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Thanks Nigec! I think the maths are easy even if you don't really like that, I didn't want to include anything difficult - it's more a matter of logic. Have you tried using the tips in the "mini guide" that I provided?

Thanks Nigec! :)

Oh thanks a lot! I'm glad you liked the game so much and the narrative part! Being compared to Little Big Adventure is an honor ^^
I agree about the hammer minigame, it breaks the "rythm" of the game and makes it a little painful to go to the inventory 3 times... I'll try to improve in a future version!

Thank you Hex! I replied with more details to your other comment (on the page of the game), but I'm really happy that you liked the setting and the use of the painting :)

Thanks Hexenwerk for your kind words! I hope too that what comes next will be interesting (it's difficult to renew ideas and stay "fresh and unpredictable" over the years ^_^), but at least I am quite happy with what I did here on Boklin, even if it's not perfect.

If you "cracked" the generator puzzle instead of solving the puzzle normally, that's fine for me. There can be several ways of solving a puzzle, and the most important is to find a solution to progress in the adventure!

The colors and numbers puzzle is not very difficult in fact (it is the last puzzle in the game), you just have to be sure that you gathered all the clues found previously - Spoiler: The plan of the temple, the columns with their colors, the code on the portal at the center of the island, and the color code on the paper with the 0 to 9 digits). Just make the link between the colors, their position with the roman numbers, and the value in digits, and you should get a code to enter in the temple.

I'm glad you liked my interpretation of the painting! It was fun to recreate my own version of it for the game. All credits for using this specific and inspiring painting go to @BlurredGames (Juanjo).

Hi! Thanks for playing! The game is not easy. I hope this helps: https://the-icehouse.itch.io/boklin/devlog/823127/mini-guide

Like all of my other reviews, I'll try to be objective and balance the pros and cons on this project. It is not intended to be negative in any way, I'm just trying to be honest and help the creator to improve the game and their own skills. 

So the Mighty Sloth takes you in a funny spaceship in which the situation is critical, because the rest of the crew has been killed by an alien, the terrible Polymorph, and you're the last survivor. Of course the Polymorph will try to kill you too, and your only chance of survival is to... err, what is it? :D I'm not sure you really stand a chance against it in fact, because you're just supposed to stop thinking! Isn't that synonymous of being dead? ^^

In this funny context, we awaken in a stasis pod. Immediately the player has to press one of the 2 buttons. I like to try the less obvious solutions so I immediately pressed the red button. I've been asked 3 times to confirm my choice and it ended up in horrible screams and the death of my character in the worst sufferings! I don't think I was prepared for it and I don't want to live this experience again! So next time I was asked, I immediately pressed the green button and could finally walk freely in the first room. Phew! 

The art in The Mightly Sloth is nice with a cartoon style, which might not be my first choice for an alien scifi game, but still is ok, particularly because there's humor and second degree in the different situations. Technically, the textures are quite detailed and there's a surrounding inking around the modeling made with some kind of cell-shading tool. There aren't a lot of objects in the rooms and they are quite lowpoly, and the 3d render parameters (lighting, shaders, global illumination, ambiant occlusion etc) are very basic, probably to save rendering time, and I have absolutely no issue with that, knowing very well the complexity of that kind of technique. Overall the game looks like a solid game from the 1990s, with the addition of high resolution, and the graphics do their job. I find the art mainly lacks of post-process (visual effects) to add a more modern touch, but we can say this is mainly a question of personal tastes. Once you start playing you don't even care about the art, the renders are neat and do their job, and overall the game looks fine.

The main interest of The Mighty Sloth resides in the setting and ambiance. We are mainly between horror/scary spaceship on the one side, and humour/cartoon on the other side. That works very well, and despite the fear that the Polymorph can induce, every situation is just fun and absurd, which is accentuated by different jokes in the texts. The game never bored me, I wanted to see the end of it, and the challenge wasn't unfair. I was only stuck once or twice, because I couldn't find a hotspot (yes I'm talking to you stupid chest next to the "work bench"!) but the game is fair and never too hard or too easy. You progress in the story in a very usual way, and it's interesting if you like the genre. 

