itch.io

I love how you embraced the chaos, this was a great experience. My favorite part was clicking play and having my computer turn into a helicopter (jk). I think this is a fantastic use of the theme and super fun, thanks for making it! :D

I love the idea of the breaking platforms, it adds a unique twist to  traditional platformer. I think a little more direction at the beginning would help a lot but I can understand with the time limit. One piece of feedback I have is to experiment with tuning your visuals, especially for pixel art. That would include making all of the assets on the same scale so that you have consistent pixel scaling, looking into the pixel perfect camera in Unity, and zooming out the camera a little. There's lots of little tricks that help cohesion in pixel art that would be worth looking into. Great work!

Such a clever mechanic! I'm really impressed with how much depth you were able to get out of it in 8 hours. I think you just clean up the movement a little and work on the art assets and this would be a great game to release on itch. Can't wait to see what you do with it! :D

What a fantastic idea! This is the perfect concept for an 8 hour jam, I had a lot of fun messing around with it, I think there's a lot of potential for new levels and mechanics to expand the idea. I think my only feedback I can think of is that some quality of life stuff like making the spring work upside down and maybe drawing a tail behind the last attempt. Overall amazing work! 

I love the art! I'd love to see something fully fleshed out by y'all, it would look amazing! good work getting something submitted! glad y'all joined :D

Great work! I loved the tension between destroying the lamps and saving the moths, I'm assuming avoiding the moths was a goal, I think making that clear during gameplay would be helpful. I also think making the attack a bit more dynamic might make the action feel a bit less stilted but it was perfectly fine for the time constraints. Overall great work! I had fun :D

Thanks for playing! you helped me realize that the Windows build was out of date so a few bugs and mispellings were still present. Just updated it! Glad you enjoyed :D

Thanks for playing! this was fun to watch :D

Thanks for playing!

Incredible all around. Fantastic work!

Wow that's hard as nails XD I got pretty far with a trackpad but after a certain point I had to give up. The polish is fantastic, and it feels great to play. Good work! congrats :D

Great work! this is a neat idea for a strategy game and I had a lot of fun with it. I think the only thing it's lacking right now is a long term goal to shoot for. I could play this for hours if I was building towards something. Keep up the good work! I look forward to seeing updates :D

Fascinating! I had a lot of fun with this, It was intimidating at first but I found it very forgiving to just experiment with which made the experience that much better. My only complaint is that I wasn't able to crash the game no matter what incomprehensible horror I made :P (jk) Great work! I'll keep an eye out for that full release

Thanks! I'll keep an eye out for ya in future jams, feel free to reach out if you want to stay in touch :)

brilliant! also adorable and super fun. It's got everything you could want in a jam game. Bravo! keep up the great work :D

Super neat concept and great execution! This was a ton of fun to just mess around with, well deserved! Thanks for such a great contribution to the jam, keep up the good work :D

means a lot coming from you, your entry blew me away :D  Thanks for playing!  

thanks for the great feedback! I agree, I would love to lean into the wacky-ness if the setting. Thanks for playing!

thanks for playing! If it makes you feel better, level 7 is the last one so you didn’t miss much ;)

Incredible presentation, truly unique idea, and fun gameplay. I've got nothing else to add, if this isn't a winner I don't know what is. Great work :D

probably the best game I've played this jam! bravo, keep it up :D

Thanks for playing! you're too kind :D

Thanks for giving it a good effort! My advice is to work backward from the portal, that can usually give you some insight into where you need to go, thanks for playing!

Your game is pretty mind blowing as well ;) thanks for playin!

Thanks for playing!

That's my favorite thing to hear! Thanks for playing :D

Thanks! your game caught my eye too, we'll see if I get to it in time ;)

Thanks for the feedback! I would love some more camera controls as well, it would definitely help make more advanced levels readable. Thanks for playing!

