It's hard, but beautiful, thanks :)

The game looks beautiful and atmospheric. Music and visual effects feel great.

I like this one :) the music is the best <3

Great art and effects! It looks like the game is ready to be released:)

Cool :) indeed beautiful atmosphere!

Amesing, probebly the best game of the jam! the post proccesing was someyimes in the way though

really nice concept and game looks and feels amazing. Took me some time at the start to figure out what's the deal, but then it was really cool experience

@slowpro Yeah, it was actually intended to be in the way. So you couldn't slow down too much.

@dusho I like to usually be not too hand-holdy and to leave the mechanics for the player to figure out themselves with only showing the required information.

Its really hard, yet very engaging, you did such an great job on the art, there's little i can say but amazing job!

It's the most polished game I played in this LD, congratulations, art is awesome and game has a very good feel all around

Love the graphics and music! Really sets the mood. Only suggestion would be to inform the player that they can click and hold to slow it down. It completely changed the game once I realized I could to that.

@aplite Thanks! I tried to inform that (even with an animation) on the third level. Did you not see that at all?

As always, this is really well crafted game. I always can't wait what you'll came with :)

Aesthetics and graphics with postprocessing effects are fantastic.. I do not nothing much to say, I'm impressed how such a simple can be appealing. Could work well on mobile too. Great job.

Edit: oh, I didn't know about slowing down, that's useful for casuals like me!

@antti-haavikko Okay so I went back and replayed through level three, and it is clear now that I know what I am looking for. Initially it just appeared to be a cosmetic detail to me. I would maybe change the button out with a mouse icon, and make it a transition screen.

I can't believe I forgot to mention this in my earlier post, but your level design and progression are really well done. I got a high level of satisfaction on some of the later levels. Particularly once the 4-directional pieces started getting involved.

@aplite Cool, nice to know that the difficulty progression is fine. I was a bit afraid that it would be too easy before I added the few later lavels. Did you make it all the way trough? Well, people usually complain my games being too hard so maybe my difficulty judgement skills aren’t quite up to bar.

@antti-haavikko I didn't get to the very end, I only got to the level which introduces the three arms very close together. At some point I plan to comeback to finish the game.

Difficulty is always hard to judge when you are the one making it, but I feel like the balance was really well done. Especially once I figured out how to slow down time.

Took me a while until I realized I can slow down time, but even then it's a very tough puzzler. It works well though and it's visually very impressive. Nice work! Good puzzles.

The game looks amazing! Fun but demanding puzzles really enjoyed playing this game.

Great little game, impressed by the design, the "post-processing" xD the overall feeling to the gam that feels quite flawless. Well done on this entry! :)

Wow, this is very polished and juicy! It's impressive for a game made in such a short time. Also, well done with the tutorial in the title screen. It's a very elegant and efficient way to introduce the mechanics of the game. The art is nice too, it reminds me of World of Goo.

This one feels like it's well on its way to a commercial release, wow. It's been said, but it's graphically very appealing. It took me a minute to grasp the game mechanics, but once I figured them out it was quite an enjoyable experience.

The slowdown feature didn't quite come across in my first few goes. Once I discovered it, it felt right. Level designs present a good difficulty curve.

I encountered no game breaking bugs.

All in all, a beautiful game. Great job on this one!

This was super cool. Love the art style, as described in my chat: "If Edward McMillen did World of Goo."

Somehow needs to make the button holding more clear. Maybe require the hold before releasing? After learning about the time slow, I never used the click again.

Should also say the level number in the HUD and maybe have a level select (so I can leave and come back) but those are minor quibbles.

Here's my play: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/344727890?t=02h09m22s

One of the most polished games i have seen on here. Amazing artstyle and feel with a fun an simple gamplay!. I love your interface and the flow of it all. Great job!

The screen transition vas very cool! This game feels very polished and has a lot of juice, and i just noticed this is a compo entry. WOW WTF. Congratulations, the game feels and plays great, i could see myself playing in it current state in my phone.

Video review! https://youtu.be/dy_OMov85jc

@dietrich-epp Cool, thanks for making the video!

I made it to the end. Wowzers! And this is a COMPO entry?? Amazing! This is pretty much release quality.

About the gameplay, I read the tip about holding down the button before going in. Big help! I first thought the goal was to puncture the hearts using as few balls as possible. Nope! A moment of confusion but after that smooth sailing. Maybe some of the harder levels are in the middle? Or maybe that was just me getting better towards the end... ^_^

Great pacing. Visuals and effects are perfect. Laid back tune that doesn't annoy. Good job and thank you!

So much fun! The game is very interesting! Took me a long time to figure out the last level. It's perfect!

One of my favorites so far! Amazing aesthetics combined with simple but fun mechanics make this a great game. I like that the UI is part of the level itself so the screen doesn't end up cluttered. The music and sfx are also great and helps to add greatly to the game. The only thing a little off is the theme, which the game doesn't really have a huge connection too. However, this game is overall very impressive and a great fun to play!

Very good graphics and music! I like the runes and how the contrast is really working with the gameplay. I like the puzzle part of the gameplay but I'm honestly disappointed that it was mixed with skill, having to hold click and release at the right time felt tedious and frustrating, there was latency to take into account, and, for me, usually too much time between the "ha! I get it" moment and the "well I finally pulled it off" moment. I'd rather have had way harder puzzles but no need for skill (but that's like, my opinion, man). The particle effects are a nice touch but maybe too abundant? Or at least particles should disappear after some time, I had some slowdowns on failures :/

Also I encountered a few bugs! One I can repro 100%: if you hold click before the ball appears, then the slowdown works but you don't see the helping white lines. Another one I can't repro: sometimes after leaving slowdowns (possibly on failure) the music would stay slow, maybe you update actual slowdown and music slowdown in separate places and it desync'd?

Anyway overall really good especially for a compo! Congratulations! :)

@mashas & @shiqichuan good job on making it all the way through! That last one is indeed quite tricky unless I'm not aware of a simpler solution. It was one of the last level additions I added. Actually drew that and one other level on paper while I was having dinner and after adding them to the game I realized that the solution I had planned didn't even work. But playing around in the level for some time, at least good five minutes, I found a working solution with the same set of demons so it was still all fine. And that's how it earned the last level spot.

@lucien-catonnet Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback! I do get your point of disliking mixing puzzle and skill. I do like them both so obviously I enjoy the mix of them too. But everyone can't like the same things. And the required skill isn't really that high either, there is only a couple of places where real precision is required. But I do understand the frustration of knowing exactly what to do and not just being able to execute, been in the same boat so many times. There also shouldn't be any artificial delay added to the release. The spinning stops instantly on the same frame when the button is released.

Good find on those bugs! The pre-hold one I've even encountered myself post-jam and seen the music slowdown on some video. Happily though both of them have very low impact on the gameplay and immediately fix themselves right afterwards. But still noting them down if I decide to do some kind of enhanced version after the rating period is done.

Waouh ! What an impressive game ! I'm marveled by your neat graphics, animation and music. And the gameplay is really innovative. A really smart puzzle game.

It might have already been asked, I didn't read all previous messages : I wish there was a way to access to any level directly through the main menu : if you want to take a break you can't go back to the level you were without completing the previous ones again. But don't worry it doesn't spoil the fun !
Otherwise, I found the game not really into the theme.

Anyway, this game is the best I played so far in this LD. Congratulations !

@1257th-or-nothing Yeah, didn't implement progression saving this time since it seems like a huge rarity that people go back to a jam game. I think I've had it in all my previous LD games and the first time I drop it, someone notices the lack of it :smiley:

But yeah, will definitely add that if I decide to do a post-jam version... thanks for playing!

I really liked the level with no hearts!

:thumbsup: The graphics in this were awesome, and the sound too. I like the style, effects, and animations (especially the level to level transition). The puzzle tended to be thought provoking, and I like that they taught me with out telling me anything directly.

:point_right: I felt the pacing was a bit off... slow in some parts too fast in others. I think it is more that the pacing was slow, but that is okay as long as I can solve the levels... but sometimes once I saw the solution it took me several loops before I could execute it. I felt the theme connection was pretty weak.

:star: Overall good job, and thank you for making this.

One of my favorite games of this LD. Beautiful and well polished. I loved the explosion particles. Making a game like this in compo mode is just amazing, @antti-haavikko you are a monster!

The overall quality is really impressive, spectacular particle effects, even the end game screen has custom animated drops… I just wished there were more varied puzzles, or maybe a couple more mechanics, such as moving parts in the world… because at the end it felt like the concept had been exhausted. But very good puzzles nonetheless!

