Great character design of the enemies!

The art is really good, it's a pretty well-rounded game for Ludum, I would say that the attacking doesn't feel good, so whilst the art is great, the gameplay brings it down. A great entry to Ludum though!

I agree with @dink-dunk, the attacking doesn't feel good and it feels slow. But I like the pixel art!

Haha, this is my kinda game, dude. Kinda wish I had thought of it myself. The joy of this art style is that it's detailed enough to inform you about some nuances, but vague enough that your own imagination gets to do some heavy lifting.

Art style is super dope. Theme was decent. Good job all round. Nice one!

Your pixel art skills are absolutely top notch, I really enjoy the style you have going for you. The animations are very smooth (How many frames? So gentle!), and the music is very good, if a tiny bit repetitive. Great job on this front for a Compo Game!

I think the combat loop didn't feel engaging, nor very fair. Enemies didn't telegraph their attacks and the attack seemed to resolve before they finished their attack animation. The main character attack animation was very, very slow and felt unweildly and just wasn't tremendously fun to use. The standard attack seemed super weak, the special attack didn't have enough oomph, and the Dodge didn't feel dodgy, nor was it useful when it locked down my other abilities and didn't remove me from the area I was being attacked.

Overall very good, seems like a lot of thought went into it! Good job!

@occultone thanks! This ludum dare I tried to put a lot of emphasis towards graphics and making the game look good which left less time to make the overall attacks and movement feel smooth. I do agree it feels a bit awkward. Thanks for the great feedback and I'm glad you liked the music! I tried your game too and while it took a bit to figure out, it was really fun!

The idea is **SO COOL**!! The graphics are also amazing, especially with the snow globe shaking and everything.

The music really fits with the game, but I wish there were sound effects. SFX would really improve it. And, did you use abundant music, it kinda sounded like it, still good though.

The gameplay did feel a bit like a spam 'c' game, but still interesting.

Anyways, good job! Hope you get enough ratings!

As others have said, the art was quite good, and the music was nice as well. The animations could do with some work though; they never felt like they had any force behind them, and I think it would've helped to have punches swing forward faster. Additionally, while the enemies were overall nice, the snowball was rather hard to defeat given its range, and in general it was hard not to get hit.

Nicely done overall though, the game is quite polished for an LD entry, and that's great to see!

The three stage setup really makes the spike in difficulty enormous, which is a shame, because I think this game has something special. In general, I really love the snowglobe setting; it was a great interpretation of the theme. The pixel art is super attractive. The music is fitting, seeing as it is chiptune; it's a little tragic sounding and somber, but this kind of made sense to me considering I was fighting snow enemies and had a fighter with the slowest reaction time ever. :P

And overall, I think that's the most frustrating part about the game. If the attacks are going to be super close range, they need to be more quick. In pretty much every instance I played, my enemies were always quicker to attack, no matter how much distance I gave myself. The only time I could land hits if I was lucky was to position myself where they would get stuck trying to chase me in the centrepiece, but even then, this technique didn't work very well for the snowball throwers. It would have been great if I could move around while preparing the sword attack, so it would allow players to strategise and dodge more efficiently. Oh speaking of the dodge, I did not find this technique useful for the game.

I did, however, like the variation of enemies, and how the sword can kill groups of enemies at once. I kind of feel disappointed that you spoiled it all on your game page, though now, I guess I can't say I was confused on what I had to do. :P I agree with @ajayajayaj that there needed to be way more sound effects for actions like deploying attacks and killing enemies. But the one sound you used for transitioning between levels was great.

If you were to make the response time of the character's attacks instantaneous and allow moving while attacking, I think I could forgive the difficulty of this current version. But for 48 hours, you've done a fine job. The graphics, music and idea were the high points for me.

Cool game! I absolutely like the music, reminds me of old games on the Commodore. The graphics are well elaborated and fit the theme. The small world topic is nicely addressed. I had however a problem with the controls, they appear to be a bit laggy. For example, instead of a quick swordstrike, one has to wait for the sword to materialize.

Heya, really nice looking game! Unfortunately, it's a bit too hard for me (would have been good if the dodge could have been more useful) but the enemy designs, art, animation and mood were all great!

The music fit pretty well and I really liked the idea of the snowglobe as a take on the theme. :)

We did exactly the same as you (leaving getting coolness until quite late because we were busy >< ) so please do take a look at our game too if you get the chance! :D

Really good job though, keep it up!

-Skruffye

Beautiful. A lot of time was spent polishing the graphics / music / ambiance. The gameplay is a bit simple, for a beat-em-up game the fighting was a bit too clumsy. If the hero could attack faster and there was some sort of feedback that you hit the opponent, that would go a long way in my opinion.

The music and graphics create a great atmosphere, the combat lacks dynamics. I would like it to be faster, to feel more powerful and to have a greater degree of control.

The attack is a little bit weird, but it has a great graphics, and nice audio.

Dude those animations are really cool. My jaw kind of dropped when I saw it was a Compo game. Keep it up

The game looks great and there's music too, so the atmosphere is great. Sound effects could've improved this even further. However, like others said, the gameplay doesn't feel very good. There's no real feedback when you hit or get hit, except for the healthbar getting lower. Also, the game is quite hard, but each individual hit on you only does very little damage and so doesn't feel like it has very much consequence. I prefer games where each hit on you feels painful, but where it's also a bit easier to block.

Realy nice game. I like the graphics and your idea. Maybe nexttime improve on audio. But overall nice game.
Pls also check out my game. I need a few votes.

Visuals are amazing (I love the enemies' design in particular), and the zoom out when you finish the first stage and discover where you are feels great. Music is quite good as well, and with sound effects the mood would have been great.

However, as others have mentioned, I'm missing some more responsive actions and some clearer feedback about your attacks and some of your enemies', so you can properly time or determine the best action. If you could improve this you could nail a very solid entry overall :)

Seems like you put a lot of time into the visuals and the game play suffered a bit. Great concept though. I think was of the issues with what was available is that I could dodge things by moving. Not sure why I would use the dodge command. Especially since using it replaced attacking and the wave seems to spawn more as time goes on so choosing to dodge just means you end up with more enemies to deal with. You might as well just attack.

That was a really good game. Very simple, but it draws you in. Stage 3 seemed really long/hard compared to the first two, then I realized I was supposed to be attacking the tentacle monster and that the other enemies would just keep spawning forever.

That was a really good game. Very simple, but it draws you in. Stage 3 seemed really long/hard compared to the first two, then I realized I was supposed to be attacking the tentacle monster and that the other enemies would just keep spawning forever.

Nice graphics and moody music! Combat needs more feedback though, either more visual (like a flash when you hit or get hit) or audio, preferably both. Some knockback might make it more satisfying as well. I'm fine with the slowness of the "Special" but the punch probably needs to be faster too.

I had fun with the dodge! If you tap it fast enough it seemed like you were invincible. Till you get hit by the Xmas tentacles and die... Great game!

I'm not sure if I have too much to add from what others have said so far, definitely a very nice mood, loved the music, the animations and the creative design of all the enemies!

The fighting system itself wasn't very fun though. Small things like making the enemies flash, making them recoil when they get hit, and stuff like that could really help.

Thanks for rating! I'm rating you back. Some comments, I really liked your universe (I also thought of snowglobe as a small world at the beginning of this ludum) and you pixel art is great... Keep on the good work!

Its looks so awesome, but I kind of expected a more fluid faster gameplay.