Nice game! The story is well written, it got me hooked.
I think I missed something or there's something broken regarding state. I threw myself to the volcano and it said the gods where angry. I replayed it and the geyser wouldn't work anymore. Threw myself to the volcano and got the "good" ending this time, then the screen went again to the "the gods are angry" view.
Anyways, pretty cool pico8 game, congrats!

@rombus The "gods are angry" view is just the title screen, so you're supposed to see that after the victory cutscene. I'm not sure why it took you straight there the first time, or why the geysers didn't work the second time. I'll investigate that. Thanks for flagging those issues, and I'm glad you enjoyed it nonetheless!

Great game! It's a really accomplished platformer and plays well for something made within the timeframe of the jam. Played it all the way through which is always a good sign, and its great to see a Pico-8 game submission! The lightning flash effect on the map was particularly impressive! Well done!

Pico8 o/
I liked your story, too bad you haven't done the music, it would had a nice touch. Like the first comment, after I threw myself into the volcano I didn't have a cut scene, just the title screen.
Nice work anyway :)

Nice little journey. I found myself advancing hesitantly. The mood is nicely rendered, great attention to detail here. I liked the thunder effect. If you wish to fix a minor typo: one of the notes says “themeslves”.

@niarkou I'm kinda sad I didn't get to do music either, but I honestly feel like it works better with the eerie background hum instead. The cutscene skipping is fixed in the post-jam version.

@samh Thanks for the heads-up, I'm usually pretty good at spotting typos. Glad you enjoyed it!

Nice funny little game! Loved the art

I love pixeart games. For me it was kind a slow game. I was able to finish it on my second try. The game is pixelperfect and I m a really¨bad jumper over everything in platformes. Some enemies was missing for me. Very nice SFX.

@manimal I didn't want the game to feature traditional enemies as I wanted the environment itself to be your enemy, but I think that may have been a mis-step, so it's something I'll look at if I ever come back to this idea. Glad you enjoyed it all the same!

The retro feel is on point and the the idea is straightforward. The jump is a bit broken while standing near edges so you can work on that a bit since it's the main mechanic. You should also use distance for playing those fountain sounds (hear them when close).

In total, nice game, keep up the good work! :D

@pfs Making the geyser sounds only play while they were on-screen was one of the things I wanted to do but sadly ran out of time for. I'll have to do another post-jam update that adds some of these things in.

Great atmosphere created with deft use of Pico 8's capabilities; by the last stage I was hooked. The lightning effect and parallax backgrounds added a lot to the sombre mood. That did however make the ending a little anti-climatic. I presume you wanted to underline the fact that the sacrifice can never know if their sacrifice was worth it, but I don't think I was invested enough at that point to feel anything but my inflated expectations drifting away.

Nice! Short and sweet, I think it's just short enough to avoid overstaying its welcome. I liked the interspersed bits of plot narrative, I feel like I would find it really enjoyable to see that combined with some actual platforming challenges. I was wondering when the lightning would come in and then ended up assuming it was something you added post-jam until it finally happened in the last screen...WOW it's pretty loud compared to everything else, haha.

@chrismcmath I'm sorry about that. The story, and particularly the ending, was supposed to be a bit ambiguous, but I guess I didn't quite pull it off correctly. Endings are hard.

@ddrkirbyisq I'm glad you enjoyed it! I definitely need to work on making this more challenging. And maybe I shouldn't have focused on the lightning effect so much when advertising this, so it would be more of a surprise and less of a "when do we get to the lightning?"

@f1krazy: Nah, I think it was fine. I'm actually glad it didn't come out of nowhere since it might have given me a heart attack at the volume I was playing at, haha...

Liked the idea, that the character was so sluggish, it corresponded of how he was conflicted with the fact that he is going to secrifice himself in otherwise speedrun looking game. Enjoyed the backstory of the game, where you kinda see the motivation, and conflict of the characters. Nice entry :)

Nice story, character controls were pretty good, was afraid I wasn't gonna make it, but managed to finish with a couple of lives to spare. But it made me think if I throw myself in the lava will it just use up one of my lives? :D

Pico-8 is so cool! Nice game. c:

Good narrative. See what you were going for there. Enjoyed the back and forth between the main character's thoughts and those left in writing by the previous person along the way.

Audio was perhaps a bit too noisy for my tastes, but that's on me! Audio levels between background audio and sound effects unfortunately tho was such that when I had set my volume to an amount that the sound effects were good, I actually couldn't hear the background audio at all. :((

Great work on graphics, especially with regards to visual cues and effects, and with so few pixels to work with at that. The bolts of lightning were gorgeous and made me really nervous about what was next, and the anticipatory animation for the gushing water was super well done and helpful.

Ending was a bit abrupt and I almost didn't see it before I was sent back to the start of the game after pressing Z, but I take it perhaps you fixed that in the post-jam version? Not a biggie, anyway. c:

Really neat game! Good work!

@ava-skoog Thanks! Yeah, audio levels are something I still need to work on in future games, but I'm glad you enjoyed the rest of the game!


Short but well done game - I adore this kind of pixel art style in games. The moving speed was a bit slow but as there were only 3 levels it did not get frustrating.

Thank you for making this, and keep up the good work! :smile:

This felt like a very complete polished game. I really liked how smoothly the new game elements and colors were added in to the levels. It really made it feel like you were slowly getting to the top of the volcano. The lightning effect was particularly good. The sound really had some punch to it, and there were times where it almost surprised me enough to mess up my platforming.

Neat game! Pixel art is pretty simple, but you have lots of little details (lightning, flowers, different platform types and hazard types). You use a lot of dithering, and it looks nice, particularly on sky and geysers.

The story is nice, and I appreciated the parts where you had to do extra platforming to collect the story elements.

Well done, especially for Compo!

@mouthlessgames Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it! I agree that the movement speed was a bit slow, but I feel like it worked for this game; future games based on this engine will be faster-paced.

@302-dave I didn't manage to get in as much level variety as I wanted, so I wanted to try and make sure there was still a visible sense of progression. Glad I succeeded! I've been told the sound effects are a bit loud, so that's something I need to work on in the future. Thanks for your feedback!

@jeremy-ryan Thanks! I honestly wanted to put in even more details and different hazards, but I ran out of time and ideas, so I'm glad to hear that you think the graphics are detailed enough as they are!

This looked pretty cute! well done.