Technically the game is not perfect. I've talked above of the art, which is subjective, but there are a couple of other issues here and there that can bother you if you're a perfectionnist:
- I went through a few bugs that I listed to the dev, so there might be a new version available to download than the one I've played.
- Sometimes when an object appears on screen (such as the blender) you see that it's a cropped picture that was placed over the background, but it causes a shift of a few pixels, which makes it obvious that the blender doesn't have transparency around it. Anyway I might be one of the only players who notice it, so it doesn't matter.
- Along the other issues I found, I think some of the sound design and music is not always at the same level, and for example when the main character dies and screams, the sound is very loud (even more shocking!).
- I finally noticed a few typos here and there. 

Globally, as a conclusion, I would say that The Mighty Sloth might not be the most polished and the most impressive game ever, it is quite classical in its form and might not impress young players, but what it does, it does it well. I really enjoyed the experience, I laughed a few times, was caught by the story, and the Polymorph idea is interesting. The dev of this game (and another person I think) said that this project finds its inspiration in an old UK tv show called the Red Dwarf. I don't know it, so I can't compare, but if you saw it and are a fan of it, then just go ahead and play The Mighty Sloth without hesitation: it's really a good game, quite long for a Jam, and with plenty of good ideas! I liked it!

Thanks Yaz! You're too kind :D
Regarding the size of the file, I do agree with you, it's incredible (I'm surprised myself). Unity is great for optimization (even if not perfect, real programmers still complain). I think it's been thought on purpose because of the compatibility of the engine with smartphones: these games have to be small and optimized.
Also, Boklin is small because there is no texture, no image, no video, on the contrary of some of my other games. Textures and images are what increase the size of the game most. You can see it with Catyph, 2GB of size! Here there's only polygons, colors, text and data. 

When you work with images, you need to optimize them a lot "for the web" (the photoshop feature is good for that). When you save a standard JPG, even with a low quality setting, it will still be bigger than a JPG "saved for web", in which everything is optimized (color palette, level of detail, etc). You have to use all the techniques that exist in order to optimize your games. Using PNG is usually not recommended if you want to lower the size of the game, unless you absolutely need transparency (which can also be avoided with some techniques: I saw it in the Mighty Slot game, he did like me in ASA using no transparency on some buttons/interactive objects that appear of disappear in a cropped area).
If your engine supports it, you can also use "newer" compressions such as webp for pictures and webm or ogg for video and audio, etc. It's always a sacrifice to do and a balance to find between the size of the project and the result in game... And it is way easier with full 3d and no texture than with prerenderend games!

Of course Josh people enjoy it, I'm sure you have already seen in during the stream of TigerJ and in the comments on our Discord :) Be proud!

Roger, I hope you didn't see my review as negative, I just tried to be honest and list the good and bad points. Overall your game ("game" or experience) is balanced and has many interesting ideas, and think you have been doing great with the tools at your disposal and your knowledge. I hope you are not discouraged and will want to keep learning and try to make new "games" in the future, that I will be more than happy to play!

This game is terrible, it's a pity that there is such a character such as Gerard. The robot is useless and doesn't even know how to make a pizza, typical of an AI. One of the worst creations in this Jam!

I wanted to play this game twice before I write my review. In addition I have also watched it on the stream of TigerJ. I wished I could play the 2nd version that is in prepare, but on the other hand I prefer to focus on writing about the actual Jam experience. As usual this review is very personal. I tried to write it (like the others) detached from the friendship I can have with the different creators, in order to comment as objectively as possible the game for what it is.

The Traveler is a unique project. Not only it's the first and maybe last game of Josh (who knows?) which makes it even more unique, but it is also a game that has been developed over 20 years, and in addition it was made with Adventure Maker, a game engine that makes me very nostalgic because I created my own first game (ASA) with it. So all in all, The Traveler has everything to seduce me. Let's see how it goes when clicking New Game. 

