I really like the mood of your world. But i'm always dying in the first few seconds and don't know why :(
Nice work! Congratulations :)

Love how balanced the difficulty is, nice work! =)

First of all, what was it with project redirects? So can it really be? Anyway. The game is a very unbalanced platformer with wildly unfriendly controls .... Although the music is very pleasant, though it bores in five minutes.

Beautiful atmoshpere! However, I think the jump is waay to high. Also it said I had 3 health but I didn't know that spikes would kill me instantly. Apart from that, fun game, loved the aesthetic.

You should add some animations, player object makes a feeling like unrealistic and not part of the world. Apart from that I think this can be a good game with adding more levels and extending it. I don't think there is much correlation with jam topic but it is fun and robust game.

I found this game very hard but it may be because I suck at platformers. I really like the drawed backgrounds! With a longer music and some animation, it could really be nice.

I think your world has a great mood, and aesthetic. I get the whole over ambition thing, did that a bit my self. The player movement feels sort of clunky, but it is a gamejam so I get it.

It wasn't super clear to me at first, that the statues give -1 nothingness, and killing the creatures give +1. Part of that is there was no visual or audio feedback, so when I would look up at the text at different times it would read differently, and I wasn't sure why. Maybe renaming it to "Lost souls", or something like that would have made it a bit more clear what was happening with out much extra work.

The other thing is that once I got up in to the cloud section, it was harder to tell where to go.
Over all, it is pretty good. I like the idea of having to be careful not to kill too many creatures, and if you do then you need to find another one of the statues. Cool game overall! Good job.

Absolutely great design and art! Was wondering why the jump was so powerful but getting to the end I saw you'd need it (though maybe there's a different way around that, it felt a bit silly to constantly be bumping into the ceiling in the beginning).
I'm not sure how well it tied into the theme, and I would have loved a longer music loop and some more sound effects (especially on collecting the statues) but such is the game jam life. GREAT job on your first jam!

The backgrounds and environment on this are stunning! Very well done. I'm not a fan of the controls. I struggled to put the character where I wanted it and died a lot because of that. It looks like it was an ambitious project. Nice work!

I enjoyed the art and music. I would love to see character animations though. I found the music restarting on death a little jarring (I died frequently)

I like the idea but I died toooo often haha

nice game and cool art style.
i had some problems to reach over this block even if i am really slow.

But nice gameplay.


Awesome art style but seriously you owe me a keyboard I bashed it while playing your game and dying for the 50th time. Maybe you could reduce the collider size a bit to give the player a fighting chance. Maybe a small save point would be nice.

The mood reminds me a lot of Hollow Knight! :) Spoiler alert for other players! The hidden room at the beggining is nicely placed and brings excitment to the game. Other than that, jumping feels a little floaty and the lack of animations is kinda distracting. However, with art like this I don't think it's possible to draw AND animate it in such a short time, so great job!

Hi everyone, first of all thank you for all of your comments they give a lot of motivation :smile: . Secondly we have adjusted the code so the collision pointed out by @neowhoru is now removed (sorry about that) turns out playing the game for 3 days straight improves your performance :sweat_smile:. We did not have nearly enough time to add everything into the game like player animations, different enemy sprites and so on. However, we have changed the ending to emphasize the link for the theme of the game. One of the worst issues we ran into and couldn't fix because of time was adding the 3 different soundtracks that where supposed to be played on the different layers of the map so the mood becomes more majestic as you increase the altitude as just like @tory pointed out it can get repetitive after a while (you can still check them out in the download assets file if you're really interested). Thank you for the reviews so far it really means a lot :heart: !

Very good graphics and game mechanics. Game is fun and addictive to play

Graphics looked good, but I wish you had added a little bit of player animation. Great job submitting a complete game!

Really cool game, love the visuals and all the secrets :)

I love the graphical artstyle a lot. The game was pretty fun, especially for a short game jam. There were some parts where the graphics were bugging out and glitching, which confused me, because I was unsure whether that was part of the game or not. Also, I want to mention how I love the feedback for killing the enemies--it feels really satisfying to do so. I also love how the level distinctly tells you without tutorial that "RED IS BAD," which is always good in games. Ambition is good, I would say, but I also see that it seemed like it was missing a little intensity, which I think would have been really cool, and animations, of course, but it was a fun game. Good job and good entry!

