CalmR - Rock Skipping Mindfulness by Eli Delventhal 2021-10-21T19:54:35Z
I am equal parts amazed and questioning what I just played It was unironically difficult and fun. Incredible writing.
never have I been calmer
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Sam Gorman
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | 👥 | On Ivy Boulevard | jam | 104 | 4.03 | 3.62 | 3.82 | 3.40 | 4.23 | 4.29 | 3.37 | 4.33 |
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | 👥 | Scares on Schedule | jam | 384 | 3.62 | 3.50 | 3.85 | 2.74 | 3.99 | 4.07 | 3.49 | 3.73 |
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | 👥 | Careless Couriers | jam | 1056 | 3.04 | 2.74 | 3.11 | 3.76 | 3.42 | 3.44 | 2.72 | 3.02 |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | A Gift in Good Faith | jam | 1079 | 3.26 | 3.08 | 2.97 | 2.66 | 3.27 | 3.46 | 3.26 |
I am equal parts amazed and questioning what I just played It was unironically difficult and fun. Incredible writing.
never have I been calmer
It ran fine for me!
Awesome job. The visuals are great and the design is solid. I like the variety of different tiles.
I think it could benefit from tighter controls ... it felt very sluggish and slippery, and I felt myself frustrated that I couldn't really change direction mid-air. I do like the momentum concept going on though.
Nice work!
Really moody and ethereal! Great art and music, and I loved swinging the light around.
Really incredible physics for 48 hrs! I also enjoyed the art, although it could have been supported by some environment art on the shores.
While this is a very impressive tech demo, I think it could use a bit of work as a game. The waves concept is strong, but doesn't amount to much, and the boat moves so slowly that the game's pace is killed - especially since there isn't a lot of gameplay. More dramatic weather, obstacles, and a faster boat could make this a really good post-jam release!
Awesome job!
Liked the concept and the art and music (very retro!) Did find it a little frustrating to play, although I know that was the point. Only three hits was a bit punishing, and the heat gauge filled up very quickly. With a bit of balancing, though, and a few more wave types, this could be an excellent arcade shooter! Great job!
Great art and concept! I had some trouble figuring out how to play and what the wave symbols meant, and still don't really understand. I think you should add an explanation to the itch or LD page.
@willoxs Sorry you had trouble with the controls! I had no idea about the QWERTZ layout. We could definitely add a way to swap out keyboard controls in a post-jam version. We picked arrow keys and X/Z as they are common keybinds for 2D games on keyboard - WASD is most often used for 3D - but you are right that it would be a good idea to accomodate those who would prefer a different control scheme.
A Gift in Good Faith also has controller support if you're interested. Controls are joystick to move, A to interact or place a flare, and X to push the Minotaur away.
Thanks so much for playing and rating! :)
Thanks for playing @juniora! We could definitely add a skip button in a post-jam update.
Beautiful in more ways than one. Love the concept, but I think even more could be done with the cards and emotions idea - maybe even a whole card game? Would love to see where you take this in the future!
Absolutely incredible. The dialogue was very well-written, intelligent, and funny, and I loved the concept of resolving chords. The minigames reminded me of Among Us a little bit. Overall amazing sound design.
||tbh I picked to download the AI because I thought it would turn evil or something but I liked the ending a lot! Now I want to know what happens if you reboot||
The game is gorgeous, especially impressed with the shader effects on the water. Aiming took some getting used to, but I eventually got the hang of it. I wish there was a little more depth to the gameplay, and that more ships were active at any given time. Nice work!
Really nice progression, and the art is very nice. I found the physics in minigame #3 a little awkward, but other than that they all played well and together created a fun chaotic atmosphere. For post-jam, this would work even better with a bunch of mini-games chosen at random, or maybe a co-op party element? Nice job!
I'm shocked this doesn't have more ratings - an amazing amount of polish for a jam game! The mechanics are solid, the world is really relaxing, and I could see myself playing this for a while. My only suggestions would be to try to simplify the control scheme a bit - it was good, but a lot of buttons - and maybe make wind currents easier to distinguish.
Brilliant work by all!
Really cute artstyle! And I think this concept has potential for something really interesting. Unfortunately talking to people didn't seem to change anything - I could always answer correctly at the end. Unless the idea is that I myself would forget, not the character, so who knows ;)
One thing you might want to fix is the collision. I think you were trying to limit the player to sidewalks (which I think restricts movement too much) but also it just felt really buggy in general.
Great work overall!
@ahistyap Oh, that's cool! I played it multiple times but I didn't notice that, somehow. It might be cool if you made the message something difficult to remember, or a puzzle of some kind.
Top tier entry! The graphics are amazing and very medieval - I think the first isometric game I've seen. It took me a minute to get that what you were delivering changed your weapon, and then the gameplay clicked for me. I love the open world too, it's massive for a game jam.
My only critique is that it felt too easy? I could just mow down most groups of enemies, or just walk through them. I felt like I survived way longer than I should. And I think the font was a bit too hard to read. But those are nitpicks, great job!
Very polished for a game jam! And very charming retro vibe overall. I wish the theme was incorporated more, though, and I feel the game could use some more depth mechanically.
Also, a few QOL suggestions: I'd love to be able to jump on ladders, and I ended up cheesing the last level by killing everything from the ladders xD
Well done overall!
This was really cute, I love the little world you made! Very detailed environment for a game jam. I feel the gameplay could use some more depth - all you really do is drop packages, and the birds don't present much of a threat. And the cinematic camera, while cool, swung around in some weird ways which made it hard to aim. Overall, very unique entry - I like it.
This needs more ratings! Really cool graphics and excellent sound design, though I wish there were music/a soundscape. I also really like the gameplay concept.
The game is very hard, though (ironically for many of the same reasons mine is). Landing took a while to learn off the bat, and since it takes so long to reverse momentum, and you die at the slightest touch, I could never get more than a delivery or two. This could really shine with some balancing!
I like the minimilist aesthetic a lot, and particularly the explosion effect. Cool premise, too. I do think that while they're supposed to be loose-feeling, the controls could use some tightening up, as it's a bit frustrating currently. I also wish you died instantly when you went off screen, as it seemed the ship went for a while before dying. Overall, nice game!
I really like this. It's simple and relaxing - you achieved exactly what you wanted with this game. It's not trying to be anything crazy, and I respect that.
If I had one critique, I don't think it even needs the health and hazards. Just let the other ships wander to add life to the ocean.
Love how the battles are integrated into exploration! They're really fun, and the start of the show here. I wonder if there's some way you could make the exploration/delivery gameplay more interesting to go with those battles.
Nice job!
The chaotic energy is strong, love it! I agree with others that the truck kept getting stuck, requiring a reset - two options here might be making a way to respawn the truck without losing everything, or just making everything destructible. Nice work!
Love the music and creative artstyle! The lighting was cool too. I found the combat a little one-note and spammy, especially with the massive hoards of enemies coming after me. I also wish objects and tents spawned more frequently, and further away from the campfire. Overall, nice entry!
BTW, late in the game the music stopped playing for me, and things stopped spawning. Might be a bug :)
@wolfier Thanks for the feedback! The goal of the game is not to stop moving - look to the sparks by your wheels to tell your direction. If you desperately need to stop, you can spin out by turning a bunch. But we'll keep this in mind for a post-jam build.
@svenerik Glad you liked the graphics! We were going to add sound effects,, but I ran out of time, so it was that or a title screen song :( Feel free to check out the post jam, we’ll be balancing and adding sound!
@stellarr2 We'll be trying to make it a bit easier to play after the jam, as a lot of people have had your issue. In the meantime, it gets a lot easier if you imagine turning the steering wheel of a car - it's all from the player's perspective, if that makes sense.
@duke-ua That's a good point! We'll add a better indication of direction post-jam.
@nicso Good idea - we might try to add diagonal sprites post-jam! No promises though; I am bad at drawing diagonally, which is why I didn't include them in the first place.
@PatateNouille Thanks for the in-depth feedback! We plan to do a few things to make the game easier post-jam, including:
- lessening the penalty for getting hit - making it clearer which direction you’re moving - (potentially) shrinking the gui to increase visibility
It’s possible we might have to remove package colours, but I hope to avoid that if we can.
@iqoribou We're probably going to change the controls post-jam to make them easier. If it helps for now, A and D turn you from the player's perspective, so just pressing probably won't do much. Thanks for playing!
@ahistyap Those are some good suggestions!
@chuckiee Thank you for the suggestions - I’ll change the control page now.
@firespike33 Per your last note, the hitboxes are just too small for the people.
Basically what happened is we ran out of time for playtesting... I was doing art and music basically right up until the end of submission hour. We'll be fixing it up to make the game more playable post-jam, and we'd appreciate anyone giving it another try! Thanks for playing regardless.
@Cinterre We'll be revamping the health system post-jam, and plan to shrink the penalty for getting hit. And I like your suggestion about finding people in the city!
@remco Thanks for the in-depth feedback! We definitely plan on lessening the punishment for hitting walls, to allow you to figure out the controls. We also plan on adding an arrow to show where you’re facing. Your point about the stun time is a good one, we’ll see what we can do about that.
I can’t speak on differences between versions, although I can’t imagine the handling would change. Anyway, I’m glad you liked the music!
Really cool graphics and world, I'm always impressed when people create a whole environment during the game jam. I did think the controls were quite awkward - everything, including the camera, moved a little too fast, and I was crashing into everything. I also felt there just wasn't much to the missions. But this is one I might come back to post-jam!
