Soooooo I still don't know how to beat lvl 1..... 

Cool game! Jumping could be improved, it was difficult to navigate the platforms.

@ilseroth The "F" Grapple function doesn't work...

Charge shot opens the blue door.

@timothy-tarter Charge an attack with left mouse button and shoot the blue shield door.

I liked it and played the whole way through! Really good sfx (but any kind of soundtrack/background noise would be good). The abilities felt great. I think enemies need to be harder--an easy improvement would be to have some enemies shoot more than three bullets. Surprisingly big game for the time given, and feels pretty complete, though the endings could use some love.

I love the idea of a reverse Metroidvania! I'm not sure if I finished the game though. I merged my AI and the game closed? I think the idea is really cool, but the game needs some more polish before it really shines. (Things like: jumping, looking, and moving felt a little funky; and the sub-rooms could do with some more deliberate design to help show off the weapons and movement that you implemented.)

**wow**.

This game was so cool I showed my friends lol. I cant believe you both did this this in only a weekend. This is better than a lot of early access games I've seen lol. If you decide to keep working on it, please make a post about it. I'll follow you. I beat the whole thing through and It was really rewarding. I got the hang of the controls and that puzzle with the ascending platforms was sick. I'm really impressed with this one

mac link with no mac download :(

I took the link down, because apparently it was bugged @dry-squid, but the ludum website didn't update it the 10 times I tried to take it off. I'll try again now. Hey it worked! Finally.

@ilseroth thanks! I'll try to play this on my brothers laptop still. appreciate your response :yellow_heart:

Okay big props to you for a jam game this is seriously awesome! I don't even wanna imagine the pain of figuring out cases where the player could get stuck. I planned out a metroidvania once, but the while thing with losing items and potentially cutting yourself off... Good job.

Good concept

@pandan
Going to play this when i get home

Cool game ... Nice work!

Pretty solid entry, only missing a BGM :D
Without a minimap it's a bit confusing, but that's part of it, I guess XD
Sadly the game does not give any "epilogue" and goes to Main menu upon escaping, and right out crashes when choosing to merge D:

@zugai89 The ending was both kinda intended and a product of trying to make a metroidvania in 3 days. (AKA Time.) The idea was that if you merge, it's over; but if that robot escapes, then the issue is still there and it's up to some other robot that will have to take over.

As for the lack of BGM, I couldn't find a fitting one on any of the creative commons sites, and I'd rather have no music then something that isn't right. I don't know anything about DAWs, so my music usually is just me playing guitar, but my cord I use to capture guitar on PC broke apparently sometime between this and last Ludum... so no music. Thanks for playing!

Good take on the theme, I like the idea. It's pretty polished for a 3 day jam entry. Played all the way to the end. As mentioned above a minimap would be nice, may be indication of what parts you already sacrificed. Epilogue was a bit dissapointing, though. :D

Congrats ! Your game has a pretty solid feel, it's great ! And pretty nice take on the theme ;)

Nice Metroid Prime vibe with this one, especially as I got totally lost! The graphical style is really compelling and the scale of content you've managed to create is huge!

Unfortunately I couldn't remember all my abilities from the title screen, so when I was prompted to give up an ability there were a few of them I didn't realise I had. This made the decision easy and meant I didn't have to change my play style.

As some of the abilities are OP (i.e. grappling vs very tricky jumping) I can't really take ownership of what abilities I retain either. This could be fixed by creating rooms with a number of different paths through, all of which are valid. It'd be a real time sink though so you'd lose the impressive sprawling map you've managed to create, but I think this might be a case where less is more.

Super impressive for a weekend's work!

I'm impressed by how much you got done in just a weekend! The concept of "giving up one of your abilities to progress" seems to be a running theme at this jam, but you pulled it off very nicely! Although, I do agree with the criticism that the physics felt a bit wonky, and I ended up giving up powers I didn't even know I had, like chrismcmath said above.

Reverse metroidvania totally works! What a cool idea, and you really really are forced to part with something you like. Good job!!!

Cool stuff! Feels really solid to play, graphics are nice and all the sound effects are fitting and give good feedback. I did find myself running in circles a bit, a map might've helped or maybe some more direction. I think the enemies should be fewer but more aggressive. Right now you have to get really close before they even do anything so I just picked them off from afar pretty much which is kinda boring. Also as some have mentioned there are a few too many upgrades that don't feel necessary (or that I didn't even knew I had). I didn't feel I gave up anything by sacrificing them.

I will try not to repeat what has already been said.

I liked your game a lot! So while the following might sound negative, it's actually more constructive.
(At least I'm trying to be)



*Here are some things I liked*

- Graphics were nice, maybe could have benefited from a shader for shadows.
- The ambition, the large levels.
- Shooting felt good, charge shots were fun.
- Grapple beam was ambitious, and felt good when it was used.

*Things I didn't like*

- People who havent played Metroid Prime aren't going to know you have to use Charge Shots to open the Purple Doors.
- The jumping felt terrible, didn't feel like gravity. When you reached the peak of your jump, you sank instantly. *i feel like the glide was to make jumping bearable*
- The enemies were just really dumb, and never posed a threat. They have such a small radius of engagement.
- No landmarks, you could get lost in the levels really easily. Lighting + some distinguishable rooms would have helped. different colors for the walls would have worked.
- Bombs felt like the easiest thing to sacrifice, because of how terrible they were.
- Grapple beam also felt easy to sacrifice, because there so few places you could use it.


***Summary***

I felt like you might have tried to invoke Metroid Prime a bit too much here, the ambition of the game is so high, because of that you had to sacrifice (no pun intended) some features that make the games fun.
The lack of map awareness makes navigation difficult, and after you kill the enemies, remembering which room lead to where was near impossible.

All of that being said, I enjoyed it, and the idea of sacrificing powerups and navigating without them is a good idea. Although the sacrifice was never felt too much because each room could be navigated with double jump alone.

I'm not much of a gamer (ironic, I know) and my skills are pretty awful, but I was still able to get a solid handle on the controls and difficulty of fighting off enemies. Once I noticed that the range of the enemies noticing me was smaller than the range of my guns, I was able to manage pretty well. I loved the concept of losing player functionality in order to progress, and the lack of obvious landmarks throughout the map added an extra degree of entertainment as I did my best to remember my way back the the first room. Thanks for a fun game! :)

@pandan I was going to did alternate colors for walls, but we were strapped for time. I mean, let's be honest almost everything you brought up as a negative were planned on being addressed but ran out of time.

The Jump I'll agree was a bit too binary, it does slow down near the top of the jump, but not nearly enough, I probably should have spent some time really iterating on it, but I didn't get much time on the actual level to test it, and I was in charge of coding and art, so I had... a lot to do.

But yeah you called it, the project was ambitious, which means that people tend to compare it more with actual games as opposed to Ludum Projects. But I wasn't really going for a good score this time, it was more for fun and to do a team project; thanks for the in depth review :heart:

Awesome game. It looked, sounded, and felt like a relatively short but complete game that I imagine could have existed in the 80s or 90s. Jumping could have done with some work, and maybe a map or something to aid navigation, but overall, it was pretty fun. One of the best games for this game jam that I've seen.

There is no data folder in the Linux download, just the binary but no level data...
I was so excited to play the other game called "Diortem".