Thank you very much for the feedback we had other featured we wished to add but unfortunatly ran into some bugs that took to long to iron out hope to make a even better game next time
ELBI & Xostu

The gameplay and particles are very good. Graphics of different styles are very distracting. The game has noticeable problems with layers. The music is very annoying. Sorry for the criticism. For the first project is not bad. Continue to improve the game. Good luck!

A very good game, very fun, graphics very well made but have some problems, but congratulations for the first project a really cool game.

I enjoyed this. Smooth gameplay and interesting idea. Nice graphics, although I noticed some minor rendering issues.

Cool game.

There are a couple of problems that I think are compounding with each other. And I think a few small tweaks could really make a difference. Here's my (I'm not an authority on the subject so take it as you will) list in no particular order

1. Put some time in between death and restart. A short respawn is good for perma-death games like this but the current one is *too* short. For one it is a little jarring but more importantly sometimes when I die I don't know how I died not really giving me an opportunity to improve and leaving me with the impression that the game is unfair. This compounds with:

2. Remove the leaps of faith. There are at least two instances in the game where you have to jump onto a platform you cannot see. The game does a decent enough job telling me that I have to jump I just don't know to where. It feels unfair when I die to these since I couldn't see what I was supposed to be doing. This is made worse by the quick restart time since I don't get to see where I was supposed to land or even what I hit, meaning I just keep making the same mistakes over and over. I think these would be best simply removed from the game, but fixing 1 or making failure non-lethal would help.

3. Jump on space down. Currently if the space bar is down while you are on a platform you will jump. This means that if you land while holding the space bar from the last jump you will jump again immediately. This causes a good deal of deaths especially because holding space seems to make my jumps larger. If you only triggered the jumps when the player presses the space while already on the ground, then I wouldn't be jumping accidentally. You might want to also make it so that space presses just before landing (a few milliseconds or so) trigger a jump upon landing to be a little more forgiving to players, but holding space while landing should probably not initiate a new jump.

4. Be a little more forgiving with platform edges. A good deal of platformers will actually let you jump a little bit after you leave the edge of a platform. This prevents the player from thinking that the game just ignored their jump if they were a tiny bit late. It should be short enough that most players don't even notice that it is the case, but long enough that the players almost never feel like they should have jumped but didn't. There were definitely a few times where I felt certain I had jumped while on the edge of the platform but I had really been too late. Giving this tiny bit of leeway makes the game feel fairer and helps the player feel they are in control.

Criticisms aside I think the idea of the game is really neat. I like the way that once I reach the end of the game the game completely changes, and now I have to avoid enemies and pickups. I couldn't beat the game (I managed to avoid killing enemies and all of the pickups but the first [I honestly don't know how to avoid it]), but I thought that twist where I had to rethink everything was pretty neat.

Nice entry! It was too hard for me, I couldn't get very far. Loved the background and environment in general, top top!

The game plays really smooth,adding animation would have made it much better, but it still looked nice. The games atmosphere gives me the Hollow Knight fell and I love it. Don't wanna spoil the ending but its worth finding out. Its a relatively small game but is really fun. Well done!

The mood is very good, though graphical inconsistencies diminish it somewhat. Movement is alright, but the jump doesn't feel too good, though that's partly due to lack of visual feedback on the character

Good visual style that creates a special atmosphere of the game. Simple and responsive in the management of platformer. I want to dive more into the story. Keep up the good work)

Nice entry. Great mood but controls feels bad for a platformer (with jump grace should be ok maybe?)

I really liked the artwork!

The artwork is really good and with the music set the right mood to the game. Missed some animations, mainly on the character. I like the "nothingness" concept applied on the game.
Need some balance, I keep dying in beggining. But overall is a good job.

I enjoyed playing the game, but I think it's too difficult. I know I don't have the legal standing on commenting about difficulties as I rarely play Platformer Games, but it'd be nice if you could lower the difficulty. The graphics and music is awesome though! Good job!

Most complaints I would have on the platformer part were covered by @u-tsang-clan comment. I would just add that the ability to stop horizontal speed during a jump felt a bit weird too, but it was more a question of understanding how it works.