I'm really impressed, this is great. The graphics are top notch, and the music and vibe are so chill. I'm also very impressed by the random generation, it felt varied every time. My one critique would be to be more forgiving on collisions - sometimes cars would just scrape me but I'd still take a full hit. I also think the drifting was a little too fast. But overall, amazing work on this!
I like how immediately I was able to understand the mechanics. Everything felt snappy and responsive, and the level design was solid, but that intuitiveness really stuck out to me. I think the game could use another mechanic to add depth, might allow for more interesting levels. Nice work!
I love the art (those comics were so cute!) And it's nice to see a strategy game, I haven't seen a lot of that so far. I agree with other commenters that the game needs a tutorial, and I would also suggest labeling the buttons - 1, 2, 3, and 4 don't immediately say what they control, and the order is weird (in level 2, for instance, only buttons 2 and 4 are used). Even just colouring them would help.
Overall, great work!
I really enjoy the art (the big snail sprites are so cute) and the mechanics are nice and simple to understand. I think a great puzzle game could be made out of this, and it feels like it could work well on a touch screen.
I know you can skip it, but I found the intro really long and I think you could shorten it. Speed up the text, maybe edit down the exposition, and get to the tutorial quicker. It was really polished, but the intro took longer than the entire game, so shortening it might improve the experience!
Really fun just to play around with, and I loved the campy cutscene. I found it a bit frustrating in the later levels, though. Good job!
Nice and clean, I like it! Reminds me of Papers Please. I really loved all the letters flooding in at the end, for a moment I thought I had to get all of them :O
The scoring seems really tough though, I felt like I was getting through a lot of letters but I still got one star. Maybe I'm just bad though!
Really neat concept and a cool atmosphere. I agree with others that it has Papers Please vibes. I do wish the pigeons that appear on subsequent days had their destinations listed, and I found the mechanics for packing tubes a bit frustrating - they all have to be stacked, and have to be on the scale. I also think you should be able to get tubes more quickly. But those are just nitpicks, the game is great!
I really like the art, it's very bright and cheerful. And there's a lot of character, especially in the voice clips. I did find the combat a little basic though, maybe another move would help.
In terms of bugs: once I killed all the enemies, they just stopped spawning and I was stuck in the arena. Not sure if something was supposed to happen there? Anyway, nice job!
What a lovely little game! Graphics and music were very charming, as were the mechanics. I like how simple they were, and yet there's a lot of depth. I wish the game were a little more about puzzle solving than timing and movement, and I found a few gaps a bit tight for the character's speed towards the end - but overall a very fun experience, congrats!
Love the art so much. The environment is so mysterious - and it almost looks toy-like. I do think the gameplay could use some improvement - the ship moves far too slow, and the feeding seems like trial and error without the recipes, since the hints give multiple possibilities for each monster. Great job!
Really bright and cheerful art and music! And the gameplay was solid, I especially appreciated the "steady claw" button. I think the game could possibly do with a bit more depth, but it's really fun as it is. As for suggestions, I think the packages should have a bit of weight to them - the claw bounced around a lot, even when carrying something.
FYI - I encountered a minor bug where the claw got stuck offscreen after delivering a package.
Great atmosphere in this, and I like the structure of the game. It's always satisfying in games to slowly get more tools that let you make more and more progress - it gives the player lots of little wins. The mysterious shopkeeper serving to give you upgrades in between runs gave the game a great character. Nice job with the random generation also, it feels very natural.
I did find the game a bit repetitive, and I lost interest after a while. That's obviously natural for this type of game, but even when I got new upgrades and made it deeper, I never felt like the gameplay was evolving. The second floor was the same as the first, for example. You weave around the same types of walls and spikes over and over, and it doesn't get any harder or more interesting as you go. Some more excitement to the actual underwater gameplay, and some more variance in the level design, could help with this. It also didn't help that treasure is rare and doesn't give you a lot of money, so it takes forever to even be able to make it deeper.
Overall, great work! There's the bones of a really addictive game here - it just needs some changes to keep the player engaged and wanting to play more.
Super impressive for one person! Very well-developed combat system, solid 3d graphics, and generally something I might come back to later (which isn't something I say about a lot of game jam games!). Also a rare 3D jam game that actually runs on my laptop.
I really like your combat mechanics. They're simple but effective, and I enjoyed the way different mechanics interlinked and encouraged certain playstyles - for example, the combo system discouraging spamming, parrying allowing for both more attack capabilities and healing, and the vanishing healing crystal encouraging moving around the space. I gave it two attempts and almost beat Day 3 - it gets a lot harder when those larger enemies start appearing!
In terms of critique, mainly, I think you could tighten the gameplay more. The game could do with a bit more juice - not just for game feel, but for responsiveness. The player should really feel when they or the enemy land an attack, or when things like parrying/healing are successful (parrying can be super satisfying in games, but here I never nailed the timing). That could include things like more impactful SFX, bigger/snappier animations, screen effects, stuff like that. I would also have appreciated a target button to lock the camera onto enemies - I was playing on controller, and I found myself wheeling my camera around more than actually fighting.
Overall, one of my favourites so far! Super addictive.
Good job making some pretty fun physics and movement within 48 hours! I liked the variety of environments you created, and there was a good sense of momentum. Super fun to fly through the air.
Throughout the game, I did find it tricky to click small targets when moving really fast, which you have to do often. It was very precise timing. I think you could add some leniency there - maybe you lock on to targets if your cursor is within a certain range or something. It was also frustrating when the game's physics acted up and I lost all my momentum from a bad angle or something. There's not much you can do at that point but die, especially since your range with the hook is not very long.
I also thought the level design was a bit lacking. The canyon area had a great sense of height but not much to do except click wooden bars, and when the buckets came in, the level just became a bunch of buckets in the air. (The buckets were also unpredictable since they have their own rope physics on top of your own. Also, the dark level made it even more annoying to click the small targets, because I couldn't see them at all.)
Overall, this is a great foundation. I think it could be improved a lot through some more interesting levels and some more leniency with the controls. Good work!
This is a really polished experience, and I enjoyed the little additions to traditional Minesweeper like the items and multiple floors. I also loved the worldbuilding from the walkie-talkie!
I do wish the game was a little more than just a good Minesweeper, though. It could use something to make it stand out as its own original game.
Really cute game! I love the variety of sea creatures you drew, the ocean feels super alive.
I personally found the game a bit short and easy - it could do with some more threatening hazards near the end! I did die once at the beginning, but it was only because I missed the small light meter at the top - I assumed the light effect around the player/screen would dim or flicker over time. I think that might make the mechanic feel more integrated into the world, and it would make it feel more dangerous descending into the darkness.
Really interesting and atmospheric game! There's a great element of strategy managing each character's health and energy, and the game has a great moody, isolating vibe. It felt great delving a little deeper each time. I also got the impression there were multiple possible paths to the end, because I didn't even visit all the rooms.
I think you could add some more levels of gameplay onto the base strategy, though. The battles, for example, were nothing but health checks where you clicked in a menu repeatedly. You could also do a lot more with the adventure game-styled items like the grappling hook - that was the standout moment for me.
Super fun interpretation of "depth"! I've seen a few depth-of-field games but yours is definitely the coolest. I like the puzzly take on the concept and the way you explore and rethink the environment to solve each picture. The game could definitely use some more depth in the camera mechanic and a more fleshed out environment, but this is pretty good for one person!
I have to admit I only managed to solve the first apple. The other three I found seemed to have obvious solutions to me (looking through that hole in the wall, for example) but I couldn't figure out anywhere to position my character to accomplish them. I did find some spots that made the apples *look* in focus, but the game didn't count it. It might help if the game gave you some more detailed feedback after a failed shot (too far away, too close, etc.), because the depth-of-field effect itself is pretty hard to judge visually.
Overall, a fun little puzzler!
I love how chaotic this gets when you have lots of dwarves running around super fast. It's fun just to watch them go!
I did think the gameplay was a little bland. There's not a lot to do other than click on dwarves, watch them mine resources you can use to make them mine faster, repeat. I like the decision between using drills to mine resources vs. dig to new layers, but there's not much reason to do the former unless you're really lacking in resources, which is rare. In general there's just not a lot of strategy at the moment.
The interface is also a little frustrating - the maps are huge with no landmarks, and it takes ages to scroll around them. I know you can use the menu to hop between dwarves, but that's pretty disorienting. It's also kind of annoying having to move all your dwarves down into the next layer every time.
Overall, great work. The dwarves are super charming and it's great fun to watch them work. Gameplay-wise, there are the bones of something fun and strategic here, but I think it needs some more depth to really shine.
This is a really cute little game - especially since it's already vertically oriented, I could see it working really well on mobile. I love the art style as well: it's a cool blend of 2D and 3D that looks stylish and clean, and there's a lot of character with the way the flower grows, the layers underground, and the silly things you use to water the plant. The music is super bluesy too!
Gameplay-wise, I felt like something was missing here. There's not really a lot to do in the game. When you start it feels like it could either be a strategy game about managing your flower, or maybe a chaotic Overcooked-style experience, but it never really evolves into anything. It can get frantic when you're running out of time for sure (and I liked the sound & visuals that enhanced that feeling!), but the actual things I was doing were a little bland, and nothing changed as I got further.
