games, but this one is by far the most fun. The controls are easy to pick up and play, the enemies are never too hard but still require some strategy to defeat. Although this game is definitely on the easier side of GMTK game jam games, I wouldn't have it any other way because the game is just SO MUCH FUN!!! The game has the best pacing of any game jam games and pretty much any single player game I've played in recent times. My biggest compliant is that the game wasn't longer, I think it should definitely be expanded with more enemy types, more bosses, and much bigger rooms. But this complaint doesn't affect my rating of the game and leaving the player wanting more is the best reaction you could get from a game jam game. Another tweak I would make would be giving the enemies and the enemies you pick up's bullets' sound effects, their absence feels kind of off. But overall it was a short ride that was some of the most fun I've had playing through games on the GMTK game jam. WELL DONE!!!

The visuals are pretty, and very fitting for this type of game. It's a pretty short experience, but I love that there is a lot of objects to interact with and some objects have other ways of being interacted beside being pushed like peeing on the tree and breaking fire hydrates. But pushing the objects with the text of "woof" and "bowf" coming out of the dog is still the best kind of interaction doable by the player. The game could be made a lot better with more and louder for things being knocked around and dog noises, have frantic and comedic paced music that would add a lot to this game's feel, more levels, and a scoring system to heighten replayability. Otherwise, its a good minute of fun.

The core mechanic of linking with the enemy and having to keep it alive is a very cool spin on the theme! It is very creative, especially because it comes with a interesting tradeoff rather than being purely or mostly beneficial towards the player unlike other GMTK game jam games I played with similar mechanics. However, the player's jump feels a bit sluggish and weird, and its cooldown inconsistent, even when spamming the space key. Speaking of spamming the space key, I find that to get very far into a run without being very lucky I need to exploit the AI. One way you can do this by propping up yourself against the corner of the map and spam jump while shooting at the enemies. You really can't go far by playing the game "normally" because how the AI acts is very RNG based and if you get hit or not is really dependent more on the AI than your dodging. (Unless you exploit the AI, but even exploiting won't work 100% of the time because the AI is very random). And as far as I can tell the game doesn't really get harder as time goes on. The visuals and sound do what they need to do and communicates information effectively to the player, although the bullets could be a little bit louder, have hitting the enemy make a sound, and make the music longer or more varied because it gets tiring after a few minutes. Overall, this game is a very unique take on the theme and stands out for the core mechanic both that helps and hinders the players rather than just being a straight benefit and gives the player an interesting choice to make every time an enemy reaches critical health, forcing them to think and access the situation on the fly.

Also you should really join the GMTK discord to get more people to play your game! It's such a shame that this game has very few ratings: https://discord.com/invite/pd4rQKU

Love the horror pixel art visuals and atmosphere and just the general feel of the game, the environment is especially detailed for a game jam game, the amount of assets is mind-blowing to be all made in just 48 hours! Reminds a lot of older rpg maker horror games, which is a good thing. I love how every level explores a different idea using the core mechanic rather than repeating one or two ideas throughout ten levels, it makes the game the perfect pace for a game jam game! I wasn't a fan of the level where you could fall off though, it didn't really require any thinking or exploration of the environment, it can be way too easy to fall the edge, and it didn't properly introduce its new timer mechanic so I was confused for a good half minute. I would love to know about the story behind this game, it seems pretty cool so the story would be the number one thing I want to see expanded in the full game.

Also it seems you aren't on the GMTK discord, you should really join it if you want more people to play your game and rate it: https://discord.com/invite/pd4rQKU

BTW if you want more ratings you should totally join the GMTK discord: https://discord.com/invite/pd4rQKU

I love the core system of the game of giving the player an interesting choice about if they want to accept a hero which comes with their own unique attack but brings in their own enemies, and their goals that add needed personality to each character. The choice of accepting and rejecting allies and enemies effectively gives the player control over the difficulty, giving the game much more depth and make repeated runs more interesting as the information the player gains on their previous runs affect their decisions in their current run. The quest system is a great way to prevent the players from getting overpowered, I just wish there was more of a incentive to complete their quest, like a scoring system that is based on the amount of days survived and the amount of quest completed. Or a small but permeant upgrade to all future heroes for every quest completed, the upgrade can differ based on which hero's quest the player completes. The simple controls makes the game much more easier to get into and start having fun than other more complicated games that require a few minutes just to get used to before the fun starts, and the enemy variety forces the player to utilize all of the different heroes rather than just one overpowered hero.

The neon hacking aesthetic is very cool, and the character designs are very cute. I especially love the voice lines, they add a lot of personality, even if they repeat a little too much for my taste. Maybe have more voice lines and longer time between the voice lines. This game fits the theme very well! I love the way many mechanics are directly tied to one and another. Like how you could either throw the bowtie at the dog to be able to attack it, but losing hp meanwhile. Or throw the bowtie somewhere else to teleport you out of danger and put you in a better position like in stage 3. And if you want to regenerate hp after shooting you are forced to teleport into the dog and put yourself in danger, giving the player the choice of dealing more damage and risk dying or playing it safe with more hp remaining but doing less damage. My biggest problem is just how much hp the dog has, it really kills most of the flow I have while getting into the rhythm of the game, especially after dying and being forced to repeat earlier stages. Besides that, great work overall!

