Top notch art combined with an exploration-based platformer? Sign me up!

Although the mechanics and first level were confusing at first glance, I figured out you could dash using Z after my first failure and eventually cleared the game.

If I were to recommend one change to add to the game, remove the lower-half entrance of the first area entirely. I got so caught up trying to pixel-perfect dash through the spikes that I didn't even realize that I had to jump and dash to the upper ledge to grab the apple instead.

Other than that, excellent work!

Definitely Celest Lite as noted.. Controls responsive. A bit confused at first also but then played well.. Need a quicker way to get back at it after failure?? Didn't like the wait. especially when I play so bad. Graphics are excellent. Solid game. Upgrade it :)

Celest but penguins; take my money

Thanks for all kind words, guys :smile:

Really cute art! First reminded me of an old game called james pond, i think its the way the players chracter stands lol! Quite difficult, i ened up not going for all the apples. Really fun with a sweet story, good job!

Cute platformer!

Personally the physics felt a bit loose to me, but the level design was lenient enough where it wasn't a huge problem. Comparing a 48 hour game's physics to Celeste's is a bit unfair though. I also wished that the reset was slightly faster to keep up the pace of the game.

The exploration aspect with the nice art made it really fun to map out the game to beat it as fast as possible. It was a bit hard to tell that there was a screen transition going down in the first screen though. It would be nice if there were markers of some kind to represent the transition.

For a solo endeavor, it was a really great game. Keep up the good work.

loved it! kinda difficult, and the time in between deaths can get quite frustrating, but with some more polish i could see this being a really awesome game

Fun game, but I think the timer makes it a bit too unforgiving. The time it takes to respawn is also too long, which can make death feel frustrating. I also noticed that the story part at the end of a run can't be skipped through by pressing space, though I suppose being able to return to the menu with R negates this as long as you don't want to see your score. I also found a bug where, in the level shown below, falling into the rightmost pit did not kill me, so I had to restart the run. In the end, I was able to see all of the levels and pick up all of the collectibles, though never in the same run. That said, I actually really enjoyed the game. The story and art were charming, and I think the levels were very well designed. I would love to see a more polished version of this!


@stevenjmiller :smile: thanks for your detail feedback, it is very helpful for me

Cool game! I like the celeste inspired movement and graphics. Unfortunately I couldn't make it to the end, I could only get the 3 apples. I would've liked to keep going and beat the game because the game itself was fun, but the ending was very slow and restarting the game took too long. The transition that happens after each death also felt slow. There were also some parts where I found some bugs. Sometimes I would teleport into a spike or get stuck off-screen. I hope to see this project continue post-jam. I'd like to challenge the level again if restarting the game is faster. Good job!

Very nice graphics. I agree with some of the advice above about introducing too many mechanics at once. Also you might want to start without spikes initially just so people could get used to it. I got stuck on the second screen. Couldn't go right, couldn't go up so jumped down and died. Not really sure how to get past that. I also agree it is a slow turnaround time (the intro, the fade to black and the end credits) and especially for a hard game where you die instantly you might want to allow people to speed that loop up. Good effort tho!

Nice base for a precision platformer. Some more sound would've been nice but at least it's there where it matters most (jump/dash). Controls feel pretty good although I wish I could dash on the ground as well. As others have stated, respawn time definitely needs to be shorter.

Nice Graphics! Nice Game! Good job!

I'm not the target audience for this awesome platformer as the clumsy dude I am jajajaja but the controls are spot on, the art spectacular and the general mood of this little game simply awesome, great job!

Nice little platformer! A couple critiques, it starts out too hard (get rid of the spikes in the first section). The transition between screens is too long and it really breaks up the flow of the game. It's very nice looking, but that transition should only be when you start the game and/or die. Finally, having sections where you drop down to move on is fine, but there should be some indication that you can drop down and not die -- I was so confused where to go because I didn't want to kill myself jumping into a hole!

I think it would be better to restart the game more quickly.

Took me a few tries to figure out where I was meant to be going... everywhere either was a dead end, or a death plane. Didn't realize I had to drop into the hole in the middle of the first screen (since other drops = death XD).

Also, the controls felt a bit awkward for me - z/x + arrows feels more natural I guess, space/z + arrows hurt my brain XD.

