fun game, the momentum and physics are near perfect and feel natural for a platformer. There were only a few criticisms I felt compelled to share, to make it even better:
1. being able to move while eye-beaming would reduce the amount of frustration of being off from the targets by a few pixels
2. The camera is annoying when you screw up: if I face backwards to reuse an eye-beam target in multi-screen-long horizontal rooms, suddenly I'm cut off from seeing where I'm headed. This gets more frustrating when going back to a static-cling wall, and now pressing in the direction I'm headed will most likely make me drop from the wall.
3. Had to fullscreen my browser on PC to see the whole screen, it was almost impossible to play without being able to see the top and bottom. My workaround was to just zoom out, but that won't necessarily work for everyone and it made the precision of the eye-beam even more frustrating.
4. SPOILER WARNING: I don't get the story's ending and I'm not sure that's my fault. What does the device do? Why does David's illness motivate him to use it? Who is drawing all the robots there, and why? Yes, I read the PC screens and info-posts, even the ones off the main path. I wouldn't say this is necessarily a problem with the story unless it was supposed to be self-contained.
A lot of your criticisms are things that I pretty much just have to say yeah, I agree, these are just things that got put on the will not fix pile when prioritising what to do with the limited jam time I had.
I am very interested in your thoughts about the story though. Like I said, this is a jam game, and one of the things that I was experimenting with was this less explicit, told through snippets type of story. I didn't want it to be too obvious, but didn't want it to be completely inscrutable either. It's not a tightrope I have much experience walking. I would be keen to hear what your guesses would be to the questions you raised regarding the ending.
(here's fine, or if you're on discord I'm Francis#8112)
I mean, that's fair--I didn't realize this was a jam game. As for my guesses to the questions I asked: I don't really have any, that's why I picked those specific questions; I don't have evidence from within the narrative itself to base any guesses on, anything I offered would necessarily just be based on my familiarity with sci-fi tropes from other media.
To get more in-depth: the player is never told what the device does, we know it interfaces with ???????? and the lack of cell-localization could be catastrophic because ???????? and creates a stasis field that affects everyone, even itself which may be how it has frozen everyone in place and stops itself from ???????? so you need to shut down power to the entire facility; we also know that it trapped David in the network. That's actually a pretty detailed description of what it does, I should have asked what its purpose is. Why would this outcome ever be desirable? Or what was it supposed to do that it failed to? Making a few assumptions that are not entirely based in what the player is provided, we can fill in the blanks above: if we assume it provides an interface between the brain and computers, we can also assume the "cell" in cell-localization refers to brain cells. That might also explain David's motivation: digital immortality as a cure for a fatal illness. But it still wouldn't explain why it causes everyone else to be frozen in place, why that would be a side effect or even desirable outcome of uploading your consciousness to a computer, nor why he is drawing the player character down into a pit from which there is seemingly no escape; if he's to be believed, why would he trap us down there with him? If he's not trustworthy, why should anything he says be taken into consideration when piecing together the story?
I'm super grateful for you taking the time to give such a detailed answer. Stories are often up for interpretation, but I can provide what my intention was at least to the story.
The three divisions are all working on seperate projects. Newminds are making the AI powering the robots (and are responsible for most of the obstacle course like rooms) Interface is developing brain-computer interfaces, and Everlight is trying to create an immortality device.
Everlight already have a device that can freeze all living matter in place, and they believe that they will be able to localise the stasis to individual cells, allowing people to still get about without aging. As they spend longer and longer without being able to crack cell localisation and David gets sicker and sicker, he eventually starts fudging numbers in desperation, and takes the device to a remote area hoping he'll be able to hold just himself in stasis until a cure is found. Unfortunately, the field is much bigger than he expects and the entire facility is affected. (the room btw is the robot storage room, I like to think every time you die it sucks one of those robots up the tube to place at the checkpoint doors)
The voice that you hear throughout the game is Brian, the scientist who just happened to be testing the Interface device when the stasis field started. (He's in the bottom left of the map)
Like I said, this was something I'm experimenting with, with a view to tell a story similarly in the current non jam game I'm working on, so I really appreciate your feedback.
Wouzld be a cool game if only the whole game would fit on the screen... made it till the key card rooms but now it's impossible since I cant the full game screen at once :-( sucks :-(
for whatever reason there is no visible fullscreen button. for some games on itch, it's there. for others, it isnt :-/
what do you mean zooming? the thing you do with strg and +/-, that shortcut? havent tried that. Edit: I just tried, strg and +/- doesnt "shrink" the whole website as intended, so the game window shrinks too. at about 67% of the normal website page, I can see everything.
funnily, when I first "shrank" the website and then clicked into the game, it shortly went fullscreen before gong back immediately. after having clicked again everywhere this "popping into fullscreen" thing hasnt happened again. and, as mentioned, dont see that usual fullscreen button, that in most cases is to the bottom right of the game window.
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Geniuos, i loved it
fun game, the momentum and physics are near perfect and feel natural for a platformer. There were only a few criticisms I felt compelled to share, to make it even better:
1. being able to move while eye-beaming would reduce the amount of frustration of being off from the targets by a few pixels
2. The camera is annoying when you screw up: if I face backwards to reuse an eye-beam target in multi-screen-long horizontal rooms, suddenly I'm cut off from seeing where I'm headed. This gets more frustrating when going back to a static-cling wall, and now pressing in the direction I'm headed will most likely make me drop from the wall.