You awaken in a mysterious empty room with blue walls. The 3d is neat, visually refined, with little details but still it's clean and goes to the essential. The art is quite old-school, clearly made with techniques/softwares from the late 1990s, with prerendered 3d, simple modeling and texturing, etc. And this feeling is accentuated by the use of the adventure engine and the low resolution. But it works like a charm and in fact I like it a lot: that kind of graphic style speaks to me and I don't need more in a game if the content is rich enough. I still feel today that games have become too complex and focus too much on showing spectacular visuals and action, but they might lack of a more serious and quiet setting. I like it that there are still games with more simple graphics (simple but good), and that they focus on doing things differently in the gameplay and storytelling. However The Traveler remains VERY simple in its construction, and the addition of a few videos to make transitions would have been great.

So you're in your blue room and don't know why, and you come up with very few possibilites: looking at a shelf with drawers and a flower on it, going through a door, or enjoying a painting that is just in front of you, hanging on the main wall. Of course you quickly guess that you'll have to travel through the painting, as it has been the fad of many artists to invite the viewer to immerse themselves in their work and escape into a delirious world. Personally I haven't been surprised that we can go into the painting, as it is something I also did in past works, but I still think the concept is interesting and can let some players completely mind blown. I love it when art becomes a door to another world.

So after a few adventures with the lighting in the room, you're finally taken into your journey. You are alone, you don't know why you're undergo the current situation, and you find a few scrolls left to your attention, but they don't leave you with a lot of answers. So you have no choice but to continue to progress, and damn what a varied and mysterious world! You'll travel from a peaceful island to a world of ice, then different environments with luxury plants, and even to some kind of alien planet and their moon where you end up in prison. You'll definitely go through many places and feel taken in a real adventure. 

The gameplay itself is very basic: you read comments, interact with the world and try to use the few items that are available here and there. There is nothing very difficult, yet it's enjoyable because interesting situations/places are unlocked when you find what to do, thus the player is regularly reward with the possibility to progress further in the journey (hence the title, The Traveler). However I feel that despite the many different places, there is still very little to do. The number of possible interactions is limited, every scene in the game goes strictly to the essential, thus you never get lost and never have to think much out of the box, which makes the experience quite easy. I mean, it's cool, I have no problem with that and it makes of it a game that everyone can play, yet I feel it could have been a little more intricate, each world could have been detailed a little more (through text?) and a few more events could have happened (more challenge?). It's not a complain, just a note, to say that one shouldn't expect something as rich as the Myst series for example, despite obvious similarities here and there, and knowing that the creator of The Traveler is a fan. I would personally have enjoyed it if there had been a real puzzle to solve, with some buttons to press or I don't know what else, and a global puzzle in the end that would require to use the different informations you have collected during the journey (particularly because you can visit all of the places again and again).

Quickly you have visited all of the different worlds that the painting had to offer. The traveller reaches the end of the journey and comes back to the first room, to realise that he's stuck in a loop. How to break the loop? You have 2 different ways to do so, and the choice is up to you. I found it nice that there are 2 possible endings. 

Well, to conclude, 20 years is such a long time to create a game that I can't know what the dev went through during all that time. I can imagine how the game was ignited with a lot of joy, then abandoned for some time, then restarted, stopped again, etc. With plenty of life events that are not told in the game, and that were good reasons for the project to not be released earlier. I'm glad it finally happened and that we could play it, and see all the efforts and ideas put into this world. The game has been made with love and it's the most important. It could be more polished, more rich, more this or that, but it's definitely a work of dedication and passion (like all the games created during this jam actually), and that in itself is more than enough to conclude on a positive note!

As usual in my comments, I will try to detail my very own experience and to review the game with my lacking English vocabulary, and my own perception of video games, so the below is very personal. It is also, like all of my reviews, written in order to help the creator to (maybe) see qualities and flaws in their creation, but definitely not with the goal to be negative. Let's go:

Trip does hold its name so well! This game is 100% about the meanings (plural!) of a trip, both for us players and for the developer. I would suspect that even the AI that created the art was powered with LSD lol! I feel that this project was born from a concept, which is that a trip is a kind of dream, and the word trip can have several different meanings depending on the context, and I love the idea. If you don't know at least five different meanings of the word Trip, play this and wait for the ending scene!

