itch.io

What an incredible take on the theme. Mostly I expect the theme coming back in the form of game-play. But a sibling bond that has been broken is a very unique angle. I absolutely loved the ending, it gave me goosebumps all over my arms.

Now as for critique. The overall levels sometimes felt to "bland", they had pretty colors, but there was no general "pull" that kept me wanting to explorer this weird mystical world. I simply followed where  the butterfly told me to go, but often times I was already at the "checkpoint" myself before I knew it. I would have loved to be able to get lost inside the levels and explore the dreamy landscapes (although this might simply be a time constraint issue, it is only 5 days after-all).

I would also focus a bit more on audio immersion, next to lighting audio is THE most important part in a game like this to really pull the player in. Make the player feel the difference of materials he/she is walking on or through by using different audio clips. There was wind and stuff, but use much more ambient audio! The water that softly hits the edge, the bristles of the tree rustling against each other, the sounds that might appear in a distance giving  space to your environment.

Story telling wise definitely something with potential here! Would love to see more of it.

I like the idea of gathering all the scraps to upgrade your ship. The hitbox of your ship however feels very off, I would give the player a bit more leeway with it size. Because sometimes I felt that I was in the clear and then I died because a small fraction of the ship clipped a collider, same goes for the water.

tldr:
Good: Concept and initial mechanic.

Bad: Readability of the hitbox and environment.

Perhaps people can view some sort of "recipe" book. In which combinations are still hidden and they can unlock as soon as they find a viable combination. The silhouettes of the hidden particles could give the player a hint on which particles they would need to combine and unlocking particle combinations visualizes them in the book, making more locked combinations available. That way you keep the awesome free spirit of your current style, but give the player an option to "find" the right path when needed.

Like the initial vibe, would have loved an audio setting. I was only flying around and taking in the atmosphere and watching the little ball's do their ding as I could not figure out what to do with them. The crosshair also did not match the actual collision point, which brings me to the second flaw for me, it was very hard to determine where your player/3dCursor was when there where no movement particles around.

To bad your final build for the jam failed though. Well it happens.

All in all, I liked the style and overall vibe.


ps. In unity try to catch your mouse next time when having a free look feature, as soon as the mouse leaves the focus window of your game the control to look around is gone.

I thoroughly enjoyed this game. What an absolute surreal experience and the twist on the theme is also very unique.

My only complaint would be that the UI does not really fit the theme of your game (The project of my group is also guilty of this so who am I to talk haha) and I would have loved some more environmental ambience in audio. The overall background music does its job very well, but with your unsettling theme, having the enemies make surreal noises or something like that, would be the cherry on the cake for me. You definitely deserve more exposure and votes for this project.

Although the game plays rather smooth. I found the damage buff not worth giving up the wider range of space I could cover while keeping them separated. The contrast of everything is also way to harsh, I find it very hard to properly detect enemies in time (but that might just be me).

Definitely room for improvement (but hey, that counts for every game on the jam including mine).
Good game overall.

Combining the tanks to power up is a really unique concept and the animations for merging are amazing. I had fun with the game however I got stuck rather early, as soon as you need to leave one tank behind it feels really punishing and a lot of jumps suddenly have super precise requirements otherwise you won't make the other side. When you fall off you get re-spawned at the start, however when a single tank is behind a lock (such as the blue first lock) there is no way except for a full reset to get back going.

Like the concept a lot, could use some work on the kinks in the game-play aspect.

I see, did not notice the upgrades you received (mainly because I could not follow what was going on sometimes), so that might just be an issue for me then! Thanks for the clarification.

The creatures have a cap after x amount is collected, after that they will no longer infect the cells. It is a point we definitely should have made more clear during a user's playtime. The camera and confusing on how the bacteria/viruses work are the two main complaints. So the feedback is definitely noted! Thanks.

I really enjoyed the dreamy experience this game offered. I felt alone, isolated and was happy to have a friend with me (yellow fox cape). The art-style is really fitting, the chosen color palette plays together lovely and the audio is very minimalist, but in this case very fitting to the overall setting..

Two issues for me. The controls feel a tad bit to floaty and sluggish, this sometimes gives the false impression as if inputs where not registering correctly. I missed one puzzle piece and the clouds got over it, killing me when I tried to retrieve it. I already touched a checkpoint before realizing and in my first play through I ended up on a hard stuck because of this.

