Very cool game!!! Like pixel art, concept is awesome. Sometimes to hard find timing of platforms... but that is all. Great game!

@Serious07 Please, don't forget to come back and rate it. Thanks.

@acoto87 Done :) Please rate my game too ;)

really cute and an interesting mechanic!

Mac build please? :3

@pandademic42 Done, let me know if you can play it, I don't have a Mac to test it :)

Niiiiice! Thanks so much, man!

So, firstly: It's a little small, windowed on a mac. But I worked with it. :)
It was pretty fun, really creative, and the audio dings were helpful! the UI was pretty great too. Simple, but conveyed enough info for me.

The funny part, is I got stuck here, waiting for that helicopter enemy to come to my side of the screen, so I could sneak past him, but I couldn't get him to. So I didn't make it past that part. :P But it was still very fun and I'd play it again sometime!

@pandademic42 Thanks for playing! I force the windowed because I only design the levels for 19:6 resolutions and windowed mode is a way to ensure that resolution. So, anyway, I'm glad you could play it in windowed mode. I think you meant to upload an image to the reply but I don't see it.

There it is :)

@pandademic42 Well that part is early in the game, there are like 10 more screens. The flying dude (that's the code name for that enemy XD) in that screen doesn't fly too far to the left side, you need to figure it out while is in the right side.

I really liked your concept! Is pretty funny and frustrating when you suddenly freeze at mid-air and an enemy is walking right into your face ahahaha

Also, the "tin, ting!" sounds pretty resembles a metronome, and it's really cool.
Nice work dud! I'm thinking about a polished version of this game with music and more art! Do it plz!

I enjoyed it! I got a bit stuck early on, but I got past it. Love the art.

Really enjoyed it!!! Only one small issue is by certain amount of time, there might be a cycle of monster movement, which makes the game hard to continue. But yeah, really a good game~~~

@RobinbyZhou Yeah, I notice that when I was playtesting it, hard to fix though.. Thanks for playing.

So very awesome! My GF was like "You're still playing it XD". Great level designs, I was surprised there was as much verity of game play with just two enemy. I did notice that the square duders sometimes felt random on when they would jump after me or not. It was incredible satisfying to wait for the perfect timing and then rush all at once to get to the next level. My favorate was timing the jumps just right to freeze in mid air to hide from a fly boy or hope the platform would be under you when you unpause.. Very well done, would recommend!

@PadenPierry Thanks for playing!

Wow, what an idea :) Lov it. Played it way to long.
Hate the chopper..
Good job. Bunch of start from me.

The idea is super interring, but for me it was super difficult to play. The graphics is really good and the sound fits the game well. Overall a very well made game.

@acoto87 How do you upload such large gifs?

@PadenPierry Don't know, I just upload them. I made them with GifCam at 16 FPS, all other settings by default.

Pretty good! Nice use of the theme.

Wow! Awesome game!

Cool concept, great art and a great game! I hope this game does well!

I like it! I'd appreciate some button to trigger the beginning of my turn, and have time stopped until then. That way I get more time to think.

This was way harder then it looked like lol. Could beat the level with both grounded and airbourne enemy, seems like there's just not enought time :( But it felt really cool, such a simple idea. Great job :)

I finally beat the game, really fun to play, I hope there will be some extended version with more levels.I m kooking forward for your next games.

This game is AWESOME!! It hits the theme very well, it's challenging, and the pixel art is cute! I need to play more, please finish this game if you can!

I really enjoyed the concept, and having the jump button not the up arrow on keyboard make platforming so much better, so kudos! The sound FX made the game more interesting, however some music would have been nice, (Not docking you to much on that, I still enjoyed what I played).

Anyways, in the later stages it turned into a waiting game, which I didn't really enjoy too much, but overall great job! Also simple graphics go a long ways!

@Gamekrazzy Thanks for playing it! Yeah I try to make music for the game, buy I'm as bad as I'm with graphics and I think all my energy went to the graphics this time.

I did notice that in the later stages the player has to wait a little too much to synchronize platforms and flying dudes, but I also found that is a little hard to fix that part since the synchronization dependes on how you played and how much time you do in the previous levels.