I also felt that there was a hudge difference in difficulty between the undergroud part and the above-ground part (trying to avoid spoiling what above is ^^). I died like 30times on the first time and 0 time once past the red vines. I've seen people saying they like the music, i do to, but its loop felt a bit short for me :/ .

On the other end... Well it's still a neat short platformer. Enjoyable and I manage to finish it (whitout too much frustration ^^)

Nice entry

The art was really nice, it reminded me of Hollow Knight. The atmospheric color changing effect really worked well to make each area feel unique. Some animations might help make the characters feel a little more alive. I really liked the concept of having to maintain nothingness in the game, but I think it could have been more fleshed out if there was more of a story. The art did a good job at making the world seem interesting so it would be nice to know more about it. I liked the music too, but I don't think it fits the tone of the game well. Nice job on the game overall, I liked it a lot.

The visuals were engaging but mechanics would benefit from some more polish. I think if you were able to "smooth" out a lot of the mechanics the game would play more fluidly. For example the jumping felt a little herky jerky and the trigger for death was very abrupt. Having said that you obviously have built the foundation for a cool project so good work!

Also @u-tsang-clan has some really great feedback!

I didn't feel like the music matched the style of the game, and in game it was not clear if I decreasing my nothingness was good or not. Other than that, cool game, neat level design. Good job overall!

Nice little game, didn't really have any trouble completing it. Having a more variable jump(the longer you press the button the longer you jump, if you just press it real quick you'll do a small jump) would probably help with the gameplay feel. I think it'd be nice if the music just played one time and didn't reset each time you died, it makes it feel a little stale if you die a lot. I like the design of the level where you can go to certain areas or skip them to just get to the end quicker. Overall it was a nice game :thumbsup:

I loved the aesthetic ^^ Congrats on your first (of many hopefully) game jam ! :)

Really nice game but the collider is a little bit to big on some spots :) :hearts:

Congratulations on your first jam. I hope the tips and comments can help you more and more. I love platform games, It sure is my favorite style and it was the one I played the most in my life. I missed animations on your character. Even enemies have moves and the main character has no moves. Loved the particles flying across the screen. They are very well placed. The scenery is also very beautiful. I would only make the bottom move as it rises. It is strange to be in the sky with a stone wall in the background. About the song, I would say that it is in keeping with the mood of the game. There is only a slight finish to the tones and effects.
As quoted in the previous comments, there are a minor problems with the colliders. Nothing a little polishing will do. I didn't understand why I died when I took the statues. Congratulations again for the first jam and be the first of many.

This is our game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/soundscapes

The controls and jump leave a lot to be desired in terms of gameplay and fun. The camera at times is also quite unforgiving as there are instances where you need to mentally picture where the platform is under you before jumping; this could easily be fixed by just moving some platforms up a bit. I also think that your application of the theme detracted from the game. I didn't want to gain Nothingness from killing enemies and I didn't want to pick up items because I didn't want to lower Nothingness, so I found myself just speedrunning to the end of the game. In other words, it really disincentivised exploring. Lastly, I felt that mood of the environment and the music was very contrasting. The art overall was well done though and I think your level design is actually smart as well; I thought it was a nice touch when you hid the one enemy behind a bush.

Overall, I think with some focus on balancing your game would be very fun, but I understand the time constraint and I think you did a great job for your first jam. Well done and good luck on future jams!

The level graphics were very cool, but a little animation on the main character would have made it more immersive.

The music could have done with being a longer loop - it was cool, but repeated too quickly. Deffo if you work on this post dare, take some time on animation , the overall look / feel of the levels was pretty cool.

Love you visuals! With a little polishing on controls it may be small cute game.

Loved the art style. What did you use for making your art assets? And how did you add that overlay to your scene?

Love the graphics and the overall mood. Nice work!

You have decent art, it looks like you are trying to go for Hollow knight style, sometimes places you can stand on were badly defined however. Any kind of animations would be great too.
Music isnt bad. Any kind of feedback for player actions would profit the game greatly. But its pretty hard to do that in 3 days. Finally difficulty should be decreeased by giving spikes smaller colliders. I also dont like that I had to start from beginning couple of times. But in general a great entry, always do what you like doing!