Really Fun! Great Art, Great Concept, love the audio - the puzzles were fun, even if it took a little time to get the controls down

Aside from the occasional level bug, which I can easily overlook because I had a great time protecting the flower. The puzzles were a fair challenge with the reduced jumping.

Fun game, sot some of the high scores :D
I love the UI, and the audiovisuals are pretty good in general.
I did get a glitch though, when you break the flower at the same time you finish a level, there is an overlay of the game over screen that stays on your screen which is very annoying...

Probably my favourite game played so far! Everything here is top notch, art, sounds, mechanics. If I had the patience I would beat it, lol.

Played on stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/598153530

This game is awesome. I find myself being very proud of myself for doing three or four things and then catching the flower. It's like sticking the landing while snowboarding or something. Graphics are great. Sound is Great. All around well built game.

Easily one of my favorite jam games that I've played! Thanks so much for bringing it by the stream!

This is a really fun game. Very well put together and thought out. I'd like a little more momentum in the movement, but the animation and capsule mechanics are bang on.

I really love this! Good work, I can tell you worked hard on this!

Great game. I loved it!

This was a lot of fun the graphics are really great! The difficulty ramps up pretty quickly it felt like and I think thats a good thing.

Great game!

I love the idea! Really fun! The capsule grabbing feels great too which is a huge piece of the game. The leaderboard is a nice touch and I really like how instead of having a health bar, getting hit by bullets impacts your ability to catch the capsule.

One of my favourites, great work!

Good job to the team. Very polished game, fun to play.

My favorite game so far from this LD, 10/10!

My favorite game so far from this LD, 10/10!

I enjoyed the management of caring for the flower at the same time of allowing yourself more movement and shooting. It was a really solid idea that had decent music. Really great entry solid work.

The gameplay felt so smooth and polish! The levels got quite challenging for me after the first few but the difficulty ramp was done quite nicely XD Great work!

That was really fun! Great work!

Challenging platformer with interesting mechanic. The enemies in level 2 or 3 annoyed me way to lot while learning the throw and catch

wow.

Very nice game! :D
Felt great to eject the plant in the air, clear the robots and catching it again :)

Oh wow I had a lot of fun playing this, very cool mechanic. Good job!

Great graphics. I really like the idea of ​​saving flowers. I did not immediately understand how best to go to the second level. the sound of glass breaking me scared)
The overall impression of the game is only positive. Cool!

This is such a nice polished little game, with so much challenge and fun! I loved the character design, don't ask me why but it reminds me of the word doc paper clip ? lol
Good game, great concept and fun characters! One of my favourite games so far!

5/5 solid game! The sound effect when the flower is in the air is so satisfying :D

I liked the game. The mechanics are so good: you can do bigger jump when you don't have flower. It is quite challenging in a justified manner and I was able to play till level 5 (I could have completed it if I have played it 2-3 more times). :D

Whoa, solid and with good content for a jam game!

This is really awesome. Have not seen a platformer quite like this before. It seems the concept of Keep it Alive worked very naturally for you. Excellent work and congrats!

This was an amazing game! I just wish my finger dexterity was better :laughing: The game was very engaging, the level design was well designed and challenging. Sound and graphics were spot on and the main mechanic with the flower was very clever. Well Done!

Nice graphics, solid core design with some innovative touches on the theme. It is pretty complete entry. Amazing work done in 72 hours, congrats!

I didn't realise I could shoot until the jumpy shooty level with the lazer enemies up top. Great interpretation of the theme, and very challenging. Bonus points for the scoreboard at the side!

Very innovative mechanics! Great graphics and music!

I love the art & music. Really good game ideas and the leaderboard system. :v: Great job !!

I beat it, and even managed to snatch the Level 9 record away from the dastardly OGRE BEE! This was great! I played it for like 20 minutes. I haven't played all that many games yet, but this was easily the most complete and polished of those I have. A fun idea well executed. I wish the wall physics were a little less... scrapey... but I know how hard that stuff can be.