I like the idea of combining the elements to create new characters, however I did not find a way do "undo" a fusion as such I got stuck on several locations (including the beginning). Also R2 jump or "yeet" kills the player instantly if there is no secondary character picked up. It also was very weird to have controller only controls, but mouse interaction for the menus.

I definitely see possibilities here, everything is just a tad to rough. (You are using unity, so perhaps multiplying your displacement with Time.deltaTime could fix your stuttering issues, if it is completely physics based make sure to move all calculations to FixedUpdate and all controller inputs to Update).

Keep it up!

Good: There is an educational element, although the choice of font made it sometimes difficult to read.

Room for improvement: The audio is very on the nose and works as a distraction most of the time. I would have loved if combining the elements had some greater impact/give the player different abilities, just something to give more value to the changed state other than some different letter.

All in all the game feels very rough still, but it does fulfill the purpose it was designed for, which (i think) is giving a better understanding of the elements.

I'm sure your future projects will only become better from this point on, keep going!

Edit: Tip for future submissions with Godot, pack both the .exe file and the pck file into a .zip or .rar file, that way you can upload a single file that people can unzip, instead of uploading your project in two pieces :)

I see the camera controls where also a pain for you :) Definitely an aspect that needs more work in the future, thanks for the review.

Little clarification for the bacteria not infecting cells, at the moment there is a creature cap due to performance issues. When you have around 40 bacteria they will no longer infect healthy cells. In order to pass the last valve you need 40 bacteria to "force" your way in.

It definitely needs work on the camera part, and on the clarity on what a user should be doing.

Thanks for the feedback.

Hey, time is limited, cuts need to be made, it happens don't sweat it!

Good:
For the time you worked on this, it is really impressive. I enjoyed it a lot.
The fact that you don't directly control your characters, but control them with indirect actions most definitely is unique on this jam. I can only imagine what you could have created in 5 days, would have loved to see that.

Bad:
So that is also where my complaints come from. I want to play more with these little critters and see what I can do with them, at the moment it feels just a tad repetitive.

Keep up the good work.

It's a straight flappy bird clone as you said yourself, does not go with the theme. That together with the upload time of your project...  Makes it obvious that this was a pre-build project.

Pre-building and guessing a project theme on top of cloning an existing thing completely defeats the whole purpose of a jam, you learn nothing out of it this way!
Please don't take this the bad way, it is meant as advice.

It is good to follow tutorials in order to understand the workings of an engine and to learn. However for a jam I would recommend that in the future you come up with your own ideas, that is so much more fun and I would have loved to see what your creative mind is capable of!

I really hope to see you again in a future jam with your own idea, I know you can do it!

Like the toy looking art style. music is simple enough, it fulfills its purpose. A few puzzles really had me thinking. Would have loved if I could let the apes cooperate more together (lifting each other up. etc...).

Also there was no feedback whether or not I could finish a level, the end gate stays closed the whole time. It took me a while to figure out it was even an interactive point of interest.

Keep up the good work.

It is obvious the game-play pulls its inspiration from flappy bird, and in that respect, it plays kinda the same.

I really wish you would have expanded on it's mechanics though, since you are playing a different creature you could have created new ways and twists based on the core mechanic of boost based flying around.

Not being able to stand on platforms did not really make sense for a monkey. The art-style could also use more unison, at the moment it is everywhere, photo sprites, pixel art, smoothed textures, clipping sprites.

However I can see that effort was put in, and I only encourage that! Keep it up, the journey is all that counts.

ps. I would have loved if you pushed the whole monke meme further, it is very obvious you are aware of your own style in this game :)

I really dig the art and the overall style of the game. The movement and everything feels very polished, did not encounter any bugs or anything.

I really wish there was something more you could to with the players, it would have been really useful if you could use the "bond" between them to deal damage or even kill enemies. If they are close together the stronger their bond/chance to defeat an enemy.

I will be playing this game for a little while longer, really would love to beat it on hard.

And as a side thought, this game would totally be something I could imagine being on steam or another storefront.

Nice work.

Thanks for the feedback, UI is a first time for some one to critique, but I can definitely see where you are coming from, noted!
Lots of people also would have loved a tutorial, something to keep in mind for future projects.

Initially the valve where locked on bacteria counts similar to the final valve that opens to the heart. But during play testing players got stuck with not enough bacteria to pass the threshold for opening (the idea was that the bacteria could force their way in with number), so we scrapped that. However making some valves clause in a more autonomous way is a good idea, definitely noted.

