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Not intentional at all, but I love that that's an option! A real Gordian Knot moment there. And you're right about the doors - this was originally intended to be a Metroidvania (or, at least, to have non-linear progression through some of the levels), but deadlines did what deadlines so often do. Thank you for playing!

Thank you for playing! My initial thought was that the Windows 95 theme is so minimal, and so much a consequence of "make a DE theme that works with these sixteen colours at this resolution" that it would fall under fair use. Thinking about it more, though, perhaps I'm in more of a grey area than I first thought, so I've tweaked the theme for the post-jam release so that it's evocative, but more distinct.

It looks like it's been a bit of a Marmite game as far as the controls are concerned. As for my design process: once I knew that I wanted to make a game where the player has to move backwards, it followed that the arrow keys couldn't be used to move, hence the "run" button. The jumping is definitely inspired by the classic Tomb Raider controls, where the tough part isn't jumping, but in properly lining your jump up. The "creep forward by tapping the button" mechanic is lifted directly from the classic Mega Man games.

If there's one thing I've taken away from this, it's that what feels good for me won't necessarily feel good for everyone; I really enjoy the controls, but I'm aware that a decent chunk of people want a game's control scheme to just do its job and then get out of the way.

Anyway, glad you liked the aesthetic, even if the controls weren't to your liking. Thank you for playing!

That's a really good point, and I think it's something I noticed during development, but I was running out of time and energy and just said "bah, it'll be fine". I've since tweaked it so that you only have to tap the arrow key to get that initial deceleration and it feels a lot better - that'll be part of the post-jam update. Thank you for playing!

Thank you for playing! Celeste was a big inspiration in one specific detail, actually: if you're jumping upwards and about to hit your head, but moving just a couple of pixels to the side would mean you'd avoid it, the game will give you the benefit of the doubt and shunt you over. I took that directly from a post Maddy Thorson did about the player controller for Celeste.

The benefit of hoarding as much retro tech as I do is that it doesn't take long to capture sounds like that. :P Thank you for playing!

Thank you for playing! Really glad you enjoyed it.

I've never seen a grappling hook mechanic I didn't like, and this one is no exception. The thing wrecked me every time I got close, though.

I've never seen a grappling hook mechanic I didn't like, and this one is no exception. The thing wrecked me every time I got close, though.

I like the concept, but I found it difficult to meaningfully strategise like I would when playing regular Tetris. If the blocks didn't crumble and I instead had to consider not just shape, but type, this could be a really interesting twist on the formula.

As someone who's barely played a football game in his life, I had great fun with this. The models could have come straight out of Mega Man Legends, the AI was surprisingly competent (with the occasional hiccup), and the animations were really impressive. The team names made me chuckle, too - nice bit of worldbuilding there.

I wasn't sure what to make of the ammo system at first, but the more I think about it, the cleverer it is. It's a really good way of letting you enjoy having some decent firepower without letting you be a juggernaut, and it combines really well with the healing system to make a game where it's expected that every so often, you'll need to retreat and resupply.

That aside, this is really impressive - the visuals especially. I look forward to any post-jam updates you have planned!

Ever had one of those moments where you're staring so intently at something on the screen it gets burned into your vision for a bit? That was me after beating the boss. I'll add my voice to the chorus of those wishing the controls had been more responsive, and the lack of sound effects is shame, but apart from that, this was fun! I really like how well you captured the synthwave imagery.

Three hitpoints and no checkpoints is pretty brutal, but nonetheless:

The amount of content here is impressive, but I think it came at the expense of refinement. The motion sickness that others have reported might be because the camera follows the player's Y position so rigidly, coupled with how quick the jump is. I've seen some games alleviate it by having the camera's Y position stick relative to the last point where the player was grounded, as long as the player stays within a certain boundary.

Nonetheless, I had fun with this! The music is nice and jaunty, and it was satisfying to beat each level given how exact you had to be.

I really like the grappling hook mechanic (which reminds me a lot of Celeste 2 - was that an inspiration?), and how well it pairs up with diving. As has been mentioned, I would make to have been able to play it in fullscreen, and to rebind the controls. The artstyle is neat, as is the music, although I feel it clashes a bit with the lo-fi sound effects.

This was fun! I love how we both decided to recreate an old desktop environment (although yours clearly wins for having moveable windows). I really enjoyed how characterful each of the messages were, too, but unfortunately, I had to turn the audio off halfway through due to an inexplicable urge to listen to Soul Bossa Nova again.

I don't know how many levels there are, because I took one look at Lane Mgmt and decided I'd had my fill. :D

A nice little brainteaser, this! I enjoyed the 1-bit visuals, and the background music was nice. That little floppy disk interlude between each level is really nice, too.

A unique take on the theme! Despite how low-poly it was, I still found the monsters pretty creepy. I wish there had been a goal, though - I think a feeling of "come on, come on, nearly there!" would have helped to ramp up the tension.

Okay, that was brilliant. Forget retro, I think "try to stay in the zone while not completely ignoring your friends" is a game we're still playing in 2026. And that plot twist at the end - spectacular. I really have nothing but compliments for this game; conception, execution and presentation are all immaculate.

It's as if the figures from the Make Some Noise intro had their own game! I was really impressed by the silent tutorials you had here - no explanations, no text, just a series of puzzle pieces laid out in exactly the right way to let you figure it out yourself. That's how a puzzle game should be.

San Gambl's first move was to call "exact" followed by four calls of "BS", whereupon a sea monster waddled up and planted their city into the earth like a field of wheat.