The game could also do better at giving the player information. The flower changes its mind on a whim, and there's no real pattern to how long it will stay on one item. This means you can't strategize, and the gameplay is all guesses. (This isn't necessarily bad - it could make for some fun risk-taking with some more engaging gameplay.) More importantly, it's not clear how much watering is required to reach the bottom - at a certain point the roots vanish off the bottom of the screen and you no longer have any sort of meter. I would make sure you can always see how far is left!
Overall, this is a really charming game with a simple but promising gameplay loop. I think you just need to add a little more depth as the game progresses! That would make it a lot more replayable.
So, this game is absolutely beautiful. The hand-drawn/painted art is lush and vibrant, the music is epic, and the way the background and music evolve as you go down is really nuanced and especially impressive for a game jam. The backgrounds were very painterly and had some great depth, and there were I think four whole songs which I barely heard 30 seconds of each! It was varied, but all blended well, and it really places you in the world of the game. I also loved all the little details you threw in - the clouds parting was awesome, and that boss fight!!!
I do think the gameplay was maybe a little basic. When you strip away all the wrapping, it's just avoiding obstacles with your cursor - kind of like a bullet hell with fewer bullets, I guess. It's also pretty unforgiving. Just two hits, with a pretty big hitbox, is tough, but it does add some playtime for sure. One thing I did like was the dash move - it's a cool trade-off between easier gameplay and better times, and adds a lot of replay value. I managed to get ~1:50 my first completion, but I may try it again another time and try to dash a little more. On the subject of controls, while the boss was a great moment with cool attacks, I don't think the spamming to shoot was necessary. It locks good times behind fast clicking ability, and I didn't even realize I could do it at first. I think the boss would work great just with a timer on it.
Overall, this is a really complete experience with some incredible work from all the artists and musicians involved. With a little more depth to the gameplay to match those layered aesthetics, I think it could be even better!
What a weird game - in a good way. Impressive work creating the whole submarine environment! It looks great and super stylized - feels like something from a professional game. The atmosphere you created was also really well-done. The strangeness of the characters and submarine, as well as the sound design, made me feel uneasy even though nothing frightening ever happened. It felt like something was wrong, but I didn't know what.
In terms of gameplay, I liked the puzzles that were there, but I found myself wanting more. The intro puzzle and detail-rich environment had me expecting more in-depth escape room-esque puzzles that never came. Instead I mostly just followed waypoints which was pretty unsatisfying. The puzzles are the core of the game, and they make you feel like you really are in the submarine figuring things out - I think you should commit to making some more weighty puzzles!
I also found the narrative a bit unsatisfying. The mystery of all these strange characters contradicting each other was built up well, especially with how all of them refused to tell me what was really going on. At the end, though, the TV did tell me what was going on, and it was kind of a let-down. Something vague about humanity's future without any real narrative stakes. I liked what followed with choosing who to trust, but it would have been nice to be able to go around and talk to people again to figure that out. (That would've been a great time for a larger-scale puzzle like I mentioned earlier!) My choice had no real impact anyway, because as soon as I entered the escape pod, the game just cut to an end screen. Satan didn't even say anything after I chose him! I did like the story, but in my opinion it was a lot of cool setup without much payoff.
Overall, this is a delightfully weird game with a very skillful setting and atmosphere, and very professional for just one weekend. Great work! I think with some more depth to the puzzles and a proper conclusion to the story (even if it is an open ending), you could fully take advantage of all that great world-building.
@seiko Makes sense! It’s good to design with a wide audience in mind. Maybe I just have a very particular taste in puzzles.
Really colourful and expressive character art! I love the aesthetic. This game has a lovely charm in general. The idea of a sequel to a previous game jam game is super unique, but since I haven't played that previous game I felt like I was missing some context. (Are they shrimp or people?)
I like the frantic gameplay too, but I think it could do with a bit more depth. It's definitely challenging, but there could be something more engaging for the player to do than just moving from circle to circle. I might also make the movement a little less stop-and-start - it took forever to get anywhere!
Great use of audio and dialogue to create an atmosphere. I like how it begins looking like a standard strategy game but becomes more sinister as you go deeper. It adds some tension and stakes to a type of game that often lacks those things.
I found the gameplay pretty lacking though. There's no challenge or strategy at all, and there's not even any way to know where the treasures you're looking for are, so the gameplay just consists of clicking around randomly until the plot progresses. On top of that, the way the graphics worked as you dug was incredibly confusing. There were so many layers and weird tiles stacked on top of each other that I had no idea what I was looking at. As the player, I felt like I had no real way to engage with the game, and I wasn't getting clear visual feedback to know what I was doing anyway. It doesn't need to be hard or anything, but I think the game needs *some* depth to the gameplay.
I haven't played the post-jam version, so it's possible you've addressed some of this already. I can see from the description that you added some strategy around buying workers which is great, but I think it's the digging itself which is most in need of improvement.
Overall, I really do like the atmosphere and progression in this game. I just think it needs a revamp to add some substance to the gameplay, and some better visual clarity to inform that gameplay, so the player stays invested in finishing the story.
@ditam Believe me - I’ve done a few jam games with lots of vibes and no gameplay. I don’t think I’ve ever nailed both of those at.l once, and I don’t even work solo. Your intention with the sinister subversion still came through really well, so you’re already on a good track!
I expected this game to just be a tile-based strategy game, but the adventure game elements were really neat. I enjoyed exploring the question mark tiles to find new tidbits, and I wish I could explore more and solve some of the mysteries of this underground robot world!
I think the strategy gameplay itself could use some fleshing out. Combat was just a number check, and the energy for movement wasn't that engaging - item cases rarely gave you back your energy, so the best strategy was just beelining for the exit. My first run I ran out of energy on level 3, but for whatever reason I could still move for several turns before the game killed me. Then my second run I found an event tile that gave me so much energy I didn't have to worry anymore. I might rethink the energy & health economy and add some more layers of strategy to managing them - or maybe some more interesting things to find in the environment.
Overall, very unique take on this genre!
Really ambitious scope for a game jam - the gameplay and visuals changing along with the narrative was something you don't see often in this little time.
I found the game a little slow sometimes. There were a lot of long pauses where not much gameplay or story was happening. The rhythm minigames also felt off - they seemed to either get de-synced over time or just be timed weirdly, because in order to pass I had to press *really* late on a lot of the notes.
Alright - I made it through a few levels but I had to stop because I was getting a headache...
There's a lot I like here. The puzzle-chamber structure reminds me a lot of something like Portal. There are some pretty neat puzzles, but the best are those that use the focus mechanic which sets this game apart - for example, one early puzzle I liked was having to adjust your focus as you walked across a bridge to keep it solid. The visuals of the puzzle chambers are also pretty neat!
The depth of field system, to me, made the game extremely frustrating to play. So much of the game involved just scrolling back and forth to see things, which isn't really a puzzle. Some puzzles didn't even use the focus mechanic, and those that did (like the laser bridge I mentioned earlier) don't typically use the visual aspect of it. This means the game world is impossible to see properly for little gameplay reason, and you end up struggling to even find anything to read or interact with. This was especially tedious because the amount of world you can have in focus is extremely small (this can even make the non-visual gameplay annoying to line up). It just feels like busywork rather than puzzling. On top of the gameplay frustration from the blurriness, it's also just exhausting on the eyes trying to focus on a tiny sliver of world which is constantly scrolling back and forth. Solving puzzles is hard enough without a headache!
Overall - I think you guys have some real potential with your puzzle designs. There was some clever stuff going on! The depth-of-field mechanic just needs to be re-designed with a focus on player experience, gameplay, and clarity. The blurriness aspect of it either needs to be toned down or removed entirely, to be honest (most of your puzzles would work just as well if the DOF was just a box on the ground). With the visual aspect improved, players could propely focus on your puzzles!
I like the vibes of this game a lot - the random names and little dialogue messages add a lot of character to the ants, and the music and pixel art is super fun. I also like the game concept quite a lot. It seems like there's some great strategy involved in balancing expanding your colony and blocking the anteater, and also some opportunity for expansion post-jam (more depth to building a colony, more resources to find, stuff like that).
Unfortunately the game just didn't work very well for me. Certain mechanics, like how blockades and rooms worked, or when I could and couldn't spawn ants, weren't clearly explained, so I was pretty confused about how to play. Things also kept getting stuck - the tongue frequently kind of broke apart into bits or stalled in the middle of a tunnel, which often completely removed any danger from the game. Also, at a certain point in each of my attempts, all the ants would stop and become mostly unclickable. If I rarely did manage to select one, none of the options did anything. So no matter what I did, I could never play the game as intended for long.
It's a shame because I really like the design! If you manage to get some of those aspects of the game fixed up, I'd love to play a post-jam version and give it a proper go.
First off, I love the concept, and the visual design of your world is so unique and atmospheric! I'm also generally a sucker for collectathons, and this seemed like a cool spin on it.
Unfortunately I found the gameplay a little frustrating. You move really slowly and there's not much to do on the way to to the treasures, other than fend off the dragons which ended up just kind of being nuisances. I also found the balloon really awkward to maneuver, and it took me a solid minute to get close enough to one of the treasures to pick it up. (This was made more annoying by the camera, which kept drifting upwards no matter where I moved my mouse.)
Overall, I think with some tighter controls and more engaging gameplay, this concept could really shine.
This is a really fun collection of homages, and the mysterious atmosphere it was wrapped up in was a very unique take on it. Loved the simple but moody art, and the way you incorporated the music of each game into the ambient background.
