Oof that's hard. I maybe didn't get a hang of the grappling hook enough though. Music was bangin.

This is a really cool hook action game, and the controls are so enjoyable and fun! I also love the passionate music.

Awesome game!But has little relation to the theme.After hundreds of deaath,I found it would be great if it has a SFX when grapple hook is ready,and there should be a interval for switch triggering.

Good ideas. I definitely should have thought of having a timer on the switch.

I am really not good at this kind of platformers, but I still had fun trying the game. I really love the music and visuals, and the intro story was pretty good. Overall a very well made jam game. Well done.

This game is incredible. The gameplay is so smooth and fun, the level design is difficult but not overly punishing with a great difficulty curve, and to top it off the music is excellent and fits the gameplay so well.
Amazing job, one of the best entries I've played in years.

Definitively captures that difficult NES era vibe!

Not related to the theme, but very fun and polished. I would have liked it to be less difficult as I'm not a big fan of tryhard. The music is really catchy

1000/10
Oh man that was intense.

Where do I even start?
1. Huge thanks for the controller support.
2. Game music - absolute best.
3. Speed, precision and reflexes. Astonishing.
4. And here I was, thinking that level 3 is a killer. :smile:
5. Absolutely loved level 10. Very technical.
6. Graphics on point.
7. Level building - wonderful.
8. I loved the ending scene and text.

Although this opinion might be biased (dark souls fan here), but this game is absolute best, and I am sure, I won't find anything better this jam. 

The game is really good, well done! For me it was a bit too difficult though :).

Fun game! The controls feel really smooth and the grappling hook is a great addition. The constantly rising lava combined with the high energy music make for an exciting rush though each level. Some of the level design feels a bit at odds with this though. It often requires precise jumps and careful movement doesn't that always gel with the rapid pace. Despite that, the game is still very well made and enjoyable.


@ruslan-kossak Thanks man. I knew making it difficult would be a controversial decision but it has its audience lol. (I like Dark Souls too, and I also like hard platformers like Celeste and 1001 Spikes so maybe my standard for difficulty is a little high.)

@veralos This is a fair criticism that I more or less agree with. If I expanded it into a full game I'd probably make bigger and more open levels.

This is really fun, but also very hard. But I like hard games so that was a plus for me. I think the difficulty could be more consistent throughout---some levels were way harder than others. The grapple hook sometimes also felt a bit unresponsive. But overall this was great! And the music is amazing :)

My deaths/times:

Superb. Fantastic music, tight controls with lots of risk vs. reward elements. I can't think of much to complain about, except maybe that the player sprite was a little bit odd looking.

The music is on point and the ninja escaping a volcano is very NES-esc. This might have been intentional but most of the difficulty came from out of bounds obstacles which got a little frustrating. For this jam specifically it could be nice to have a "next level" button so players could see the entire game.
It was pretty cool that you could hook across the whole level, could lead to some awesome speedruns!

awesome game! Great (and challenging) game design. Being able to finish a level feels excellent, congrats!

i think i suffered a bit, really enjoyed playing your game "it keept me hooked XD".

New record perhaps??


What an AMAZING entry!!! The music is a freaking bop, was humming it uncontrollably all throughout my break from work, fits the game perfectly and actually sounds like something an actual NES game would play at the time! Controls felt a bit uncomfortable, my left hand was always cramping, feel like W could have been a better button for jump. Restart could be a biiit quicker too. Also, many important things are off-screen which is kinda cheap and guarantees that your first time around will have some deaths even if you are very skilled. That said this is still an incredible and addictive game!

Nice one! Sounds like really NES game! Really difficult for me but so cool. Good work!

This is a very fun platformer game! I really like its pixelated style, and the game's background music is excellent. I even found myself humming it after closing the game. Thank you to the developers for bringing us such a great game!

Uff, way too hard for me :,)

@fupi Thanks, and good job on beating it in under 70 deaths. I feel like space bar is a pretty standard jump button, but if I update it I will also add jumping with W.

@esther128 How far did you make it if you remember?

BTW, if anyone had trouble realizing that wall-jumping was a mechanic, let me know. I realized that some people might miss it since it's only a tiny little parenthetical on the controls screen. The first 8 levels can be beaten without it, though they would be massively harder.

@firespike33 It is pretty standard, I guess it's just personal preference. Usually is not a problem for me in 3D games but 2D ones always seem to make me cramp up. Didn't affect my rating tho don't worry this was one of my favorites this jam

great compo entry, it was too hard for me and I didn't get far but there's quite a bit of depth and complex movement mechanics, which i love

This was, hard. man. I'm not that great at these, but the mechanic that got me the most was jumping in the wrong direction. I'm used to super meatboy style mechanics where you slide down the wall and you get to kind of choose what way you are going to jump off the wall. this one always jumps opposite. :o:

Awesome game! Loved the intensity, the level design and the music! Congrats!

Great game, I had a lot of fun with it! I use a laptop with a touchpad, and the grappling hook was a bit hard to control, but outside of that I thought everything was pretty smooth. The music was great too.

Hey, cool game! Simple mechanics but very well executed. Being able to hook off-screen add a very nice possibility for speed runs :)

This was as intense as any NES game I had played in childhood. You captured the aesthetic well, and the urgency of the situation. Well done, I had a lot of fun!

