funny

I liked it, it's a very well put together metroidvania. The behaviors of different creatures are very nice, the art looks cool, the atmosphere is great. I like the procedurally animated arm and of course the grappling hook mechanic itself. Some complaints:
1. After some time the gameplay becomes a bit stale.
2. I wish the spikes were more forgiving, restarting the whole game because of one mistake isn't pleasant, especially considering the previous point.

Overall, good job!

@suchista Thanks!
I agree. I wanted to add some sort of respawn system, but ran out of time.

I think there's an error with the web build, it never loaded and showed a red box at the top of the screen. If it was an error, I couldn't read it since it was cut off

Will update after playing the downloadable :)

Update: I loved the visual style and metroidvania mechanic! Fun concept. My only complaint is that the weapon was difficult to use and hard to predict, which made combat feel clunky

Webbuild is broken, go to player settings, publishing settings, and check fallback decompression.

Mac build doesn't work on my M1 air. If you exported for x86, that might be why, but x86 should still work on M1 so not sure what the issue is :(

@digitaldude555 Thank you so much! Combat could use a little polish.

@mopifish Thanks!

@gus-goucher That's not good. I'll look into that.
If you want, the web build is working now, so you can try that.

@henanboy Awesome! I'll give the web build a shot.

@henanboy I think the web build's cursor is corrupted, but the game appears to work :)

Loved the layout of the level, and it's not too tough for me which is rare! I loved the aesthetic and it's very cohesive visually. The tentacle I found to be a little in the way when I wasn't using it, but I'm probably just being nitpicky :)

Okay finished playing, love the atmosphere of the game, the graphics and audio combine really well here. I also love the crunch when you hit enemies its extremely satisfying, it has the where the hell do I go of metroidvania plus there is no map but overall its a fantastic game. Seems the theme was just a mechanic to the side though instead of the theme of the game. Good job.

Character movement and combat feels super good and juicy, art is great, nice variety of enemies, and I liked the way you get more abilities over time. Overall a great short Metroidvania, great job!

I think that losing health over time, together with the game completely restarting on death, was a bit too harsh for a jam game. I was able to get to the slingshot ability but after dying I wasn't motivated to do everything again.
Also I wasn't sure I did a good job navigating. I was kinda walking randomly to any of the available paths (no time to think due to health diminishing), and I was able to make progress but most of the time I felt lost. Maybe some landmarks, or returning to some common center point, would help getting more familiar with the environment.

I liked the impact of hitting the bee, I laughed when I saw the jackelope, and I felt really good about taking out that flying eel thing.

I was confused about the RMB instructions because nothing happened, but then I started getting power-ups that allowed me to use it. I struggled a bit with the grapple mechanic, and I wanted to do more with the boulder moving ability, like smack a creature.

I like the color palette, although I thought the bee stood out graphically more than its actual importance warrants considering most of the other creatures were monochrome.

By and large I enjoyed controlling the character, and attacks felt juicy, and I liked the race against time and the choices to make between moving forward or taking time to gain some time.

Made by one guy, incredible! It's stylish, it's moody, it almost feels like a finished game. Metroidvania level design is well done - while some backtracking could be avoided, that's basically part of the metroidvania concept, so I won't bash on it.
Also IDK how but I knew I had to go back to the start to find another way with all my new abilities from there and was able to find the exit in a quite straightforward way.

I'd say polish the hands a bit, so they don't get stuck under the earth as well as the slingshot (more air time at the azmuth of the jump, so re-grappling is easier with all the reorientation from the camera movement), add more abilites and areas to your map and ship it. ^^

Edit: some ideas for future abilities:
- grab weakened enemies with tentacles and eat them immediately
- spray acid on trees to melt them (also works on enemies but does very litte damage, but slows them down, maybe binds flying enemies to the ground)
- Shield which makes you heavy (can drop on floors to break them, can drop on enemies to hurt them, can drop on shielded enemies to break their shields so you can attack them)
- Thin tentacles which grab nearby food (costs one life but collects all life gems within a radius, useful when collecing gems inside spikes - can also be used to open specific doors which need the thin tentacles and pulling something from the other side)
- Attack while hanging
- Grab onto flying enemies to pull them down for some time
- Grab onto strong flying enemies to fly with them
- Tentacle spikes from the Floor (push your tentacles into the floor to emit an AOE attack, can cost life or have a buildup for balance .. or both)

@gus-goucher Thanks! I was trying to avoid making the game difficult, so I'm glad I was able to pull it off.

@digitaldude555 Thank you! A map was planned, but I had to scrape it due to time constraints. I agree on the tact on-ness of the theme. I wish I could have done more with the concept.

@brusi Thank you! The game can definitely be unforgiving. I would have added a respawn system, but ran out of time.

@gbgames Thanks XD
I probably should have been a bit more clear on the RMB instructions.
Also, yeah, the bee does stick out quite a bit. Trying to get everything to conform to a color palette while making sure the enemies had variety and didn't blend into the background was a lot harder than I thought it was going to bee.

