I might have missed something but using your spells always seems to cost more than its worth. On the last stage I rushed through to the end, barely fighting and just made it in time.

Would have been nice with some more mechanics to keeping the flame alive, rather that just being your health bar steadilty ticking down.

@bit-assembly thanks for the imput!

I had planned some checkpoints inside the stage as healing spots to help. Also, unfortunately I didn't have time to share it for others to playtest. After release I had a friend play it to the finish and he used the first two spells a lot and tried to clear all the levels so at least I guess both play styles are viable.

Still, in hindsight, some things could have been balanced a bit more (like lowering the flame cost of the spells to make them more worth risk using)

I think this is a really cool concept for a game and the graphics are really good, but unfortunately blurry(I would maybe try disabling anti aliasing on them somehow). For sure it's a little rough around the edges, but the idea is there and I think the flame mechanic is really cool, kind of like risk-reward. I could totally see this being a full release with some tweaks and balancing.

Really neat premise, I enjoyed fiddling with the mechanics and running around the levels. I often found myself skipping combat until it was required, which I personally do not see as an issue. When I discovered I could rush in mid air a lot of the seemingly impossible platforming challenges made more sense. I wouldn't mind seeing this game with more development!

Awesome game, love anything using the theme of magic. Reminds me of that one project I saw on Twitter called HP Sword, check it out, I believe they cancelled it though. Great concept though, awesome work!

Nice game. The controls are a bit too quick for my liking but i did get used to them. And I like to have levels to explore. Even though they are simplistic they each had their own identity.

As with all platformers with the same torch-bearing concept the idea is very solid, sadly something tells me you need to do some playtesting yourself. As a side note, I was only at the second boss.

* The graphics are so good on the characters and the trees, but sadly suffers from anti-aliasing being enabled. If you want to patch this game, then patch this please. Should be an easy fix.
* Spells are NOT worth it. It drains too much of the flame. The damage is not worth it. It all feels like a 1-hit thing and not working anymore. If it's supposed to linger and be effective, the feeling is definitely not there. You may want to add an indicator the enemy getting damaged by them, like them flashing of some sort.
* First spell should have some sort of gravity than not spawning in air at all. That way it'll always fall to the ground and allows those unawares to be singed by the heavy flames.
* If not checkpoints, healing spell that uses coins.
* Cooldown icons on spells would be nice, but clearly not enough time so I'll let it pass.
* As a guideline, the buttons O and P shouldn't be in the tutorial. Tell them the option is there once you unlock
it cause I was expecting something and not think it's bugged and not working at all.
* Attacking is NOT worth it either. The range is too small and there's an obvious cooldown. I was expecting it to be an alternative to attacking enemies, not really as another spell. If your style is to be cautious, then the stage design is against that, especially the second boss where the whole stage is suddenly swarming.
* The upgrade is 25 coins. Helps us to get to that sooner I think. If it's supposed to be a high level thing of some sort, maybe make the cost a bit lower and the upgrade weaker if you have upgrade stages.
* The enemies move too fast, more panic and randomly mashing buttons than using the spells. If they're slower, maybe attacking normally would be a more worthwhile tactic.
* I feel the enemies should give 0-1 coins? Maybe I haven't seen too much coins yet.
* Sometimes, no music is better than any short music loop that feels somewhat annoying. Trust me on that.

If you plan this to be a full game at some point, then please play around with game feel and how you intend others to play along cause this feels more like a mash of stuff put together, but that's Ludum Dare for you.

Great idea, somewhat not good execution. Great job nonetheless~

Wow, I would have loved to play this on the NES as a kid! I got stuck when I couldn't make some jumps. Really nice, polished game! :)

@benbonk @lanalux @zabaman @charliegray @myles-mccoy thanks for the kind feedback, people. I'm happy to be able to deliver some interesting level design and polish all around, even though being new to gamedev.

@fiakaiera Thanks for the complete feedback. There were many things I wanted to include and/or polish. Really a lot could have been improved by more iterations of playtesting and balancing and adjusting but yeah, time was short as you imagine.

Good entry! I found it fun and challenging. There are so many orcs in the world :sweat_smile:. The graphics are also pleasingly retro. Controls could be improved but are not bad. Audio is a bit repetitive. Good work! :thumbsup:

Solid platformer! I enjoyed the pixely graphics. The movement and combat could do with being a bit tighter. Having sound effects for all the actions made it feel more engaging. Good work on your first game jam!

The overall controls feel very clunky making plateforming harder than it should and almost guarantee getting hit if attempting any combat. I quite like the NES-ish aesthetic though, good job!

As commented already, it needs some rebalancing and no more anti-aliasing. I won't cover what you've already been told.

A solid idea, and I like the spells using the flame. A creative risk/reward mechanic. I think the controls could definitely use some reworking, though. These sorts of games generally follow Arrow Keys + ZXC, and I think it works pretty well. Don't fix what ain't broken, and all that. More of a preference thing, but still worth considering. Games that have small screens and big levels like this I think need interesting backgrounds, so you really feel like you've reached new places.

Nice work.

@gus-the-shark @natpat @rongefilet thanks for playing my game! I'm really happy you enjoyed the graphics, as it is my first try at doing pixel art, let alone for a whole (albeit small) game.

@thedashdude Thanks for the input! I'd love to set control schemes or even rebinding, but ofc I didn't really manage to get that in due time. I wanted to work more on the background (actually add a new layer, with background art) but I had only time enough to finish this limited tilemap I used.

<3

Hey nice job, really reminded me of a game I tried to write back when all the only things were 8 bit lol (that's what comes of being so damn old!) I won't rehash other comments, but I did enjoy the jumps and the movement speed and control and went back for more a couple of times :). Well done on your first entry - way better than my first go!

Really nice job on this game, I love the colour scheme. :)

Good work on making this game! Remember that Construct have a option to change the filtering from blinear to point, check it in your project settings because is really annoying seeing everything blurry haha. Keep improving!

Nice entry! Especially liked the RPG-lite Upgrades :D

Maybe it's just me, but i had problems seeing any indication whether I do a melee attack. I had an audio indication, but couldn't see a sword or anything, which again made it very hard to hit orcs in melee range.

Still very nice for your first entry n_n

The music was a bit jarring, and maybe the controls were too floaty. But overall it is a very solid game for your first game jam, so you should be very proud!

The game was intuitive and fun! I like the graphics. Even though the player felt as light as a balloon the movement still felt AWESOME because of how high the player jump (Extremely high compared to the player character size)! The audio felt a little odd for me(Just my opinion). Over all great job, and keep it up!

Nice entry! The graphics and audio is nice, and the game is pretty fun. I don't really like how the game fits in with the theme since you essentially just have to keep the player alive.

Overall it's a great game, well done!