The pictures are beautiful and detailed, particularly the environments (I liked the characters a little less - well they're just pictures of realistic people), and give a real feeling of evasion. The ones with plenty of colors and exotic places are definitely great to look at and convey all the emotions of this game imo. When you start playing Trip, what you want to see is these beautiful paintings that invite you to continue the journey up, or down, or left, or right.

I liked the AI art and how everything has been put together with Renpy. The transitions effects are interesting and well done! There are a few issues however in the game imho, but they are not very troublesome. The first issue I would notice is that some texts are going too fast and you don't have time to read them (final video), but I'm not a native English speaker and so I don't read English fast (yet I think it's important to take this profile of players into account). The second issue is more a matter of tastes, so I can't really say if it's an issue or not, but I find that the font used in the video (and to write the word TRIP) is beautiful but doesn't fit with the rest of the art. As you can see those issues are not a big deal and are very personal. Maybe the biggest issue is that quickly the game gets stuck into a loop until you unlock the final scene?

The gameplay itself is minimalist. It's not a bad thing, yet it's not a good thing either as it can become a little boring after a few clicks. Yet that was enough for me to continue to play and see where it was going, and I had a good time. I just wouldn't play like that for hours to a game, but in the current case that was a pleasant experience. As said above, you just choose in what direction you want to "trip": up, down, left, right, with a few variations. It's just like you're in a dream (or under drugs maybe but I've never experimented), you don't control anything at all in the different situations, but you can still decide a little bit in what direction you want the dream to continue on. In that aspect, Trip is a real success: you are a spectator, you see mysterious things happening before your astonished eyes and you have absolutely no control on them, and you just trip. 

Trip might have needed a bit more of a context, or a narration. I don't know. On the one hand I like it like that: the main character is clearly sleeping and tripping, but once the trip has started for the player, I feel like giving him more context could have improved the experience. Or maybe not a context, but an objective to reach? I don't know. I found it interesting for example that there is the "5" to see, but it's quite easy to find it in the game. Maybe it could have been something more difficult to unlock, after travelling in all directions for example. In addition this 5 is important and it's not immediately clear what it means. I liked it that way, but I feel like using the exact same picture for the 5 we see in game, and the 5 in the ending video, is a bit of a shame. I would have wished to see something different and unique in the final video. Nevertheless, even if the picture of the 5 is similar in the game and in the ending scene, there is still extra content in the ending scene, thanks to the additional text that give the different meanings of Trip, so I can't complain :) 

A word of conclusion. There would be more to say about Trip, about the music, the finition, etc, but I feel that the most important in my case was said above. The rest of the game is just what makes of it a game or an experience. It is short, strange, psychedelic somehow, and comes with a very unique idea of the theme of the Jam. Well done TreeDancer, and thanks a lot for creating this game and sharing it with all of us! I really hope you learned, had fun, and will continue to evolve and share your ideas with all of us at The Icehouse and on itchio.

I think we all have this mixed feeling ^^ WOW the art is gorgeous, this game is incredible! ... and... oh is it already finished? Isn't there a little more exploration? :D 

Nevertheless I really find big qualities in this game! Watching it streamed by TigerJ showed me new things I didn't do (such as walking outside the main path). That was interesting!

This game is awesome! 5 stars!

Thanks Juanjo, you know that this game would have never come to life without you <3

Thanks Juanjo! Indeed I wanted it to be quite easy. There's still inventory and items to find, but the whole gameplay relies mainly on minigames, no difficult puzzles, so I think most people can enjoy it! 

I'm touched that you liked the graphic style. Coming from you and the incredible art style/graphics in Psyche, it means a lot...!!!

I'm sorry but I don't remember which text(s) I found hard to understand. When I watched the stream of TigerJ, I didn't have that feeling. I think it's not really translation issue, it's more that some short texts can be understood differently out of context, and sometimes I was like "what's she talking about?" lol. It's not an issue, it's probably just me, but I wanted to say it. Don't worry anyway, your game is great, I loved it!

Thank you Kiki for the nice comment! I'm glad you had fun with the game. It's not perfect but it's good to read that you liked the top down view and the character of Roboto! I can't help but feel that there's something wrong with this game, and I can't really find out what. I think it's just personal, and related to the fact that I try to make the King (Gerard) character so detestable/despisable (on purpose) that everytime I see him I want the kind Roboto to hit him once and for all :D Of course in the whole story (going through all episodes) things are changing and this nasty lazy fat Gerard will evolve to a better person thanks to the robots, but in this Prologue he's just the worst version of himself and I had to deal with it XD
Anyway I agree with everything you said, including the hammer minigame. I just did that way because it was convenient and faster for me, and also to be honest because it makes the game a little longer when the player has to use the hammer item again and again...
I think I know what style will be the next one :) Now I just need to find the good moment to work on it! Thanks again for your encouragements and for playing my little game!

Thanks!

The following review is based on the first version of the game and I wrote it without knowing what kind of improvement/bug fixes would be done later. So this is a very personal review at an instant T. Please download the latest version and play it to make your own idea of this game!

The first thing that catches the eye in Jinx is the beauty of the art. The 2d illustrations are gorgeous, detailed and accurate and everything is lively and colored with taste. The 2d art is beautifully rendered with adventure creator which does wonders here compared to other 2d engines. The animation of the witch is a little more clumsy, but still works like a charm, particularly with the style of the character that is so funny and weird! What an original character design! :D

The game itself is not very difficult, the progression is easy to follow and good, with clear objectives. I don't have much to say about the gameplay, it's classical and if you like point and click adventure's you'll feel at home. The scenes are beautiful so that makes the game interesting to visit, with various items to gather here and there - they might be too obvious to find sometimes, such as the mushrooms. The world is actually well thought, with different areas to visit, in the past, present and future of the witch. It's really a good idea, and the design/coloring of the witch itself does change depending on the era. I like her kind of hippie style in her youth! And her cyberpunk clothes are unique!

There are other funny creatures and situations that occur during the story. The dialogues are short but the rants of the grumpy witch make great punchlines. There are some texts that I didn't understand, but it might be because of translation issues. I found a few bugs too, such as a mug hotspot that doesn't disappear after taking it, but it's not a big deal.

I did also like how we travel to the other eras. It's quite smart from the dev to have included an additional icon at the bottom. I was initially wondering what it is for, and why there is the game's logo included when we play, but it quickly became obvious that I'd need it to progress at some point. Good idea!

I don't know what to say to conclude, but I enjoyed the game and it is of high quality for a jam. I can't say today if I will remember it until the very end of my life as one of the most incredible games I've ever played but hey, it's just a jam game after all! It might miss a little something to make it definitely memorable, such as a longer story (I don't know), but all the ingredients are here to make it a potential winner of this Jam, from the quality of production to the ideas. Nothing prevented me from enjoying this game and its silly conclusion! I'd be happy to see more games with this funny witch!

Oh about the music as I said it's not "bad", it just doesn't stand out much to improve the immersion. During Jams I don't use original music either, and the music I choose is probably not better than what you did here. I take what I can find and try to think if it works or not, but it's never optimal. As a result I totally understand you and why you did it that way. I just wanted to say it about the music in my "review" because visually the game is well done, and the audio globally isn't bad with interesting sound effects (such as the blue monster running sfx) and I just thought the music was a little less interesting compared to these parts. Anyway! Maybe Yaz Jam 6 will be 2 days long, so we'll see what you can do next year ;)

This is my review of the game, just please take it as a very personal opinion. Please play the game to discover all of its qualities and more, and make your own idea about it! 

I always look forward to playing new games by The Argonauts and or Esmeralda. The 2d hand drawn art is always unique, lively, comical and very well done, and I like it that it doesn't make use of 3d and modern tools. Everything is neat and thought in a smart way, the setting is nice, and overall it results in funny situations where the main character has to take silly decisions.

In this game, the main character is a young person that is quite lazy about house hores and cannot go back into the house, but a very strange world with magic and monsters is slowly replacing reality, everything coming from the favorite game of the character. The story is simple, and as you can read there's nothing really new, but it works well and it's a good pretext at taking the player in the game, until we start to meet very unusual characters and funny monsters!

The game is not very difficult, which I liked because you can just enjoy the story and situations without being stuck for too long. There are a few situations where I've been stuck and had to wander around, until I found out that I had indeed to wander (on purpose) and come back here or there after some time, and the world had changed. It's not always easy to know when you have to leave a place and come back, and why it happened, so I think you just have to try and guess, which is also part of those games.

It's a game in which you have to find items and use them properly. In this case they've made good use of it, because the items are found in logic places and are not hidden too much, and you know when you have to use them (it's not unfair), yet it's comical and you still need to think out of the box. It's also a game where the whole story takes place through speech/dialogue and I found that the punchlines were short but well written. The whole game might be less talkative than previous ones from the same creators, but I might just have bad memories.

The animation is well done and supports the story well. The sound design is not bad either and I loved how the blue monster runs away with the phone (the sound design when he runs goes so well with the situation!). The choice of music might be what I liked the least maybe, making it very standard. Nothing bad here, yet nothing original? I don't know, it's very personal, I might just have different tastes. It wasn't bad and I didn't dislike it either. 

Overall I had a nice moment playing this game and it might be one of my favorite so far. I met a few small issues here and there (which I don't remember and didn't write down), but the game works well, tells a nice story, is made in a clever way and respects the themes of the jam. 

The following is a very personal review based on my own experience. Please play it and make your own opinion! I'm not trying at all to be positive or negative, just telling what I felt out of playing this game. I tried to detach myself from the friendship I may have with the creators, to be as objective as I could. Let's go!

The games of BlurredGames are unique and very special. Whatever of their game you play, you will feel attracted into a unique mysterious and often dark world, with a huge level of detail and realism, and that will make you in awe. This new game is no different: the art and visual elements in Psyche are incredible, I really LOVE the whole design and atmosphere. You feel like you have suddenly crossed the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and you are facing a very weird world made of other dark monoliths in a foggy space. What's ahead? What challenge will you face? The game is over 800MB so you immediately think it must be rich in content, and you start to dream of a wonderful scifi story. We are going to talk mainly about this below!

You immediately want to explore the fascinating place and learn more about the story, situation, hero, philosophy, or whatever else you can expect from such a piece of art. And so, of course, you expect to see a cutscene or read a paper that will give you some more detail about your situation here. The issue however is right here: there is no interaction and no real story... I have been completely caught by surprise because it's not a game, it's really just a visual experience. I'm not saying at all that it's a bad thing, Art can absolutely be visual and not need a single word. But that's not what I expected when I launched the game, knowing what the creator can do, and I feel that it should be made more obvious from the very beginning what to expect exactly. Usually in these games there is at least something to read and a door to unlock (and hopefully more), but in Psyche you just move forward and it ends. It is very minimalist, and people can have different opinions about that, some will love it, others won't, but it should be made very clear in my opinion that we are not going to actually "play".

Of course there is a sense of wonder and curiosity because of the mysterious world that shows before our eyes, but you can't help wanting for more when you reach the end after just a minute. I think the frustration comes exactly from that: there was a huge potential with this unique place that reminded me of my own game Kitrinos somehow, and globally the whole Black Cube series, but in the end it's not exploited and results in a big questionning when the ending message suddenly pops up without having learned more, or done anything. There is no interaction with the world and you can only try to guess why you were there, after you see the final object before the credits. 

Again I'm not saying it's bad: it's obvious that it has been done on purpose, to let the "player" (more spectator) make their own story in their head, and imagine what they want. A lot of people enjoy games where we don't actually play, in which the story evolves, such as Dear Esther or more recently Hellblade II, which are both different kinds of interactive movies in a way. However Psych is far from the interactive movie because it's just too short! Is it the kind of experience people want from a game? Is it even still a game? Shouldn't it be turned more into a short film or showreel when it is that short and minimalist? It could have easily been turned into a more cinematic experience with a few camera moves and subtitles, making of it a journey between game and short film. But in the current case, it more looks like an empty scene. We walk and that is all. Is there even still a joy or an interest in 2024 in walking and looking around in a virtual world? It is not a criticism but a real question, and I can't answer. I even feel that the music by Python Blue as been misused, being heard only in the main menu, not when you play, which adds up to everything said previously and adding up in my case to the emptiness of the gameplay.

