itch.io

First off, congrats on the demo!! I remember playing Fishtellations and really enjoying the concept. I was excited to see this demo announced! Controls are really intuitive and easy to pick up, the audio is really nice and polished, and I love the color palette and graphics as well.

Some feedback from my demo playthrough:

• Level Transition: After completing a level, having to manually connect the stars felt a bit like a chore. Could this process be automated while still showing the constellation forming? I liked seeing the lines form but I was usually sitting and waiting a moment before I realized I had to do it manually. It would make for a nice reward for completing the puzzle.
• Fish Momentum: The very low friction can lead to fish gaining too much momentum, making them difficult to catch again to correct their course. On level 2, for instance, my fish kept bouncing off each other and getting knocked out of the star repeatedly, which became frustrating.
• Top-Left Buttons: I noticed the R button no longer resets the level. Additionally, the top-left buttons could benefit from hover text—like whether the arrow is for resetting the level or exiting to the menu. Initially, I hesitated to click it, unsure if it would go back to the main menu. Typically I associate a more circular arrow with a "reset" and this looks more like a "back" type of arrow.
• Fish Knocking Out of Goal: After 4-5 levels, I found the mechanic of knocking fish out of their goal to be more of a hindrance than a fun challenge. The game feels best when it’s fast-paced and fluid, but this mechanic made me play more cautiously and slowed things down a lot.
• Mouse Wheel Sensitivity: Scrolling the mouse wheel feels overly sensitive, doing a natural scroll of my mouse is clicking it 5-10 times per scroll so i have to be super precise with my mouse just doing one tiny click. Perhaps a slight input delay so one mouse wheel direction does not input more than once per ~0.1 seconds to avoid double-inputs? (You could still rapidly alternate between up/down directions and not trigger the delay)

Glad I played again ! Way better once you start collecting powerups and weapons  :D Froze on level 7 boss's death ray, so I'll see if I can beat it later

Loved the Gameboy intro jingle! The soundtrack and graphics were perfect.

You've really nailed the Gameboy aesthetic—there’s a great old-school vibe to the whole experience. I can see a lot of passion behind it! That said, I found it a bit challenging, even for someone who loves a good test of skill.

I noticed some progression quirks: starting at level 16, beating the boss, and then getting an instant gameover felt a bit jarring (and the message made it seem like I could have done something to 'collect the wish orbs' like they instructed, but I don't think I saw any..). When I select continue from the main menu, it took me to level 17, but it was really intense! So much was happening so quickly, and I found it hard to react. Maybe toning down the intensity or giving players a LOT more shielding could help everyone fully experience the awesome content you've created.

Overall, great job on the execution! A little extra balancing and playtesting could really make it shine. Nice work!

Nice short and sweet platformer game :)

Was there a wish orb hidden somewhere? I looked around but couldn't find

Love the way you integrated the story with the gameplay. Super creative!

I won't lie this definitely tested my patience on the last obstacle lol. But I persevered – the narrative was definitely what compelled me to keep trying and not give up! This is a great example of how story can be so important for gameplay and player experience. 

Woooo! Love the speed of this game! Nice use of graphics and I like the particle trails of the wish orb and the character.  I also *really* wanted to catch that wish orb!!  

A few small notes: the music didn't loop so it got very quiet part way through my run, and I noticed a small graphic glitch on the character's sprite. I've had this problem with godot animated sprites before too. I found the solution is exporting the spritesheet with extra padding of empty pixels around the border to avoid the issue. It's probably something to do with subpixels. I suspect the small gray line is from the shadows in the sprite sheet row above the current frame. Sorry for blurry screenshot - you may be able to notice it in my playthrough video too. 

Overall had fun and the feeling of speed was great. I also liked the little intro cut scene to give the game a little story as well. Nice job :) 

Wow super cool concept and executed really well!! Love the music,  the soundtrack was excellent, and I liked the visual style you brought to the 'wish orb'.  Really nice work on the whole UI and interactions.