I originally expected this game, based on the atmosphere, to be more of a puzzle experience about finding secrets or shortcuts in this familiar level, but I liked the direction you took it as well. It works well as a fun yet mysterious little game, but I can also see potential for a larger adventure here as well (maybe with some exploration between these different game levels - I can imagine having to take a bomb from the Zelda room and using it in a Mario level, for example.)
Great work!
I love the stylish graphics and frantic music. It's chaotic, but you've done a good job using colours and SFX to communicate each aspect of the game to the player. It's never confusing *why* you're failing, which is good.
I don't mind having lots of things to pay attention to - that's the point of the game, after all! I think the only part I found frustrating was navigating the drill on the map. It turned really slowly and you were completely at the mercy of the random generation. I ended up dying because I was running low on oxygen and the game just wouldn't generate any, which was a little annoying. When you already have ten things to do at once, there's no time to stand there and wait for the game to give you what you need. The slow turning also means you can't react to obstacles last-minute. This could apply somewhat to other tasks as well. Randomness is okay, but make sure it never screws the player over!
Overall, super fun game - I can see it becoming addictive for sure.
@lisek-gagatek I think I did miss that button somehow! I didn’t even know the fires were determined by things you did in the game. Maybe I’ll give it another go with that in mind. Other than that your balance was honestly pretty well tuned for a game jam.
@plidomo Glad you liked the presentation! FYI, you can just hold on the plates to make them float... hopefully that helps your sore hand.
@koolruz Thanks for all the feedback! We're hoping to make some balance changes in a post-jam update, so all advice is welcome.
@skosnowich Thanks for the feedback! I think that sound you're confused about is the alert when a new person enters the map. I was going to add a visual indicator but ran out of time, so it might sound like it's just playing randomly.
@edison-boerke Thanks!
@Empyreans Thanks for playing! We've heard a lot of confusion around how to work some of the minigames, so intuitiveness/readability are definitely going to be a focus post-jam.
The switch into the eldritch aesthetic was so cool! Such a great moment, especially with the music switch-up as well. I don't know if there are more stages below - I'd have to give it a few more tries.
I do think the gameplay could maybe do with a bit more fleshing out, especially as you get deeper. I also felt like I couldn't really plan ahead, especially since doing well means you have no space to see ahead of you (at one point my roots got so far ahead of the screen I could only guess what was going on!).
Overall, really stylish entry!
What a fun and cute take on a dungeon crawler. It's a great juxtaposition with the kinds of mechanics you'd typically expect (even the fireball was for cleaning!). I also like the relationship between the three cleaning mechanics and how they feed into each other.
I did find the gameplay itself a little repetitive. I initially planned to clean everything, but it quickly became tedious and I just beelined for the end. The amount of time it takes to cart each bag of trash over to the garbage can, for example, or the Sisyphean task of mopping up after your own slippery footsteps, got boring pretty fast. It's not challenging, but it takes a lot of time. I might try either adding something else to engage/challenge the player, or making these tasks themselves a little more interesting to do.
Overall, great work! It's an adorable game.
It's always fun to see a 3D platformer in a game jam, and I liked that you really experimented with the format! It took me a minute to fully understand the gameplay loop, but once I got it, I found it really neat. You scout ahead to find the platforms and traps first, then when you're confident, you can take your totem to the next altar. I liked the ambience a lot too, and the exploration/multiple endings aspect was interesting.
I found the platforming itself a little frustrating. Even with a torch, you can barely see the next platform, let alone traps. Sometimes when there's a bigger drop, you can't see where you're going at all. The game is also pretty unforgiving - one single fall or trap kills you instantly, and it can feel cheap when you couldn't even see it coming. In general I felt like I was dying a lot not because of tricky level design, but because the game was working against me.
There are also a few technical things you might want to iron out. Picking up and throwing objects is in general a little janky - the game is third person, so it's not clear where you have to click to pick things up, and the physics of throwing and holding things seem a little temperamental. Respawning also seems to be glitched - sometimes it will kill me several times in quick succession when I respawn, or do some weird stuff with held items. Also, when you die for real and restart the game, you seem to no longer be able to pick up items? I had to reopen the game every time which was kind of annoying.
Overall, really unique take on this genre!
Amazing world-building and aesthetics! Your underwater world was so mysterious and lush with detail. I loved the little touches like the big eye-fish or the sea serpent in the background. I managed to find all the shells and gems after some work, although I was kind of hoping for some sort of reward... like maybe that big mysterious vault opening?
Anyway, if I could make any suggestions, I think the actual gameplay could do with some more interest. Other than swimming around and collecting gems there wasn't a lot to do. The traversal could also do with some cleaning up. The heavy fog did add to the atmosphere, but I could see so little in front of me and there were so few landmarks that I ended up wandering in circles for ages trying to find the last few gems. The rope also kept getting stuck inside geometry and ending up strung across the entire map, which was annoying when trying to rewind back to base.
Overall, really impressive work!
Always impressive to see procedurally-generated levels in a game jam, good work!
I agree that the gameplay was a little lacking. You die really quickly if you do get hit, but since there's unlimited ammo and the enemies are slow, that isn't likely to happen. It's great that you're planning to add more abilities and spells post-jam, but more spells aren't super useful if there's nothing to use them on. If I were you, I would focus on increasing the challenge and adding more things for the player to do. More complex/aggressive enemy types, maybe some navigation elements or something else to do in the map itself... stuff like that. Right now there's not much to do but click on enemies, and I don't know what the materials I was collecting were doing either (unlocking spells maybe?).
Good luck with further development!
*Note: I played the web build assuming it was your jam version, but from the comments it seems like maybe there was more in the Windows version. Feel free to ignore any of my advice if it doesn't apply there :)
I love all the monster designs you made! They were all super creative and helped keep the game interesting.
I didn't feel like there was much gameplay going on, though. I picked stats mostly at random, focusing on strength and agility because I never fully figured out what "sanity" did (is it like armour?), and I never came close to dying. It mostly came down to a lot of waiting - slowly moving to the next monster, waiting for the battle to end, repeat until the game ends. I think either there needs to be more in-depth strategy, or the battles shouldn't be automatic, to give the player something to do.
Really creative framing for this game. The documentary style is funny and unique, and I liked how mysterious you are about the game before you play it. The title and thumbnail really don't give a lot away.
On the gameplay side, the depth of field effect was really neat, and you had some cool puzzles working back and forth. I did find it a little repetitive, though - a lot of the puzzles boiled down to running back and forth between bombs and buttons with a lot of empty ground in between. I think there could be some more interesting ways for the two layers to interact with each other, and maybe a little less walking back and forth. (Also, I would really appreciate a fullscreen option.)
Overall, one of the most unique entries I've played so far!
I love how epic this game is. The intro was really cool and that music is *gnarly*. It's pretty tricky too!
I agree that the difficulty ramps up pretty quickly, at least in the jam version I played. I think it might help if the game was a little more lenient - maybe your hitbox is a little smaller, or your dodge roll lasts a bit longer.
Overall, great entry!
Super ambitious entry! There's a lot of systems in this game that interact in interesting ways. It took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to be doing, though, and I found it a little frustrating to play. My camera sensitivity was super high no matter what my mouse was set to, and there was significant lag as well, so I didn't manage to get that far in the game.
Overall, solid work!
Love the chaotic energy. Throwing the weapons is awesome and the way they absolutely fling the enemies across the room is hilarious. The emotes are funny too - never seen those in a jam game before.
The gameplay has a fun, fast pace that I like. Finding new weapons encourages moving around the space and weaving around enemies. I found myself using melee attacks a lot more than throwing, though, which is a shame because I like the dynamism throwing mechanic. Throwing is tricky to aim and immediately discards your weapon, and since most enemies die in a couple melee hits anyway I found myself defaulting to that.
I agree with others that the camera was a bit too sensitive. On top of that, Unreal game jam games never run well on my laptop and by default have a lot of motion blur, which added to the disorienting feeling. I know the lag isn't your fault, but some camera tweaks could help this out a lot.
Good work overall!
The art is really stunning in this game - visually striking and builds the atmosphere really well. I liked the mystery of the story too, although the ending I got didn't reveal any of the answers, and it seemed like a bad ending. Ambiguous endings are often great, but I felt a little unsatisfied with this one. All I got was that there was some sort of cult protecting a magic crystal, but I still don't know why that matters.
Since there were a few choices, I wonder if there are multiple endings, or if the choices just change the way you get there. (For example, I chose the cat at the start, which found me a coin that helped me escape the trap. I wonder if another item would have just helped me in a different way.) I also got some items like the golden dagger I never used.
I would've liked if I had a little more agency, and if the game was more clear about how my choices were affecting the story. I could kind of tell that my choices weren't too important, because things like the cat were dropped from the story later on. The battle system that popped up a few times was also pretty barebones, although I did manage to die once because I didn't realize it was real-time.
In any case, this is very impressive for one weekend. I thought the atmosphere was really well done, good work!
I love the lighting and vibes, and the 3d puzzle-platformer concept has a lot of potential. I like the body-swapping mechanic too - obviously I've only played the tutorial level, but I think you could create some neat puzzles with it. It would have been really cool to explore a bunch of varied levels exploring the mechanic further. You should consider continuing this game after the jam and seeing where it takes you!
Cool approach using watercolour graphics, they look great and super surreal! Music was groovy too.
I didn't expect the game to be pinball at all from the description, but it was pretty fun. The circular gravity and fun obstacles give this a neat twist. Initially I expected to be able to move around more after your first launch, and you kind of can, but you move so little it might as well not be an option. Without that, or anything like the flippers in pinball, your score depends almost completely on your initial launch.
This isn't necessarily a problem, but since you can only see a tiny corner of the map before you launch, the game felt like an exercise in randomness. I would either let you see a full zoom-out of the map before you launch, or make your mid-air dash actually move you a decent amount. That way the player could feel more of a sense of control, which is always more fun.
Overall, a fun and zany entry!
I like the idea of exploring abstract 3D dreamscapes, but I found the gameplay disconnected from the theme. The game is also really slow and tedious, which was made worse by some pretty significant performance issues. There's some potential here, but I think you'd need more engaging puzzles and much sharper pacing.
This is such a beautiful game - kudos to all of the artists! The environment has a wonderful surreal look to it, and I love how it evolves as you go. Great use of colours to create moods as well. I also enjoyed the little touches that added to the aesthetic: for example, the school of fish that moves away as you approach, or the way the camera eases in and out to direct your attention.
I do have a few suggestions to make this better. First, on the graphical side - normally I wouldn't mention this, but since this is a visuals-focused game, there should really be a fullscreen option on the web build. It was stuck in a small window and I couldn't fully immerse myself. I would also suggest running it in a higher resolution to show off the art. Even in that small window it looked pretty jagged to me.
Gameplay-wise, I understand that this is essentially a walking simulator, where the mood and visuals are the real focus. However, I think some more thought-out gameplay elements could enhance that mood even more. For example, the movement right now is very stilted - you could think about creating some smoother movement that makes the player feel like they're swimming. I would also improve the navigation. The art is gorgeous, but it's often hard to tell what's a wall and what's not, or where to go next. You could use colours and light to better direct the player's attention to the path forward. In terms of new ideas, you could always add some light puzzle or exploration elements to keep the player engaged and immersed in the world.
Overall, beautiful work!
I'd love to play this game, but the HTML build on the Ludum Dare site isn't loading for me across any of my devices. Is this an issue you're seeing as well, or is it just me somehow?
@lordsheo I’m on Chrome so that may be it. I’ll give Firefox a try later.
Worked on Firefox!
I really like the art style and music. It's a bit Paper Mario maybe, but to me the vibes are a lot more like Bug Fables if you've played that. I like the combo of genres here - taking the towers/turrets from tower defence games and using them in a more open setting where you get to join the action yourself is pretty cool.
I felt that the execution lacked some clarity and depth, though. You don't get to place the towers yourself - they just appear randomly on the far edges of the map. At first I thought the upgrade system wasn't working at all, so that could be better communicated to the player. Even so, spawning the towers like this removes any strategy element from the game.
The combat was also a little tedious. There's only one type of enemy and they take forever to kill, even when under attack by you and surrounded by several towers. I would probably make you - and especially the towers - deal more damage. I would also suggest adding more variety in enemy types/attacks, and also varying the way your own towers attack. It would be more exciting for the player if there are a wider variety of interesting things to do that are always changing up.
Overall, good work! I haven't played your post-jam version yet, so it's possible you've addressed some/all of my suggestions in that already. I'm looking forward to giving it a try.
I like the simplicity a lot, and the snowman in hell theme is fun. Great music too. The gameplay loop reminds me of old Flash games for some reason.
The web build was pretty laggy though, and the snowman's collision was really janky. The snowman's model is also really big and covers a lot of the screen. Other than trying to see it, I thought the level was really easy and didn't progress in difficulty over time. I only died eventually because the game kept stuttering and I'd get stuck sideways on the diagonals or in between platforms.
I think this game could shine with some technical refinement!
This is a really well-constructed game! The mechanics are simple but creative, and there were some pretty cool little puzzles. I also like that after you solve the puzzles, the focus on speedrunning adds another layer to replays. It's like two games in one. Love the fake retro console too :)
I thought some of the puzzles were a little basic, even near the end. It makes sense that they shouldn't be too time-consuming, in order to facilitate speedrunning, but I never felt like there were "clever" solutions to any of them - I kind of just threw things onto each button as I needed them, and everything worked out. I don't think you necessarily need any new mechanics to make them more interesting - just try to think of out-of-the-box ways the player could interact with the game systems. It's definitely tricky to design puzzles that are both interesting to solve and able to be done fast, but I'm sure you can do it! (To help with that, I would suggest increasing the speed of changing water levels/floating objects. It's sluggish right now and gets in the way of the speedrunning.)
In general though, this is a really concise package that does a great job at integrating multiple styles of play - that's not too common in jam games, which tend to be one-trick ponies. Nice work!
This game seems really interesting and ambitious for a solo project - there's even a character creator! Unfortunately, even on the lowest settings I can't get it to run at more than ~5 fps on my laptop, which is pretty headache-inducing. So I didn't get to try the actual submarine gameplay. I'd love to play this in the future if I can get it to work on my machine.
@katastudios To be fair, I think a lot of it is just Unreal Engine 5, not your game in particular. It isn't a well-optimized engine and it doesn't really work on anything but high-end PCs.
Don't worry, I'm not going to give a low rating for a game I haven't played, lol.
@katastudios That’s incredible! I could’ve sworn it said UE5 in the files, I must’ve been thinking of another game. I’ve played a few unreal games this jam that ran far worse than yours, for the record.
Alright, I messed with some settings and got the game to run!
I really like the gameplay loop, diving down then bringing treasure back to land. It gives the player lots of little victories and provides a safe space to re-assess and practice the controls. I also liked how the game forced you to leave your sub and swim by yourself to get treasure, which upped the tension a lot. The graphics are also adorable - great contrast between the silly cat and the odd world you explore.
I do like silly physics controls, but to me these ones erred on the side of frustrating. Both the cat and the sub took a long time to react to any direction I pressed and were wobbling all over the place - including the camera, which kept ending up off-axis and being pretty disorienting. I also think there could be a higher concentration of stuff to do underwater - you move really slowly, and there's large stretches of empty ground with no treasure.
Overall, very impressive work, especially for a solo dev. This is a rare game I see potential in as a larger project in the future!
This is a pretty interesting little precision platformer! Not something I see in jams too often. I like the way you've placed the levels in a little "world" you explore, and the emergent mechanics that don't get taught all at once are neat too. From the start, that design approach was reminding me a lot of the game Leap Year, and when I learned about the bouncing mechanic it _really_ reminded me of Leap Year. Were you inspired at all by that game? It's excellent and similar in a lot of ways to your own.
I like the mechanics, and especially the way the levels are often just as much puzzles as execution challenges, but I think the platforming gameplay itself could do with some improvements. For one, the bindings are pretty weird (I've never seen S for jump in my life) but you can get used to it. Mainly the mechanics just didn't feel quite right. Wall jumping doesn't feel as tight as it should, and being unable to sit still on a wall makes precise levels a lot harder. Everything is just a bit too loose, if that makes sense - I kept fumbling with buttons after a jump or glide and slipping off a wall, which doesn't feel the best.
The level design also frequently requires awkward jumps around corners that don't feel very intentionally designed, and long stretches of these without checkpoints can get a bit frustrating. I feel that you could maybe have gone a bit further with the exploration aspect. Right now you mostly just move from room to room, but a bit more freedom could be fun! Just a suggestion. I should also mention the music - I like the ambient, floaty nature of it, it fits the gameplay well, though you could maybe have a little less silence in between.
Overall, really unique entry! I enjoyed getting some more challenging platforming in a jam game.
This was a really interesting jam game! I like the focus on narrative, and the lighthouse aesthetic is nice. Lovely watercolour visuals and chill beachy radio tunes. The back-and-forth between the dialogue segments in the day and the gameplay at night struck a good balance between chill vibes and tension. The writing was good too - each character had a unique voice, and you built the mystery well. Really tested my French knowledge, haha
I do think you could improve a few things. The ship-redirecting gameplay is a good idea (and the sync between the window and console views is super impressive!) but I found it a bit off in practice. The mechanics took a bit to grasp at first - from what I gather ships can navigate on their own in the light, but otherwise I have to direct them? Having to enter the ship codes is clunky and I often lost just because I fumbled with the dials. I was never fully clear what the win/lose conditions were - I assumed ships had to reach some set destination, but you could actually just send obstructing ships out into the blue and the game counted it as a win. The game also never really accelerated in difficulty - in fact, the final level (which was supposedly set in a hurricane) only had two ships and was easier than one of the previous ones.
The story also lacked a bit of payoff, I think. The mystery was cool with the ghost ships and crackly messages, and I liked the dilemma of whether to help this mysterious voice - but the game doesn't give you a choice, you have to help it. Then when you do the game just ends? No wrap-up for the missing teenagers, or radio pseudoscience, or that corporate guy who joined our channel. I felt like there should have been some ramifications for helping the AI, but there weren't. I'm curious if there was more of an ending that got cut during the jam.
Very nice work overall! It was fun to play something more story-based for a change.
@tyrannas Ah, okay! That makes more sense than the boat mechanics I was envisioning.
Yeah, writing stories on a deadline is really hard. I think you did a pretty good job here, props to @kerdelos! I may have to check out your other game sometime too.
The voice acting is such a fun surprise! I like the funny story and all the different boss characters are great. I like how their personalities are reflected in their fighting styles.
The combat itself didn't really land for me, though. I like the idea of playing melodies to command the ship, but it gets really tedious to walk back and forth inputting what amounts to very slow button combos. Plus, because the bosses are so unpredictable and your reaction time is so slow, there's really no way to fight effectively. All I could really do was run back and forth spamming triple attack and heal as much as I could until I died on the third boss. There wasn't any strategy to it and it didn't feel as intense as a battle should.
