Oh wow is this one a hidden gem! There's no thumbnail on the ludum post so I almost didnt click, but this is beautiful! Fantastic art, such nice animations and little details everywhere, the reflection of the boat is really nice, I love bumping into the duck and watching it spin away, so fun! The sound is amazing, so much detail and voices for each character. Gameplay is simple and fun and so well polished too, it doesnt need anything extra, it just works so well, and the pacing is really good too, hit that first boss fight just right. The floating fish in the second level are really funny! The 2nd boss was kinda hard because I forgot I could dash, but then I realised that makes everything better! I could go on probably but I loved this, amazing job ^^ (My one gripe is I want a web version ;))

The graphics and physics are great didn't expect someone to make something this polished with Love!

I am in awe at this game. You managed to do so much in 72 hours! The voiceacting, the animations, the transitions, the character designs, everything is so good and professional! I have basically 0 complaints, other than I wish this was a full game. Incredible work!

Really well done! The whole game was super polished, it was super impressive for the time frame. I did find the attacking motions a little bit clunky and hard to manage, but maybe that was the point. My full playthrough with more thoughts is linked here!

https://youtu.be/eqBhb1MWeD0

Every single jam you peeps make something fantastic, but this entry is something else. I can't find anything to fault it. Everything just works so well, its so polished and so enjoyable. Thanks for making this lovely game!

Absolutely delightful. The story telling is so positive, I couldn't help but have a huge smile while playing. The artwork is fantastic, and I especially like the boat scene. My words fail to accurately describe my thoughts, so I'll let the video commentary do the heavy lifting. Great work all around!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrKxRyOnCso

I don't know how you keep making the games look better and better. How does art/effects get this good in a weekend? I will never know. The boat is incredible :motorboat:

The big fat anchor at the end of the short chain made it feel like wielding a mighty flail! (though maybe a cat o'nine tails with many small anchor ends would have worked too) :D

The story and characters were cute and the voices, especially the autotuned kitty voice, were fun!

Great job all around!

What a fantastic experience! Great game like always from you guys! 10/10 would find treasure to buy oranges again :D

I'm going to be brutlaly honest, I almost never give out 5 stars in a rating in virtually any category. But in virtually every category, you guys get 5 stars. Hot damn, you knock it out of the park every time. This was so cute, and the polish level was amazing! A tight little core mechanic, adorable characters with so much life. I love the sounds Matteo makes. I tried hard not to die just because I didn't want to see him hurt. The moment he popped out at the end I actually laughed as I realised what was going on. Amazing. The transitions, the atmosphere, the reflections in the water on the surface, the lovely water-level music, the amazing surface-level music with the meowing cat soundfont? I loved it all.

If I were to have any constructive criticisms at all, it would be that the game was actually quite easy, just because I realised quickly you can tank hits and just keep swinging at the boss, and he'll die way before you do. But also we all know that balance is super difficult, and better to make the game a little on the easy side, than way too hard - especially with a narrative focus like here. Top tier work friends.

With Ludum Dare, one thing is for certain: I get to play another banger of a game made by Windmill Games. You guys never disappoint, and each time it's impressive what you guys manage to do in the short time span of 72 hours. The graphics are beautiful, the cutscenes are well put together, the game mechanic is interesting, with three freaking bosses, and the audio and visuals help set the mood. My only complaint would be that maybe it's too easy. I actually forgot to use the dash mechanic haha. Anyway, great game as always!


Awesome game! I loved the fight mechanic with the swinging anchor.
The absolute highlight is of course the artstyle with the animations and how fluid everything feels. Good job!

Great game, you guys are awesome!.

Very cute game, love the art and the music. For some odd reason I really like the choice of fonts. I swear so many people can make beautiful games, then they fall flat when it comes to the UI, but this was was super coherent all the way through. I liked the cat vocaloid too it sounded pretty funny. I went through the whole game without using the dash :( I forgot about it and was wondering why it was so hard to dodge and keep anchor momentum.

Also, the linux build on the itch.io page is just the source code, not a build. Don't know if that's intentional.

The interactions felt great, the physics for the anchor felt really satisfying, the sprite work is on point, and just feels really polished. Everything from the underwater to the boat to every interaction from the cat just feels adorable and on point. Even the enemies are so cute I felt a bit bad hitting them!

Super well polished game! The anchor mechanic feels really fresh and different and there's a really good curve to like getting the hang of mastering it. I'm glad there were checkpoints as well because I got very stuck on the pirate captain boss! Pixel art is utterly phenomenal as well! All in all a great game!

I'm impressed you managed to make such a fun and innovative game in such a short time, I've seen few games with this amount of polish and quality, everything from art to music to gameplay is nearly flawless. Amazing work! I can't believe I missed this game until now.

I'm glad I stumbled upon this game. It is extremely well polished and fun to play. The anchor is satisfying to control once you get used to it. The characters are funny and we want to keep playing until the end only to see all the designs. I like that the levels are short

wow, this is a full game. The anchor mechanic & first boss fight is some of the most fun I've had this jam.