Also, failed a few times and stopped playing because I couldn't skip the ending text (you can skip the starting text). Really would have loved to speed back into the game, worst part is when the slowmo somehow engages just before failing - then all the text is super slowed down too XD.

Loved the pixel art, and a fun mechanic (if a bit hard for me to use), keep up the awesome stuff!

Nice work! :P.

What a cute exploration thing~!

It's actually quite responsive and nice, but here's mine and a recap of everyone's feedback:
* Your intro and ending: Your intro is quite nice and I love the premise here, but the way that the game works is that if you fail, you'd end up with a very slow piece of dialog. How the game is designed works against what you want. I know it's perfect for feeling bad, but this only gives a feeling of aggravation. Which leads to my next point:
* When you die in the game you are penalized about three to five seconds give or take. Not just that, you actually need to experience that penalty each time via a very slow transition. It's supposed to say that you're dead and you should be careful. The design of the game, again, works against how you designed it.
* If this is inspired by Celeste, the game design around is that you quickly get back up on your feet as soon as you fall into a pit/spike. The one-hit death mechanic keeps that in mind so you can keep retrying with ease.
* When you're designing a slow death, then you MUST have the ability to take in multiple hits. Otherwise, this slow fade is actually a VERY BIG downfall to your game due to people raging about each death every time.
* The fact that the timer is still going is also a deeper shot on the foot for your time.
* The map design, while good for precision platforming, is not good at all when you take in tight spaces.
* The way Celeste's maps are usually designed is that it takes into the account of direction. The first part of the stage is already against this and is already the starting point of the frustration.
The first thing you want to do is to move in, right? But you want to get through it easier so you hold up to float, then right to go to your direction. You'd end up dashing top-right instead because you have both up and right held down.
* This is not really a problem if the death and respawn time is quick. But if the death time is accounted for, then this path would be actually be a lot bigger to show you're doing that.
* The second problem with the map design is that you can't differentiate between what you can go through vs what is a pitfall. This leads in to problems where you do blind jumps. Frustration amplified with the death especially when the clock is ticking down.
* This is usually circumvented with arrows saying that you can go through this, or adding warning signs that you cannot go there.
* This also applies to invisible walls going left or right. It suggests you can go there, but in actual you can't and wasted even more time. More time to frustration. Please add walls to prevent these.
* Other things about the map design:
* There's this one section where you want to go around the whole horizontal area with falling blocks. Most people will just wait on the first block to skip all of that back and forth. It ends up being filler.
* Both paths going back for each shard is easily done with jump to a death than skillfully going back.
* Another big problem is that 60-second timer. I think this may have been a last minute decision. If you timed this, there is no way you could get ALL 3 apples, and both shards.
* Again, the clock ticks down for each death, which makes it more unforgiving.
* Two minutes will be good if everything is considered.
* Finally, on a lighter note: the controls and usability.
* Z and Space is pretty awkward. When both keys are hovered on, your hand will lie like you're gonna scratch like a cat at anytime. This natural position is uncomfortable.
* Your hand will naturally lie on WASD and Space. If you want to have comfortable controls, you're better of using Shift/Ctrl + ZXC for jump and dashing (avoiding Z to account for QWERTZ keyboards)

This would have been a very good precise platformer. But as it stands, the design of all of it are going against what you're trying to design for. As a second game, it definitely needs work but great job nonetheless!

A really cool game with a few flaws. I think the comment before me summed it up better than I ever could, but the biggest downside was the long respawns. Just put me back at the start not even a second to think about please! Really well done otherwise!

This game looks FANTASTIC! Excellent job on the artwork, couldn't have done that better to be honest.
I also really liked the platforming physics, they felt just right, but the controls were a bit of an issue for me.

Space and Z were an awkward combination, and when I'm using the arrows for moving left and right I like the up arrow also to be jump. Preferably, though, I would have used WASD to move because WASD + space is far far more comfortable.

Also, the difficulty curve was far too high in my opinion. A difficult dash through a small gap right at the beginning was definitely too much, especially with awkward controls to get the hang of.

Overall though, a great concept for the game and the artwork and physics were excellent. If it weren't for a couple of small design flaws then this would be such an excellent game. Fantastic effort!