black square instead of casting animation - other than that - awesome, feels like proper metroidvania

Great game, really liked choosing spells - only issue I had was with the character walking but we all know that is pretty hard to get movement perfect:)

woooow, cool idea, very well executed

It has been said time and time again, **but congrats on the completed game!** This game is solid and fun! Even though this concept is no stranger to the keen eye, it could be said that you really expanded upon the idea with the theme and the upgrades, which contributed to a polished and coherent game. That is something you do not find as much!

**For the gameplay, I've summed up my opinions into the following:**
- The *movement is great* makes total sense, from the perspective of a developer. However, for the average player, it may feel clunky and irresponsive. It is realistic though, which gives it a huge plus in my eyes.
- The spell switching and casting is a great concepts with a easily usable implementation. One suggestion here: maybe make the cast performing quicker to make the game feel more responsive
- The dimension switching was *on spot*.

For graphics, I understand the limitations of a GameJam. The game was already excellent in its own right, and I really enjoyed the artistic direction!

The humor was a decent touch to the game. Adds to the mood. **You should feel proud of your game!**

audio and aesthetics are great! That on air bug is not nice though :( good job!

The art and writing were fun! The gameplay I found a little frustrating at points, since I wasn't sure what exactly was expected of me and most mistakes meant starting over from the beginning, but it was cute nonetheless!

The game, art and music are great. Changing the level every 10 seconds and having 3 spells allows for a varied gameplay, well done! In cases where the player is split between two level, what I love to see are puzzles which require actions in both levels combined in order to progress in a single level. This was very well done with the beggining of the game when aquiring the spells, but is almost not present in the consequent puzzles. This kind of design is crucial for this kind of teleport game.

Another thing - the jumping is not fully pulished. In my opinion, the velocity along the x-axis should not change at all, or only very little, when the player is in mid-air. In your game when you jump you lose all momentum along the x-axis in midair, it is limiting and noticable. Also the collision-detector needs some polish, but not a lot. The edges of the map feel spikey, and sometimes the charachter wiggles really fast when it is between two close objects.

I would not be writing these comments if I didn't like the game so much. If you explore on this you can get a very nice metroidvania type game! The immersion is already there, well done again! Cheers :)

@karataskn20 Thank you for your feedback so much! What 'on air bug' do you mean? Can you give more detail?

very good game, with some interesting mechanics.
the two only (very little) issues i found are :
-some cycles could be more balanced because sometimes i just take a spell in one realm at the beginning of the timer and just have to wait 8 sec because i can't do anything more in this realm.
-the jump animation was not super practical for me.
but apart from that, i really liked the game feeling overall! really good use of the theme. a shoutout to the artist, the illustrations are very nice!

The dying-and-restart system was maybe a little too punishing for me, but it's a really well thought mix of platform and puzzle mechanics!

@Elros Thank you so much for your thoughts! I'm really excited for us to build this into a bigger game with more elaborate puzzle and level design. :) I'm curious if you beat the game, and if so, what you think of the mechanic needed to get past the obstacles. It's this mechanic (the 'thinking with portals/teleport' thing) where I think we actually have a chance of making something new and interesting.

Thank you to everyone else who has commented, too! Especially those who praised the art, really heartening to hear after three days spent frantically making sprites <3

Love the idea and the mood. The music and the dialogs are really fun and the little puzzle mechanic is cool.
Though I find death way too punishing considering how slow the game is. You can die either from a misplay or from trying a new approach. But then you'll have to backtrack through a lot and it's no longer interesting once your dead.
Puzzle should take time to figure out but then be simple to execute once figured out.
I stopped a bit after getting the vine spell before a big lava pool. Don't know if there is much of the game after that.
Still it was rather enjoyable overall, well done !

