I thought it looked really neat and the controls were very intuitive and easy to understand. Liked it good enough.
However, the sounds are a bit harsh (especially if there is no music) and I found the hitboxes of the spikes a little bit to unforgiving.

I like this game! It's simple, but it was challenging enough to keep me playing. I like the art style you've chosen and the sounds really help the overall vibe.

I agree with @pandaderzwote , the hitboxes could be a little bit smaller

So I'd say I'm a big fan of your art design here. good stuff!

With a better background, tight controls and a better collision it will be a very good game! Maybe the transitions between deaths are a bit slow to for a game that consists on repeat and repeat a level.

Anyways good job!

I agree with Panda's comment on the harsh sounds. I like the graphics, as well as the color choices. Level 2 was a bit hard ;)

Pretty nice game !

It's a bit hard to chain actions due to the recovery animation of some moves (dash for exemple).
And the die+restart could be faster to avoid waiting frustation.

But yeah, overall, the game is really solid, clean graphics & animations, and smart mechanics.

The idea is fun! It was cool to play this. Two things to improve: When it said to press shift to dash, i assumed it was the right sift, since i used the arrow keys already (but that did not work). Second: The fadeout and fadein seemed a bit slow, i think you could try speeding up gameplay downtime. Overall great stuff and godspeed poncho-man!

Too bad I was blocked lvl2 with the double dash passage x) would've loved to see the enemies! I might come back to it later.
The game is very beautiful, it's impressive for a one-person band. I also loved the introductory text.
Idk if it was due to technical limitations, but the 3 sec screen at every retry with the command is pretty annoying, especially when you're stuck and have to see it 20 times.

The game is amazing but it gets pretty hard early on. All around its really cool though!

this game is amazing, looks professional, graphics are great and controls are smooth
very polished for jam game
The only negative I can think of is that the game could really use some backgroung music, otherwise good job!

The art was really good, although the hitboxes could be a little smaller.

I liked the game. Graphics and sound are consistent. Maybe a bit more work on inputs and general balancing could improve the gameplay. double tap is difficult to trigger.

I found the game too hard, I couldn't get past the third level. It could use more lenient hitboxes and quicker respawn times to make it less frustrating.

Fun tiny game, I lasted until mosters showed up :up:

I missed some BGM!

@alyd-asmar, @winnymarubaba @zype I guess you probably tried the windows version, where dashing happens with the double tap, which is a little bit hard to pull off. On the WebGL version I have updated it to use the left shift, making lvl 2 a lot easier now.

@jlmast forgot to tag, check the above comment.

Really good game :D
But maybe you could shorten the respawn time to reduce the frustration...
But overall I liked this game ^^

Really like the pixel-art aesthetics and the choice of colors, and the gameplay fits the theme. I find that the character is slow and difficult to control though, especially the double tap dash because it requires to release the second button tap for it to take effect which is counter intuitive if you want to keep moving afterwards.

The game felt pretty hard so I didn't go very far, but it's a solid entry and really impressive since you're doing everything yourself, so congrats :smile:

I beat the game!

At first the controls felt a bit floaty, but I got used to it quickly. It also makes sense that they're a bit "floaty" since he's falling! A lot of the game is based off memorizing the level, which slowly builds up to the player perfecting the level. Some of the jumps felt a bit too hard to pull off and the spikes hitbox might've been a tiny bit too big (but I might be the only one feeling that way!). It would also be nice if the retry for every level was sped up a bit, since you need to replay the level a couple of times to beat it.

I really liked the aesthetics of the game, nice animations on the player and a really nice color palette. Overall a nice looking and feeling game! :D

Very nice and simple game. Pleasant artstyle, nice and gradual increase in complexity. The long wait times between death and restart are pretty annoying though, especially in the memorization level or when you die from hitting the ceiling for the 3rd time. Last level was fun and challenging

@nazorus please try the WebGL build (or redownload the windows build), the dashing has been remapped to use the shift key instead of double tapping. Now level 2 should be a lot easier.

You were the only one who truly understood how the double tapping worked and what it's problem was.

@exofrenon I tried again on the WebGL version, and dashing is a lot better like that! The game is still pretty difficult but I had much more fun this time. Another improvement I would suggest is to make the transition and respawn animations faster so that death feels less punishing. Again, I'm impressed with the effort you've put in this solo game, good job :thumbsup:

Cool! Kinda felt that it ended bit too early. Currently it was just scratching the surface and was pretty much just a tutorial. Wouldn't call it too easy though but that was mainly due to some unfortunate design choices. With just those few mechanics you could design a whole slew of interesting levels. The default movement felt very stiff but I guess that makes the dash be even more useful.