Super polished and well designed, good job !

Amazing! This has some of the best polish I've seen in these jams! I especially liked the characters, very likable.
I might have been missing something when it comes to throwing the anchor. I didn't really use it, I found it way more useful (and satisfying) to keep it out of my hands and using it like a hoolahoop. It was incredibly satisfying to use the momentum of the dash with the anchor. Well done, you all should be proud!
ally

What a stunning game ! The visuals and the sound design are great !
I like the anchor mechanic, it was intuitive and very fun to play with !

The design and the animations were amazing! The audio added really nicely to the design and gave the game a really good atmosphere. The only problem I had was that I immediately encountered 3 enemies then I sawm around for ages and didn't find anything else at all. It would have been nice to have some direction or hints as I didn't really know what I was supposed to be doing swimming around down there. Maybe I'd missed something in the animation text? It could be nice to have a way to re-read instructions if you missed them.

@r8teful Oh no, you basically just need to stay put and enemies will come to you (+ bosses and more of the story). So you must have kited one of the enemies and thus missed the entire game. Would really appreciate it if you gave it another go. Thank you in advance!

This is such a wholesome game aww^^so awesome! Lots of love for this game!!

I loved this game! A full game with multiple levels with bosses, a story, voice acting and beautiful animations? Really cool entry. I liked the anchor mechanic, that was something that I hadn't seen before in a game. The closest I had seen comparatively were some grappling hook mechanics in some metroid games.
Thanks for this game. I don't think I have constructive comments on what to improve. :D

Your game is incredible. i have nothing bad to say. i am beyond impressed by how polished refined and clean this game is. the animations are great, the momentum based attack is great, the story is super cute but most importantly I LOVE THE PIXEL ART GUYS YOU DID AN INCREDIBLE JOB I DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO SAY

This game looks incredible. So cute ❤. Unfortunately for me all the subtitles were mangled. 

OMG THIS IS SO POLISHED AND I LOVE ITTT!!, IDK WHAT THIS ARTSTYLE IS BUT I NEED SOMEBODY TO TELL ME WHAT IT IS I LOVE THIS STYLE!!!

This is such a polished game for just 3 days. Love the art style and the anchor mechanic.

Wow what a cool mechanic and its been executed so well. love the art and music well done!

@fraanns Ah, that's a real shame. As the one who programmed that, I feel bad your experience of the game was impacted. I appreciate your kind words even with that issue! It'll definitely be fixed for next time.

This was stunning and so polished! Well done!!

MEOW MEOW, WHO DO WE HAVE HERE? Cat, fish, catfish! Guys, the color palette is an explosive style!!! Just wow! The animations too — how did you manage to pull this off within the jam??? My respect — an awesome project!!!

I am flabbergasted by that game. Simply the best! Great job! I only wish there was an option to see dialogs faster :)

Omg so nice and cute. Awesome graphics and audio

For some reason Windows Defender is flagging this file (wacatac) as a trojan...

@thesmellofoxygen That's unfortunate to hear! The game's source code is available in the ".love" format (you can unzip it like a ZIP file), and our EXEs are built using this process - https://love2d.org/wiki/Game_Distribution.

If you still want to play the game and don't want to use the EXE, you can install Love2D (https://love2d.org) and then run the ".love" file directly.

I didn't even have to think about it. 5/5 across the board. So much polish and effective gameplay in 72 hours is astonishing. Such a fantastic entry, just wow.

The game is amazing! Idea, music, controls, especially pixel art! Just wow! I can't fathom how anyone can create such a beautiful art and in such a short amount of time! Also I swam into the duck.. what have I done XD I do not think I have much to add... maybe I wish the mob fights were are bit longer or more varied? Then again, that would be a lot more work. Anyway, great job with the game!

the art is wonderful!! including the sound. really polished and impressive jam game :)

What a polished game! Awesome entry. I love the cute graphics and animations! The movement with the anchor is a nice idea and fun to play. Somehow I managed to escape the map when searching for the treasure. I appeared to be in turquoise background when I fought the crab :D

Very high quality game, amazing for the timeframe- from fun to art to sound to humor, top notch! Reminds me of hammerfight with the spinning anchor attack, it would be cool to have the impacts feel a bit more weighty.

https://youtu.be/EM9XTMdR8pQ

The walkthrough as I promised :smile_cat:

Apologies for not noticing the freeze on stream, it seems the game can only be recorded with Display capture as it loses focus in the Fullscreen.

Tried to get a No Hint, but the hook mechanic is a bit inconsistent as Matteo doesn't always pulls the anchor back unfortunately and it seems to be tied to either movement or animation or both so eventually I had to give up on the idea, but why I even decided to do it in the first place is because Boss Fights are extremely well done and the game is well balanced.

Beautiful & cute pixel art, great voice over and music! Game also has easily the most sweet, memorable and overall enjoyable story.

Excellent work!

P.S. If you find the time, I'd like you to pop in for "The Best of Ludum Dare" stream I'll be doing about the time when official ranking will be announced :)

~Xp

Congratulations! Well deserved!

very good game