itch.io

I think most of the challenge is in the muscle memory of knowing which key is where on the keyboard. I found that all my deaths were due to misclicks x_x

Fun!

Ohh gotcha. Didn’t realize it boosted the clicks. The game play somewhat reminds of this old game on the DS called “Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure”. It also has two kinds of game play on the two screens that affect each other which this was very reminiscent of. It’s not relevant to anything, but just thought I’d share.

I only got till level four or so before I decided to take a break, but it was really fun to figure out. The mechanics ramp up over the levels and they’re quite clever so you feel really smart when you figure it out. Background music got a bit annoying for me over time as it added to the frustration of not being able to figure the level out, but that might just be a personal thing. Overall I had fun with this and will probably return to figure out the rest.

I basically agree with everything Dragon’s Isle Software mentioned. I like the concept of the game, but I do wish there was also some more depth to the game play. It also felt like a bit of a wild goose chase without some sort of radar to indicate where the parts were. I did think it was cool that when the moon (?) was colliding, you got lifted up by its gravity. It has a very visceral feeling of death to it.

Very interesting take on the theme. The game looks and feels very good to play. I did find it annoying that the blocks/orbs just disappeared if I misplaced them a bit. I was also lost a bit on what exactly the Power meter was indicating. I still thought this was a pretty unique idea, but a tutorial of some sorts would have been good.

Very cool to see a mobile game here. I played on my phone, and its alright! I found it a bit easy to outrun the police by tapping with two fingers rapidly. Dodging stuff while at high speed was a nice mechanic, but I do wish there was more depth to the game play. Like someone else said, maybe even another track would have been good.

Really creative and relaxing entry. I agree with the other comment that it would have been nice to have some more gamified elements to it though.

Oh wow! We made an extremely similar game. Love the goofy dialogues and voice acting. Unfortunately the performance was really bad on my device, so I decided not to rate the game as it wouldn’t be fair. Still very cool to see a sister project out in the wild :) The aesthetics are on point.

Simple mechanic but the puzzles had surprising depth. Probably the one of the few room looping games that doesn’t feel like the looping mechanic was just thrown in. I think the platforming controls could feel better, and like someone else said, grid snapping would be really helpful. There is also a lack of general polish. The core game though is fun, so great job!

Really fun platforming. The wall running mechanic feels sooo good. I think the controls just feel a tad too slippery, but otherwise its really fun to play, albeit super hard. I only have few pieces of feedback;

• The initial head turn is really bad when you keep restarting.. At the very least, the mouse motion should be locked until the head returns back to facing forward.
• In a game like this where you constantly replay it, death and respawn should be instantaneous (for e.g. see Celeste). Here you had to wait till the timer ran out. I just randomly found that R mapped to reset, so it was fine but you should let the player know about it.

Otherwise, super impressive for your age. Well done!

Love the Pokemon ranger inspiration, especially with multiple loops multiplying the damage. I agree with the others about needing more responsive UI and giving player feedback. But other than that, I think the implementation of the mechanic ended up creating a game loop with a confusing identity;

• I can make loops of arbitrary size, so I could just circle around the edges of the screen and even dodge some projectiles while damaging all enemies.

• Even if I couldn’t do that, and say the intention is to make tight loops by rapidly circling the enemy, then there is no way to dodge the projectiles.

I think some balance can be struck here, but I’m not too sure how. Still had fun playing, and enjoyed seeing another loop drawing game :P

I like the concept, but I think it could have been presented differently. I thought it was a generic memory game until I saw that pressing H let you listen to the sounds. The problem is that when the notes are shown initially, it also highlights the block which makes the sound obsolete. Instead if the highlighting is removed and you just let the player figure out based on sound, it would have been way more interesting IMO. I tried this by looking away when the sounds played and I think it works. Perhaps a smaller grid would be needed in that case.

Multiple modes were nice for a jam game, so kudos for that! I think it would also be better if the art were a bit more cohesive though; the somewhat shabby style still kind of works, but the colors clash way too much.

Ooh this is an interesting take. I mostly agree with what everyone else has said about improving the UI so I won’t repeat that. Between the UI and my own incompetence at the game, I did find it a bit hard, but I still find this a really nice idea. A word/clue history definitely would have definitely made it better.

Well that was beautiful and sad. I don’t know what the message is, or if there is any at all, but it certainly stirred something..

Really interesting mechanic for a puzzle, I don’t think I’ve seen this interpretation so far in the jam. The level design was pretty good too; I got about halfway through and watched your walk-through for the rest. It is quite challenging I think, but not unreasonably so. Having said that, I think it could do with a little more on the UX side.

• Since the logic is so heavily based on the number of steps taken by the players, I think the flooring should have some grid overlay so that the tiles can be distinguished and counted. Otherwise, it relies a tad too much on just trying things out randomly and hoping you can reproduce it again.

• It was a bit confusing initially on how the end turn mechanic worked. I think you should highlight the active player at all times (or gray out the inactive ones and disable clicking on them). As it is right now, you try to click on the inactive one, and it is just unresponsive and you should never let players feels like their input is ignored.

The game is also fairly polished, except perhaps when the characters loop back to the initial point; a tween which shrinks/enlarges them over time would look so much nicer instead of plopping in and out of existence. Still had fun with this though. Just wanted to let you know how it could be improved!

Thanks for the detailed review. I will try to address some of these:

• I think there is a learning curve to closing the hole. Typically you start a bit slow, draw a tight loop and cut right through it real fast instead of drawing a circle from start to finish like the other games. This is why the controls needed to be snappy to change speed, so that you can make precise cuts. I realize it’s a bit hard to get the hang of, but I’ve some people play and figure it out in a few mins.

• Again, if you draw a hole by cutting through it instead of making a circle, this is much less likely. It still happens though, that’s a bug on our part.

• Fair point about the contrast, will keep in mind.

• The slow speed controls + camera edges definitely takes the precision out of the game a bit. I personally enjoyed the variation, but I think this can certainly be fixed.

• We did mention this in the info graphic in the game description; it recharges when you go very fast by keeping the cursor farther away. I think if you realized this, the energy depleting wouldn’t have been a major issue.

I don’t necessarily agree with all your points, but it is valuable to have your experience detailed out like this. Thanks!

This was super cool. The controls felt really nice, and the POV was perfect. What was not perfect were my skills to maneuver this beautiful machine. I did have fun looping around while ignoring the instructions though.

This was actually really good. The platforming felt a bit slippery but not frustratingly so because the controls were still very tight. Its also super polished and like slimewitch said, the atmosphere is truly something special. My only gripe is that sometimes I just died randomly? I’m not sure if it was a bug with the hitboxes or what. I also appreciated the super fast respawn times, so it felt the like game wants you to succeed. Good stuff!

I think its a bit of a learning curve, because I’ve sent this to a couple of streamers and typically half of them are able to master it while the rest give up early. It definitely could do with some tweaks, I agree, but you can in principle get through all the waves as is.

That’s fair. The camera zoom is certainly a common complaint. Thanks for taking the time to follow up :)

Sounds great. Good luck!

I basically had the exact same feedback about the game that Nathaniel has listed out. I also didn’t really feel it did justice to the theme but that’s okay. It was cute and I had fun. It did surprise me that after all that practice I was actually able to capture the mouse way before the elevator. But I see that was deliberate to keep difficulty low, so fair enough. I guess some more mechanics would have also been nice to see because right now its basically just a generic platformer, albeit a charming one.

Valid points, and I pretty much agree with everything. Thanks for playing!

Yeah I suppose that is true but it is also the unique part of the mechanic that you have to be careful of running into your own traps.

I did notice that the steering is imprecise when the mouse is close to the bike, but I did not give it more thought because that goes entirely against the intended way to play the game. The whole setting is to force you to go fast (incentivized by refilling the power bar and being able to draw tighter loops) unless you have to dodge things, then you slow down as needed and I didn’t find the need for more precise maneuvering in that case. Regardless, I do appreciate the feedback.

Yeah I agree. Minimap was the plan, but we ran out of time. I think simpler would have been to just zoom out the camera but it didn’t strike us at the time. Thanks for playing!

Just over 100 is better than what I’ve seen a lot of people do, so perhaps you have hope :P Good point about the engine needing some variations. Didn’t really take that into account but it makes sense because its always on. Thanks for the feedback!

I don’t think I’ve seen the mechanic of claiming the power of the enemy that kills you before. That was quite innovative, but I think it is fundamentally a bit strange in game play. Either you encounter an enemy that you can defeat but deliberately lose to just to get the power; or conversely, you have no chance of defeating them unless you have their power, both of which are rather unsatisfying. The power stealing mechanic is the star; but I don’t know if death is the best way to implement it. I can see this implementation respects the whole looping theme, but I think there is something here that would work better without this limitation.

Other than that, here’s some general thoughts:

• Choosing the different abilities should have been mapped to the scroll wheel with a 3 slot inventory instead of mapping to different input keys.
• Mana regeneration felt really slow for no reason other than to incentivize death. Its especially annoying when the aiming mechanic is rather imprecise to one shot the flying enemy so you waste mana.
• Camera control would have been nice. Sometimes the flying enemies went into some corner that was hard to view with the default angle.
• There was a general lack of polish/juice which hurt the experience a bit, paired with the somewhat mediocre visual assets. I don’t mean to take a dig at your work, but it definitely helps with the experience if the presentation is nicer.

Overall, its an interesting entry but definitely needs to be fleshed out more.