I think this could work better if there was more interest to the melodies - maybe lean into the musical aspect, and have you respond to enemies' melodies? I'm not sure, but it feels like there's something there. The game would also work a lot better without the 3D movement - just put everything on one screen. It would make it a lot less laborious.
Love the characters and story though! That poor cat :( Just needs some more interesting combat to go along with it.
(Side note - the third attack command, which I assume is shield-piercing, never worked for me.)
@pickens-inc I totally get preferring the diegetic, tactile bells! Feels more like you're controlling a real ship. I think the frustration mainly just comes from how long it takes to walk between them, haha
I love the very visual take on the theme! The waveforms look great and are fun to tinker with, and it's satisfying when you finally manage to make them click.
It did feel like a little trial-and-error though - I understand vaguely how waveforms sum together, but not well enough to do on the fly in a puzzle game. I think if you had some more puzzles I would've been able to figure it out. I also didn't feel like the platformer part of the game added very much - it was never very challenging, and kind of just ended up as a delay between puzzles.
Great work overall!
What a cute little puzzle-platformer! I love the hand-drawn look and the story and NPCs were a lot of fun. (That ending was so heart-warming!)
At first I wasn't sold on the depth of the puzzle mechanic, but once you added the different signal strengths the puzzles became really interesting. The final level playing with the timing of all of them was super neat! The platforming aspect could be tightened up a bit though - the player character is pretty slippery, which hurts when you're trying to do things fast and die in one hit.
(By the way - the SFX are very, very loud, and I had to turn them down nearly all the way to be able to play the music at a reasonable volume. I might change that post-jam!)
Great entry! I love the demo disc aesthetic, and the drum & bass soundtrack is KILLER. There's no better music to jam out to while shooting spaceships. The 3D buildings whipping past add a great sense of speed which is only helped by those frantic breakbeats. Kudos to the musician, it's amazing work, especially for just one weekend!
The gameplay is pretty standard for a schmup of this style, but it works pretty well! I like the different weapons which add some variety & strategy to the game. Dual wielding is super fun. I did get a little confused by how you pick up weapons - it seems that weapons replace the slot on the side you move into them with, which is kind of odd and means I kept accidentally replacing weapons I wanted to keep. I think you should prioritize filling empty weapon slots when they're available. My weapons also kept swapping between sides when I changed direction, which meant there was no consistency in which button fired which gun. That definitely hurts the strategy aspect of choosing which weapon to use, but it'd be easy to fix!
As other people have said, I also think there's a bit of a difficulty issue. This genre is generally pretty hard, so I don't mind a challenge, but the one-hit kill is brutal, especially because your ship's hitbox is so large. I think letting you take maybe three hits before dying (and maybe even adding some heal pickups?) would let you keep the difficulty without making it frustrating. (Also, just as a side note, I'm not sure there's a point to the lives system - all a game over does is make me press start again on the title.)
Great work! A good schmup is always a blast, and the music was a real highlight.
The mixed media aesthetic is such a cool idea! The whole game is so cute and it really made me care about the plights of these poor bugs. It felt like playing with toys :)
I didn't quite get the gameplay - the bugs never gave any feedback on why they liked/didn't like my answers, and it seemed like there was a lot of ambiguity. (Is the non-coloured text important? Why do some emotions share colours? How do I decide how many flowers to put in? How is the game scored? etc.) It didn't help that during scoring, the description didn't always seem to match what the hint book said about the flowers.
Overall though, I do like the idea of a puzzle game where you have to deduce emotions from dialogue, and it just needed a bit more clarity. Plus, the visuals are extremely well-done. Congrats!
This is a super polished and unique take on a rally racing game, nice work! I liked the combo of low-poly graphics and cool video effects, it created some very interesting and immersive visuals. Nice breakbeats, too! I also liked how each level used the poor signal idea in a different way - slow loss of vision, fixed camera, and the total blackout. It made the game more varied and let you explore your idea more fully.
While I did really like the gameplay conceptually, in practice it can get a little frustrating - driving at high speeds with poor visibility is very hard and I often had to reset a level just because I got lost. I know the challenge of the game is trying to work past the video errors, but I think there are ways you could make the experience more consistent for the player. Maybe give them ways to fend off the poor signal, or get a bit of info about the environment (a radar maybe?) Just an idea. An easier solution which would definitely help would be to make the track visuals more clear - higher contrast between the road and surroundings as well as less clutter around the edges would make it easier to discern what direction you're supposed to be going, especially when you start losing details.
Really nice work! You've really made something brand new out of this genre.
This is a fun little puzzler! Ciphers were a good pick for this theme, and you did a great job wrapping it into a game - the UI is super clean. I'm a sucker for anything with this kind of language decoding angle, so I had a lot of fun! I like the little story developing through the messages too, it adds some depth beyond just decoding Caesar ciphers and the like. And the title reveal at the end was a nice touch.
I think the gameplay could use a bit of work. The real game in my opinion is the Vigenere ciphers - Caesar and Affine just don't provide a lot of gameplay, especially with the neat decoding tools you've built. I know there are strategies to do ciphers like that faster, but it takes like 30 seconds to cycle through all the Affine combos, so there's no point really. The Viginere ciphers, however, are fun - hiding the keys in the messages is a pretty cool way of turning them into puzzles. In order for that to work, though, the messages need to be on screen for more than two seconds! Look away for one second and you've missed them, and there's no way to go back. (That's especially easy to do because when spamming through Affine combinations there's no way to predict when that message will pop up.) I had to replay the whole game twice because I missed a message both times - partially my fault, but it was really frustrating.
This is a very impressive solo project, though! Ciphers are always a lot of fun. With some QoL changes this would be a smoother experience, and I think if you delve further into the story and puzzle aspects (there are some other cool ciphers out there) there's potential for a more involved game here. Great work!
One of my favourites from the jam - this is so delightful! As an audio nerd myself I loved getting to play with all these effects, and it's cool to engage with audio more visually compared to how many musicians & sound designers do. It's even more fun when that visual is a cute little worm :)
I liked the gameplay a lot! The game manages to be a fun teaching tool about waveforms while also making puzzles out of it. Some of the puzzles could be a little more trial-and-error than real challenges (slide vibrato until it matches, slide distortion until it matches, etc.) but given the educational goal of the game I don't think that's a huge issue. I kind of wanted a final level that included all of the effects, although maybe that would be visually confusing. I bet you could do cool things with other ways of processing audio, too, if you ever wanted to expand this - maybe you'd start working with multiple worms and start dealing with phase and stuff? Not sure. But the game does work well in its current form!
The gameplay was also helped a lot by the sound design, which is just great. The waveform manipulation sounds excellent obviously, but even little things like the buttons and... worm noises?... made everything a lot of fun to interact with. There's very good auditory feedback for everything the player does, which is crucial for any game but especially one about audio like this!
Awesome work! I had a great time with this one.
So, first off, amazing presentation. The pixel art is both great-looking and readable, the music is perfect for this kind of game, and the sound design on the waveforms is excellent! (Every channel actually changed what it said audibly! Not 100% about phase though, that's hard to hear unless paired with another waveform.) The levels seem to be randomly generated too, which is very impressive (esp. in terms of the landmasses), although it's possible you pre-made a number of them and just randomly choose, which would also be a lot of work by you. Nice work getting an effective tutorial in during the jam too, that often falls by the wayside!
I didn't find the gameplay super engaging, though. It's just moving sliders until a number gets high. The actual graphics and theme of the game are largely irrelevant. There can be some challenge trying to do them all in the time limit, but it's just a measure of how fast you can move a slider. When I saw the waveform visualisers and audio I thought I'd actually need to look at that and try to solve puzzles with the different parametres, but that never really came into play. The idea of stabilising the signals is great, but I think that process could be more interesting. (Maybe some added gameplay with choosing the directions of signals could be neat too? Maybe you need to redirect signals to different towers throughout the game. Just an idea.)
Nice work! This was a fun puzzly experience with some super clean presentation.
Such a great vibe! Great use of 3D for the ocean environment, and the ambient SFX are lovely. It was a really relaxing environment to solve puzzles in. I liked the signal mechanic too! It made for some interesting routing puzzles, especially when different directions overlap.
I did find a few levels a bit directionless, especially the larger ones. The money mechanic is very cool in that it makes you add detours to your route, but because you keep the money after ships crash it means you can just send them into a market for a while, build up a bunch of money, then delete that route and finish the level, which isn't very satisfying. I also found myself wanting a bit more nuance in the ship movement - right now the signal towers force them into cardinal directions even if the ships barely touch them, but I feel like the ships should maintain whatever angle they had coming out of the signal. That would allow for more interesting routing!
Overall, super cozy spatial puzzler. I liked it a lot.
Wow, what an incredible jam game. It feels like a polished release. The 3D art is really well done, I love the music and sound design on all the aliens, and the calming, spacey atmosphere of the planet is immaculate. It's enjoyable just to explore the environment you've put together. Really impressive job.
I like the gameplay loop too - it's really satisfying to suck up bigger and bigger aliens throughout the game. (I was hoping for more than there were, but it's a jam so I get it.) It creates a nice sense of progression. On that front, I did find it odd that aliens typically spawned only around my base, leaving the rest of the planet mostly empty. My main critique, though, is that the game lacked friction. I'm not saying you need action or enemies or anything, it's a cozy farming game basically, but there really wasn't anything standing in my way as a player. (There was one bit where an asteroid or something appeared and I had to press a button to stop it, but that doesn't really count.) I just sucked up defenceless aliens in order to increase my ability to suck up more of them. Some sort of challenge or strategy around how you deal with later-game aliens might help keep the player engaged. The battery hunting was pretty simplistic too, and I bet you could do some more with that.