Well done!

Pretty cool game, the visuals are great and the "juggling" mechanic is very neat idea. The overall gameplay can feel a bit flimsy at times, but it's no big deal.

I love how the soundtrack builds the tension when you toss the plant.

This game's really fun. It fits the theme well, and having to throw the capsule makes it a really fun challenge. Awesome work!

Wow! Really cool game, probably one of my favorites so far. Great combination of mechanics and I really love the Wall-E vibe so, well done <3

Great and unique platforming concept. I feel like the physics could be tightened up a bit, but still a satisfying mechanic.

This was really good. A very well polished game with great level design. The give and take of mobility was a nice touch. I like how the flower had a different gravity than everything else, it felt good to throw and catch. The gameplay really complemented the theme very well. Having a leader board is also very impressive. Nothing really wrong with this one! High score!

Nice work! At times the controls could feel a bit clunky and that glass shattering noise was a bit too painful to listen to, but overall really good game!

This is a really fun puzzle game. I think the shooting could be a little more smooth but overall great submission

Excellent puzzle mechanic -- the flower gravity was really well-tuned so that you had precisely enough time to toss it, take a few actions, then panic about catching it again. I also really liked how nicely the "you're not holding a flower" audio blended with the general background music. Great job!

Spectacular game! Really well made and fun. I did find it a bit hard however, but fun overall! Everything fits together really well and the graphics and audio combine for a really good mood. One added mechanic could be a parabolic aiming system when you can shoot the flower container really long/high/short/low or any combination to suit your situation better. Really well done and an excellent game, especially given the time. You must have worked well as a team!

Wow! That is really cool! Online leaderboards is a great motivator =)

Stunning graphics. I love the idea of having to protect earth's last remaining flower, that is such a unique idea. Having to juggle between jumping far and carrying is a really nice touch. Excellent job.

I love these kind of puzzles, also super polished experience. Very nice, well done!

Wow, this concept is really cool, it is actually really similar to my entry! I loved the visuals and that quantity of content, the leaderboards makes it a more challenging game, really nice entry, congrats!

Wow I really enjoyed this. It definitely has a speed run type feel and the leaderboards were a great addition to emphasize that. I replayed a bunch of early levels to try and optimize my times. I could definitely see this becoming a full game down the road. Great work!

Nice interpretation of the theme, very creative! The concept is a nice twist on a platformer which I haven't seen before. I love that the enemies are simply pushed away instead of destroyed when you shoot them. Makes it more challenging.

Well done!

cool idea for the theme but sure it's hard :laughing: just made it until level 2. the game seems polished well and good looking graphics. well done! :thumbsup:

This is definitely one of the most "complete" entries I've played thus far. Graphics and audio were well-polished, the interfaces were slick and fully utilized, and the progression in difficulty was perfect.

As a platformer this felt really awkward to play for a long time, until I finally got a good handle for the physics. There was also a bit of a learning curve to the rules of the mechanics themselves - for instance I had to learn through trial and error that the capsule didn't break when hitting the floor while carrying it, and it also didn't break when touching walls/ceilings, but it *did* break when enemies touched it, even when I *was* carrying it, but enemy bullets *didn't* break it, even if I *wasn't* carrying it, etc.

There also seemed to be some bugginess/inconsistency in the way the game handled collisions/physics in general, as if the game was trying to do some simple physics without fully embracing a physics engine, even though the physics engine may have been the better call. I say this particularly in regards to collisions between the player and enemies, and between the player and the capsule. It seemed like nothing ever preserved momentum, which created some interactions that felt unnatural - like, for example, giving the capsule a push through the air, only for it to drop straight down. Pushing an enemy into a wall and having them warp on top of the player was another one of these odd interactions.

At its core the concept is sound and well-executed, and there's little that could be improved with the presentation. Leaderboards are always a nice touch.

@epicular Thank you for the detailed feedback!