Definitely the best multiplayer game I've played for this jam! The controls are surprisingly easy to pick up thanks to the great physics, and its very fun to swing the chainball around before hitting the football at just the right angle for it to enter your opponent's goal. The game can get a bit slow at times but making the game more fast paced might've made it too hard, so I think the pacing is great as it is. The presentation is top notch, there isn't a weak link in terms of 2d art, 3d art, particle effects, animation, sound, and music. Not to mention the AI, this game's AI is so good no other jam game even comes close! Its cheating is noticeable if you look closely and its a bit easy but its still very fun to play against! Undoubtedly one of the best games made for the 2021 GMTK game jam!

The art, the animation, the sounds, and this music for this game is incredible. It was fun throughout the entirely of the my play session despite its simple central mechanic because of great execution. Having gameplay that is initiative to understand and play but is still fun makes for great pacing! Many other games with more complicated mechanics often suffer pacing issues and detract from the "flow" of the game making it less fun overall. I think the simplicity of this game made it more fun than if there was an extra mechanic or two that would distract from the casual and relaxing atmosphere of the game.

Also: If this game jam game was polished and made into a full game I think that would be great! There are many cool ideas and mechanics that connected the newlyweds it would be great if these mechanics could be in a less buggy full game and explored further. I think the games has enough cool mechanics to make a interesting 2-10 hour game. Having a narrative would probably elevate the game's themes further and make the player more invested!

The keys used for interaction are E and Numpad 0, as it says in the description of the game.

It is such a shame that this game probably won't be rated much as a result of the large download size and lack of clear directions, because there is a lot of ideas and content here. Even though it was buggy, I could tell there was a lot of effort put into this just from the first few levels (I got stuck on the part where you where supposed to drive a police car into the big red button, the police car stopped a a few seconds before it could reach the big red button). I can't imagine the amount of effort it took to make a game this content dense in just FOURTY-EIGHT HOURS!!! I love the variety of mechanics that emphasized the connection between the newlyweds. How zombies are damaged using the literal physical connection between the newly weds, how heavy objects can only be moved if both of the newlyweds grabbed it, how the events (The only ones I encountered so far are driving a bus and driving a police car) makes one of newlyweds drive while the other ones protects themselves and their partner against the zombie horde alone. My favorite part when I had to use both of the newlyweds to grab and put aside the barrels in the way of progress quickly as a zombie horde is attacking them, pinning them against the barrels. There seems to even more levels and I imagine that they also introduce new mechanics that develop the relationship of the newlyweds further, shame I couldn't reach them :(. 

Also if you want more people to play and rating this game you should join the discord (https://discord.com/invite/pd4rQKU) and post your game on the review-my-game-channel, I'm sure many people there will be interested in trying out your game :).

The doodled art assets was actually a last ditch effort by me to make my game look more polished in a short amount of time. The game was actually initially planned to have more cartoony and detailed art (It's also why the game has the subtitle of "Doodle Edition"). But I'm glad you liked it anyways!

Yeah, the UI was probably the my least favourite part of the game. I literally designed all of the UI (The colour meters, score displays and the menu) in around 10 minutes and you could probably tell. I definitely should've spent more time on it. It wasn't until after long submissions were closed my Dad (Who play-tested my game so I could gauge how much I need to explain to new players) told me that the UI was hard to understand and I realized how obtuse it was. It could've been very easily improved if I just put a percentage of the girlfriends' hp and gas on top of or near the colour meters. So yeah I completely agree with your criticism.

While I've played quite a few jam games that have a grappling hook mechanic, I have to say this has the best grappling hook mechanic out of the all the platforming games I played thus far. The fairy hook has two options: Swinging or pulling, and the physics for both of these mechanics are great and are fairly lenient to allow for player expression, although its still a bit hard. Other games I played with a similar mechanic only allows for swinging or pulling, not both. They can limit your movement by only allowing you to attach to walls, I didn't think of this as negative until I played your game and got a taste of how grappling hook mechanics can be improved! They also usually make using the grappling hook either too easy or too hard, the fairy connection mechanic by itself isn't all that difficult, but the game would be made a lot more fun with levels having smoother difficulty curve. But I understand that it would be hard to make even a single level during a 48 hours game jam, it would be hypocritical of me to fault you for that. I didn't even have enough time to make a in game text tutorial! So good on you for making 3 decently fun levels!

I can't believe I would see another game in the genre of "lesbian arcade shooter"! Though yours is much more polished than mine, the presentation is incredibly cute and top notch!  The game is very hard to start with, but is very fun once I got used to the timing of the rotation. I love the enemy variety and having to move in a different way to tackle each enemy makes for a great difficulty curve (After the initial difficulty spike trying to learn the controls) and keeps the game from becoming stale! Easily my favorite jam game thus far (Though I might be biased because our games had somewhat similar ideas).

It's simple, original, and fun. The idea behind the game is intuitive to understand and play, and I love the dynamic of being powerful vs powerless depending on the player's and the enemies' colour. I also figured out that if you position yourself just right in front of the enemies without touching them, they'll teleport over you without doing any damage. My only real criticism is that I wish that the player would stop right where the mouse so I could be more precise with my movements instead of just stopping a small distance away from the mouse. Some relaxing background music would be also nice, music can add a lot to the feel of the game.

You can make a great mobile game out of this! I tried it on my mobile device and it works just as well as on my laptop.

Diad has a very great and original puzzle idea that is easy to understand and grasp, this is a pretty fun puzzle and it will be great if something like this gets turned into a full game, with smoother difficulty curves and with additional elements like portals added. My only problem was that the game doesn't appear to have a way of closing it and it is stuck in full screen. It was a bit inconvenient.