Great use of the theme and great artwork

@Adinimys You were actually nearly at the end, there is only one more big obstacle on each side after you unlock the vine spell (or maybe like two and a half). I agree that the resetting is frustrating, though. For the postjam polish we definitely want to add checkpoints. I hope you come back later and experience the ending, there's a fun little twist to it. ;)

@hekateras Ping me once you post the post-jam one, I would like to give it another go !

@hekateras I reached the final puzzle but I died there, and at that point I didn't want to replay from the start. I think I did figure it out though, and indeed it incoporates the teleport as true mechanic, well done:)

I love the opening dialogue! It gives the characters a lot of personality the a lot of other LD games don't achieve. The jump losing all your momentum feels a bit rough, but the biggest issue is **Blind Jumps**. I mention it in the video I made, but if the player doesn't know what's off-screen below them when they are required to move downwards, it's impossible to know if there's a poorly placed hazard, or anything to avoid below them. It's anxiety inducing ,and it's bad design.

Everything else though was fantastic. The animations, the design of the characters and enemies, I loved it all! The puzzles were simple, and I enjoyed the variety in spells. I got stuck at one part, and you can see in the video I made if you want some extra feedback:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIzL8wDloOw

@adinimys We uploaded a downloadable version that has checkpoints. If you fall into a pit you lose one life and respawn at the checkpoint instead of having to start all over again.

@100th-coin Thanks a lot for your feedback. We had no experience in making a platformer going into this jam, so your feedback is really helpful to us.

Really good game!.

Cool wizard teleport game! Made me smile

This game is so well made! the graphics are great, the story line is great, the only issue I had the whole time is that I'm bad at games and kept dying and the no check points thing I thought was a bit brutal.

@Misfire-dev There is actually now a version with checkpoints available! You have to download it, though, it's at the bottom of the itch page. I hope you finish it if you haven't already, there's a little twist waiting for you at the ending! :) Thank you so much for your feedback.

We didn't want to put it in the browser version yet since you're not supposed to add features after the deadline. We'll do that when the event is over.

Very interesting concept! The hand-drawn graphics look nice, and the BGM helps set the mood for the game. I also love the fact that main character can barely jump, and has to use spells for almost everything :smile:

This game is really to hard for me! I'm not really good at platformers, so I had issues not dying of supid mistakes like jumping in lava. I'm not sure the way the jump works helped me on that, but it feels that it's more a question of skill than an issue with the game itself.

The game mechanics with the spells is pretty nice, the double world is a nice take on the theme. And the music is neat.

I really enjoy your games (I really loved project memory), and I look forward to play your future LDjam games! Keep up the good work!

Great art, funny mouse. I liked the feeling of being an old wizard up to magic shenanigans way past the age when he should be doing magic shenanigans. Concept isn't entirely original, but I liked the way you made using the upgrades together work.
No checkpoints was brutal and I gave up after few attempts at the last shadow section (pre-update version). Having a hard unintuitive section happen over a pit that resets the game was just too much. Then I tried the post-jam version, and I'm not sure you understood the issue entirely. As a puzzle game, it wasn't fun to restart the level at all. I already knew how to do it, and doing it was simple and not fun after I had the fun of solving it. Even adding checkpoints, I still struggled enough on the last section that I had to restart the level several times. Never managed to beat it.
While I'm complaining, the stun spell really didn't do much once I realized that after the teleport I could just walk through enemies. Not a big issue, just something to comment on.
This is now probably the longest comment I've left on someone's game this jam. I mean that as flattery, btw, even if I'm mostly complaining. I did like the game. It looked nice and it played nice it was cool to solve most of the sections, I'm just a bit peeved that you didn't execute it quite as well as you could have. Really nice work regardless.

@thedashdude This is very helpful feedback. "As a puzzle game, it wasn’t fun to restart the level at all. I already knew how to do it, and doing it was simple and not fun after I had the fun of solving it." You know what, you're right. We were treating it more as a platformer than a puzzle for the checkpoints thing. I'm working on an extended postjam version with overhauled graphics and a longer level with more puzzles, and I think we will add the kind of more forgiving checkpoint you describe. You're right about Stun being pretty useless, I wonder how we could make it better? I don't want to ditch the post-teleport immunity because it's an important anti-frustration feature, but maybe we could shorten the duration of it.