Really wonderful work, though. I played through the whole thing and it was a very chill experience.
@picross ooh, evil plants sound fun!
My teammate and I actually DNFed a jam a few years ago where we tried to make something like this! You did a good job with it - I like the elegance & simplicity of the mechanics and presentation. It can get pretty frantic when the trains start piling up, especially when a new train appears from the depot you were just guiding another one to! One thing that might make it a little bit smoother to play would be some clearer visuals on the swapping tracks - it's kind of hard to tell immediately whether the straight or curved one is on top, and it would be nice if you could look at the whole level and clearly see the paths each train will take.
You've made a good start with music, too - it sounds maybe code-generated to me, which is pretty cool. I think you could make the compositional idea work a little better by making it less relentless and choosing a less harsh sound. Let it fade in and out a bit, create a chill ambient vibe. Keep it up, writing game music is super rewarding :)
Overall, great work! There's a nice zen atmosphere to this one.
I love how cute and cozy this game feels! It's really fun exploring the town and bowling over all the physics objects and people. I like the World Cup theme too, and the frantic Overcooked-esque gameplay is a good fit.
I think it maybe needed a little more depth somewhere - fixing the signals was nothing more than pressing a button for a few seconds. I also think the movement could be a bit more satisfying - the dash seemed to kill my momentum more often than not, and I really wanted to zoom around and knock stuff over!
Overall, great job!
This is a really cute game! The bee dances are adorable and I enjoyed exploring your little world. I really like the idea behind the gameplay too - learning dances and repeating them to bees is a fun, video game-y way to direct bees to flowers.
In practice I found it a bit tedious though. Even with your bee speed upgrade, the game is pretty slow, and there really isn't much gameplay other than flying out, memorising some button combos, and flying back. I guess there's room for skill in how many dances you can comfortably memorise, but it still wasn't super engaging. (By the way, could I have repeated flowers? I kind of assumed not.) I think some more complexity with how you manage your bees could help out. Maybe there are other tasks bees have to complete to keep up the hive, so you have to manage their time between those and pollinating flowers. Some more interest in the part where you fly way out to flowers could be nice too.
Overall, really nice work! I just love the idea of dancing bees. With some more layers of gameplay I think this could be a really fun tycoon-esque game.
I really liked the retro arcade presentation! The title screen and graphics are really fun, and it definitely felt like playing on an old cabinet or something.
The actual game, though, I didn't get a lot out of. It's pretty basic gameplay, and the one unique mechanic (the lures) is cool and helps with crowd control, but doesn't amount to all that much. The movement is also a bit clunky, slowing you down whenever you shoot or land from a jump. I was glad for the controller support because D-pad really fit the retro vibe, but it was awkward to have to manually redo all the binds to make that work.
I love the aesthetic though! Keep it up :)
@gkthegkpchannel Glad you liked the game! The pinboard can be tricky - the icons at the top represent the different characters. What you're supposed to do is take pictures during the game of suspicious scenes (maybe someone mentions a motive, or you catch them up to no good), then connect those pictures to the suspects they incriminate. You'd usually have to play through multiple times to solve the whole mystery!
@mr-sun Thanks for the feedback! We're planning on adding a preview feature for the pictures after the jam, which should help with that segment. It's definitely tricky when you're just working with little generic photo icons and timestamps, haha
@F1Krazy Glad you enjoyed - nice job figuring out the mystery! And thanks for the feedback. We’re working on a post-jam update where you’ll be able to replay the scenes you took photos of during the pinboard segment, which should make it a lot easier to prove your knowledge, as you say.
What a cute little puzzler! I love the clean aesthetics and the adorable little robot noises. Great use of the theme too to create spatial puzzles!
I did find a lot of puzzles were fairly trivial, just making chains of robots - I think they'd be more interesting if you focused on restricting the environment and number of tools, rather than putting a dozen robots in a big field, which just lets the player do whatever. I also don't fully get the point of the 3 signal limit - all it does is make me have to redo the whole thing if I misalign the robots slightly. (Which is easy to do - a lot of levels require positioning the robots right at the edge of their range, which can be a little frustrating. I wonder if it would be more streamlined if you placed them on a grid?)
Great job overall! I loved the chill sci-fi vibe, and there are some good mechanical foundations here.
(By the way - your UI doesn't resize when you fullscreen the game, making it very tiny and hard to read. Might be worth a fix!)
This is a fun little puzzler! Love the space station vibe, and the graphics are both cute and effective for communicating puzzle mechanics. I always like a laser deflecting puzzle, so it was a good time. The last puzzle was especially clever - realising I had to undo and then redo my own solution to get to the exit was a cool twist.
I think a few mechanics could be improved on - the trash collecting doesn't add all that much right now, other than that sometimes you can mistakenly lock off a piece of trash and have to reset the whole level. The little corners with random stuff in them all to hide a piece of trash just distract from the puzzle. On that note, an undo button is sorely needed! The levels tend to be a bit cluttered with boxes, and it's extremely easy to softlock yourself. Redoing the whole level whenever this happens can be tedious. The addition of an undo feature and tidying up the levels a bit would really help the experience.
On a audio note - while I totally get not have time for it during a solo jam, in my opinion music and SFX should be your top priority if you choose to continue development. SFX are crucial for the feel of a game, and music ties the whole thing together.
Great work!
This is an incredibly polished game for a jam, I love it! The haunted house theme is great, and the graphics are super charming - they look very Paper Mario to me. I liked the way you explored more of the house as you went, uncovering the story and different fun ghost characters. The evolving music for each colour light was cool as well. The game really takes you on a journey from beginning to end, which is cool to see in a jam (I went and played the post-jam too just so I could see the ending!)
The combat I found a little frustrating. It's just holding a light on the enemy until they die, so there's not a lot of action to it. And you can very easily get trapped in a corner and be unable to escape damage. Health packs are rare, too, so that damage is very punishing. I got all the way to the ending gauntlet and just got overwhelmed, which is when I discovered dying makes you do the whole thing again - and it does feel a bit like busywork the second time. When I died again I really didn't feel like doing _another_ whole playthrough, so I never saw the ending of the story, which is a real shame.
Great work! This is a super-polished, whimsical ghost-hunting romp, and I'm really impressed at the scope of it.
(Also, just a side note for the story - it would be nice to be able to re-read collected pages! I missed one my first playthrough and was disappointed I missed some of the story.)
@tetracold How didn't I figure that out?! I may have to give it another try sometime, that would make the ending sequence a lot more doable haha
@tetracold You could always just slot it into that cool manual page you have in the opening! I probably should have made the connection, since this is very Luigi’s Mansion and those games are all about stunning ghosts with flashlights.
First off, I very rarely see large explorable worlds like this in game jams, so kudos for that! I like the sound design too - the whole game is very relaxing.
To be honest though, there's not really much of a game. The world is nearly entirely empty and I have no ways of interacting with it is a player. Now, games don't have to have action gameplay to be fun. They can be puzzle-based, or even just be about vibes like this. There are lots of popular games out there where you basically just walk around (I'm thinking Journey for some reason).
I think you could make this kind of game work by either adding some level of narrative, or even just more fun secrets to find around the game. There were a few here - for example, I thought the "I dare you to jump" sign was funny. Except, when I actually did jump, nothing happened (I didn't even drown, I could just walk on the water). You need more interesting things to find in the world, and some way for the player to *affect* those things, because otherwise it feels very sterile. Maybe there are people you can actually talk to, and they need your help with something. Maybe there are items to hunt for. Maybe something's going on in that cabin other than just a meme. Lots of possibilities!
Nice atmosphere though. I think you have a good start here :)
Ooh, another mystery game! This is super stylish, and the dialogue is well-written & full of character. It's all full of intrigue and everyone has their own voice - plus, everyone's making hand signals on top of it all! Great humour too (*Stulti et Avari* - hilarious). I love the inclusion of a language-deciphering mechanic - I recently played Tunic and Chants of Sennarr and loved that aspect in both. The way signals combine with the words people are saying makes for some interesting deduction.
My main critique is that I didn't get to do a lot of that deduction. Characters are constantly making signals, but because the dialogue proceeds automatically, I have no time to decipher most of them. While I can enter signals into the bottom to figure out what they mean, doing that makes me miss parts of the scene - and replaying the scene to deal with that takes forever. That meant I missed a lot of the depth you put into the character writing. I know I could've paused more, but doing that every half-second gets tedious. The ability to rewind line-by-line (and maybe advance dialogue with a button-press) would allow me to dive into the hidden signals more.
I also didn't get a chance to use much of the language, because I could only reply with one symbol. That's a shame, because it looked like there was some real complexity to it! (I know this is probably because writing a dozen versions of each exchange isn't feasible for a jam, but I still wish I could've experimented more.) The game didn't let me try to solve the mystery, either - I was suspecting Stultus Frivolus because he kept disagreeing with defeatist statements about the emperor (or at least "begrudgingly agreeing"), but at the end my character accused Capricious without my input. I guess I was wrong, but I would've liked the chance to choose who to execute myself!
Overall, the game looks and sounds great, and the narrative & writing are really, really well done. I got really into the mystery and the social/language deduction aspect. I think the main point of improvement would be giving the player more time to think during scenes, and giving them agency in the puzzle/mystery aspects. Awesome work, guys!