Such tight controls! And an awesome level design. Had to quit in the third level for now but I'll be back for more!!

Tried using a controller initially - though it seemed like the grappling hook could only be aimed using the mouse (for what it's worth - was using the Web version). Switched to keyboard and it was far less frustrating... until enemies started showing up, haha.
Controls feel great, music is top! Love the art too. Feels very complete for 48 hours, awesome job!

Awesome game! The controls felt fantastic and the theme song was really catchy. Didnt get old once! The best feeling game I have tried during this jam. Look forward to seeing what you produce in the future! I also have to add that this is the best feeling game I have ever played on the Godot engine so great job. 

@alec-cunningham Did you enable controller mode with F6?

@cavedens I'm glad that spending the first 3 or 4 hours of development on just the controls and physics paid off. I was trying to use the Celeste philosophy of super smooth and forgiving controls combined with difficult levels.

@firespike33 I'm glad you did. Would love to see this expanded tbh

@firespike33: Oh I did not! Oopsie! Had a much easier time with the controller, and the controls were definitely buttery smooth!

Really good! Loved all the traps when you want to use the grappling hook :joy:

Awesome work in 48h, good job! :clap:

What a hidden gem! The movement was super polished and very satisfying, and the grappling hook felt really great to use. The graphics could've used a bit more work to match the impressiveness of the rest of the game, but they at least worked and were perfectly functional.

A really fun experience, if a little frustratingly difficult at times, but with the permanent checkpoints and short levels it never felt punishing, as I'm certain is exactly what you were going for. Good work!

@eyedromeda Thanks. I'm not much of a pixel artist honestly, and when it came to the graphics I was mostly going for "good enough." It's something I want to improve at though.

Cool game! The platforming felt pretty smooth, and lots of variety in the (admittedly very few) levels that I was able to see. Unfortunately a bit too difficult to me, and I got really sick of doing the exact same beginning of a level over and over again only to die at the same spot, but that's pretty par for the course for this kind of game -_-. It was great that there was controller input, it worked pretty well, but I kept finding myself wishing I could press A to jump (muscle memory, I guess) instead of needing to use a bumper. Music and sounds were nice, all fit very nicely together!

@jimbly I agree that using the bumpers is weird but I needed the player to have a free thumb to use the right stick. I'm not sure how you would use A while aiming.

Well, I wasn't very good at aiming, so was often just doing jumping and wall jumping, and that's when I found my thumb on the A doing nothing =).

Dude, that was a great game! I usually despise playing action games and platformers on mouse and keyboard, but I had so much fun with this one, the controls are extremely smooth! 12 incredibly designed levels with a music theme that kicks some serious ass, oh yes! As I said, I only wish I got to play this on a controller, I think I would have avoided some unfortunate deaths. Awesome!

I wasn't very good at it, but it was fun for the first three levels until I got stuck. I think you did a great job of accomplishing what you set out to do :)

I really liked the grappling hook, it felt very fun to use! My biggest pain point was the wall jump. It felt very awkward to control compared to other platforms I've played. I also was a bit confused in the beginning by the bomb walls, I thought I had to shoot it with the hook. It didn't register with me that they were proximity bombs until I read the game page.

Alright I've come back for revenge and this is my best so far! Could probably get it down to 0 if I tryhard enough but for now I'm happy.


I love me some tough-as-nails games with short iteration times and low penalty for failure. Well, I did notice you put a death counter in the corner of the screen, but the day I start caring about my death count in Super Meatboy-esque platformer games is the day I stop playing them.

You really got your dime's worth out of the game elements. It never felt like you were remixing the same ideas to pad out the levels. Little stuff like, "explosive crates, but this time you have to stay in the air while you wait for them to explode" is an excellent new way to use that element.

I like how you always put in an easy level after each tough level as a bit of a pacing break from beating the previous one.

The graphics are decent, but the music is fantastic! What a catchy soundtrack! Top marks there.

The high air friction got me a bit. Given how wall-jumps always seem to work a bit differently in different platformer games, my usual strategy is to stop holding forward a little bit before I hit the wall and let moment up carry me to the wall, then start holding the opposite direction after I jump. That way I won't cancel my momentum by moving against my desired direction after jumping. But with the high air friction, I stop moving before I hit the wall and fall to my death. Maybe it's just muscle memory built by playing too many Ludum Dare platformers with poorly implemented wall-jump mechanics, but I think less air friction would make the wall jump feel a bit better.

An issue often complained about in platformer games is the "blind jump", where the platform you have to land on is off screen, making it impossible to know ahead of time where you will need to land. This game has a lot of "blind grapples", where you are encouraged to grapple onto an off-screen object and may accidentally grapple into some spikes or into an enemy without knowing it was there. I think you should have made the grappling hook limited to only going as far as you can see and adjusted the level design accordingly.

But overall, fantastic game that had me hooked all the way through. Great work!

@zungryware Thanks for the detailed critique. Regarding the wall-jumps, I'm not sure if you noticed but you have fixed momentum right after wall-jumping, so you don't have to worry about ruining it if you're still holding in the direction of the wall for a moment. It's like how the NSMB games do it. Regardless I think your suggestion about reducing air friction is probably a good one.

BTW @fupi congrats on getting such a low death count. Even when I playtested the game I usually had more deaths than that lol (although I can do it in 0 now).