This might be the most unique take I’ve seen by far. Super cool. I agree with others that it is missing some depth in gameplay though. Most jarring is that only the bottom row of the track seems to have any impact, and the other two just add to the soundtrack. A really quick tutorial or some description on the itch page would have also helped quite a lot. Still enjoyed this a lot, good stuff!

I think this is my favorite implementation of the interpretation of repeating the same room multiple times (I’m glad you didn’t go the route of jumping over your own dead bodies). Level design was smart and the loops actually felt different enough to justify their existence. Mechanics felt sufficient and kept things interesting. Couple of thoughts I have in no particular order:

• The pink tiling feels like a questionable choice. Its kind of high contrast compared to the rest of the scene.
• The background music is really repetitive and gets annoying quick but I understand this was just a corner that had to be cut.
• I think the jump could do with a little tweaking. It feels a bit weird right now, albeit functional.

I also thought it was clever to let the player reset/undo the level loop by loop. It certainly would have also been good to have a global reset button to get back to loop one though. Overall, I had fun and this is quite impressive for a first jam. Nicely done!

Interesting interpretation of the theme, I don’t think I’ve seen this one before. I feel it may have been realized better though. Maybe allowing the player to arrange weapons themselves to have a bunch of load outs that change randomly instead of everything being random might have helped. As it is, I felt myself just spamming whatever weapon it gave mindlessly and it somewhat works. I think if the intention is that the player changes tactics based on what weapon is up next in the loop, the movement should definitely be faster and snappier. Otherwise, this was actually a surprisingly polished entry with a good amount of content for a jam game. I did have fun smacking the sharks with a sword :P

Like the others said, the visual aesthetic and sound design are really good! I do wish the mechanic had some more depth to it though. Once I figured out what to do, the limitation was how long I could do it without getting bored which is a bad look for an arcade loop. It definitely needed some kind of ramp up in difficulty at the very least. Some other general remarks I have:

• Sometimes I destroyed an asteroid off-screen but it was hard to tell if I did or not because there is no feedback.
• The controls somehow don’t feel fluid. It might just be a matter of throwing in some tweens and tweaking but it felt a bit stiff.
• The UI for score and health were way to dim so I didn’t see them for a while.

Otherwise I still had a good time but again, it would’ve been neat if there was an increase in difficulty over time.

For your first ever jam, this is a really nice accomplishment! My first entry barely had a game loop, much less a main menu and tutorial section, so good job with that. The platforming elements were pretty standard and played well, so I have nothing to complain there. The looping aspect feels like a last minute addition but I see you’ve heard this already so I won’t go into it more. I will just list some general thoughts about things in no particular order:

• Sound design was mostly good; stuff like the popping sound when bricks disappeared was well placed. I didn’t like the sound of the boxes hitting the spikes though. It was really grating against the otherwise soft background music.

• The timed disappearing blocks should have some indication of how much time they have left. Something like the cracks appearing on the other kinds of blocks to tell you how durable they are. Also, it would be better to use tweens to animate things out of existence instead of just plopping them out.

• Like someone else mentioned, the realistic physics of the box along with the jagged surfaces made it really hard to move it around with precision.

• The jump animation was a nice touch, but it felt a bit off. I think its because if you imagine a blob, typically the sprite compresses first, in anticipation of the launch, and then expands beyond its normal height during flight, and returns to normal (or compresses back on landing). Here it just compressed mid flight, which didn’t match the motion I felt. Still good that you even added it to begin with, so its more of a nitpick.

Other than that, I think it was a great first attempt! I hope this experience gave you the encouragement to keep making more stuff.

Thank you for the kind words and detailed review! I agree with your first two points about the in-game tutorial, but I did not want to throw in a low effort image because it took away from the aesthetic and I did not have time to make an actual tutorial unfortunately. I don’t particularly agree about the loop because it encourages to make tighter ones and run faster between enemies; I feel making it easier would undermine the idea of being deliberate with your actions under the constant threat of enemies. I do concede that the values could use with a bit of tuning though, it was definitely rushed near the end! In any case, I’m happy you enjoyed!

You go fast when you run out of power! It is mentioned in the infographic in the description because we ran out of time to add controls in-game..

I’m a bit reluctant to engage feedback on the fast movement because it is a pretty core part of the game-play feel. I have also seen people on streams getting the hang of it in a couple of minutes (and others who weren’t able to, but this seems to be more of a ‘you either get it or you don’t’ thing). What you say about the enemies crashing into you is definitely a valid point. I think like the others suggested, a larger camera view would be a good solution to that. In any case, thanks for the feedback!

Its mentioned in the description, you get more power by going fast (dragging the mouse farther from the bike)! The game really intends to be a fast-paced experience and I think it either clicks or it doesn’t unfortunately. Thanks for playing regarless!

Its certainly got a bit of a learning curve. I’m glad you were able to get something out of it!

Thanks for the kind words! Glad you enjoyed.