i really want to like this game, but could you please put jump on the up arrow, for some reason this ludum dare everyone is putting jump on X or Z, PLEASE DONT. :(

@jcmonkey hey sorry about that :) you could also use spacebar/Lctrl for jump/fire, or use a game controller!

my mouth is hanging open. this is one of the coolest smoothest experiences I've had in the compo and one that most perfectly captures the theme and is super fun to play and thrilling when you figure out what to do because its so damn mysterious.
* YOu dont know why and it doesnt matter but you are filled with awe and wonder since now you dont know around what corner will be another inexplicable mystery.
* Plus the aesthetic is so appealing and its just fun to run and jump like this. could this ever be a full game and then some.
* I imagine like metroid many different tileset environments and each level is like this whole game where it starts out seeming pretty straightforward but loops, and then you finally find an exit, but perhaps you have to go through the loop a number of times for some lighting to change and then certain other triggers happen.
* Wow I love the style here.
* I'd say some tweaking to make the player move and shoot little more fluid like metroid, and make the enemies knock back when hit (they just kept coming which meant you had to use a retreating strategy of sorts).
* Also gamepads work on this game even in html 5! (well they are advertised to ... lets find out! yup it sure does!))
* On mac this doesnt run in Safari (it doesnt finish loading - usually that means theres a compression problem and I think if you search for that you'll find several solutions).

What a winner this is. I loved it and this is one of the most underrated games in the compo.

@fabdynamic thank you so much for the kind words! Really encourages me! :)

The sound design here is spot on! This remind me so much of the good old days ^^

The controls are really smooth, I liked it alot!

Really cool game, the seamless shifting of the level layout is pretty impressive. My only complaint is that the movement of the enemies made them frustrating for me.

It went forever and ever and ever and ever! I guess you took the "Stuck in a Loop" theme quite literally ahahaha. I did enjoy this entry, however I found the enemies to be really tanky, they could take so many hits to destroy! Other than that, solid submission!

Very cool, I love the little particle effects when a bullet hits something :) Combat is pretty fun too.

@daitli hey thanks! well, it doesn't go on *forever* :)

Tips:
use a gamepad if possible. Keep enemies just off the edge of the screen. first stand and shoot fast, if you dont see sparks (which indicates youre hitting something) jump and shoot. When going up dont try to shoot them lure them to the side and juke to the other side. When going up dont jump out of the hole (you'll get hit lots) without jumping as high as you can on the side to see whats up there and lure them down. keep trying and look for things to change and you'll win eventually!

About the spoiler:
My spoiler is so vague that you will have to try it several times to even see what it means but if you have figured out the core mechanic and you are stuck then this might help and you'll probably understand what I'm talking about here.

**SPOILER ALERT** ~~If anyone wants a hint heres a real vague hint: right left (change) right (change), up left up, right (a bit) left (change) right and down~~

Wowzers, it took me a while to understand that I could go in *any* direction including changing while backtracking. A simple yet genius piece of jam! Really good job! Definitely one of the best compos I tried! Why isn't it just rated yet?

Really cool game and really neat puzzle mechanic but damn is it hard. I would have loved to see more of the puzzles but I could not get past the difficulty of the enemies and shooting.

Loved the pixel art and mechanics! Congrats!

After traversing the maze rightwards about 5 times, I finally realized something was fishy, and figured out the way to proceed :stuck_out_tongue: Unfortunately, the gameboy-style XY controls were too much for my left hand, and I gave up after seeing 3 unique scenes :( Very cool concept!

Very nice entry! A cool idea, great setting, nice music to enhance the mood of the art, which captured classic metroid vibes that meshed so well with the theme of being lost and looping.

The gun feels great, fires away with old school turbospam required in some panicked bursts, but then there is also downtime in between fights if you want it. Lots of the art is strong, but the particles of the bullets hitting the wall was a highlight.

So overall the game was really good! Because it was really good, let me dig into two things that caused me a little pain in the experience... but seriously, I'm just going into this because the game is so strong, so I hope this is helpful and constructive:

First the controls: I started with WASD but couldn't find a shoot button friendly with that, so I did invert and play lefty. Been a while. I was rusty with arrows/x/z.

Second, I feel there's maybe some room for improvement in the way combat plays out. These enemies are brutal in the way they come at me fast and with acceleration, do not get knocked back, and take a few hits to kill, and do a lot of damage. It's fine if they approach at the height of my standing gunfire, but I got hit a lot when they came at just-above-normal and I had to multi-shot them on the rise during a jump.

I failed so often that I gave up and my approach to the game became: spam jump and shoot off the screen for a while before entering any dangerous area. If I do aggro an enemy that's not at shot-level, flee wildly and try to gain space or wait for them to come down to shot-height. When I encountered the vertical climb, I extracted each enemy one by one down into the corridoor rather than mix it up with them.

The exploration was great, but ended up a bit at odds with the combat, where I wanted to explore but I did not want to take the risk of new areas lightly, so my exploring became extremely meticulous.

It did pay off in the end though: https://imgur.com/3jTg29Z

On the other hand, maybe I just needed to git gud, and I will say the enemies did their job of slowing me down and preventing me from turboing through the whole maze to figure it out.

So a really solid game that I enjoyed jumping into and playing to the end. Hope I didn't over-focus on critique, because I do like this game. Nice entry!

Woah that was hard! I made it through in the end though! Luckily the comments clued me in that there was an actual game here and not just an endless loop. :laughing:

Great pixel-art with good music and really satisfying combat. Great job!

@pkenney thanks a lot for the detailed feedback and glad you liked it! :thumbsup: