I would happily play a more traditional platformer with the same art, because this is so nice to look at, with big backgrounds and so many unique things in practically every level. Especially fond of the ghosts in the boat, and the disconcertingly wriggly toes and fingers on some of the bigger sprites. I just wish I liked the gameplay as much... part of the movement just feels a bit buggy, like when you recoil slightly when you walk into a wall, but ultimately the design just didn't quite work for me. I don't know what I thought an anti-coin collection platformer would mean if not this, but there are only so many times I'll play the same level twice, once collecting zero coins and one collecting all the coins. And the big numbered blocks everywhere detract from the detailed, isometric level art that I want to see more of. Really cool stuff, love all the set pieces, just not my preferred platformer engine.
VioletCLM
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Not quite what I was in the mood for, but this is very elegant (elegantasy?), there's a lot to be said for making the most of a minimal moveset. The graphics likewise do a great job of conveying important information with a limited resolution and color palette. I'm glad the game speed option is there, though the default is very low.
It's not as elaborate as Friendsim 2 but there's some really nice work in here for sure! I appreciate the focus on how people are remembered... for most of these characters, all we were ever told in canon was about a single thing they did, so that's all their scenes here have to build off. But you're still trying hard to be kind to everyone. It's nice!
I beat this and it was all very average. Nothing especially bad (though I'd scrap the retrieve-money-on-death system, and the carrots behind asteroids in the final stage), nothing amazing (though I do like the level theme variety, and the number of bosses, and the main character sprites). A respectable, fully playable game that I won't remember in a few weeks.
This feels pretty good so far! There's some odd glitchiness surrounding Granite Act 2--in my first playthrough, I spawned pretty close to the end of the level for some reason, and in the second playthrough, it was called Sunset Gate Act 2 in the title card--but otherwise things seemed to work as intended. Visually Sunset Gate is quite nice, though I think you could play with the palette some more... it's all pretty basic green and brown right now, and this is a PC game, you don't actually need to worry about using a standard sixteen color palette or whatever. It could definitely use more to DO right now, too, especially with the gloriously gimmicky Golden Capital Zone to compare act 2 to. Right now you have cool flower animations and basically nothing else to make the zone interesting. Granite is very good, by contrast.
It's a cute Celeste clone with some overly slippery jumps, but I can't handle Jungle-6. That much backtracking, requiring so much precise movement over so long a period (around a minute and a half?) just isn't fun at all. Some of your students, I'm afraid, are better at this than others. The little bits of dialog at certain spots in the levels is a neat engine touch, though.
I don't think the parody names are useful, because readers either a) recognize the shows just as they would have if the names hadn't been changed or b) don't recognize the shows and are unable to google them. But otherwise this felt like a very unique idea for a story, wide-ranging and well-executed, emphasizing that people can disagree but get along and even enjoy the disagreements.
The hazard of having so few testers on a puzzle game is there are bound to be alternate solutions that don't get caught. By the end of the game it felt like 50-50 odds that a level would be beatable without using all the pieces, even while getting the emblems... even 4-24 and 4-25 had easier solutions. Also the very frequent Custom([file_write,stderr]) crashes were a bother, though fortunately they never lost me any progress. But when it's working, it's working well. Good readable graphics and good commitment to a single moveset. I had fun 105%ing this.
Maybe playing this at 2am just made everything hit harder, but this felt really powerful. Numbness was a good metaphor for getting used to loneliness, especially as part of the broader temperature metaphor. It was nice to see the main character constantly realizing things about herself. I'm not convinced the final sequence with the hospitalization and timeskip was really necessary though.
is that some are inevitably much harder to dodge than others, so the difference between a successful run and a failed run feels less like it was the player doing well and more like the player randomly not having to work as hard that time.
Interesting game though, I was expecting something more like Run Gun Jump Gun but the holes didn't end up mattering much for most of the game. Really effective illustration of how much a single game can progress in difficulty. The "secret characters" were cute additions.
This is very cool! I'm always a fan of getting a lot of mileage out of a small play area and/or set of pieces, and this does both with aplomb. If I had one suggestion it would be that in levels 7 and 8, I had to switch colors so frantically it was easy to lose track of which walls were or weren't solid: maybe if unsolid walls could be partially darkened, like half-black-half-orange? Otherwise everything was nice and cleanly conveyed. :)
I've played a lot of racial justice bundle games at this point but WitchWay is one of my favorites, it's so clever setting up lots of different puzzles with the same set of mechanics, to the point I can understand if you don't feel there's really any more ground to be explored in this vein. Thanks for making such a charming time, I've recommended it to a few other people.
It's neat to see another game in the same genre as Wunderling! Not as much polish, but the different powerups were a good idea that added a lot of variety and new things to pay attention to. I did think the final level was way too long, though, past the point of what I was willing to play through again each time I missed a single fish if I was aiming for perfection in that level like every other. And the parallax speeds in the castle didn't seem to make sense. But mostly this was a rewarding and fairly unique experience.