Two things really hindered my total enjoyment of the game. The bullshit hitboxes and the slogging slow intro between deaths. Hitboxes felt just unfair. Like it happened to me so many times that I sliced a vine or an enemy just fine and got their destroy animation and still crashed to em. I think the spikes were a bit too unforgiving too due to high speeds. And even the non spiked ceilings killing you was fiendish. On the last level I even tried mashing the swing button as fast as I could (and I'm an NES Track & Field master!) since it had to cooldown but still sometimes managed to die while also killing em. I guess it deters the users away from mashing and properly time their swings.

And yeah, the intro bit repetition thing was annoying. No need to repeat it every single time. Difficult games, or lets say games where you need to try again and again should restart very quickly. Could go even further and spawn right at the start and give the control to player while still displaying the tutorial message. Would get the best of both worlds, not making the player wait and still showing the repeated tutorial in case the player might have missed it.

Another thing I didn't quite like (and skipped before half point) was the wall of text intro. I'm not against having some story even in a simple game like this at all but it could be better than making the player read an essay before even starting the game. The first thing that comes to mind is just split the huge text to smaller bits and show them one by one. Maybe even accompanied by some visuals. Something along the lines of Ninja Gaiden or Undertale intros for example.

I liked the pixel art. Not too eye pleasing color palette in my opinion but still looked good. Sound were a bit bland. Bfxr bleeps and bloops are fine (I use em too) but they need some variations (I usually just go for ~10% random variation on pitch at run time) and everything needs the effects and not just some few actions. And of course some music would be a great addition in masking the repetitive sound effects.

Anyways, good job! Left me wanting more... :thumbsup:

@antti-haavikko I really appreciated that you took the time to write such a long and constructive review, and for the suggestions on how to fix some issues.

I am aware of and I agree with almost all of the problems that you noted. But you probably know how these things are when you have to do everything yourself, you keed fixing stuff right until the last moment under a lot of stress and some sacrifices have to be made :D.

I started designing the levels 6 hours before the submission deadline, so I didn't have time to polish it. The sounds were added in literally 3 minutes and I spent 1 hour for the intro scene and the "story" in total.

Thanks for the pitch variation tip, I will try it next time.

Happy that you enjoyed it. Wanting more is a good sign.

@exofrenon Thanks, yes, will try!

Sorry, I tried multiple times but it's way too frustrating for me and I can't pass the tutorial levels. However, as it was made by only one person, I must say it's still interesting. Most of the feedback I could give you was already given before, so good luck!

Note: After multiple requests, I have decreased the respawn time after death on the WebGL build.

Great pixel art and really good concept, the game really is interesting.
I felt that the dash was too "restrictive", in the way that he prevent to use the sword or to do a second dash during a too big length of time, I think that almost 75% of my death were due to that part. Also some obstacles felt unavoidable the first time we encounter them, which is a bit frustrating, and the death sound felt very aggressive to the ear.
Nonetheless, you really did a good job, and it's a pretty nice entry, well done :)

Finally finished the game after so many, many tries. Too bad I played the download version, because my main complaint was the insane respawn time. I just tried the Web version and that was a bit better. Air dash worked a bit better on that version as well. There were many times on the Windows version where I died a lot because the character kept dashing the wrong way even though I had the opposite arrow key held down. Anyways, I hope you improve it even further, it has potential!

Pretty fun concept, although it was pretty hard in my opinion (not that is a bad thing). It would've been nice to have some epic music on the background. A very solid entry for a game jam, great job!

So, came back to it, aced lvl 2 and finished the game. It's so cool, in love with the aesthetics. I loved the feeling of becoming stronger. Thanks a lot for the experience!
PS: just noticed your update note on the respawn time, it was a real plus (when I replayed I was like "why did I complain about the respawn time already? it's fine in fact", and turned out it had been changed :laughing: thanks :heart: )

@retro-banana-man-nl Thanks! I would have loved to have background music, the most obvious ommision, but unfortunately I have 0 knowledge on music and audio and I wanted to make everything in the game myself. I was planning to send it to the compo but I missed the deadline.

@alyd-asmar Thanks for coming back, I really appreciate that you took the time. Congrats on your game too, I am sure you will have a top spot!