I don't finish your game yet, but I'll and leave you a proper review when I finish it. :)

Really good concept overall ! I like the idea that you can stay in the air while ennemies try to eat you alive !
Anyway the graphics looks consistant et the gameplay is robust.
A bit challenging on the timing sometimes but if you are patient it pays off.
Well done !

I made [a similar game](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/rock-reach-flag) with a different take on the pause-and-play platforming, in a more simultaneous-turn-based platformer manner. But gosh your graphics are great! I'm echoing sentiments, but I really liked the smart aerial positioning at the end of a timelapse to avoid enemies on the floor.

Nice graphics, vibe and execution of the theme. Some of those levels were HARD for me to beat (got lucky), but felt pretty rewarding to get through (not that I beat all of them). Nice work!

I really love the concept of this. Quite simple, but fun. Although there are some rooms with flying enemies that are near impossible unless you get really lucky. Anyways, great job!

Wow, the concept is fantastic, love the art, the sound makes me confuse in the start but I get used to.

The game was really fun, you guys did a great job at combining the two genres. I also found a small bug where if you hold left or right when dropping into the next level you can get on-top of the ceiling. After a while the bell began to bug me a bit but that might be due to the lack of music to accompany it. All around this was a great idea and well executed, thanks for sharing!

FANTASTIC, MAJESTIC, INCREDIBLE! I've REALLY enjoyed this game. The graphics reminds my to VVVVVVVV. Keep going with the great work :)

Super cool take on the theme. Turn-based real-time? Perfect!

Great execution! I really like the aesthetics and the music, they fit together well. I would rather not have the time increase, since the waiting makes the game lose speed, but I imagine that would limit the space of possibilities. I hope you think about that when you expand the game!

Beat the game! Really fun and smart concept, mixing realtime and turn-based is just brilliant. I'd love to see this expanded into a bigger game :)

@GastricSparrow Well the increment of the time is precisely to increase the posibilities in the design of the levels. It's true that it looses speed, but well, I guess I have to think about that to refine the design. Thanks for playing!

Neat idea! I included it in my Ludum Dare 41 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7llm9eTY4YI

Really intriguing combination! one of the better platformer + X combos I've played. The taking in turns to make your move, whilst still maintaining full control of character is interesting. Having to think if you're in range of enemies and where will be a safe place is a nice bit of strategy. Graphics are nice, the sound unfortunately a bit annoying but does get you into the rhythm thats needed for this type of game. Almost finished it... but I failed you. Forgive me....

Sound Effects were really fitting and I loved the art, awesome work!

Excellent game! 5/5 all around. This type of game genre mix seems to be doing really well - i forsee turn-based platforms becoming a thing i think. The only thing i found odd is that the moving platforms stayed moving the whole time - not sure why but i would have expected them to only move on the enemy turn.....strange thats what i would have expected

@Rocktavious I haven't consider that the platform move only when is the enemies turn, I'll consider it now! Thanks for play it.

Great game! The turn based mechanic was a really great combo with platformer.

Some of the jumps were difficult to make, and needing to wait several turns for platforms to line up was annoying.

I feel like the timers were a hindrance, they made it difficult to get the timing of some platforms to align.

Good game overall though, I like the graphics.

I love the concept and the art! It's really clever and way more difficult than I expected. Well done!

I would love to see the audio explored a little more, since the current set can get a bit repetitive.

This was pretty cool. I had some trouble with some of the jumps. But lots of fun.

I love your take on this theme! Your game feels like a very organic combo that goes well together and makes both platformer and turn-based game into something completely different, like a new puzzle sub-genre of a kind. Good job on nailing it!

Really great concept and fantastic interpretation of the theme. I was skeptical at first but after playing it I realized there really was something to your real-time turn-based idea. Very creative! I thought the game would have been more fun if the levels were designed so that the enemies and the level environemtn didn't end up in these situations so easily where you had to wait for multiple cycles to get the enemy to line up in the right position for you to make your move.

Cool concept! I also really loved the art style. Pixelly goodness. Great job!