I'm not a big puzzle gamer so the tutorial was kind of a lot to absorb all at once, but I managed to figure it out after a bit of trial and error. The reference chart on the left was really helpful. I was a bit confused about unlocking elements and so I used the 'Refocus' a bit too much at first, but then I found out I can unlock them by combining nearby elements. Still kinda difficult to do everything I needed to do before the enemy attack phase, so I didn't survive super long. I also had a bit of trouble figuring out the multi-colored element for the magic missile, but overall it was easy to understand the spellcasting mechanic which was really interesting!

I liked how there were multiple avenues to attack and figure out the optimal decisions based on the enemy HP. Do I go for a straight attack or use a few turns to charge up a spell? My only trouble was resource management and keeping the board unlocked. Quite a challenging puzzle game!

My only other wish was that the 'wish orb' tiles acted more like wild cards that could be used to cast any spell! Right now they felt a bit more like a dud/blocked element since I didn't have any spells that could utilize them.

Awesome entry and great job!!!!

Wow this was an awesome concept for a deckbuilder! I played a couple rounds to get the hang of it, then also recorded a playthrough. Definitely a challenge! I was able to get to the 3rd round on my best run. This is an awesome concept that I could see expanded into a really fun roguelike with lots of cool interactions. Amazing work! Sound, music, and visuals were fantastic.

First off, I have to say the music in this game was fantastic! It set a great atmosphere and kept me engaged right away from the title screen. The core gameplay loop itself was fun and engaging, but it started to feel repetitive after about 10-15 minutes. One suggestion might be to add more strategic layers or decisions for the player. For example, managing different types of orders at the bar—some who need a drink from the left side like you have, and others who you need to serve food (or braaaains?)—would add an 'Overcooked' style mechanic that could spice things up and make you plan your  optimal path between the left/right. I think also making a certain type of enemy actively fight you and force you to use combat every once in a while could be cool too, cus I was able to keep ahead of it and never had to fight anyone in my play by just serving the whole bar with drinks.

I did encounter some technical issues during my playthrough. I softlocked in my first run and didn't realize till about 3:50 in my video, which was frustrating as I wasn't sure what had gone wrong. Also, figuring out the keyboard controls wasn't immediately intuitive for me. I got my controller out, since the controls were explained, but the softlock made me wonder if something was broken with it! Seems like some bug that wasn't activating any of the hitboxes on the bar.

Luckily refreshing fixed everything and it was smooth sailing from then on out.

I had a solid run up to day 7! At that point, I felt like I'd experienced most of what the game had to offer and decided to wrap it up there. You've built a fun and engaging game here-- just needs a few tweaks to add a bit more depth and variety. But I had a fun time!! I think my movement build was def the way to go :D

Great game! Tonssss of recipes which was really cool, but a little overwhelming. It was hard to memorize the combos since the ingredients were RNG, so less chances to 'practice' brewing the spells I wanted to get. I mostly brewed whatever I was given and it seemed to serve me well enough. I had my fill after the Dracula fight, that would have been a great final boss for this!

Really nice graphics, sound, and well made gameplay loop with a well polished menu system. I appreciated the recipe book!

Such a cool concept!! Love the sound effects and creative level design. Also love the thumbnail design!!

Got soft locked I think when I died with the rat on lvl 2 unfortunately. The controls felt very sensitive there which was a little frustrating cus the shadow was so fast and maintained a tiny bit of momentum when you changed directions so it was hard to do 90 degree turns.

The attack was nicely animated! I really like the main character design so it'd be awesome to see it fully developed with running animations too.

Took me a little while to figure out the controls, but once I learned how to control the orb, it was a little easier. I like the super power mode! Really satisfying to clear the screen and get full HP.

I wasn't able to figure out the objectives so a bit more direction for that in game would have helped. I still had fun in my playthrough :) Nice work

Very cool lightning and atmosphere in this game. That's definitely the strong suit of the design. Really nice graphics. I love the green glow and bloom effect from the attacks. The transmutation mechanic was also really cool! Great work!

I really dig the concept of this and love the NPCs in the potion room! Each character feels really unique and has interesting design! The writing was also good for their dialogue. With the gameplay, I also really like the tradeoff that each potion has to impact gameplay.

 My one critique is I think you could lower the difficulty a bit to make it easier to complete the game in one sitting. The reset from level 1 felt a bit harsh, especially since there were some one-hit-kill mechanics at play. I would have kept trying to beat the game if I could have continued the level I died in.

Overall, a solid start with a lot of interesting choices for the player to make with their potion arsenal, even though I only used the starter potions. Good music, art, and atmosphere with a lot of enemy designs filling the dungeons. Nice job!

Really nice art style and impressive graphics tech! I was amazed how fast and responsive the gameplay is. It runs sooo smooth for a 3D web game and the details like cast shadows and reflections was so cool to see. The mirror room gave me a bit of a jump scare! Such a cool idea.

I don't have much to really critique, it was a really solid demo and proof of concept. I'd say the environment design is probably the area I'd focus on for improvement. Perhaps  at the very least a few more landmarks or decorations to help navigation?  The one room which splits into four paths was easy to get disoriented and forget which door you just came from, since it all looks similar. Different floor tiles textures, colors, candles, door frames, etc are some suggestions that could help a lot with that.

I really loved the soundtrack too! Especially for a short game jam, I really enjoyed just having some fun high energy music. But just like my previous suggestion for creating distinct zones, sound design and atmosphere could really enhance the feeling of progression and distinctive areas. Jonas Tyroller has a really good video talking about atmospheric sound design and lighting. I feel like with your raytracing tech, there's so much potential for atmosphere and mood with both light and sound.

I was also really intrigued by the potion brew system you had outlined in the GDD! Would be really cool to see it developed :)

I had a lot of fun in my playthrough! It was also the perfect length and difficulty. Really excellent work!!

Hey we're font buddies! :D

I really loved all the character designs in your game! Amazing art style!!

 I'm not the best detective or word investigate gamer, so I'm glad I got super lucky with my accusation lol. On a technical note, it would have been cool if the click-to-move had pathfinding . Still enjoyed my playthrough tho :) 

Very cool concept! And congrats on taking the leap into making your first game jam—huge accomplishment! I really liked the idea of using moving light sources and having shadow platforms only affect your shadow character. It's quite unique and well executed.

However, I did have some trouble understanding the solutions at times. My expectation was that my shadow would appear in the same spot it disappeared, so there were moments when I felt a bit confused about how to approach solving a level. On the last level, I think I just got lucky!

I also appreciated the little detail of having a jump button but no jumps ;D

Great work!

Wow thank you so much! I'm really glad you enjoyed playing!

Initially I had  actually planned for Kelfric to have all three abilities available at the same time, but I was running into the problem that the combat was not really deep enough to justify it. Whenever I had people playtest, they always favored the punch over everything else! I wish I could have had some more enemy attacks that could have warranted the full 'super smash bros' control scheme and required different strategic approaches to different enemies.

Thank you for playing and leaving a review :)

Glad you discovered the dual keyboard support! I know it's a matter of preference so I tried to accommodate everyone at the same time. (I'm also a keyboard + Z/X player). Thanks for playing :)

Thanks so much :) I'm glad you enjoyed punching goblins. If nothing else, I wanted that part of the game to feel good so I'm glad it was! Also glad you liked the sounds. I had fun doing my own foley for it haha

I think I understood the concept... but it was a bit difficult to comprehend. I'm supposed to look at the top left, and then find the ingredients with '+' or '++' by the shapes displayed? I understood... but in practice it was very difficult to keep track of what ingredients I needed.

Because the directions were not explicit I had no idea if I was on the right track, and gave up after several failed attempts to brew a potion.

A few suggestions that could make it more accessible:

• Reduce total amount of alchemical symbols, at least so you don't have to scroll through the bottom left book every time. You should be able to see everything when you mouse over each ingredient.
• Make the cauldron show the current ratio of alchemical symbols so you don't have to keep it all in your head.
• Make the alchemical symbols more distinct. Some of them were great, like the bat wings. But others felt indistinct and so it didn't stick in your mind as much, like the various rounded rectangles and rhombus shapes. Think distinctly different like Crescent Moon, X, +, Bat Wing, and Star
• Tutorial system to teach you how to brew successfully
• A failure message telling me what I did wrong

I think if you fixed the confusion around the system, there's a lot of promise here and it's very charming and made me want to play. I love all the art for the various ingredients. Very nice illustrations and layout in that menu. Also loved the vibe of the music and sounds. It did feel satisfying to use the alchemy kits. I also really loved the art and the way his hat bounces while he walks!