Rolling up a piece of paper is how I came up with the idea! the theme came out while I was at work so I starting messing around with objects around me, like pieces of paper, until I came up with it  ;D

I think this is one of the top games I've played so far! Y'all really nailed it with the cohesion and concept, this is hilarious XD This is definitely not my type of game but even so, I appreciated the design and had a lot of fun with it. I think the only feedback I have is on the refinement side. It could use a little more flexibility like being able to take back dishes and whatnot. There's also situations where you can end up out of a needed dish with no way to get one soon enough. RNG could trump skill in causing you to lose sometimes. All things considered those are minor balancing details I'm sure y'all have ideas to fix. Great work! I hope y'all go far :D

I'm gonna be honest, I had a fair bit of trouble with this one. It seems like a pretty unique idea and I like the way it's presented, but I couldn't figure out a practical way to solve any of the puzzles apart from just waiting for a prompt to suggest what to do. I was also able to get both of the endings and I still don't really have a very clear idea of what the narrative was about. It seemed intriguing but I think I must've just missed how it all connected. 

I think the biggest thing that got in the way for me was that your design doesn't trust the player. There is a prompt or suggestion for just about everything. As it currently stands that's necessary because the search engine prompts in particular would be impossible to figure out apart from the prompts. So what you have then is relatively unsolvable puzzles that the game doesn't let you try to solve on your own.

so, here's my suggestion: trust the player. Design puzzles that could be solved by simply exploring and engaging with the world, then allow the player to draw conclusions about what to do next. Yes, some players will likely not understand the puzzles, give up, and miss out on the rest of the game. But by handholding the player past all of puzzles and handing most of the answers to them, you've already deprived them of the experience of solving the puzzles. 

All that being said, you're clearly a very talented dev! I hope this comment can be an encouragement to really drill down and understand on a deeper level the design decisions that you're making. I think you have a very interesting experience here and I'd love to see it refined so I can experience and appreciate it fully. You have me on Discord so feel free to reach out whenever and maybe you can help fill in the gaps in my understanding :) Keep making games and I wish you the best of luck! :D

I'm gonna be honest, I had a fair bit of trouble with this one. It seems like a pretty unique idea and I like the way it's presented, but I couldn't figure out a practical way to solve any of the puzzles apart from just waiting for a prompt to suggest what to do. I was also able to get both of the endings and I still don't really have a very clear idea of what the narrative was about. It seemed intriguing but I think I must've just missed how it all connected. 

I think the biggest thing that got in the way for me was that your design doesn't trust the player. There is a prompt or suggestion for just about everything. As it currently stands that's necessary because the search engine prompts in particular would be impossible to figure out apart from the prompts. So what you have then is relatively unsolvable puzzles that the game doesn't let you try to solve on your own.

so, here's my suggestion: trust the player. Design puzzles that could be solved by simply exploring and engaging with the world, then allow the player to draw conclusions about what to do next. Yes, some players will likely not understand the puzzles, give up, and miss out on the rest of the game. But by handholding the player past all of puzzles and handing most of the answers to them, you've already deprived them of the experience of solving the puzzles. 

All that being said, you're clearly a very talented dev! I hope this comment can be an encouragement to really drill down and understand on a deeper level the design decisions that you're making. I think you have a very interesting experience here and I'd love to see it refined so I can experience and appreciate it fully. You have me on Discord so feel free to reach out whenever and maybe you can help fill in the gaps in my understanding :) Keep making games and I wish you the best of luck! :D

This was a lot of fun to play! the controls feel good and the movement mechanic is really neat once you get the hang of it. I was pretty unsure of the looping mechanic until I realized once you learn more in higher up levels you can use the new knowledge to redo the early levels faster. That's a really fantastic way to tie the theme to the mechanic in a meaningful way

. Unfortunately I'm not too good and I kept getting stuck in the same place unsure of how to progress so I gave up, but that didn't effect my enjoyment, just made me sad I don't get to see the top. Resetting was a bit frustrating after a little while, I don't really know how that could be solved though. perhaps checkpoints but I worry that would interfere with the main loop mechanic. 