@luka420 Well there's lots of time! I'd love to play it again post-jam to see what you've changed (and maybe get a different ending!)
This is a really simple, elegant arcade game, I like it! The game feel is surprisingly good for a game controlled by the microphone. I especially like the way the wire bounces in your wake, and the grinding on top of vehicles is super satisfying (not sure if you've played Clustertruck but the sound design & truck hopping really reminded me of that).
In terms of gameplay, the best part is definitely building those grinding combos, but I didn't feel like the level generation gave me many chances to build up long combos - the vehicles always dried up. I wanted more trucks to hop on! I also found myself hesitant to stay in the air long anyway, because it means you can't see the hazards approaching below. This is bad because the mic controls, by nature, have significant input lag, which means you need a lot of lead time to avoid anything. I always ended up fast-falling as soon as I could, which is a shame because mid-air combos are the best part of the game! I don't want to suggest getting rid of the mic controls, since those make the game unique, so perhaps some sort of indicator when hazards appear off-screen could help with that?
Great work! I got into a flow for a while, it's definitely in that addictive Flappy Bird family of games.
I love synthesizers, so getting to tinker with one while playing a game was pretty neat! I loved how the song built throughout the game and evolved with my actions. I did find that the actual moment-to-moment gameplay was a bit slow-paced and fiddly - it's mostly just turning dials at the right points, but it was really easy to take a second too long and bounce into a pit. Some more interesting mechanics for the synth dials could also add a lot!
(Also, on a music note - I might suggest not using gain as one of the dials. It meant I had to keep turning off cool parts of the music in order to play, but I wanted to hear the whole song you'd built up!)
It's cool to see a really technical puzzle game like this in a game jam!
Unfortunately I couldn't really figure out how the game worked. I can tell that I'm adding and subtracting numbers with the plants (so it's about using the space effectively to get the right frequency/power), but how exactly all the plants worked and how the waves propagated never really made sense to me. I think a game like this really needs a clearer tutorial. I also think the oxygen timer hurts the gameplay. It's really tight and only serves to stress you out while you're trying to solve the puzzle. I didn't have enough time to figure all the mechanics out.
Nice job overall! I think you should keep working on this after the jam and see how you could refine it.
I love the story in this one, and the art is genuinely stunning. Incredible work. It's both beautiful and something I've never seen before, especially in a game jam. I also love the way you used music and sound as part of the design.
Unfortunately I really don't understand how to play. I found a star with the telescope, but I can't figure out any sort of pattern to how the dials affect the frequency. By fiddling randomly with them (which takes a while because you have to spam-click), I managed to make the static go away a few times, but pressing Space did nothing but send a little ping sound. A moment later the static came back and I had to find a brand new dial combination. So I never managed to find any verses or build a poem, which sounded really cool.
If you have any guidance on how to play, I'd be glad to give the game another go :)
Ah, okay, glad to hear it wasn't just me. I do think the static minimizing works actually, it's just that the attuning part didn't work for me. That's really impressive that you were able to pull this much off starting that late! I'll definitely check back post-jam to play it properly.
Thanks for playing ours!
I really love the space graphics and the humourous dialogue! The exploration is really well-done too, it was always fun to stumble across new things in the world.
The asteroid-destroying part I found pretty frustrating, though. They come fast out of nowhere when you're just trying to get around or complete a task, and they do tons of damage. You can't freely aim your gun (mouse/right stick aiming would be super helpful), so if they're above or below you you're screwed. Dying just makes you redo everything all over again, which just makes me feel unmotivated. Plus, half the time they don't even drop crystals, and they barely ever drop med packs, meaning you havce to shoot dozens and dozens of the things to get anywhere. I managed to find one of the two story objectives, but after dying three times late in the game I gave up on finding the other one, which is a real shame because I didn't get to see the ending!
I really like the space environment though! I think a cleaning-up of and de-emphasis on the junk shooting mechanic could really help the game. As it stands it felt a little bit like busywork when I really wanted to explore.
I really, really love the scrapbook look of this game, and the gameplay sounds really cool and Papers Please-esque, but even after reading the whole description I can't figure out how to play :( I understand what I'm *supposed* to be doing, but I just can't seem to interact with anything. The first briefing letter I only got past by accidentally dragging it into the garbage can, and the second one I got (a Caesar-encoded letter about a pig) I managed to load into the computer, but that was about it. Nothing else on the screen seemed to react to my mouse, even stuff mentioned in the description. I couldn't use the paper buttons, the keyboard, the pigeon, nothing.
I'm going to hold off rating this for now, but if the game does in fact work and I'm just missing something, I'd be glad to give it another go! I was playing the web build on the LDJam site - not sure if there's another somewhere else.
(From a design perspective - assuming everything is working, it might be a good idea to make things animate a little when you mouse over them. It feels like pixel hunting right now and I genuinely don't understand what I'm doing wrong.)
I love the old PC vibe, it feels so cozy and warm! Lovely art style and fuzzy bitcrushed lo-fi keys in the music. It's a clever little puzzle platformer too, with some laser deflecting puzzles that reminded me a little of Portal for some reason. I like that you justified the puzzles through the broken keyboard theme as well.
I enjoyed the little video game word puzzles as they gave context to the levels (even though they weren't really puzzles themselves). I did find myself wishing you did more with them than just being the order you send the lasers in. Maybe the levels are themed somehow after each game, or maybe you solve the word puzzles inside the level rather than beforehand? I also thought the puzzle designs were a bit inconsistent. Some of the reflecting box ones were great (the one with three columns of boxes was my favourite) but some others were too simple (the save block one at the end was barely a puzzle). I found myself wanting a bit more challenge, but maybe you could add that with more levels in the future. The game feels like it ends after the tutorial right now!
On a mechanical note, the laser reflecting is a great mechanic, and I like how you have to hit each block in a certain order. I also appreciated the generous undo feature, since it meant I didn't have to redo levels if I hit a wrong key. In my opinion, getting the signal from the USB at the start of each level and putting it into the first block was an unnecessary step - it's not really part of the puzzle, but it's an extra mechanic in the environment that confused me a little at first.
Really nice job! I feel like I've been transported to the 90s.
I really like the cute hand-drawn graphics, and the combo of a turn-based economy game and a classic Space Invaders-esque top-down shooter is neat. It's a neat mix of strategy and action!
The gameplay didn't quite click for me - I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing a lot of the time. I tried it several times and am still not confident how the enemies are dying. I think you need more visual feedback for the actions you take in the game (SFX would be very helpful as well!)
The mix of turn-based and real-time gameplay also felt awkward. It takes a while to input commands (especially with those kind of ancillary open/close brackets) and the bullets move around so fast it's near impossible to avoid them. If I were you, I would make the bullets move on a grid turn-by-turn just like you do. Some more commands to add more strategy to the "coding" aspect would be nice too!
Nice work overall! It's super cute and the mix of gameplay ideas here has a lot of potential.
What a cute lil lighthouse! I really like the simple artstyle, it's both charming and moody and really makes you feel like you're alone in a huge dark ocean. I like the gameplay loop too, trying to balance efficiently gathering fish with having the tools to defend yourself.
I found the boat pretty frustrating to control - I know that's part of the challenge, but even with an upgraded boat I felt like I was slipping on ice, and that kind of turning makes it annoying when trying to gather tiny little fish in the dark. The very small view radius doesn't help when you're venturing far from the lighthouse. On that note, the time between waves is very tight, and again even with lots of upgrades I often barely made it back in time - which can be a death sentence when the higher health enemies start coming. It felt like I was blindly stabbing out into the dark looking for tiny fish with no chance to make it back before the wave started. I think some tighter boat controls and a bit more leniency there could go a long way (and maybe some sort of radar to help with finding fish?)
Great work, especially as a solo project! The atmosphere and core loop are great, and I think you've got a great foundation here :)
This game is so cozy! The hand-drawn graphics are gorgeous - Xiao Shi the robot is super cute, the intro/outro cutscenes and very well done, and the backgrounds looked like paintings. (The autumn level was my favourite!) The story is simple and sweet as well, and the piano soundtrack ties everything together. Even though this is a wasteland, I wanted to spend more time just hanging out there!
I know the focus is on the aesthetic rather than the gameplay, but I still think a little more work on that front could help the game be more engaging. At least one more level would help fill the game out, and some more interesting things to do in those levels would be nice. Collecting the signals in the first level was alright, but the waveform-matching in the second felt a little random. Either a little bit more puzzle-solving, or a little bit more platforming, would help your beautiful art come to life.
Great work! What a nice, relaxing game to play on a cloudy afternoon.
I love the cool, neon, sci-fi vibe in this one! I also liked the variety of different ways you used the signal speed gimmick. I think this is worth a post-jam update to explore these mechanics further (the stealth thing only appeared once, for example) - the game felt a bit like it ended after the tutorial. I did appreciate the checkpoints, since these sorts of timing puzzles can be pretty trial-and-error.
My main piece of advice would be that I think you could improve the game feel. Everything moves a bit slow and slippery, there aren't any sound effects, and there's not a lot of feedback from the game as to what you're doing. It seemed to me the signal moved slower depending on which objects I clicked, but there wasn't any visual in game that suggested that. With some snappier movement, strong SFX, and more clarity in the mechanics, I bet this game could really stand out. Nice work!
(By the way - I was able to cheese the final puzzle by sneaking past the edge of the gate hitbox. Might be worth a fix post-jam!)