Interesting idea! It's a nice fit for the theme, but I think moving platforms kind of break the experience for me. I think those moving outside of the "turns" felt weird, with lots of waiting to synch with them, and become frustrating fast. Otherwise, I like the concept, good work!

Really polished! The timing was really smooth and the artwork works so well! My only critique is that the drones are unfair, more predictable drones would be better in my opinion (similar to flying Koopas in Mario).

@candlesan Yes, this is the major critique of the game, I did notice before publishing but at the time I didn't have (still haven't) a good idea of how to solve it, because it depends on how many clocks the player picked up, nd how many time is spent in previous screens. This is something that needs work. Thanks for playing!

@Blinkenlights Yeah, probably the flying dudes need improvements. One of them could be showing some sort of indicator of the area they are covering, and the other could be what you suggested, I'll look into it to see what works best. Thanks for playing!

+1 for HTML
The theme is perfektly matched.

Really nice game. The turn-based strategy matches perfectly. The simple pixel art looks great. Really I have nothing but good words to say about this game.

The best use of the theme of all games I've played so far!
Level design-wise a lot of screens turn into a waiting game, especially when you get longer time periods, because the enemies tend to stop at the one spot where I cannot continue a lot of the time. But that's a simple tweak issue. The game itself, and the execution is really good!

Pretty fun! I like the addition to the clocks to add some progression to the game and longer challenges, and THANK YOU for making the enemy turns shorter. As some people have pointed out some frustration comes from the syncing of enemies and platforms which results in long waiting periods at times. A fix might be to resync the rooms when entering and at death.

OK, thats a cool game :D only meant to spend a little time rating it but ended up playing for much longer, well done!

GREAT GAME! I really like it and the mechanic too! You should keep working on it and make it bigger with more enemies and levels. Good job! Check my entry if you have time, its really diferent https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/alien-sports thanks!

Great game, i really like the concept and the mechanics are perfect :)

One of the best interpretations of the theme I've seen. Everything is good except for one complaint which that jumps are hard (especially near the roofs) which is sometimes frustrating since the player needs to wait for the correct timing again. I also would like to suggest adding some coyote time where the player can jump after falling of a platform if he didn't exceed a specified small amount of time in the air which makes jumping easier especially near roofs. Great job.

This is a well done game with a clever mechanic and good presentation. But I think there are some places that the wait for a good platform cycle is huge, and there is nothing the player can do about that (which may be frustrating). Maybe a mechanic that would let you move while it's not your turn or something that stops just the platforms (just spit-balling) would help improve the game.

Well done.

One of the better platformers I've played and platformers are my favourite type of genre. No general feedback other than to reallllllly encourage you to make more levels and add more content. I can see myself spending a lot of time playing this game if its longer (and if maybe the graphics are a bit more polished). :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Very cool, I just think really difficult to see the clock, maybe if it was represented by another kind of graphic it would be better!

Pretty cool idea, has a lot of potential.

i like it!

Very cool concept and well executed! I really liked going FULL WARPZONE MODE even though it only ended with mme getting dropped into the void. the lack of music was very eerie and put more emphasis on the timer pings. I'm also very glad you made it so you restart at the beginning of the scene whenever you die because the alternative would have been maddening haha.
Would have liked to have seen some variety in animation like perhaps idle silliness or something to give the main character a bit more personality, but overall a very very solid entry

Interesting idea, though I think the timer was a bit too hard to see. It made it a bit difficult to plan moves. Maybe an idea would be to have the enemies change color when it's their turn.

Wow, this is great! I liked the central mechanic, and the game was just the perfect length with the mechanics it had. The physics felt fluid, the sound effects were perfect, and the graphics were clean and polished. I had a lot of fun with this. Amazing work!

Nice pixel art and concept. I was wondering what would the game feel like if the timer moved only when the player is moving (walking, falling etc.)

:smiley: Wow, seriously a great idea and well implemented. Nice game :thumbsup:

Nice one! Standing frozen while the level moves into your desired position and then out again, or being in a good position but with enemies at completely impossible places works really well.