All in all this game was a blast, fun but a bit too challenging for me. I think this is perfect for a speedrunner audience so you nailed it. Great work, thanks for making this :D

This is a super creative idea! one of the most creative I've seen so far. This was executed really well, the  whole experience was quite cohesive. I only have a few notes that are mostly nitpicks. I think there's room for some good user experience improvement, specifically the option of restarting only the current color, not the whole level. A majority of the time I was stuck in need of a restart, it would've been fine with just restarting the color I was on. I was also super impressed with how many levels y'all were able to design, I got pretty far but eventually I ran out of time so I wasn't able to finish them all. If I had known how many levels were left that might have helped me push through to the end. Aside from those few small nitpiks this is a fantastic game! I had fun with it. Keep up the good work, it's cool to see a husband and wife duo, y'all rock! 

This is a solid first entry! you should be very proud. I think my main advice would be to do a deep dive into game design and after the jam really analyze your game and ask yourself what the design encourages. Some questions I think would be helpful to ask yourself are these:

• Why is the player playing? 
  • what motive do they have to progress? 
  • what are the trying to achieve and why?
• How does engaging with my core mechanics further the player's goals?
  • is there a clear link between the mechanics and progressing?
  • is engaging with the mechanics the most efficient way to progress?

These core questions will help you solidify for yourself the core of your game. I bring up these questions because as a player I felt there was a bit of a disconnect between the mechanics and the goals of the game. At the start I wasn't sure what the goal of the game was (later I discovered the portals on accident). I think this goal of finding a portal and leaving is really my main issue with my experience. 

Essentially what you've created here is a scenario  with fun mechanics where you power up your character again and again all for the purpose of leaving the powerups and fun mechanics behind. If your game is fun, leaving the game is a punishment, not a reward! Additionally the portals discourage engaging with your fun mechanics because it encourages the player to spend more time walking around searching for portals and more money on the portal upgrade. 

I hope this makes sense and doesn't sound too harsh or nitpicky, I'm saying all this because I see a lot of potential with your mechanics and I think you've done a great job! I genuinely had a great time when I started ignoring the portals and gave myself the goal of powering up as much as possible. I think a simple change of the goal to better tether the mechanics and the goal would take this game up a couple notches. This is a great entry! Thanks for making it and best of luck on your future jams and games!

This is a clever little word game, once I figured out what was going on it was pretty fun! I don't really have any expertise in word games so I'll only go into detail on this one thought:

The only thing that came to mind was that the score doesn't feel like much of a motivation because It's just too much of a black box to know what a "good" score really is. I think a frame of reference to compare your score to would go a long way to making the accomplishment felt. Something like an algorithm that calculates the theoretical max score based on the given letters. The alternative would be to make the levels more puzzle-y handcrafted levels that give the player clear objective markers of success. Either way, a score alone isn't enough to reward the player, they also need a context to frame it in. 

That's all I have for feedback, this was a lovely little word game and I wish you all the best in the jam! Keep making games and have fun!

This was such a nice surprise! I wasn't expecting a top down shooter-esque game to become a narrative about the importance of effort and trials, that was really special! I think I especially needed to play this as someone who can get comfortable in my style and rarely branch out in what I try out. Thanks for making this! I wanted to the main non-narrative mechanic I really appreciated. I loved when the boomerang did more damage on return, that was a fantastic mechanic that encouraged thoughtful gameplay.  

Some quick feedback on what refinements I think you could make. I think the level of polish is excellent, the game is very juicy, just be careful not to swing too far in that direction. I think the main thing that stuck out was the screenshake, it was a bit much as a viewer. The other thing I would improve is the information telegraphed by the enemies. Because their art is so simple, just a sprite flipping, it's super hard to read their attacks leading to frustration and I eventually gave up trying to dodge attack, opting to just take the hit and kill them faster. If ignoring an enemy attack is easier than actively engaging with it, it needs some tweaking. That's all the feedback I have! keep refining all the little things and you've got the start to a great personal style! One of the most creative entries I've played, keep up the great work and keep making games!

thanks! I’ll give it another go when I get home from work :)

Thanks for playing Zach! Best of luck to jamadoo, y'all rock ;)

Interesting idea but the looping doesn't add anything to the game from what I can see, it only impedes progress. Good work on to controls though I feel like the dash is really awesome to use. Good job getting a submission in! I wish you luck in future jams :D