Being unfamiliar with Liar's Dice, I'm afraid I struggled to figure this one out. I'm pretty sure there's a brilliant game of deduction and deception to be had, but either I'm missing something or the game needs to explain itself better.

On the other hand, I loved the presentation - the C64-esque graphics and the MIDI soundtrack are really fun.

On my first playthrough I intentionally went towards the beast as quickly as possible to see what would happen, so it's safe to say my self-preservation instincts could do with some adjustment. I really loved the old-school TTS voice, by the way. On my second playthrough, I got to "SAFE 15" and decided that it was not, in fact, coming.

Honestly, the way you've implemented the controls is really clever for a horror game. In any other genre, I'd complain about how having to awkwardly position a tiny stick figure over the buttons to do a basic action is tedious and frustrating, but here, it's a really effective way of making a simple game of Simon Says nice and tense.

Thank you for playing, and for the detailed feedback!

r.e. jumping, I agree that it's not quite there - I'm tempted to pull some footage of Super Mario Odyssey and look at the timings of the regular jump. I have a hunch that part of it is just a case of tweaking the numbers (how long does the ascent/hang/descent last, how fast can you move during each phase, et cetera), but I think that the animation is probably a factor, too. My character "winds up" their jump while they're already in the air, whereas Mario snaps almost immediately into his "punch the sky" pose. I'm also missing some particles that I imagine could help improve the game feel.

It's the same story with the camera - both of them do the job, but not elegantly. Definitely something to explore in future.

And yes, there will be a post-jam update! Nothing revolutionary, but a few snarls fixed and a bit of refinement added here and there.

I genuinely found myself getting hooked on this for a little bit. I like the mechanic of swiping to the edge of the screen to change rooms, although it fights a bit with having the menu be so far from the center. I'd love to see this get more developed after the jam!

Really goes to show how far framing can take a game! You could make a game that is functionally identical to this one  with nothing but blocks and numbers, but without the sense that I'm controlling units on a battlefield, it wouldn't be nearly as engrossing. Great stuff!

The mark of any good puzzle game is that it takes a simple concept, and makes it work for a decent runtime - which is what you've done here. I really like the 1-bit graphics and the way the tiles shift slightly, which combined with the audio, makes the world feel delightfully strange and alien.

My only criticism is that I'd like the game to have given me an indication of how far through I was - apart from that, this is a very solid entry.

As someone who feels the pressure to make his games' controls as versatile and forgiving as possible, I really appreciate a game that says "no, you will commit to your jumps". The greyscale visuals and the subtle 3D effect work really well, and combined with the audio, it makes for a really relaxed vibe that counteracts the occasional "noooo don't fall down!" moment. A really great entry all round.

Wow - I had no idea you could do that! It's pretty fun to see people break your game in ways you never realised it could be broken. Thank you for playing!

I agree that it's fun to find ways to cheese the game, but in hindsight, I wish I'd made the "proper" solution more obvious. Thank you for playing!

I had Sunshine on my mind when I was implementing it! Made me appreciate how much fun it was to aim F.L.U.D.D.. Thanks for playing!

Mouse sensitivity and volume adjustments are in the settings menu, available from pausing in-game. The mouse cursor is a bit of a weird one - the game and browser seem to be fighting for control of it. Pausing and unpausing fixes it, I find, but I agree that it would be preferable to not have to deal with.

The ichor is a part of the same shader used for rendering the terrain, with a splatmap determining whether or not the floor is lava. For the most part, it's a signed distance field, but I had to draw on top of it for some last-minute alterations.

As for the top... the tower seems to have a few cracks, doesn't it? Perhaps if you were to strike from really high up... ;)

Thanks for playing!

The spritework here is excellent! Fairly early on I got a ring that increases my attack speed after every attack, so in the final battle with Satan himself, I turned into Mr. Turbo Stabby Man, which was very fun to see.

I enjoyed reading the emails to get a picture of how the crisis started, and having those two choices was fun - I imagine the original intent was to see a payoff for them? The Game Boy aesthetic is a nice touch, too.

It's rare to see a game with a historical setting like this! It would be helpful to know before you interact with a turtle what the outcome will be - I think I softlocked myself because I only got up to level 3, and the only turtles accessible to me swapped with me rather than adding to my level.

Has a bit of a cinematic flair at the beginning - nice touch! I really enjoyed the pixel art, and the player character's monologue is a really clever way of giving clues as to what needs to be done next. I encountered a slight bug where I was able to push a rock out of the area, but that was about it. Great stuff!

A very unique take on the theme, and one with some real staying power - I'm impressed by the number of levels! The UI is really well-implemented, the key and death markers are some brilliant quality-of-life additions. The "copyright safe mode" gave me a good chuckle, too.

The moment I saw that Godot now has an AudioStreamInteractive, I knew I had to give it a try. Thank you for playing!

Honestly, valid. A well-designed game should explain itself. There's one entry in this jam - I won't say which - whose Itch page is so long that I immediately said "wow, that's a lot of words. Too bad I'm not reading them."

I really should make it a habit to have gossiping NPCs in my games more often. They're not too much effort to add but they go a long way to preventing a game's world from feeling empty and lifeless.

Thank you for playing!

That's a fair comment. Initially I had planned for the game to have multiple stages where the mountain would mutate in a different way each stage (and the player would have to upgrade/mutate in order to compensate), but - say it with me now - I didn't have time to make that all happen.

Thank you for mentioning the performance, by the way - that was another thing I was aiming at from the beginning. I even pulled an old laptop out  to profile it so I could be sure that people could enjoy it regardless of what hardware they were using.