3. Had to fullscreen my browser on PC to see the whole screen, it was almost impossible to play without being able to see the top and bottom. My workaround was to just zoom out, but that won't necessarily work for everyone and it made the precision of the eye-beam even more frustrating.
4. SPOILER WARNING: I don't get the story's ending and I'm not sure that's my fault. What does the device do? Why does David's illness motivate him to use it? Who is drawing all the robots there, and why? Yes, I read the PC screens and info-posts, even the ones off the main path. I wouldn't say this is necessarily a problem with the story unless it was supposed to be self-contained.
A lot of your criticisms are things that I pretty much just have to say yeah, I agree, these are just things that got put on the will not fix pile when prioritising what to do with the limited jam time I had.
I am very interested in your thoughts about the story though. Like I said, this is a jam game, and one of the things that I was experimenting with was this less explicit, told through snippets type of story. I didn't want it to be too obvious, but didn't want it to be completely inscrutable either. It's not a tightrope I have much experience walking. I would be keen to hear what your guesses would be to the questions you raised regarding the ending.
(here's fine, or if you're on discord I'm Francis#8112)
I mean, that's fair--I didn't realize this was a jam game. As for my guesses to the questions I asked: I don't really have any, that's why I picked those specific questions; I don't have evidence from within the narrative itself to base any guesses on, anything I offered would necessarily just be based on my familiarity with sci-fi tropes from other media.
To get more in-depth: the player is never told what the device does, we know it interfaces with ???????? and the lack of cell-localization could be catastrophic because ???????? and creates a stasis field that affects everyone, even itself which may be how it has frozen everyone in place and stops itself from ???????? so you need to shut down power to the entire facility; we also know that it trapped David in the network. That's actually a pretty detailed description of what it does, I should have asked what its purpose is. Why would this outcome ever be desirable? Or what was it supposed to do that it failed to? Making a few assumptions that are not entirely based in what the player is provided, we can fill in the blanks above: if we assume it provides an interface between the brain and computers, we can also assume the "cell" in cell-localization refers to brain cells. That might also explain David's motivation: digital immortality as a cure for a fatal illness. But it still wouldn't explain why it causes everyone else to be frozen in place, why that would be a side effect or even desirable outcome of uploading your consciousness to a computer, nor why he is drawing the player character down into a pit from which there is seemingly no escape; if he's to be believed, why would he trap us down there with him? If he's not trustworthy, why should anything he says be taken into consideration when piecing together the story?
I'm super grateful for you taking the time to give such a detailed answer. Stories are often up for interpretation, but I can provide what my intention was at least to the story.
The three divisions are all working on seperate projects. Newminds are making the AI powering the robots (and are responsible for most of the obstacle course like rooms) Interface is developing brain-computer interfaces, and Everlight is trying to create an immortality device.
Everlight already have a device that can freeze all living matter in place, and they believe that they will be able to localise the stasis to individual cells, allowing people to still get about without aging. As they spend longer and longer without being able to crack cell localisation and David gets sicker and sicker, he eventually starts fudging numbers in desperation, and takes the device to a remote area hoping he'll be able to hold just himself in stasis until a cure is found. Unfortunately, the field is much bigger than he expects and the entire facility is affected. (the room btw is the robot storage room, I like to think every time you die it sucks one of those robots up the tube to place at the checkpoint doors)
The voice that you hear throughout the game is Brian, the scientist who just happened to be testing the Interface device when the stasis field started. (He's in the bottom left of the map)
Like I said, this was something I'm experimenting with, with a view to tell a story similarly in the current non jam game I'm working on, so I really appreciate your feedback.
Wouzld be a cool game if only the whole game would fit on the screen...
made it till the key card rooms but now it's impossible since I cant the full game screen at once :-(
sucks :-(
Are you able to use the fullscreen button or zoom the browser window?
for whatever reason there is no visible fullscreen button.
for some games on itch, it's there. for others, it isnt :-/
what do you mean zooming?
the thing you do with strg and +/-, that shortcut?
havent tried that.
Edit: I just tried, strg and +/- doesnt "shrink" the whole website as intended, so the game window shrinks too.
at about 67% of the normal website page, I can see everything.
funnily, when I first "shrank" the website and then clicked into the game, it shortly went fullscreen before gong back immediately.
after having clicked again everywhere this "popping into fullscreen" thing hasnt happened again. and, as mentioned, dont see that usual fullscreen button, that in most cases is to the bottom right of the game window.
I jsut beat the game, as mentioned it would have been easier if I could have seen the full game screen all at once :-)
Really good. I loved the game mechanics and the difficulty is just right.
great game but real hard - the checkpoints could be better placed ...
i got soft locked in the section with 2 moving wheels and 5 jumps
this one?
how did you get softlocked there?
yes , the 4th blue block
hmmm, i'm still not entirely sure what issue you're encountering with that grapple point
was stuck below the grapple point right along the line of the grey lattice background if that helps