The Subtle Hourglass

The web version seems to have a build error...

Getting an error trying to download the linux build.

Hmm sorry about the issues, @james-7777 and @snesgaard . Looks like I need https to support WebGL builds now. I'll put it on itch or something shortly. As for the zips, looks like you can right click to save link as but then you'll get a security risk warning. You need to approve that first.

Looks like the days of putting builds on my simple webhost are over. I'll get these all on itch.

@james-7777 @snesgaard Okay I moved it to itch.io, try now.

I really enjoyed the rewind mechanic and working through the objectives with clones. I struggled with controlling the facing of the character and knowing when my attack was available to be used again.

I love it! Well done building a rewind mechanic, that's tough. I like being able to undo my endless list of failures. Fun sound too.

Very cool idea, liked the rewind. At first loved the clones, than hated them XD Cool game, nice art and sound effects :)

R for restart and ESC seem to freeze the game for me on Windows 10 and Chrome. There's something about the attacks I do that makes it feel a bit like I'm not really hitting the enemies, like I'm waving the sword in the air. Maybe it's the sound effects or the animation? Otherwise the art was really interesting. I kind of enjoyed not grabbing the hour glass and just running around. Thank you for the game.

@ubershmekel yeah if the enemy attacks the same time you attack then it deflects. I agree it doesn't quite work - it was an attempt to keep you from just swinging your sword over and over. Instead if you defend the attack then counterattack, that works better. Or if you're just talking about the "feel" of the art, that's great feedback too. I'm a game designer and programmer, not an artist, so I'm always just doing my best in that department. :P Thanks for the feedback!

I never actually tested restart or quit, haha. Maybe they're broken, sorry!

Overall I'm pretty impressed with how complete this game feels after just 2 days. Good job!

Dude this is a really well crafted game. A very inventive new mechanic that was used in an interesting way. It's Hony Tawk meets Zelda Oracle of Ages

Really cool game. Everything went well together to create this really cohesive whole. Melee combat is really uncommon and it's really nice to see it implemented so well in here. Great game.

I saw your trailer on the LD discord and knew that I wanted to play this game; the style is just very unique, which is something that I appreciate. Turns out the game was even better than I initially though, the time warp mechanism is incredible. I love how your "past selves" can help you a lot, or just block you and cause you to die. This game has potential if developed further.

As I am typing this I notice that it is a COMPO game, what? How? Amazing!

The rewind mechanic is so cool! I agree that the other parts of the game could use more polish, but the core idea here is really solid. Seems like the sort of thing that's just begging to be expanded upon, but this makes for a nice proof of concept.

This is a very welcoming take the on dungeon crawling genre and great work on the pixel art. I guess this this game is too ambitious to polish in three days, so definitely carry on development if you have the time!

So, great game, great work, had a fun time ! The core mechanic is smart and well developped, the differents upgrades, althought brought up a little late, makes it refreshing (by the way, on my first try I got a speed boost and on the second, won without having to get it, were there more optional artifacts ?) and less bothersome while your multiples clones are running around, blocking path and killing you (When I got the dmg bonus, I had the very smart idea to try it at spawn, let's say futures mes didn't like it). The music is great and the rewing animation is top notch (although a way to speed it up would be nice when you're in a "hurry" after a frustrating death). I however have some points I'd like to bring :
-The background is way less visually appealing than the rest, it seems messy and because of the absence of characters outline, it can become a bit hard to see what's an item/entity and what's the background.
-There seems to be an input lag in combat, especially with the sword
-The delay in camera movement is too big, it makes it hard to see where you're going, at some point, I even had trouble following the arrow as it always was outside of the screen.
But overall had a great time and if you ever make a post jam version I'm looking forward to it.

The core idea is really nice. I had some trouble with the combat mechanics at first. Because I found the input-reaction time quite long. Once you get into it, it's really fun. I appreciate the diversity of enemies and the animations !
My small remark: the backgound is in too low resolution compared to the rest of the game, it can be quite confusing.
Really impressive for a compo

Really cool idea, this gameplay in a labyrinth was the best idea. Controls can be a bit weird and the camera a bit difficult but I really enjoy it. Great job !

This is a really great experience, especially considering it's a compo entry! I really like the main rewind/replay mechanic, and completing tasks with past selves and then unlocking new tasks is a great way to progress the game.

Thanks for all the great feedback!

@slecornu since it's a compo game I only have 2 days actually. I could have balanced it much better with 3. :)

@pordrack thank you so much for the excellent constructive feedback! With the upgrades, the idea was to have it be more sprawling / let you explore, but I literally added them with 1 hour left so didn't get time to explore that idea as much as I hoped. The speed boost is the only optional one. Haha bummer swinging your sword at the start! Another undeveloped idea was being able to change your start location or kill off some clones, because a few mistakes like that can make it impossible to win. Good feedback on speeding up the rewind. Yes, the background is quite ugly. It was also something I had to do very quickly, and there are so many rooms that I really couldn't spend enough time. Basically, I painted it super rough, put it through an AI filter to give it a uniform style, and then pixelated it. No way to get nice crisp pretty art that way, but at least I had something. :) Yes, the sword has some lag – I'm not an artist so I did way too many frames on the swing. I should have just cut some out but so it goes. Good call with the camera! One of those things I didn't get to tweaking.

@aune Thanks so much! Great points, I agree the backgrounds aren't as pretty as I'd like.

@kiddy Thank you! Agree about the camera, and yeah the controls could use a bit more work.

@steve7411 Thank you for the feedback!

This was a lot of fun! Can't believe the time rewind mechanic works so well for jam game. Great work.