This is the first time any of us has made either a platformer or a puzzle game, so it's been a learning experience and honestly I'm very happy that we're getting feedback like this. :D I hope you give the more extended postjam version a try once it's up.

Lovely artwork and mood - a really solid entry, liked the dynamic between the wizard and their rat!

I don't want to repeat to much of the other comments, but here is one thing I want to point out:
I really liked the text-boxes, especially in the beginning, giving me very much needed info and splitting the "Tutorial" up. Maybe you can implement a system, so that the Text doesn't pop up the third time I trigger it, because by that point, I have alredy read it and got the info.

Cheers

Great tutorialization, great art, great fun. Not much to fault; it's a great jam entry!

A game with a lot of potential! The mechanics of changing levels are practically perfect. A very creative idea and very well executed in its level design. The graphics are beautiful as is the music. The gameplay is good too. It's fun to gain new mechanics/spells that unlock passage through the stages. This game fits perfectly with the concepts of a metroidvania. It would be interesting to see this game become something bigger!

If I may say so, I believe I would just add checkpoints to your game. I don't think I was able to finish it because of that.

But overall it's a very nice game. Good job!

Awesome! The gameplay concept is fantastic and fits nicely with the theme :) The graphics are cool and the way the mechanics are presented through humorous conversations is a nice extra! One of the most solid entries I've seen this year :)

Cool ideas and original gameplay. I like that the spells are once per 10 seconds. Means you can't spam them, but also are not afraid of using them.

I like the rat and wizard dialogue, just the right amount of text for my taste.

A shame you didn't have time to do checkpoints before the jam deadline. Would have been a *really* great entry with it.

Anyways, still a great entry :)

You got my stars, thanks for letting us know.

As our team developed a platformer too, we know how hard it is.

Good job!

Great game!

The presentation at the beginning is very good, really brings you in the mood and already adds some connection to the chararcters. The humor in the dialogs also adds to this. The music is very catchy and my ears also enjoyed the sound effects. Great job on these! I also think the artstyle and animations is where the game really shines :) The game has a lot of potential with some more of polish needed.

The teleporting mechanic really fits the theme of the game but binding it to the 10 second theme felt forced to me at some points. F.e. if you can't make it to the first spell in the first cycle, you are teleported to the other realm and can't progress there even though there would be enough time to do so if you already had the spell. I ran into this several times during the playthrough and it made the game less enjoyable when this happens.

Jumping felt a little clunky when jumping horizontaly and colliding with the environment. Losing momentum when losing ground also feels a bit unnatural.

Continuing an animation after a teleport can also lead to rather punishing moments, especially when the direction you are forcing is the same as before teleporting. This often made me fall into lava/spikes although i had "parked" the character in a safe spot before. Though this is used in different other games for gameplay elements and because the level design might be built around it, I personally don't believe that it fits in your game.

I hope the critique doesn't sound too harsh. One can feel that you put a lot of effort in the game and that's really estimable. Keep up the good work :)

@amunonra Wow, thanks for the super detailed feedback! Some of the problems you mention are probably due to the rushed level design, I hope the postjam version (not yet released, but soon) will be better in that, as well as the less punishing respawns. It won't fix the issues - I'd say they're inextricable from the main design - but it will hopefully make them sting less.

@hekateras Great to hear you are still working on the game. If I find the time I will give it another try after the update.

Full postjam version is finally up! Please feel free to give it a try in the browser.

Originally I thought about doing a Compo for LD52, but ended up not having the time for something that hectic. So instead I finally polished up the postjam version of this game enough to post. You can see the full update notes on the itch.io page. I hope you enjoy!