This. Is a gorgeous game. Every single animation can only be described as joyously fluid. The sounds compliment the game perfectly and you masterfully wove the two modes in a way that worked with the level design. The games controls are equally magnificent! Extremely well done!

I absolutely loved how you did the in-game tutorialization of everything, the sound design was great (I really like that skull guy's attack sounds... it just fit perfectly), and switching between top-down and sidescrolling made it feel very interesting. However, the graphics were a bit muddy overall, making it difficult to tell the difference between the ceiling and a stalactite, which used the ceiling's graphic but slightly darker. Also, it might just be me, but the game ran horribly on my machine. Like single-digit framerate at times.

This game was fun, it looked good, played good and sounded good. The only problems I had were some glitches (went out of a top down into a 2d platformer area at a corner and it duplicated me, it eventually fixed itself but it was odd for a moment) and a slightly jittery camera.

good game but the camera jitter and the input lag was too much for me, great sounds tho.

I really love the mechanics! It was hard to get used to switching between modes at first but once I got the hang of it it was really fun. I was able to find the secret locked door in the room with the guy who shoots ghosts at the beginning which was great. I also really love the character animations and how they even sit on the couch

Really love the game, I couldn't play too much because of the camera shake but the bit I played I loved.

Good idea! I very like this grahpics style and music.

Great game! Very good animations and in game "tutorial". Here some commentaries:

-The chest gives you one extra heart, but only for that room?
-It feels like attacking the skull boss it's for nothing, some animation or life bar could be great. He Actually has a long life, and no change in his behaviour.
-What was on the secret room? I found it too, but I went the other way...
-The animation of crouching is the best. In general, all the art is excellent.
-I encountered some bugs. In the room you first met the key object. Sometimes after collecting the key, when throwing a fruit, the trails of remaining fruits and key start slowly moving down, disattached from the movement. If a throw then a fruit, it's always a banana until I run out of the number of things I had in my trail. I mean, the trail is still there going slowly down. So there is no way to get back the key but dying. After that situation, the respawn gets really weird, infinite times if I don't move, and some glitchy other stuff.
-In the room of the skull boss there are some tileset misplaced, or some collision walls misplaced.

Conclusion: A really good game, one of the most solids I have played so far. A huge amount of content for a game jam (I haven't reached the end). My sincere congratulations, enjoy your gained freedom.

Edit: Sorry this was a duplicate comment.

@megamasterx Thanks for your overwhelmingly positive feedback! We worked our absolute hardest and i'm glad you enjoyed it!

@niterich It was pretty hard to keep the mechanic feel fresh throughout the game. Looking back on it i now, i definitely agree about the graphics being hard to tell apart at times. Also which browser did you play it on? Only time i had problems was when i was using Safari.

@Procrastinaaaa Glad you liked it. I'm well aware of that pesky bug. Ran into it last minute and had no time to fix, but oh well.

@rekeben Sorry about lag. I'm good at coding, but not making it run well and efficiently. As for the camera jitter, I wanted the camera to follow slightly behind the player, but it doesn't work so well when zoomed in so much, as it kinda snaps to each pixel as it moves for some reason.

@noumenus definitely a weird mechanic to get used to, i tried hard to teach what i could with gameplay. I'm really glad you found the secret room, i was slightly scared that no one would be adventurous to get there. We worked vigorously on those animations. Appreciate the love.

@Bitten-Toast-Games Sorry about the camera dude! I will make it a lot different and easier on the eyes next time.

@imod Thank you for your kindness :)

@Le-Slo The chest and getting extra hearts is super glitchy. Made it last minute and it does not work right at all, it was just supposed to increase max health. All of the enemies (including skull guy) were last minute and i didn't have any time to polish them. I had the same thought about him needing more than just a sound when you hurt him. The secret room is a big room with lots of platforming and no enemies just for fun. When you exit, it takes you to the same room as the other door after the skull guy. The crouching is most definitely the best animation, thank you for noticing! really glad you liked the art. as for the key room bug: the side scrolling player and top down player are two separate objects that are supposed to be destroyed when switching states. for some reason the corners of the area where the key is cause an array of problems when trying to move through them. encountered it last minute and had no time to fix.

Thank you all for your feedback so far, the two of us really appreciate it. This was our first game jam and first actual full project we have completed together (and my first time using Game Maker Studio 2). Overall our biggest issue was an over-estimation of time. I absolutely cannot believe we were able to make this much content and pretty much everything we planned on.

@ryan-bishop:

"This was our first game jam..."

"...our biggest issue was an over-estimation of time"

Yeah that sounds about right. Happy first game jam!

And for the performance issues: I played it on Google Chrome, on a Windows laptop from 2013, which I expect to be at least part of the problem.

Easy to pickup and fun to play! Great job

This was great to play - I managed to go out of bounds once or twice (it's the best place to be), but I really enjoyed the experience!

I had fun with this! You managed to get a surprising amount done in the space of the jam, and it all looks really nice. Like others, I got a bit stuck on the skull enemy, because it didn't seem like I was doing any damage, but eventually I just shot him enough that he died.

Very fun game! Really liked the concept, and the art was very nice!!

There are so many good things about this game. The combination of platformer and top down was great. Loved collecting the fruit as a weapon and also as part of the game mechanic for puzzles. Really well thought out and implemented. Great work.

I really dug how the inventory works! The graphics were really cute, and the platforming felt really nice (heck yeah wall jumping). Unfortunately I ran into a game breaking bug where, after dying, the game seemed to get caught in a loop of endlessly respawning me!