Really cool concept! I would prefer if you couldn't just run past all of the enemies but aside from that great game!

Technically impressive for LD! gave me memories of the psp mini game echos. it was a fun play!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1451440143?t=06h23m06s

Thanks for playing on your stream, @tigerj ! To answer a couple of questions that came up: yes, I have a Mac keyboard, yes, I used X scale to flip the sprite; I actually drew the delete button directly into the sprite to save time so there was no quick fix. In terms of you being unable to get by, I noticed that you basically never used the shield which is pretty clutch when you’ve got a whole army nearby, and that would have helped. But either way it’s not super well balanced!

@eli-delventhal ahhh the shield.. whoops :laughing: ! things may have gone a lot differently. This was one of my favs this time around. well done man.

Wow, I have a lot of thoughts about this game. The main mechanic is very interesting; each time you die you have a clone of yourself repeat your actions, which can interfere with your own goals. At first I was a tad frustrated, but it ended up growing on by me the end. The little hallways connecting rooms together did make this mechanic a bit too frustrating though, as the character cannot be seen under the hallway sprite. This can cause a lot of difficulty in mid-game runs before obtaining the speed boost, as often I have both attacked inside or near a hallway due to an enemy being close to it or I would wait inside the hallway for my clones to exit the room. This lead to me either running in to my own attacks that I couldn't see or struggling to break through a hallway that's packed with my own clones.

The combat was surprisingly enjoyable, albeit extremely simple. I think the time limit and low hits made it a lot more engaging than otherwise, especially once the clones started getting more sizeable in quantity. The fact that your attacks and enemy attacks cancel each other out when they connect is rather interesting in a game like this, as it ended up being something I tried to actively avoid in order to save on time despite it technically making combat easier. The shield is also a really good feature, providing much-needed defense against both groups of monsters as well as your many clones. The fact that you can just hold down the shield button to block, though, feels a tad off, and also makes it way harder to defend . The little stagger animations and attack telegraphs are really nice details that make the combat more manageable. I do think that there wasn't enough incentive to fight enemies most of the time, though.

The camera was a major source of frustration. For one, it is way to zoomed in, which not only sort of lowers the quality of the art but also makes it more difficult to see the enemies around you (especially in larger rooms). More objectionable, however, is that the camera takes WAAAY too long to actually center on your character. You have to slow down way too much to actually be able to have your camera stay centered, which made things way too frustrating once I had to start rushing through in order to avoid my clones and stay under the time limit.

Overall, this game is very cool and unique with some frustrations. Good job.

I like it but the camera shouldn't follow the character, it should LEAD. Otherwise, most of the screen is dedicated to an area that is behind the player and you're so zoomed into the action that vision is impaired.

@edmanbosch Thanks so much for all the feedback! Great call about the hallways; I wondered if that would be an issue. I purposefully moved the enemies far from doorways for this reason, but in hindsight I should have just made the walls semi-transparent! I'm glad you liked the combat. I definitely didn't have as much time as I wanted to make it really work (for example, when you block I wanted enough stun time to get a couple attacks in, but you only get one). I also wanted it to be more like a counter-attack, so it's not quite right as is.

Both you and @gix 's (and others) feedback about the camera is a great point. This is why I wish I had had time to do some playtests. It never bothered me, but I see now why it's an issue, and it would take me literally 30 seconds to zoom the camera out or make it follow more tightly. Oh well!

WHOOF, that was BRUTAL. Pretty soon I was spending more time trying to avoid getting killed by my own time clones than making actual progress. The combat feels a bit sluggish, and I don't like how the game makes you sit through the "rewind" animation - a game like this should keep the respawns short and sweet.

Other than that, I like the overall concept. There's some nice pixelwork going on here, and it's clear that you've packed a lot of stuff into the house, though I think smaller sprites/bigger rooms would help make things feel less claustrophobic (and make it less likely you'll die from friendly fire!)

Wow, it's fantastic how many things did you manage to include into a game. The game itself feels very refined and perfectly put together. The main mechanic is a bit weird at first but solid.

My minor complaints are mostly about the visuel style as these character sprites don't really go well together with these backgrounds with the weird perspective angle.

@ryusui Sorry you didn't enjoy the game. Definitely could have been balanced better.

@lesinvisible Yeah, the backgrounds are super quickly sketched and then filled out with an AI. It's definitely much uglier than the characters.

This was a very clever game, and one of my favorites so far this LD. I really liked the rewind mechanic and deal with your clones dynamic.

I wish the attacks were able to hit enemies above and below, as I found myself stuck sometimes trying to maneuver myself to the left or right of an enemy who seems to have an entire circle of attack.

The chaos that occurs the longer you play was hilarious, and it just kept getting worse. There is some point at which I felt like I might as well restart a new game as I can't make progress past myself. I can see a more polished version of this game handling that situation automatically or otherwise allowing for it to be mitigated.

But I kept playing it again, because I wanted to rescue that second sibling!

Strategically, I realized I needed to try to time my attacks such that my future self can more easily avoid it. "Stand by that blood stain, then attack the slime." "Last time I killed myself because my past self attacked a demon in a doorway. Let's not do that this time." It's got depth!

I loved it. Great work on this one! The music, the special effects, the concept were all great, and I look forward to seeing this one developed with more polish if you plan on it.

Oh, and to clarify, by polish, I meant balancing and such. The general execution of this game is otherwise fantastic. I loved the spinning hourglass in particular.

@gbgames thanks for the great feedback! You're totally right about needing to mitigate the clones somehow. I had grand plans for new spawn points being unlocked, being able to kill your clones off, etc. And you're right about the hitboxes, they're not great from up and down (I wanted to draw art for up and down but ran out of time).