Interesting idea! I got stuck on the same level as @pandademic42.

Nice game! I like the idea. Gameplay is very well implemented. The color scheme is nice gamboy-ish and all.
At first I had to get used to that time could freeze during a jump but after all that wasn't that hard at all.
Great game!

I love this execution of dynamic vs. turn-based. It's challenging but fun. Nice job!

Wow nice game! Liked it alot!

You got a lot of positive comments already, so I will go with them and congrats you for your work. Its a fine job. Well done!

I highly appreciate the tight controls and the reasonable platform difficulty to find this game enjoyable. To be honest, though, I thought the turn-based aspect did not add to the game in any way. On the contrary, waiting for the next move was a test of patience to me. While it's compelling to go through the suspense of, "was this the right move" after your turn ends, once it becomes a predictable pattern, it turns into a chore.

I really like the concept. Great use of the theme and combo of mechanics. There's a lot of potential for something more with this idea. And the visual style and basic sounds all fit wonderfully. If you can get some music to really get the player pumped, then this could turn into one of those intense, addictive, challenging indie games. Good work!

This was neat, and tightly implemented! I sometimes wished I could just fast-forward through my turn because I was waiting for things to align correctly, but otherwise enjoyed it - I think my favorite mechanic was jumping towards an slime right at the end of the turn, so that you ended mid-air and by the time the next turn started the slime was out of the way. Saved my bacon towards the end! And I did beat it, which was challenging but doable, yay!

Also, the first time a slime jumped at me I was so surprised I yelped! Sneaky little devils!

This is really fantastic! Great use of the theme!

Neat game and nice pixel art!

Thanks for joining me in chat while I streamed your game on https://www.twitch.tv/saoigames.

This game was excellent. The only issue I had was that the slimes all looked the same but didn't all behave the same. Great concept and excellent execution.

Nice little game. This mechanic has potential.

Unfortunately I think that those two genres should be compatible! :) Because this idea really got me and I want more. Really love your idea and I wish you could continue some work around it. Art is also very good and this old gameboy vibe fits very well! Great Job!

Interesting concept. The genres works together. It was also puzzle / plateformer. What could be improved for us is a way to interact with the time phase. Shorten it with a skill or a collectible. Good work, could be turned into a full game imo.

A really good take on the theme that works perfectly. My only gripe is that some screens/rooms are very frustrating and becomes more or less a very boring waiting game of waiting for the enemies/platforms to line up.
Other than that, this is a really good entry.

Great concept!

Time manipulation is a favorite source of many game mechanics. I think this can be expanded to utilize the time mechanic already in place. Some of the enemies feel unfair because they operate with different rules than others. A quick color change would have helped here. I appreciate the length of the game, some games overstay their welcome, but this one has a good length. Well done. Cheers!

Really good game and interesting mecanics which work well as expected. The main gameplay create an anxiety in-game - unusual puzzle game playing with time. The aesthetic is good. Add a background music and you have a five stars projects. Thank you. One of my favorite entries ++

Nice game and cool concepts. I enjoyed the minimalistic art style as well.

Just some feedback: On one of the levels a blob moves on three blocks and esentially only minimally changes his position after a turn, which leads to a lot of waiting if you have the blob in that state.

That wasn't a big deal however. Anyway, great entry!

This is a really neat idea! It's weirdly more strategic than i first thought, and the art style is simple, yet elegant. I liked that there was minimal sound to emphasize the metronome, but it got a little annoying after a while. Personally, i would change it to a softer sound. My only real problem was when i encountered the room with two helicopter enemies accompanied by a moving platform over a pit. Took me nearly forever to get past it. Seems like the copters have a little too much range, or at least they snipe you out a little too good. All said and done a great game!

I tought this was awesome for a team-made jam game. But then I remembered it's a compo!

Incredible job here! I just wish the level design would be more challenging on tricky ways, not only by having hard enemy placements. Having some Mega-Man-esque level designs like disappearing platforms and some more complex moving/behaving patterns for the enemies would make this game go from great to mind-blowing.

Well done!