The graphics/sound and mood are really good! Unfortunately the lag was too much for me to really play much of it. I know that when my game had significant lag issues in HTML5, the local version was much much quicker. But it didn't appear that there was a downloadable version?

@rush Glad you enjoyed, thanks for playing!

@nbickford Thank you! Glad you were able to find your way into the most fun part of the game! (inside the walls)

@GiraffeCat Thanks! i'm surprised by the amount of content too. It felt like my brain was going to explode by the end. Sorry about skully, 25 hits was a bit much, especially when there is no hit animation.

@thomaz96 Glad you enjoyed, thanks! We thought long and hard of how to make the concept be fun.

@paulhocker Thank you very much! I'm glad you liked the fruit, we needed that extra little mechanic for the game to feel full in my opinion, and im happy it worked!

@lum I'm so happy you enjoyed the fruit inventory, it was pretty difficult to get the fruit to follow the player and switch around without looking clunky. Sorry about that bug. You may have accidentally duplicated the character in a specific spot, but not noticed, because it was in the exact place of the original character, then when you enter a door, it fudges up the whole game. thanks for playing!

@Autumnotopia Thank for trying it out and leaving a comment even though you didn't get to play much. sorry about that. I'm not sure how to include a download version.. Although now that i think about it, i may not be able to. With the version of Game Maker Studio 2 i have, i can only export to HTML5

By far, one of the best games i've played this ludum dare, the simple art, the beautiful sounds, the level design and the theme fits well this game. I have nothing to say other than you should continue this game and make a post ludum dare entry, I am certain there will be people like myself who would be interested in playing it! :)

Incredible game for a Ludum Dare, the switch between top down and platformer was kind of reminiscent of Celeste for me, with their space looking blocks. The game was a little clunky control-wise. It felt odd to immediately use your one air-jump after exiting a topdown area. Also, the edges of the top down area that let you fall down were really odd to me, they looked like you should still be in it. Finally, the camera was a bit shakey. Oh, I also wanted DPad support, love my DPads. The levels were really awesome and the amount of content was crazy!

This game is awesome and super fun! Love all things about this game, especially the idea of some puzzles can only be solved by adopting certain perspective. Changing perspective makes everything alive

I tried launching the game through the itch-app but I only got a grey screen and nothing happened. (On Windows)

I love the mix with platformer and top down adventure game ! Nice pixel art ! The atmosphere is really funny ! A solid game ! Please made a windows exe for play it in fullscreen !

Found some strange bug where i ended up inside the walls and couldn't get out, think i might have jumped through a switch. Aside from that, fun game. Combination of top down and platformer is interesting although there was a lot more platforming in the levels i saw. On the boss it took me ages to figure out he was only vulnerable when he fired, there is a little visual indication but its quite subtle. artwork was nice, the only minor thing, some of the fx have a different pixel size and it feels a bit jarring, but its a minor detail. It also took me a while to realise i could shoot the fruit. Sound was also fun and fitting

Excellent game!

I liked the fruit mechanic that made me think of yoshi island. It was cool opening locks by throwing keys.
The swap mechanic is great, perhaps a softer sound for this, because we swap very very often :)
I liked that you included a "secret" in the boss room on the left.
Visuals have their personnality, and you took care to put an audio for everything.

Well done, great respect of the theme, and fun is definitely there :)

I love games like this where the game world feels so pleasant to be in. Great job!

It was a bit confusing figuring out how everything worked at the beginning of the game; I wish the game taught me the controls as I went along. Also I wish it was mentioned somewhere that you can double jump, that took me a little while. And I echo previous comments about damaging the boss, multiple players glitch, and getting stuck like the above picture.

The level design was fun and flowed well! The art and the level design make the world feel rich and lively to me. Lots of detail in the art. I really enjoyed this game, great job! Also I wonder if it's possible for you to still add your teammate to the Ludum Dare entry.

This one was a lot of fun! It had good platforming physics, tight controls and very nice art! Great game!

Did you make this all by yourself for the jam? I really liked it! ^o^

Your art is really charming and fills the world with character. The puzzles created by the topdown and platformer interaction are fun, kind of like what celeste did, but with an intriguing twist. The music is good, the world building with the art, is again, so good.

This game feels really fleshed out. It's hard to find anything to critique! I love the ghosts coming out from the tree layers in the beginning. The inventory was cool! I like how you changed the music once the player character left the "safety" of home. The amount of animations the player character had was also a nice touch. This game felt immersive and full of good content. If I was to critique one thing, it would be that some of the art assets seem to have different art style, but it adds to the vibe anyways. Very good work here!

I'm loving pretty much everything about this game! I'd suggest adding a more detailed list of the controls but overall it's pretty solid. Great job on the visuals and music!

This was a pretty interesting game. However,
1) The whole game felt laggy. A combination of input delay and slow gravity meant that controlling the character wasn't problematic but never felt 'right'
2) The boss gave me no indication that I was dealing damage. I thought that I had to do something specific to get past some invulnerability, but no, I just had to keep shooting more.
3) After taking the upper route and completing one more level after that, I got stuck inside the walls. This ended my playthrough, as I couldn't figure out a way to force a restart (and then I fell off the edge and went past the bottom of the screen)

Very fun game, but it should be a bit more difficult at the beginning :) Awesome music!

I found this combination very interesting and very creative. The level design is well worked. Congratulations!

I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.

I hope you continue with the project.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape