Wonderful lo-fi graphics and animations, with a very lovely simple sound effects.

It's surprising how good this looks with extremely low resolution, it's also fun with really tight controls and some fun sound effects

It's interesting, I tried the game thinking it would be a puzzle platformer where you use a single (but great) mechanic to pass levels... and it was more of an exploration/adventure game instead ! So I was a bit thrown off at first, but the game is great. Had to use the walkthrough to solve some riddles though.

So great work in definitive, congrats !

I say this every time, but I'm such a sucker for nice Pico8 games.
Those are some super tricky riddles, I definitely had to restart once or twice to go back and look for tombstones I had missed/forgotten (the initial snake puzzle in particular comes to mind).

It looks, feels, and sounds stellar!

Loved the art style and vibe of the game. I like that from the get go you can just break everything :D Well done !

The screenshake was a bit much for me though.

The loop mechanic is really interesting and innovative! Fits the theme perfectly. I liked that you are free to explore the world. The art is really cute as well and the story is surprisingly good for such a small game.

I do have admit that I didn't really know what I was supposed to do at times and that I had no idea how I was supposed to arrive at some of the puzzle solutions. I'm glad you provided the walkthrough for that.

Despite that, great entry overall!

Great riddles (even though I didn't get far) and good use of looping mechanic. Overall great! The three lives without regaining them in any way was brutal.

I remember seeing a gif with this mechanic a while back on your twitter. Nice to see it in a finished game for this jam. The idea of using the gem to lock the screen is very clever and fits the theme perfectly.

Pure genius !

Looking good, and the game fits the theme well!

Wow. So beautiful and fun to play. I am impressed that you could do something that nice in such a short time.

Really nice graphics, cute sound effects I really the effects on dialogue ^^

Nice first entry (if i can trust your "games" section), but i didn't really understood the link to the theme

@coderaurus There's actually a way to restore hearts, but you need to find the gem first. I probably should have make the gem access easier, sorry about that !

@bonevolt Maybe from this post : https://twitter.com/benjamin_soule_/status/746467667482140672
I made this demo four years ago and never took time to build something bigger with this idea.

@kack3y Well, dont thrust the "games" section :D The link to the theme is the loop created by the gem. It's not available at the start of the game so have a look at the playthrough if you can't reach it.

Quite challenging, but very clever and unexpected mechanics! Great works. ^_^

Love this!! I just finished playing La Mulana so I love the little tablets and hints. The puzzles were really fun.

Happily stayed up late to get to the end of this game :D

That was a game of highs and lows! The graphics and polish was incredible - I'm amazed you managed to do all of that in PICO-8 in 48 hours! The single colour tiles really made it pop, and the character was expressive and animated really well. The story is fun too. Really clever use of the theme, and it led to some very tough puzzles!

However, I think that's my main gripe - the puzzles were incredibly hard! Combined with the frustrating death mechanics and some slightly janky platforming, it made each attempt a bit of a pain, rather than having the fun of finally working out the solution.

Each of the puzzles seemed like they had a little bit too much going on. I had to refer to the walkthrough for almost every single one - and it still took me around an hour to complete (which to be honest, is really impressive for a LD game). For instance,

!> the puzzle to unlock the door using the patterns/levers had 1) a puzzle to get to the "possible patterns" 2) a puzzle to work out which patterns to use 3) a puzzle to work out how to input the patterns - and on top of all of that, enemies you had to deal with every time you wanted to have a punt at a solution. It was a bit much, and as you had to get all three parts before the solution was accepted, it made you question which parts you had understood and which parts you hadn't.

That being said, I'm attacking what is really a very very impressive game for a Ludum Dare. It really is an incredibly good job, that's oozing with charm and polish.