Shadow of the Elm by Plasmonic

Save the magical Elm tragically endangered by the extended darkness sweeping across the land! Collect the crystals of light to enable its blessed photosynthetic processes to continue through the long hours of darkness! Return the 5 crystals to the tree to save its life!
Controls:
left/right arrows // A/D // controller thumbstick to move
Space / A button (controller) to jump
Be patient with the web page loading, it does work!
Music available on Olaf Stromberg's YouTube channel
Bug fixes for bug_fix version
- ALL invisible bolts now visible
- falling through floor now (hopefully) a thing of the past
- reset on game restart works now
- menu bugs fixed
- small tweaks so game not quite so hard
- platforms crumble at correct time, and not triggered from below
Ratings
| Overall | 1739th | 3.267⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1101th | 3.379⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 2386th | 2.482⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 2474th | 2.5⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1286th | 3.583⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 995th | 3.25⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1953th | 2⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 972th | 3.517⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 45🗳️ | 37🗨️ |
The bugs I encountered were:
-I got stuck in the platform once:

-If you collect some crystals and exit to Main Menu, you still have them filled in, so you can collect the same crystal again and effectively cheat the game
-The first time I entered right-top level, it was bugged for some reason: I couldn't see the pellets shooting from the left, but still died to them:

I'd totally play more of this if there were more levels and bugs were gone!
The palette of the colors are good. The pure white color is too much for me. It would be better to dim a little so it is more harmonic with the rest of the colors.
I miss a acceleration, deceleration in body velocity. It was hard for me to jump to the right place.
I liked the screen switch. It reminded me the old times. Thank you for that.
Good job. Thanks.
There were a couple bugs i ran into, one where the jumping animation got stuck and you were unable to jump. The other was also related to jumping, but it had to do with the game registering double jumps on certain occasions.
Other than what I mentioned above, I thought this was a solid entry and I look forward to more! keep up the good work.
So, not sure why but sometimes I come across what I think are invisible spikes? I seem to die from nothing, which is preventing me from getting the last 2 crystals. Otherwise its a really good game, interesting story hook at the beginning, and you pretty much almost made a metroidvania, its just missing some power ups. Good job!
One problem is you can easily get stuck in the floor and sometimes can't get out of.
Other than that, movement felt good and my experience was better
1. The spikes were hard to see at first
2. For a game about "Keep it Alive" it felt weird to be able to die as much as i want
3. Sometimes i fell thru the floor but i managed to get out pretty easily
Overall, great game!
I really expected that something is up there since I went so far away from everything else :) Otherwise pretty neat, jumping felt good, controls felt responsive, never encountered any weird behaviour.
I sometimes felt that platform colliders were a tad bit too small, like I was supposed to land on the very edge but fell through it instead. Also I'm not sure about the platform graphics, the title screen and the character is beautiful, but the platforms themselves are just... well, they're okay, which is a high contrast to the title screen :)
Good one, short fun, perfect jam length, pleasant experience!
And thanks for including a super short-ranged respawn. The only change I'd suggest there is that you might want to take away any gem the player collected in the meantime. I feel like leaving the room with the gem should be part of the challenge too.
You could also consider making the jump height dependent on how long the jump key is pressed, enabling smaller and bigger jumps. Always helpful in a precision platformer!