Interesting concept. But implementations looks unplable. Levels with copters and moving platforms looks impossible and require to be nerd to count timings and complete the game =(

I like the concept behind the game in that it is a combination of real time and turn based games. Though the audio was simple, the graphics, audio and text created a sort of retro experience that I enjoyed. I also liked how the powerups simply did not just give the player an advantage, but it also gave the player a disadvantage (even though the player's turn is longer, the enemy's turn is also longer). This made me think about whether I should pick a powerup or not. I did not understand the mechanic of going backwards to a level the player just completed. I did not finish this game, but is this game possibly a Metroidvania?

Good job! Cool game!
Very creative and challenging. I believe AI has to be improved, but I really enjoyed seeing these two genres working.

I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.

I hope you continue with the project.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape

@D-Studios It certainly have elements of a Metroidvania game, mostly the camera movement through the levels.

@cristiano.m.garcia I already have rated and reviewed your game. It's a good and interesting game.

I was looking forward to try out this one and I wasn't dissappointed. The idea was great as well as the execution. :smiley_cat:

Now for the nit-picky stuff:
* ghost jumping would be great
* jumping with a gamepad didn't work for me in the WebGL version - instead of a long jump, the character just kept doing tiny jumps (but that might just be the device (Logitech F310) - it worked great in the Win version)
* some screens felt a bit too 'position-dependant' - I had to wait quite a while for the moving platforms to get into the right position (especially the very last screen)
* the base sfx volume is too loud
* the timescale could get faster during the enemy turn, but that might get confusing

@SecretPocketCat Thanks for playing and for the feedback, helps a lot!

Came here from Jupi's let's play video and had to give this a go. Glad I did. Nice work!

Really good! Loved the art style too!

Typicaly i'm quite bored with platformers but this game feels fresh as i was plaing platformer first time in my life!

Reminds me strongly "Braid" which was also platformer about time manipulation - it feels this way for me (not that you have turns but that you depend on some time manipulation trickery...)

Game is very well paced, teach you core concept very well and levels are very well designed.
As some ppl mentioned before there are some issues later in the game that enemies are desynchronized and you have to wait a lot to progress, but on the other hand i love idea that you do not punish player for failing but simply you let him play again and again - this is very addictive! :)

Things that are lacking here are:
- not very good pixel art (very repetetive :D)
- no music or story :(
- did i mentioned no music? :D

Great things in this game:
- very well paced introduction to core concepts of the game
- great level design
- player movement and jumping feels very juicy
- letting player play over and over without penalty
- core concept is not very innovative (i think everybody thought for this theme :"turn based platformer") but execution is outstanding!
- i see that you had to think about few issues with this idea like: "what to do when player respawn in enemy" or "what to do when player falls over into enemy over and over" - and you solved those issues very well!
- enemies are quite 'smart' i would say and their new abilities are introduced step by step - which is very good
- one enemy followed me even to next level (maybe bug but it feels like feature - and it was great feeling and suprise!)

Only bug that i found is that you can jump "on the level" - like in Mario - check out screenshot


You can check out our game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/educational-beat-em-up-punches-delivered-with-math

Cool take on the theme, its a unique spin to a (for me) really stagnant genre. I like how the enemies behave and I love the concept's implementation (timers are generally on point) but i really struggled with the level design. I get that it's supposed to be hard, but from the early levels I can see that the enemies can stop at choke points (the first one where there's the little cube dude and the jump, if he stops on the right edge you basically just have to wait for his ass to move) and this one https://i.imgur.com/LRWtsV5.png are particularly annoying rather than difficult. An additional thing I would've liked to see (generally in a "hard" game like this) is a death counter, just as a motivational "you can't quit now", but overall good entry! Love the fact that it doesn't have any music and instead it makes the timer's really clear with just sfx, don't know if intended but that was great for me.

I like the concept! Got a bit stuck on the 4th (?) stage or so but could see myself playing this game when I need something to sink a few minutes into :D

Very nice game - the only flaw I found is how the enemies behave - they were too aggressive and would sometimes attack me at my spawnpoint. Other than that, great work! :)

Really nice game and concept! The graphics were very cool!