For me this is a demo that proves once again, if it was necessary, that Blurred Games is highly talented in creating incredible visual scenes nearing AAA quality, but it's not an actual game. Is it bad, is it good? It's up to the player to decide if they liked it or not, but personally I'm a little sad that there is not at least a better introduction and a longer conclusion, and something to do or to live in between. I do however feel grateful for the effort and the participation to the Jam, and I can't deny that I loved the world that I saw!

This is an early review, written before the latest updates that can improve the experience and add clues, and like any review it is very subjective. Please download the game, try it, persevere if you're stuck, try to understand it, make pauses if necessary. Make your own opinion and don't stop at what I wrote. Many changes have been brought after I played the early Jam release, and since then I have been able to understand the meaning of the symbols (with the help of Yaz, that said).

The art is just great, from the highres detailed spherical environments to the music, this game is both beautiful and relaxing. There is no deep story but you quickly feel that there is a mystery to solve, with some text and voice over to help, and you start wandering around. I really liked walking in this world. However! It is clearly not for everyone and it's really really difficult! Knowing the creator well enough (^^), he will probably reply that it is very logical and not so hard, but to be honest, I find that it requires a lot of adventure/puzzle-solving skills if you want to fully enjoy this project. I think that Yaz would benefit of making more "simple" games, more opened to people like me with a simple mind. Of course making the game too easy wouldn't be so fun and it would be finished very quickly, but I feel that there would be a better balance to find in the difficulty with what I could almost qualify (in a friendly way) of sadism in this case lol, because Yaz seems to take pleasure in making the player uncomfortable because of the too high challenge.

The first part of this game is a pixel hunt: while you are walking, you have to keep your eyes opened to find hidden symbols in the environments. It's a challenge that is "for everyone" on the one side, but also difficult/exhausting on the other side. Indeed, some of the symbols are easy to find and make the walk fun and give a purpose, while other symbols are a real torture to discover because they are hidden so much in the details of the backgrounds that you have to look veeeery carefuly, turn the camera around a LOT, and walk again and again in the different places until you find them by pure chance... 

Next comes the real puzzle: you have collected all the symbols and you have to use them. What do they mean? How can they be used with the given maths operations (or not?). And what is the logic behind all of this? Honestly while writing these lines I am still stuck and haven't found the solution, so I don't know and I haven't seen the end of the game. It's too hard for my little brain, and I feel that I will have to ask for help to the creator, and it's a shame as I would like to be able to fully find the solution on my own, which brings frustration, and it is not what I expect from an adventure game in a beautiful world. 

So globally, I have a mixed feeling about all of this: there is a sense of wonder and beauty, and at the same time the challenge is so hard and seems to require so much brain gymnastics that I can't help but feel a little disappointed. It's a good game, but only a very small amount of people will want to do the necessary effort to understanding it to reach the end.

Of course as this is a review written before I could finish the game, I might change of mind and update this text if I end up solving the puzzle.

Il faut lire les textes.

Great playthrough! Well explained and easy to follow. Glad you liked the game, thanks for making this video!

Nice preview Roger! Looking forward to playing the final game. Keep up the good work!

Sorry for the wait, but the Jam version of Zly.ii is finally available again! However I have not been able to finish the updated version with sound effect and improvements as planned, because of a busy schedule - still working on it from time to time though, not cancelled so far.

Thanks! Really cool :)

I didn't make the link with tower defense but you're right!

Would love to see some of the watercolor art in a devlog someday

Looking good, nice colors, great FX, and I really like the art style! Reminds me of Zelda or Ico, it's a very interesting mix. Is the game still in development? I would really like to see more in the future :)

Oh sorry, I was so absorbed by my other game in development that I totally forgot to visit itchio for a long while... I would like to make Zly.ii available again before Summer. If it is too long and you don't want to wait, please feel free to contact me through www.theblackcube.fr and I will do my best to send you a private access if it is possible. I would however recommend waiting for the improved version.

Well I'm overwhelmed by too many things to do, but I don't forget it and want to finish this project someday. Reading positive comments such as yours can definitely speed up the process ;)

I'm glad you liked it!
I can't compete with your high quality graphics ^^

Thank you!