We definitely could have put more time into tweaking the platforming. (actually we really didn't have any time, but you get the idea) We kind of got it feeling "good enough" and then moved on to the rest of the mechanics.
I think the wall jumping was the worst part. Instead of having you stick to walls, it probably would have been better if you slid past the wall normally and had the option to kick off the wall only if you wanted to.

We spent a lot of time fiddling with what did and didn't break the capsule/collide with the capsule. I think what we settled on made the most gameplay sense even though it was rather unintuitive.

Well done :)

Gameplay was a bit unforgiving (sometimes it'd have been helpful to benefit from a bit more tolerancy), but rewarding. The overall idea and mechanisms really fit to the theme!
Music is cool as well, but can be a bit repetitive when you struggle a lot on certain lvls ^^

Good job overall!

Wow! Really love the concept, gameplay was so smooth and satisfying once I got used to it! Art and sound were great and really add to the theme of the game. Excellent entry! Great job!

Wait, you can shoot in this game? I've got to level 8 without ever shooting :sweat_smile:

Enjoyed it quite a bit, though it takes time to adjust your mind to you being incapable of jumping properly when holding the capsule (which you still want to hold most of the time)

Thanks for the nice experience and the challenge!

P.S. Leaderboards are cool, got some highscores there :D

really nice game :) I have always played with the idea of a leaderboard in our games too so nice to see someone implement one.. I'm always scarded of people reverse enginering the leaderboard API to cheat ;)

Love the mechanics. The concept that your movement is limited when carrying the capsule is very interesting. You have to throw the capsule away, dealing with troubles and catch it back. Very challenging game experience.

really creative concept and mechanics, i had fun!

nice game, i had fun with it, loved the art style and the music

Last plant in an Ecumenopolis...

Noice!!!

Really good game! I loved the mechanics, it was very original,

i really like the mechanics, very original idea. it certainly requires an element of skill, having to throw the capsule away and hope to catch it again. some of the art is nice, like the backdrop, but it would be nice to see more variation with the platforms etc, maybe in a post jam version? the audio and colour palette complement each other to create a nice mood.

Loved the concept, the mechanics and how the audio was implemented. Really good idea. Congrats!

Quite good to play, the movement felt a bit awkward at times, but not nothing too bad. Level 10 was tricky, but the ending was nice (not too surprising). Graphics and audio were good and the whole thing felt polished. Great work! Very impressive what you came up in 72 hours!

What annoyed me is the drag when touching wall and falling down, made me lose couple of time because couldn't catch the flower in time because i was dragging.

I liked this so much. TY for the entry. Bonus points for the final.
I liked that you managed to put lots of design flavours like camerashake and stuff. The game felt prety finished and polished to me.

BTW on level 10 I found an exploit, because I restarted several times. I noticed that i can leave the flower on one pipe safely, went forwards (super zoomed out) cleared the level then went back for the pot.

Overall great entry.

Really liked the concept and the gameplay felt very smooth! The core mechanic felt very refined and well made too! Overall, this is a very good jam entry!

Amazing stuff, good job guys on including a scoreboard, best addition!

Loved it. Absolutely loved it :) And I don't really like 2D platformers. This one had a very nice spin on the gameplay. And the music and graphics and just about everything is top notch. One of the best submission in the jam category if u ask me.

Really cool. Interesting idea for a platformer, good art, good music. I have two little problems:

1) It feels that capsule can't break in some situations, but it breaks anyways. I understand that it is the core mechanic of the game - capsule breaks every time it touches anything - but it is hard to resist my common sense

2) The change in control schemes while with and without the capsule is too significant. You have to keep in mind these 2 states, and for someone that could be a game breaker, but for someone this is the challenge. For me it is just little to hard

There is also a bug in gameplay, which may lead to some cheese tactics.

Amazing game overall besides these 2.5 major problems.