@leorid Thank you! I wanted the tentacles to collide with the ground, to make it feel more, well, grounded. But with all the problems it caused, I probably should have just removed it entirely.
Those are some great ideas! But I'm not sure if I'm going to do anymore than some bug fixes. I've already got a couple projects going on. But who know, I may change my mind later on, because I do rather like the concept of it.

I like the atmosphere and the basic gameplay, I had issues though, my first kept getting stuck in the ground sometimes, and the grab didn't seem to work at all, the camera kept snapping around while I was moving as well which made it hard to keep track of where I was standing (and honestly the motion of the camera made me a little nauseous)

Awesome game! I had a similar idea for the theme with losing health. Really cool to see a different perspective and a similar idea!

@raptor851 Thanks! Yeah, the hand getting stuck can be quite annoying, but it's mostly a visual bug. Just press the LMB to reset it. I'm sorry about the camera, probably should have finetuned it more.
Could you expand the the grabbing issues?

@rawb Thanks! That's pretty cool, I'll have to check yours out!

Such a polished game. Love the art and mood. Solid core of mechanics with already some cool abilities thrown in. This feels like a nice pitch for a full game. Just some music. Added to collection for future play and hopefully updates

The scale for this game is beyond my imagination - the whole "unlock new ability" journey is quite long and reminds me of many Metroidvania games that I have played. I really enjoy the movement in this game, and I think it has the potential to be some core mechanic for a platformer like this. This could be a perfect start for something different ;)

The game is made at a professional level. I played for Spider-Man!)

@marvalgames @foursay @bassilij
Thank you all so much!

I'm still debating over what I should do with this. I like the concept, so I guess we'll see.

I love the game, great atmosphere, great music, smooth controls, I love it when the grapple was unlocked, makes me feel like spidey

Nice game! I really love the pixel art and the game mood and some of the art elements remind me of LIMBO. Only 1 suggestion, change the sound when you take the creature's soul, it sounds like cash machine.

@devzhrssh Thank you! That's a great compliment, means I did that bit right.

@dmitrygalias Thank you! I agree. Probably not the best sound choice.

Awesome art! :paintbrush:

The game is very polished and it felt nice to play.

The grapple is super cool.
I think you could turn this into a full game.

Well done! :wink:

Very good entry! Love the art and the mood!

@arqitech @rbn
Thank you!

Art is amazing!! Fun gameplay. And even with a trackpad I was able to kill dudes

@nick-hayashi Thank you! That's very impressive XD

It's a pretty good concept. I got lost and died, so I didn't see any ending, but not bad.

@agrimes Thanks. Yeah, the game could really benefit from a respawn system

The art and movement is amazing!
I had a few problems with the characters arm being stuck nad boulders not falling, they just floated and got in the way.

Aside from those 2, this was one of the best games i played this jam!

Super atmospheric and moody, art and sound is amazing. My only suggestions are to add checkpoints because it isn't very motivating to have to play the entire game again, and to make the movement feel a little more responsive. Apart from those small issues this game is truly something to be proud of and a great entry. Great job! :smile:

I really liked it! It got really tense after i unlocked a few abilities, since I knew if I died i wouldn't want to do everything again, and wanted to see what else this world had on. The game made me genuinely "delay the inevitable", that being stop playing :)

Thank you all so much!

@milan8890 Yeah, the arm getting stuck is definitely a problem. Just press the LMB to get it unstuck.

@cakts Checkpoints are definitely something I wish I added.

@vila6 I'm glad you had a lot of fun playing!

Beautiful colour scheme and layers. It felt like a parallax effect while playing, but I guess it's just an illusion due to the different saturations. Everything runs and fits very smoothly, with a lot of nice touches, such as the different enemy AIs. A very polished entry, congrats!

I don't know how you managed to fit so much content into this! The art assets are wonderful. I really love the style of it all. The platforming and combat mechanics were decently polished. The grappling mechanic was the most fun, which is why I wish I could keep it for longer! By that point in the game, it got to be a struggle to keep pace with the health loss.

I would play a full title like this. Fits very nicely into the hollow knight "genre"!

@ditam Thank you! Yeah, no parallax in this one XD

@hawkin Thank you! I would have liked to give the player more instances to use the grapple, but couldn't make the map any bigger due to time constrants.
Hollow Knight was definitely on my mind when making this. But I ended up taking a lot of inspiration from a game called Rain World, which I haven't played and only discovered it a couple of days before the jam. But it was very pretty and I loved the atmosphere.

Nice to see working metroidvania game. Although seems out of theme, but plays good. Hits are juicy. Enemies are mostly different.

Hand bugs happen often.
Healing orbs often out of reach. As well as enemies.

Lack of properly working systems here and there, but overall really nice work. Slingshot for example hard to use sometimes. Many teams achieved way less than you alone. Great work!

@morricore Thanks!

The hand-bug is purely visual, just press the LMB to get it unstuck, and orbs being out of reach was just poor planning.

But yeah, it is missing a lot of needed features and is missing polish in quite a few areas.

Pretty cool game, I like the variety of enemies and the kinda creepy vibe

Love the atmosphere and art style! This is probably because I was playing with a trackpad (I know, I know) but I found the mouse-based mechanics pretty finicky. I struggled to move and jump while clicking on moving enemies and objects.

@theo-clarke @evan-minto
Thank you!