The white blood cells used to be everywhere, but at moments caused an unplayable drop in frame rate (when a lot of them started to collide), due to time constraints we where unable to optimize them enough, so we placed them in the main chambers and behind some valves where the infectable cells are. A lot of optimization went into the environment to get a good balance in tessellation density for meaty movement closely and proper distortions far away.

Thanks for the feedback, it is very helpful!

The game feels very surreal, the character looks uncanny, but in a fun way. After meeting the brain i did get stuck. I jumped against the wall on the left and it threw me over the wall thus getting stuck out of bounds above the playable areas.

Overall experience was interesting, I would have loved a bit more ambient noises to draw me just a little bit more into the surreal world I am experiencing.

great work.

Really like the game, movement feels very good. However I kept getting stuck in the third level, after I fall in the red pit, gravity seems to be disabled and the gravity switches no longer work, I am stuck on a single line of movement in the air.

I like the game, would have loved to explore it more.

I liked the initial atmosphere and was very creeped out by the red eyed creatures. Their spastic movement made it very uncanny.

However after finding the green light the goal was lost on me, I could not figure out how to proceed and after discovering that there was no penalty system or anything for the red eyed creatures, the tension was gone.

All in all a very promising concept, just missing that last bit of polish and direction.

Keep it up!

aah, that is a bummer. Well end crunches bring stress, it happens!

Keep up the good work.

Game-play still feels a bit rough. Especially walking over the ground feels weird, to much grip/collision on uneven areas.

I like the art style and sound design though!

Like the atmosphere vibe. Sometimes my player would go up in the air and I would lose without being able to do anything about it..

I miss the theme a bit in this game. This style of rhythm game has been done before.
Like the music though and it is also nice that all the effects work in sync with your audio system, UI is very clear and looks in style with the rest of your game.

A little side note though. Next time only upload your build folder, because you packed your whole project, thus leaking al your resources and source code :). I think this was done by accident.

Keep it up!

Ey, no worries it happens. Part of the jam. I will make sure to play it once you can upload the fixed version.

I got completely immersed in this experience, incredible job. Hands down one of the best I played on this jam. Te length of the game was not to long, not to short, just right for what it needed to do.

Only two notes:
-I really wish the enemies where utilized more.
-The wait time for the gates to open is just a tad to long, it really hindered the flow of the game.

Keep up the good work, I can really see this game going live on steam or something one day.
Maybe even add some co-op so that two players each control their own character.

The game plays incredibly stable. My only complaint would be that the music is way to loud and there is no (as far as I could see) no way to turn it down. Also the Kaiju animation is a bit repetitive.

Art-style is cool, fits the theme of your setting well. Police force feels powerful in larger groups.

The puzzles where really challenging and I absolutely loved the art-style and overall original mechanics. In the beginning I was a bit confused with the movement controls, but I got the hang of it rather quickly.

Liked the atmosphere, getting on the bear makes you feel "big". Only complaint is that the progression and combat feels a bit repetitive.

I was really feeling the vibe, then the music stopped and everything went silent. Second level did not load. There are two major faults that can cause this: -Level was not added to your build index, or your index number/string name did not match in your code to load the proper level. If you used a string name to identify the level and load it, probably a capital or spelling mistake.  Not to worry though, every one is here to learn!

edit: further below I read you have  a UI issue that is causing the problem. Check your canvas settings, make sure it scales with the screen size (set slider to 0.5 in order to scale based on width and height).

Love the style, the rythm, lovely art and I love the song that builds up the more characters you recruit, everything fits really well together. I actually have no complaints on this one. Very well done.

Yea we knew the clarity on what you had to do in the beginning and the camera would be the two major complaints. Definitely a focus for our next project. Due to time constraints we focused on  getting everything we wanted in the project. But the camera definitely could have used some extra love.  Glad every one seems to experience the  immersion we where going for. Thanks for your feedback!

Hey, time constraints, it's part of the jam experience :). Bugs are just a big a part of this as the finished product.

Visually one of the best 2D games in this jam. Only complaint is that I would have loved to move the elements in unison rather than switching between them. I get what the point of that mechanic was, but it often felt that  I needed to back track just a tad to much.

Overall I loved the experience and atmosphere. Very serene.

Keep it up!

I played this game with a ridiculous grin on my face the whole time. I find it hard to describe, but there is just a certain "bro" charm to this game and it's simplicity.  A bro needs to help a bro out to keep their gains up. the 2D characters and props in a 3D setting also give it a very unique style and atmosphere making it stand out, in a good way.

Only negative was me failing the bros and letting some of them die. No it is not a negative, I failed myself and my bros.