A very well polished game. I do find that the difficulty curve spikes up a bit too much from the first level where you're learning how to move and jump compared to the next two where you need to deal with an enemy in level 2 and precision platforming in the third. Also like others mentioned the switch between the two gameplay styles is a bit too much. Overall great job!

I adored the style of this game. Graphics are truly great, soundscape pleasant and the gameplay inventive. It is a great jam achievement, I say. It was really challenging to time throwing the capsule and jumping sometimes, especially if I accidentally ended up catching the capsule mid jump, loosing momentum and falling into the pit. Good time :wink:

That was remarkably polished, and the gameplay felt really smooth. At first having to coordinate the A/D keys with the spacebar while also aiming with the mouse felt counter intuitive. I would have preferred to keep things as close together as possible and just use the W key for jumping. But after a couple of levels I'd gotten used to it.

I definitely second that comment about the capsule breakage sometimes being a tad too sensitive. While the breakage is an obvious element of the gameplay, being able to safely put down the capsule when you need to go off and shoot things is equally important. Sometimes I'd be able to put it down carefully in one round, would try and repeat the exact same move the next time, and it would smash for no obvious reason. But I imagine balancing that sort of thing can be quite tricky.

Also a couple of times the capsule ended up out of reach during gameplay and there was no way for me to retrieve it because it was too low down on the bottom platform, or right in the middle of a large column and unreachable from either side. Not a massive problem in and of itself, but there was no way to manually restart, and sometimes no convenient holes in the platforms through which to fling oneself so I had to reload the whole game from scratch.

But overall I really had fun playing, and loved the graphics - especially the way the little robot's eyes always follow the flower. It was simple and uncluttered and really engaging. The catching/throwing mechanic with the claw worked beautifully, and the whole thing felt very well put together for a JAM game. Hats off to you.

@vesper Thank you for all the detailed feedback! I'm curious how exactly you are managing the capsule. It sounds like you're embedding it in walls as a core part of your strategy. The intent is that you can never set down the capsule and that you have to always fling it in the air. The capsule is supposed to break if it even lightly touches the ground from above. If you release the capsule within a wall, then a number of factors could control whether it breaks, but we did not anticipate that playstyle when designing the game.

@scott-steffes Ah, I see. That absolutely makes sense in that case and ups the coordination challenges significantly. :laughing: I think I started doing that because when you first get the capsule it's in that state, and when you're getting hang of the controls initially it happened organically, so using it that way seemed intuitive. Also if you're careful you can lay it down on top of the platforms rather than within them (though as I mentioned before, not with 100% consistency). Thanks for clarifying!

Cool game! I like the sound effects and artstyle! The overall mood and design of the world was great, I really felt bad when I broke the capsule. It was very challenging when I had to throw away the capsule, go around jumping and killing enemies and manage to catch the capsule (super hard!)

Overall pretty good game, I especially like the concept. My feedback:
* Good that you can quickly restart with space (jump).
* Shooting enemies that disable the grabber is interesting.
* My main complaints are that there is no grace jumping and that the walls are very sticky.
* I would like to jump with W. Others will probably also appreciate support for the arrow keys.
* Level 8, 9 and 10 were too difficult/frustrating (mainly frustrating). The jumping enemies are also a bit over powered.

Very cool game! I enjoyed the ramp-up in difficulty and the constant juggling in the later levels. Level 10 was HARD! Ended up camping out and taking down those pesky robots one by one. Nice ending and cool that you made one!

I think some of the robots could be slightly more affected by your shots; maybe that would have made it too easy but some of them just seem to ignore my constant barrage of firepower. I like the variation in enemies, and the mix between platforming and tactical shooting!

Excellent entry.

One of the best "in the theme" game I have tried. The idea of throwing the plant in the air and taking it back is just perfect. We feel the sensation of the fragility very well, and it is so cool when we take the plant back. (Lot of breaking glass in the level 2 ^^ Then I could manage it better). The control and level design is well adapted. So good to make many levels in a Jam. Congratulation!!!