Phenomenal game concept!

Coolest concept I've seen so far. The camera needs to move faster though, and the controller felt pretty janky, but I assume that's because most time went into making the cool light/dark mechanics.

Came here after your post about new genres. I'm definitely a big fan of new ideas and your screenshots implied it was going to have some. They were right.

The clock mechanic is definitely something I haven't seen before, and ESPECIALLY the idea that different things happen whether it's in the light or darkness. My absolute favorite section was the gravity one. Absolutely brilliant and it was extra fun to play in to boot!

Darkness spawning enemies was a nice idea, but in practice I didn't really notice it too much. I think it's because the enemies are on the easy side so I didn't worry too much about them even if they popped up. Regardless, I understood the design and could see it shine with some tweaks.

I'm curious what other modes/stages you could have with this mechanic given more time. I was surprised to see the gravity stage for instance, so I'm sure there were some other great concepts left on the cutting room floor. Very neat idea and I'm happy to see someone pushing innovation fronts :)

Thanks for the comments. I love interesting mechanics. But introducing something into an existing genre doesn't always pan out as sometimes it just looks entirely bolted on. In this case the clock mechanic was really central, which I think is what makes it work well.
I agree the spawning enemies in the dark didn't pan out as well as hoped. I think part of the issue is you don't actually see them spawn in most cases. Or they did but when you get there it's light, so it's not immediately obvious.
There are other ideas but I went for the ones that seemed easiest to test out or obvious they'd work. The gravity was an early idea and immediately seemed fun when I tried it. The doors thing I just dove right in as it seemed like a basic puzzle style thing that would work.

Really nice game :) I do not know if I missed something, but I did not find any gun and reached final room without a single shot - enemies could move a little faster ;)

Very creative mechanic with clock. I'd say the part of spawning enemies inside darkness is not working for me very much. Mostly because enemies can immediately move to light part and also they are not so fast that you will be stressed about seeing enemy in dark part. But i think it has a big potential and a lot of other mechanics can be implemented based on this clock thing.

I liked the mechanic of having the rotating light/dark clock on the screen and I liked the different ways you explored the mechanic.

At first I had issues understanding where to go, then I didn't understand how the doors in the bottom room opened so it took me a while to get started in that area. Besides that, none of the mechanics were confusing and I felt the overall difficulty was right.

I also found the camera to be a bit slow.

As a whole, it was refreshingly straightforward to learn while still having a unique and interesting mechanic.

The game idea was refreshing and putting the mechanics into place must have taken quite some time. I would have liked to have more visual feedback, like a red sprite when taking damage, or an explosion when I hit an enemy. You could also have a smaller map and as a result more time to focus on sound and visual effects.

cool concept, and theres quite some different mechanics in there. Nice!

Really interesting ideas and cool game overall! I didn't like the movement/camera movement and maybe the clock could be a little more transparent otherwise I liked the game :smile:

I think this one deserve a good rate in the innovation section, really nice idea and mechanics. the game feel original without straying from the theme which is great! one thing that I wish was done differently is the Waiting.. if I want a door to open I have to wait for it, if it was just close I'll have to wait even longer, no one likes waiting! especially for more than a few seconds, I think it kind of breaks the flow of the game. other than that I think you did a great job! especially for a solo dev

I really like the clock appearing over the whole game, and I thought a lot of the mechanics like changing gravity were very cool. I think more could have been done with the "darkness" (I thought it was gonna be a stealth game originally) but still nice. Last boss had wayyy too much health and I got bored of shooting them - but a great foundation for a game here!

That is a nice concept for a game, well done :)

I like the concept for the game
- WASD to move, mouse to aim/shoot. Every jam game should be simple and intuitive like this.
- Game flow being interrupted by pop-up text isn't great, especially in jam games that everyone wants to experience quickly.
- The physics pulling me into the dark in the knife room happened without warning so I thought the player movement was glitched. Visual feedback on these unique effects would be helpful
- There wasn't much guidance on where to go, and a lack of visual landmarks makes it hard as well
- The clock, while clever, is a bit distracting. Having most of the play area obscured is a bit odd. I think having the whole screen visible with the clock (or just a timer) in the corner would be easier on the eyes.

I re-visited all 4 rooms twice to find the one crystal in the big room to fight the boss. Still liked it as it was unique and still simple to understand - the mechanics, the levels were hard to understand for me.

Now some constructive criticism as requested:

- to improve the level design, don't make the area the player can visit so big, close rooms, where the player has fulfilled the mission (collected the crystal).
- some sign like "EXIT ->" would also improve undestanding where to go (away from the exit).
- also the orthographic size and how the camera moved could be improved, by making the camera faster and showing more of the level (orthographic size is too narrow in our game too)
- as other jammers have pointed out, the clock itself is blocking a lot of the view, the minute-hand of the clock could be on the outside instead of the inside, or thinner, transparent, half the length.
- to improve the player controller movement you could use frictionless physic materials on the character collider(s)

That said, it's still very unique and I eventually made it to the end, which felt good. The story went a bit over my head like .. why are robots considered "creatures of the dark"? .. but the different rooms, the clock-mechanics and so on felt good and idk why but I never really had to wait in a way that would be annoying, like I've seen in so many other games in this jam. So that was executed quite well.

Keep up the good work, hope to see you again in the next LD Jam. ^^

A very very fun game! I thoroughly enjoyed playing this start to finish. It took a bit to get the hang of things but tutorials were well placed and not too long. I like the story you were trying to place over the whole situation. Each "level's" mechanic was really interesting and I really enjoyed it. The idea of the split between light and dark is really genius and creative. I will say the gun has balancing issues, I found that I killed enemies faster just punching them versus using the gun haha. I feel the fire speed could be quicker. The final boss certainly had a tonne of health but I think a faster gun would make the whole thing go down smoother. All round great game! Thank you for making the game!