Really awesome entry! Loved the fog of war effect, and the mechanics all felt really great. I like the flying physics, the sound design of the magic spells. Everything had a really nice level of polish.

My run had an almost fatal bug though... where I clipped outside the canyon's walls, and couldn't get back in! Luckily I found a way to clip back into the play area at the last moment with 129 hp left! I was able to salvage my run and achieve victory!

I really enjoyed the exploration aspect to the TD genre. That really made it feel more interesting and less passive than a traditional "sit and wait for the enemies to come to you". At the end, it felt like I was tower rushing in Warcraft 3 which was a great way to end the game. Get rekt, necropolis!

Love the art style as well. It felt a bit cartoony and stylized, yet sophisticated with just the right amount of detail. Top marks in visual clarity and readability in the game.

My only wish was for more layers of alchemical mixing! Like creating new spells when you combine the elements instead of just one of each projectile. If you could expand the game more, it would be awesome to be able to combine higher tier spells to use, and more enemy variety.

But for the scope of the jam, everything was excellent :) Great job I had a lot of fun!

I LOVE THE WIZARD DESIGNS SO MUCH!! Super rad game system, and really impressively robust tech with all the ground status effects and wizard elements. First game I've seen with a cheese wizard!

As satisfying as it was to cast everything at the same time, it definitely had a performance tradeoff in the browser! In the "big battle" especially. I decided to stop my playthrough since it felt a bit too chaotic and I didn't like the massive lag spikes after each turn (I thought my browser might crash at one point)

But this has soooo much potential, especially if it was a downloadable game, I'm sure the performance would be vastly improved. I think the main area of improvement would be on readability. I ended up mostly just spamming huge AOEs instead of trying to target carefully, since it was hard to figure out who was an enemy in the black smoke clouds covering everything. 

There's a lot of little things that I think need some more balancing, but when you zoom out and look at it as a whole, it's an amazing game concept executed at a high caliber. Excellent work!!

Really interesting day/night mechanics. The moon bridge was super cool! Awesome work on the boss fight too! I really enjoyed my playthrough and the alchemy brewing system was quite unique. Love the sunset sky panorama, and the art was all great :)

One thing I've learned about platformers, gathering feedback from my own playtesters in various game jams is to increase friction/acceleration a bit more than you might initially want to. Even if it doesn't feel quite as fluid, giving players more acceleration and predictable friction is usually better and lowers the learning curve a bit. (I tend to make my platformers feel slippery too, but since I'm playtesting it constantly while developing it, I quickly get used to the 'feel' of it, whereas someone picking it up for the first time will not have that same experience and feel out of control at first). You'll see in my video most of my deaths came from the friction and acceleration not being quite as tight as I expect and mistiming a jump or sliding off the ledges.

That's quite a detailed note, though, and overall it did not detract much for me. I enjoyed getting to learn the game feel from some trial and error. :)

The 'metroidvania' aspect was also really cool! I liked how you placed the recipes in locations I would find naturally and that made it easy to figure out the next objective. Really great job, especially with 3 mo. experience in Godot! Very impressive! Lastly, my favorite part was the fireball vollley. Really fun to use on the boss fight. Pew pew pew!

Really fun resource management game! The sound design was super satisfying and made it fun to just organize my cards around the screen while waiting for the processes to finish. Loved the art direction and illustrations! This game definitely made me wanting more! I also really liked the stacking mechanic which made it easier to manage things, and getting a big 'payout' of gems from a big stack was really fun.

I tried my best to break the game as much as possible, and I did manage to create one bug at the very end of my playthrough by making a huge stack of gems. Once the stack reached a high amount, the card stack moved off screen and was irretrievable. (at 9:55 in my video).