Great concept, this is exactly how the theme should inspire people, to create innovative games!

@Bartosz Wow, thanks for the detailed feedback, all of that will go to my notes. I'm glad you enjoy it, thanks for playing! I also played and reviewed your game, and is very good.

This was fun! I disliked how I couldn't defeat the enemies making some portions of the game more of a waiting game since the game between monster and safety was so tight (which may have not been so bad if I had a button to skip my turn. Unless there was and I just didn't know about it - lol). However, I really enjoyed the execution of it. It took some getting used to because I'm used to continuous fluid movement but it never felt unfair and I didn't miss a beat. (duh, it's going to take some getting used to, after all this is essentially a new genere no. :P) Really cool. :D

@acoto87 I played your game again, and on second thought i would say - if you really polish this game and put a lot of thought into cool riddles, and add cool story - it can be next Super Meat Boy! :D
Obviously for great success this needs a lot of marketing and probably some big advertisements like for XBox or PS but i would give it a try! ;)

@ProdigalSon Thanks for playing and for the feedback. There was no button to skip the player's waiting turn, but I have it on my notes now. ;)

@Bartosz I'm really considering it, because the feedback from all the players has been awesome, and I want to see if there something here if I spend more than 48h (much more, of course).

On a second read of your review:

I want to say that I know about the bad things in the game, in terms of art and music, and above all it's because my skills in those areas are very primitive, and I have no idea how to do nice things, except in code: P. So I always end up doing something not very pretty, although I must say that this is my best work of pixel art XD.

Early in the development of the game I notice the "bug" about the player been able to walk "on the level", but left it there because I wanted to do some kind of Mario warpzone/shortcut thing, but in the end I didn't. However, it was fun to watch some of the streamers (and also you) try to walk "on the game", and see the reaction when they think they found a hidden passage, but they aren't. I really regret not having put at least one in the game, because it would have been much cooler.

Anyway, I don't have on my records anyone who played it twice and say it in publicly, so thanks you very much for playing again!

I enjoyed the game overall, but I believe it can be even better by adding more features (e.g. double jump). Good work, keep it up.

What a great little idea! The game feels and plays very well. It's extremely innovative and that's the source of the only potential flaw that I can see in it. I mean, the game requires a shift in mindset from the player. There's a bunch of tight platforming here that we all know and love and turn-based mechanics kinda kill the pacing of it. If you play Think Before Escape expecting a platformer you probably won't enjoy it that much. However, if you approach the game with an open mind you'll get tons of fun from it. Great entry! Cheers!

Simple but fun. It's not the most original, but it sure is well executed and gameplay is smooth. Cute little graphics made the experience even more enjoyable. Good job.

It is amazing! And very fun! Just sometimes need to wait for too long for a chance.

concept is awesome, level design is good. The switch sound is a little boring, maybe sound is not the best way to give feedback to the player IMO.

Nice job ! It was a pleasure to play it.

Oh yeh I love this game. Pixel art is great. Mechanic is good. relly good job guy.

very cool idea! in the level before that I developed the skill to 'wait' in mid air, but that wont help me in this level, can't beat it, but still very good difficulty curve, also sweet graphics and sound
Edit: beat the level :D

Edit:

The mechanics are good. I like how it kinda turned into a game where you had to complete the level before the timer ran out. However some of the positions the enemies stopped in were annoying because they stopped me from completing a level until they moved. Otherwise, it's a good simple game.

Cool game. The graphics were cute. The concept is genius but waiting my whole turn for a platform to move into position got annoying sometimes. Good job.

Nice game! The enemy behavior could be a bit hard to predict. I like the idea and planning my next move while frozen was frustrating in good way.

Beat the game. It is fun and well designed. Shame about that recurring audio glitch though. With more playtesting more levels and more polish this could be something really interesting.

I like the art style and concept. I found the jump to be very unsatisfying to use and I stopped playing on one of the later levels because I was going to have to wait a minute just for the platform to cycle back all the way. This is the best turn based platformer I have played yet, though.