Amazing project with an unusual gameplay and a darky aesthetic. Addictive. Well done ++

Man, that's just amazing. It's a complete game, ready to be released, and it's bloody fun. It looks good, it's fun, it's creative, it sounds good. Everything is just so bloody good. The only thing that was a problem for me is that I only noticed you could slow down time after I read about it in a at the itch.io page. After that, the game was so much more enjoyable hehe.

It's just incredible. The amount of polish, the amount of little design things, the level design... Just release this somewhere else already lol

Cheers!

I did figure out the slowdown mechanic but there were still some parts where it was unclear why the skull was exploding. I did figure out that spikes kill you, I guess too enclosed spaces also do you in. The game was fun but also a little unforgiving but I guess having infinite tries allows that. I still think it would have been more fun to have a few more skulls in early levels. Still great artwork and cool design.

@glimaleite Many thanks! Yeah, I'm quite sure I will continue with the project. Just gotta make that holding down mechanic 100% clear and add a whole bunch of levels with some interesting and fitting additional mechanics like the moving blocks that @samh mentioned. Those were indeed on my mind even on the jam scope but quite quickly realized that it's not quite as simple as adding a moving object there. Gotta recalculate the arm positions if stuck to a moving one and check their collisions etc. So I decided to leave it out for now and just focus on the basics. But those would definitely will bring in some nice new level ideas.

@dk5000p I totally agree. I do regret not adding more of those "can you squeeze all these diaballs in this space" type of levels...

What an amazing game and a compo entry as well. The visuals are top-notch as is the music. The only downsize in that regard is the mixing as the SFX volume is way too high for my liking. The flow of the levels is great, I'd only switch levels 6 and 7 (at least I think - 2 hearts in 2 rooms is the one I'm talking about) as the later level tells the player they can move the spawn position thru the terrain, which I got stumped on for a little bit in the previous level. The only other thing is the difficulty - it could be a bit more lenient.
Unfortunately, I encountered a bug when I switched to a different window and new guys are not spawning for me (I got to 3 hearts with a double and a triple guy). I tried to repro it again, but I couldn't (WebGL build in Chrome).

In short - a great entry that could work really well as a mobile title.

Dang, this game is ***hard.*** Extremely hard. I had an issue (or is a feature?) that not all of the... balls? display the guides showing where they will shoot their... grabby things. It made it really difficult and frustrating at times.

The graphics are absolutely stunning, however. They are phenomenal. The post-processing, graphics, and art look super polished. The level transitions were also great. (Out of curiosity, did you have all the levels in one scene?) You should probably take it down a notch with the particle effects though, they were a little too much.

Excited to see what you cook up for Ludum Dare 44! I really enjoyed your game.

@secretpocketcat Thanks! Yeah, I think I know exactly the levels you mean and actually have already switched those. Haven't seen or heard anything about bug you've encountered before and can't really come up with a reason why such would happen. Did you notice that the diaballs only spawn after you bring you cursor to that rectangular area? Did you make sure the game canvas was actually focused after changing windows?

@mertios Yeah, I think it ended up being quite a lot harder than I expected. Actually, in the end of day one, when I probably had like half of the levels, I thought it would be too easy. The levels are indeed all in the same scene. All but the current one are disabled and when changing levels, I enable the next one and after the transition I set the previous back to disabled.

And I will never take it down even a notch with the particle effects! :sunglasses:

@antti-haavikko I did get how the spawning works and I did click the canvas a bunch of times, so there should have been focus. I should've looked into the console in case the build logged something. Oh well...

Really enjoyed this entry. The art was very well crafted, and I liked the transitions between levels as well. I know you said you don't like to hold the player's hand, but a bit of mechanics explanation would have been nice. For instance, I did not know until looking through some of the comments that you can slow down time, and I still don't know how to do that! Also, did not realize at first that you could move the diaball outside the rectangle after it spawned, so I tried that first level with the hearts at bottom several times!

Great entry!

Very juicy and full of nice polish, however the mechanics were really opaque and definitely not very intuitive. Discovered that you could slow down time, but didn't realize you could spawn the balls without them touching spikes and not letting them explode until a while later. Very interesting mechanics though!

Neat idea and great graphics and music, but a bit too frustrating due to lag. It's not clear exactly how close you can get to the walls without exploding.

@someoneman Thanks! What do you mean by lag? A slower computer and it can't handle all the effects? It should be pretty clear on how close you can get, the collider is the size of the head circle so not including the hair, beard and horns.

Many many content for a ludum dare game! Well made! Good luck!