Other than that, the game played super smooth and I really loved the tutorial system. Again, excellent sound design. Really nice sound effect that catches your attention. It was also an amazing way to teach the player one step at a time without overwhelming them. I also love how the recipes get added and always have it as reference.

Where could you see this game going from here? Would the player be brewing specific recipes that are being ordered by a witch? Are you combining materials to spawn minions in a defense game? Could it be a way of 'brewing' your own deck in a deckbuilder PvE game? I'm curious how you could add interesting decisions beyond simply climbing the 'recipe tree' for the sake of reaching the top.

Really well done and I look forward to seeing how this can branch out from the solid core you've developed already. Great work!!

Amazing visual storytelling!! Very well done. Really fun word play mechanics that reminded me of board games like So Clover! or Codenames. I really enjoyed figuring out the puzzles. Thank you for the solutions tutorials in the description as well.... you'll see where I got stuck.... 19:06 is when I figured out there was a missing potion I hadn't found yet....omg that was so frustrating I thought I was losing my mind trying to brute force it...

Other than that one room, everything else was perfect! The ending was excellent and gave me a real horror feeling!! Amazing lighting and color design. Overall, the visual storytelling was just top notch, it was really fun to figure out what the solution was just by the visual clues. To be honest, the whole drama between the laboratory scientists felt a bit superfluous, as it didn't seem to have a direct relation to gameplay, but it was interesting nonetheless as it made the world feel more fleshed out and immersive.

At first it wasn't totally clear if my potions were failing. In the first room, before I had a successful potion, i had no context of what a fail vs. success was. If you were to add a message like "Hmm.. that didn't work" or force the first room to be a guaranteed success with just two ingredients, it could introduce a successful brew right away so the player knows what they're looking for without any trial and error. But in the first room, it didn't take me long to pick up the clues I needed to figure it out. Once I noticed the tree sitting in the chair I "got it"! Very clever.

Excellent game! I had a lot of fun :)

Tutorial was a little bit dense and took me a little while to understand the mechanics, but once I fully grasped it... I WAS HOOKED.

Reminded me of the old days on d2jsp playing Ladder Slasher. Really satisfying for such a simple combat system. Watching the bars go up and my inventory multiplying was really fun. This definitely has a winning formula for expansion!

The shadow battle was a little bit anticlimactic, which is fine because it's a jam game and has to end, but if it kept going, or had some sort of "end game" system I could see myself continuing my playthrough :D

As for the tutorial, I think it just needs a bit of editing and color-coding keywords to help the player understand the game loop more quickly. It's just a lot to absorb in a short amount of time. Bold keywords, color code, and new lines to make it more digestible can go a long way. I really like the biome icons throughout, that was super helpful and made it easy to browse the inventory quickly, looking for my desired items.

For example, a suggestion for an edit to Tutorial 5/8 could be:

Equipped items are activated only by specific biomes.

Combat may fail without the correct items equipped.  

Equip the correct items to scavenge more effectively.

You could maybe force the player to do some steps in order to proceed, like equipping a T1 item and starting combat before the next tutorial pops up, so players can learn one mechanic at a time. You'll see in my playthrough it took me 6 minutes to discover I could actually equip the T1 materials. Woops!

I'm glad I persevered and kept trying though. Really fun game loop, great job!!!

Super cool, satisfying juicy combat! Love all of the polish and the cohesive style. There were a few technical issues that detracted from the experience unfortunately.

The dynamic camera present the game reallyyyy well in the GIF and totally caught my attention and made me want to play immediately... but in practice it feels very dizzying and disorienting as it moves unexpectedly during combat or turning around corners with fast 90 degree turns which changed my input directions and made me lose track of my guy. In my very first battle I also clipped straight outside the level and got stuck in the void

this game has such a great sense of rhythm!! The pacing is so good, and the sound design for the bar filling up is so satisfying!! (actually all the sounds are!). Super fun

Love the music and art :) REALLY fun idea, and the interpretation of the theme is very unique and I think one of the best examples of creative uses for the limitation, with the most distinct double-actions from a single button. Kind of an interesting way to implement braking for turns.

I think it was sometimes hard to feel the immediate effect of turning since the inertia was so high for turning and it would take several seconds before the 8-directional sprite changed. Some way to indicate your arrow key is working immediately would be helpful for the player feedback. You also weren't kidding when you said "Impossible" difficulty! They smoked me in that race!!

Really good job! That was a lot of fun

I liked how it seemed to reward creating nice symmetrical designs with the nodes, which felt really satisfying to dissipate the heat efficiently!

I had fun trying it out, but towards the end I encountered a few bugs that ended my play session with a soft lock (no win, no meltdown even with both bars full), but not sure what triggered it. I was just experimenting and testing out the mechanics and noticed a little bit of unreliability with the drag n drop system and delete tool as well, and I was just curious if I could figure out what was going on. Maybe the video of my play session will help you find out the bug that are still sneaking around that might have gotten triggered by something I did.

But good job on the overall design and the idea! I really like where it's going!

Nice little physics game! It's relatively simple but well executed. I only got 311 

That was awesome!! Really ingenious control scheme and resource management. Took me a minute to realize the planets were recharge stations. I was at first under the impression I Had to protect them from the fireballs, but it was a relief to discover they flew right past :)

I really loved the graphics style, the shader effects were super stylish and had a really cool title screen. The zig zag graphic style of the sun was very unique, and it feels like some sort of cosmological illustration in an old book. I think you could really go far exploring this style!

I had a fun play through! A few close calls, but the game wasn't very punishing so I was able to recover, which I'm thankful for so I could learn as I went along and ended with a win :)

No real bugs to report either - just minor things I noticed: the countdown timer does not have a leading zero so it shows 2:5 instead of 2:05. And at 3:15 in the video I got catapulted across the galaxy at an exceptionally high speed, which may not be fully intended.

Overall it was a great experience and I had a really fun time playing! Great work

Very nice artwork and presentation! Really nicely polished and the audio was great for the mood of the game. It was a fun little minigame that started to actually get pretty fun after about ~50 meals and the speed ramped up!

I experienced a bit of audio crackling/clipping from the waves sound fx every so often, but no other issues. I agree with the comment below that I started to get fixated on the cooking bar and couldn't really appreciate the art after a certain point. Perhaps having the UI be more centralized would let the user focus on both?

I quit after 123 cooked meals since it didn't seem like there was a way to get game over :)
Great job!

honestly if you are causing a real crash and not a "fake" designed crash, I consider that almost malicious design and would strongly urge you to change it

WOWW!! that was such an interesting grapple mechanic and 10/10 on level design!!! The physics tuning felt perfect and the bubble capture mechanic made this really unique. 

I really loved the level of difficulty you made for this. The final level was SOOOO satisfying to get into the groove. The final level was *chefs kiss* for flow state. I really liked the rhythm of that one the best (and i got super lucky on the "sorry" part! :D) The only level I had to skip was level 5 -- I was not really a fan of the boosts forming a wall like that. My only other critique would be the music loop being just a bit too short as well. Given how addicting it is to play, and that it takes a good 10-15 min to beat, I'd love to have something a little less repetitive especially when it starts to get frustrating as a player, the short loop feels like it's mocking my failure lol. The music wasn't bad or anything, just short. And the sound design was otherwise excellent.

I had so much fun playing tho and those are just minor points (I'm thankful for the level select and being able to mute the music, so they were both able to be remedied in my playthru)!!  Amazing work!! :)

SO MUCH SLIME! I crashed it too 😈

(Headphone warning at the end, it's LOUD...)

Love the music! Feels like it's right alongside Duck Tales - The Moon :D

👌+Hank Hill approves of cat.jpeg in the backgrounds

Short and sweet fun game! Nice work

Really nicely polished simple idea done really well ! I got 12,360!!! Had a really fun time. I lost from getting to 50 degrees, even though I was getting ice creams for my bonuses. It caught me by surprise, but I still had fun :)

Thank you so much for the video!! This was incredibly valuable feedback to study and It really corroborated with ABCWarrior's feedback about the micro-management of the minions. This gave me the confirmation I need for a control scheme rework which I think will make it easier to design puzzles as well! Thanks again!