POLLY by Spica
Polly is a game about a girl who got the power to summon water spirits to paint all over the world.
Use water brush to PAINT your story.
Water — life


Ice — death

Steam — uplifting

Shrooms. Yes.

What you see is not what it is

--- CONTROLS --- - A/D: Move - Space: Jump - Q: Toggle drawing mode - Left mouse hold: Draw while in drawing mode
--- CHEATCODES --- - N: Next level - R: Restart the level
v1.1: Fixed broken collider v1.2: Fixed bug where cutscene would not disable player controls correctly
| Link | https://ranejeb.itch.io/polly |
| Link | https://ranejeb.itch.io/polly |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/polly |
Ratings
| Overall | 515th | 3.621⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 789th | 3.242⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 192th | 3.848⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 944th | 3.167⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 9th | 4.742⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 879th | 2.5⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 134th | 4.091⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 17🗳️ | 42🗨️ |
It would be excellent for a more immersive experience if the game had some relaxing music (like in your trailer video, for example).
By the way, the game prototype is not ready to run on 21:9 monitors.
Consider using letter-boxing or something.

Also, the girl's movement doesn't seem to work (freeze?) at the top trunks of the tree:

I can't wait to see how far you get with your work. Good luck!
I wish there were more gameplay and content :(
Very pretty, very cute, much like! Will follow you guys to see more. Great entry!
It's a very very solid start to a chill adventure game. It reminds me a bit of Gris.
Keep it up, it's beautiful! :)
A very impressive and potential demo. I can't wait to see the whole game. XD
If you need any help in building it (probably you are using some engine which is easy to export) I would be glad to help you!
On the off chance the build works, be prepared that the actual gameplay is no bigger than what you could see in the gameplay trailer, it's a really smol prototype :D
Watching others play your game can be extremely insightful, so I recorded my playthrough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS5cDSBk90Q
Here's a summary of what your video gave us
1. We feel bad we didn't give Polly a proper jump animation, we didn't expect it to be used that often
2. We've seen a handful of comments regarding toggling drawing mode with Q. This is a big challenge for us in terms of balancing performance and user experience, and we are considering better ways of handling this mechanic
3. Sloppy scene transitions and invisible walls: something we wish wasn't there, sorry for that! Will definitely improve on that aspect given more time
4. The urge to freeze **everything**: We'll need to think about how to satisfy the need to destroy stuff without breaking the whole world while doing so xD
5. In scene 3 apparently the cutscene didn't trigger for you properly, which resulted in a pretty awkward experience. I thought I resolved that bug...
6. Lack of visual clarity on tree platforms: noted and will be taken care of
7. Girl not moving while on trees: a known bug (unless we explain that she has fear of heights). Out intention is that trees are best climbed with pufelkas, will need to think how to make that more clear.
Completely agree on the lack of stuff. With this short build we basically focused on exploring visual style and testing whether any of the mechanics we have to offer are at least tiny bit satisfying. And in that regard, we're happy with all the positive and negative feedback we've got so far!
P.S. haven't played Child of Light, but definitely will add to my backlog, looks pretty wholesome :D
You probably did, sorry for the confusion. I played v1.1 because I had downloaded it a while back and didn't notice there was a new build.
As a prototype, this is already quite good and really left me wanting to see the rest. The visuals are gorgeous, and it's not just 2D art, as you used various subtle effects to augment it. The animation quality is also noteworthy for a jam: I particularly liked the introduction cutscene, it makes me want to see a whole game with our heroine! It's too bad you couldn't go past the tutorial but I know all too well how short those three days can be.
As others noted, you can get stuck if you transform back to Polly when on top of the trees. I also think you could get rid of the last Q press after drawing: it could be "keep Q pressed while you draw and then release it when you're done", or it could consider the drawing as done when you release the mouse button. I'm not sure there's any point to doing multiple strokes now, but perhaps you were thinking of combining "spells" down the line? Anyway, congrats again!
Edit: Also, thank you for not being one of countless Unity games that hate non-QWERTY keyboards... everything worked fine here ;)
P.s. legit have no idea how I made keyboard-agnostic controls, I didn't even know it is possible to break that xD
I'm kinda curious about your keyboard layout and whether that affects how you position your hand on the keyboard. If you have some spare time, please let me know the details!
Apparently that's the default in Unity now, but I've seen so many Unity games where I had to change my keyboard layout because they were expecting the actual W and A letters, which aren't adjacent to S and D (that's why French people call it ZQSD, not WASD :smile:). Imagine that + non remappable controls!
## cute character! yeh!!
(I drew vappy instead XP)
Thank you so SO much, this is our first fan art ever received! Makes us wanna keep working on this story :blush: