The UI is pretty clean and looks polished. I'm a bit confused as to how the combat works though, I'd suggest clarifying how it works perhaps?

The sounds and sprites are satisfying. I really like the item requisition between levels. Unclear how equipping and combat functions. The use of color in the compositions are satisfying!

It looks nice at the beginning, but then I can't figure out what is happening. I can't see any damage numbers whatsoever, and some items (for example, the apple) have no descriptions. And I have no idea what the “Change Host Button" is for 😄

Nice concept, but as others have said I wasn't really able to understand what I was doing or how to influence things.

Figured out the gameplay, was able to influence enemies and the PC, but still feel like the game needs to give the player a lot more info and feedback. At one point I collected tape to increase weapon durability, and was able to place it adjacent to a dagger, a whip, and a zombie arm (for some reason though it could not be placed in the empty space below the zombie arm or left of the dagger, so I had to finagle it a little.) But the fight immediately after, I die from one hit, despite disarming every enemy beforehand. Caught me off-guard.

I really like the pixel art-style! I think it mostly misses some feedback to the player about what an action does exactly. Reminds me of Backpack Hero. :)

It's a really immersive game.

art is veeeery goood i like it

Quite confusing, Im not sure what Im supposed to do. The graphics look really good tho

It took me a while to understand the game, I think a bit more feedback would make it better. But it is a nice little game with cool art and sounds. Good job!

A very nice art style and I love your audio! The inventory system is also extremely nice along with the game UI. But I am pretty sure I broke your combat system. Right clicking deletes items and I don't understand why but I can swap to the enemies inventories? When I do I can right click on ALL of the enemies inventory slots and basically make them unable to attack and then clear all of my items but the knife then spam it.

I also don't know how I feel about items being randomly used also, it may had been a better apporch imo to make players "stuck" with lots of items perhaps give them a few deletes they can use on yourself or the enemies but just not as many as I want like rn. Then use the items you are forced to hold on to in a clever way. The items themselves are neat.

A good idea, a nice realisation, but the deletion of items feels not well thought through. In general the game is good. Nice job!

UI feels really good. Main menu is so pretty and controls window feels satisfying, and I like how buttons react when you move the mouse over them.

I wish I knew what was going on in the combat though. It needs some reactivity (what happened? did my attack deal that 2 damage? how much HP we have, the enemy has? - at least some text appearing like "Slime takes 2 damage!" and "You successfully block the attack!" would be a huge improvement). Also, we can check what both of the parties have on them, but what can we do with it other than read descriptions? I clicked on everything, dragged everything, but it seems the only thing I can do is "Start turn".

UPD: I found that right click removes the item. Now the knight and the snake look at each other, all their items removed, not knowing what to do :'D

Definitely needs more explanation, reactivity, feedback. Art and UI are pretty tho.

I understand that you wanted to rework Backpack Brawl by removing autobattle from this type of game and giving the player more control. I really liked the idea, but I didn't feel like we could control the battle.

Yes, maybe you planned to do this but didn't have time. Nevertheless, the mechanics you did have time for look and feel good. I think this game is worth refining.

The inventory control is satisfying. Graphics and sounds are good. The gameplay is unfortunately confusing. Main improvement would be to make it clearer what is happening, and what your are supposed to do.

https://youtu.be/jB4pswZ7TlQ

I won, but I'm not sure this gameplay loop was intended.

It seams some items doasent do anything and sadly you cant see your live. But Overall a verry good Concept. It just seems it dident got finished.

Kinda cheesed your game unknowingly lol, the gameplay is confusing but in my game its confusing too so i cant be mad. Very polished and cute game, but the obvious balancing issues are getting in the way

This is really aesthetically pleasing, and the conceit is quite interesting, but unfortunately the game just feels a bit too opaque right now. I gave it a few attempts, and was only able to get to the fifth level. Because the game doesn't communicate stats like health/influence/etc (and even some items don't have descriptions), I ended up just having to randomly take actions most of the time, since I didn't have the information I needed to make informed decisions. I can tell there's potential for interesting gameplay here, but the game just doesn't make it clear to me how to engage with it. I'd be interested in seeing a post-jam version with some of the kinks ironed out, though!

Heyy, I've tried it, but I haven't rated yet because I want to make sure I do it right and give you a fair score 😅 Looking at the comments, others were confused too. J4cko16 said what I was about to write. Basically I was able to just keep going with the same initial host, deleting all my enemies' things every time, and just spamming until I won. Is that intentional, like is it meant to be a battle simulator where I get to try things out by deciding what character has what? Stuff I picked on the screen between battles kept disappearing from my inventory after swapping hosts, which confused me too. Am I doing it wrong? Just want to make sure!

Heya @ava-skoog,, this game is definitely in a bit of a buggy & unfinished state~~ The original idea behind this was to have more of a strategical battle where you have to try to survive through the dungeon as best you can (kinda Slay The Spire-y?) and throw away you host at the cost of your items and influence gauge (right click on items to fill -- hard enemies cost more to switch to etc),, but we definitely got a bit lost along the way! Theres simply a lot of state tracking stuff that just did not work out in the end (as evidenced by items disappearing, which is definitely not intentional!) ~~ and the "switching hosts or bust" strategy is more or less just the emergent strategy from the way the game currently is.

Thanks for checking it out though!!

Ah, sorry that you weren't able to do everything you wanted on time—I'm all too familiar with it :')

I've played some more now and tried to rate in a way that feels fair based on what you were going for and what was actually there in the end. It's definitely impressive how much stuff you did do, with lots of different creatures and items complete with graphics etc.

"Playing along" and not cheesing it this time, it was fun to try various things, weigh options, and so on. I did still unfortunately have the issue of items sometimes disappearing from my inventory without really understanding why.

I can see what you were going for, and with some fixes like a visible influence counter and something to prevent the cheating and encourage swapping hosts more it I think it could be great! Will you be working more on it after LD? :)

@ava-skoog Hehe thanks for playing and approaching it with such an open view! For this game I kinda ragtag'd together a team of people I knew / met at in-person gamedev events so it was more of a spontaneous thing,, I could definitely see this game getting some much needed cleanup (especially with conveying the information to the user) but I believe it's currently a bit of a busier month so that may have to go on the back burner for now,,

We'll definitely be around for the next LD at least, hope to see you again then!

Ah, we'll see then :p And thanks, I hope so too!