so awesome you could play it with your partner! Your description sounds exactly like the experience we intended :D thanks for playing and your nice comment :)
Quite amazing you managed to create so many systems in this single jam (multiple abilities, skeleton upgrades, dialogues, the UI (i like the electric health and mana orbs)). The artstyle is cool but I'd make the environment more clear, like where you can or cannot walk. The collision in the beginning with the graves is especially harsh and barely telegraphed. Nice game!
For me the loop of digging - cleaning bones - selling, the UI and switch from manual clicking to automation was kind of unclear, and I was confused for a while how the game worked. I thought digging up bones was bugged because it did not go past 0, then I realized they were just selling immediately. I really like the artstyle of the monkeys!
There are so many things to love about this game, from the perfect implementation of the theme and the special object, to the clever and simple way of the tutorial text boxes, the cute artstyle, and the complex puzzles, which can be brute forced or perfectly solved! One of my favorite games of this jam!
I really dig the artstyle, also the cute helmet animation when you use the shovel. The gameplay could be very fun with a few tweaks, now it seems too binary. I also like the unique resolution!
We know about the bug with the Shovel spawn but I thought I had fixed it on the final build ... how often does the shovel phase through the ground? Does it happen every time you press B or just every now and then?
It's intended to dash home after picking up the flower because you can't really defend yourself - but striking the perfect balance was beyond our scope for this jam!
There's a short explanation on the board you're looking at when the game starts. You have create a hideout somewhere in the level with the E key, then collect and store all items in it (there are four in total). You can collect all items at once or indiviually; you drop them with the Q key. You can also create new hideouts whenever you want but you can only have one at a time, and all items must be stored in the hideout simultaneously to win. If other balls come near your hideout, it gets destroyed.
Basically we wanted to give the players a lot of freedom to choose the route they can take - so it would be interesting to watch in a speedrun.
Thank you!! Yes, the camera controls were a late and spontaneous addition, initially we tried having no camera controls at all for the first two days and ended up with this compromise because did want to keep all controls to the keyboard, without having to use a mouse to play. But it is indeed clunky right now. We really enjoyed your game too!
hey, don't apologize for your honest experience. Your frustration is on our part, it's a mix of puzzles that required further testing, our experimental visual style, the rulesets of the jam we had to adhere to and the time constrains. We tried to mix a dungeon crawler, a puzzle and a horror game which each have aspects oftentimes at odds which each other. Did you play the jam version or the updated version? The bright level is one of our favorites but when watching people play we also noticed it was the most confusing and tried to add more clarity. Hopefully you could still take away something from playing our game!
thank you! I'll watch your stream later. There is a combat mechanic; you can find a lasersword and a laserpistol. We wanted to give the game a horror feeling so we didn't want weapons to be too common. The enemies stay in the dark and you can only see them from specific angles but you are able to fight them, especially with the laserpistol which illuminates your surroundings. We'll release an update soon which fixes some current issues players had.
I think the core idea is not that bad and other than most of the commenters I think this does fit the jam theme pretty well. Not having any UI about where or how far you will jump and the fact that you can drag from one screen to the other is pretty out of control. I think this is not intended but the jump is also not consistent. Sometimes I'd move not that far even though I dragged through the whole screen, sometimes I'd move in the exact opposite direction (especially when dragging while moving). But tbh I don't think these "out of control" aspects make the game more fun or interesting - but to be fair I wouldn't spent my time playing Getting over it or QWOP either. So I do think there is definitely an audience for this kind of game and if you like it that way without an UI you should keep it! But then you should probably look into the controls to make them as consistent and clean as possible, like the controls in Getting over it are frustrating but you can still learn and predict them extremely well.
I think it's interesting that the platforms change while the player and the coins stay the same. I'd expand on that and make maybe different levels with different layouts. If you want to keep it at one endless level I'd think about spicing it up with new mechanics. Overall the movement could be quite a bit faster and the jump maybe too. On my second and third try I got a bug where I couldn't collect any coins and was randomly floating around!
Hey, thanks for your feedback - I already changed the thumbnail to match your suggestion! As for the platforming, I'm not 100% confident either, I already worked on making the movement more responsive, next I'll work on the jump.
I already played this game during the jam and thought it had one of the most creative and unique concepts. The main mechanic is very clever and gets build upon neatly with the pendulum and the clickable boxes.
I think with some work this could easily turn into a successful full release!
Imo the movement could still improve a lot. For the first few rounds it felt like I was just fighting with the controls to not fall into spikes. The hitbox of the spikes is way too big and you shouldn't be able to get hit from the side. The jump is a little bit too short as it reaches only slightly above 2 tiles and it's very annoying when it misses and you have to do it again. I regulary got some movement bugs where I was unable to move for a short amount of time especially after jumps.
Because you have already working physics in place something like moving crates or rolling barrels would be a great addition as they would also interact with all the other mechanics. The player could move them or when the level turns they could crush the player. Also something like explosives or liquid would be great but I don't know how hard this would be to implement.
The UI could be more clean. Maybe it's just my preference but I'd prefer it if all the valuable information would be right above the playable area and not on the side. Also small and big turns should have different symbols. Then there are also many possibilities for new variety of turns such as full turns or very slow turns.
Lastly it's good in some ways that all the levels have the same size but you could also think about spicing things up, for example asymmetrical levels or levels that go beyond the borders of the screen.
Anyways, I think this is a very clever mix between a puzzle and a platformer and hope you expand on your idea even more in the future!
thank you so much! i tried to introduce all the numbers in the beginning but it was very hard to fit the writing onto the screen!
from left to right:
leftmost number: round (increases each time you jump into the sparkles on the right side of the map and restart on the left (but not if you pick up a ?)
left middle number: food left in this round
right middle number: overall food collected through all rounds and + the bonus food score from the events
rightmost number: big jumps left (press c to make a big jump ), increases by one each time you pass a round or pick up food!
hey there is, if you press [up arrow key] you do a small jump, if you press [c] you do a big jump except if you have no more jump points left, then you do a small jump. So if you want to do a small jump just use [up arrow key]. The second number on the top shows how much meat is left in the stage but the game is not about collecting all the meat in every single stage, this would also be impossible later on, although you can still try to play it that way if you want to.
Very fun to play! I think the ammo amount is perfect and the AI is very well designed. And there's so much you could add, this game has a lot of potential to go in many promising directions.
You mean walking down didn't work in general or in a specific scene? I think there's only one invisible block in the game which is near the end and you can just walk around so that's probably not it. I personally didn't experience any bugs but let me know under which circumstances it happened.
Imo there's a problem with this interpretation of the theme which I've also seen some other games do, if everybody lies, the theme becomes redudant because you can "trust them to lie". But if you're keeping it ambivalent you run into the danger that your game becomes to random and unfair. I also struggled with this.
Also I got no bugs except that the stones took a long time to disappear!
Great entry. I like the torch throwing mechanic although it was always faster to just jump ahead into the unknown as you don't gain anything by playing cautiously. I really like the secret ending. Imo it would be cool if the thing that guided/misguided you felt more like the character resisting a mysterious entity and less like you, the player, distrusting the narration.
Yes that's the ending! How long did it take you/how many tries did you need? If you got to the ending you saw the majority of the map except maybe a room here and there and some areas on the left side. Let me know if you have any more feedback!
It's a weird but interesting stylistic choice to have two fighting knights with shields and swords which they cannot use! Really nicely polished game with great mechanics and the best implementation of the theme I've seen!
The audio is phenomenal and the visuals are very nightmarish. I actually really liked the movement. Everything felt very hostile but in a good way. Also interested in what tool you used to create the levels / audio.
LMAO that music! Please don't change it unless you really want to. I like the look of your MC. Right now the level design holds it back but you did a lot of things really well and it has much potential.
Awesome game! Fake controls are pretty radical, good job. I really love the jump/death animations. I still found myself subconciously avoiding spikes after the first level which was a really weird state of mind.
I know you're just starting out and used non original assets but this was such a bizarre and memorable experience to me. The combination of all the elements, the weirdly responsive controls and camera, the pixel artstyle with assets in different pixel sizes and the strange song was really unique. I'd really like to play a similar more extensive game.
Yes, I think so too! I don't want music in every room but maybe something calm/ambient/creepy in the later stages. Sadly I did not have time for it - I added in footsteps like 20min before the deadline! But I will work on the music after the jam!
You fit the theme really well, I love the 2.5d perspective! If you want to keep working on it, as a suggestion i'd try to combine some previously introduced mechanics later on and maybe break with some patterns like the level ending position. Glad you enjoyed my game! I did not expect many people to play through it :p After you finish it, let me know how long it took you and what you liked about it! And feel free to make any suggestions because I want too add/change some stuff after the jam. Cheers, Yonn
