Cave of Generations

Controls were super slick but also made me die a lot due to floaty-ness. Really enjoyed the minimal color palette and your smooth animations

The game is based on trial and error, and it is too slow to put you in action again. Watching the animation every time you die becomes frustrating. Might be subjective, but I don't like the jumping mechanic because once in air you can't stop/move. Animations are great, the graphics are beautiful and the sound is very good (great ambient sounds btw). I like the shooting mechanic too, pushing you backwards. Good work.

While the presentation is very nice, the stiff jumping physics made it unplayable. With so many spikes around, you die constantly. On top of that, the restart animation of the calendar makes each run take that much longer. Still, a fairly ok foundation for a platformer,

Restart after you die is a bit too long. Control while in the air is a bit tricky, but with the gun doable if handled. Maybe a bit too tricky. Overal great game.

The game could use a little bit more color. I never could get past the part where you are supposed to drop down and there's spikes all over the place. The difficulty seems to ramp up too quickly. I never found if there was any use for the gun, although the particle systems looked nice.

I really loved the art in this game. It's exactly my favorite style. Sound is good and the gameplay is quite straight forward, but what I really liked is the generations mechanic. Interesting idea.

I would really love to play a more polished version of this. Well done.

The ambience is nice and the sound effects are spot on. The graphics are also great, especially the limited colour palette. I like all the little flavour details such as the messages when you record the year and the calendar when you die. Basically, the presentation is fantastic.

I wish I could say the same for the gameplay. The lack of air control makes precise platforming almost impossible, especially since it means taking the slightest step off a platform can send you flying into spikes. The fairly small view means you sometimes can't see where you're jumping, and obstacles can also be obstructed by dead bodies. Finally, the respawn time is way too long for a game in which you can die so easily. I did eventually make it to the end, though.

Overall though, it's very well made and I wish I could enjoy it more that I do.

Looks and sounds great! Also moving and shooting feels controls fantastic. Marking signs was not working for me, so was kind of frustrating trying to get far in the game. From what I could play though I was interested to see more! Hope to see this expanded upon post jam.

The game had a really cool concept it was built around and I didn't get to really enjoy it until I found my past skeletons and then had the chance to realize how cool the shortcut design was. The animation at each death was pretty nifty but it would be nice to be able to skip it. I never found any bugs, just a whole lot of deadly spikes!

Great job!

Very nice! It felt super immersive. I also liked having the "exit" sign at the beginning, which added all the functionality of a title/menu screen while still having it function as a prop in-game. The controls felt nice and tight, too!

I died a lot at first, so sitting through the entire death animation got annoying after a bit (maybe just a hold (x) to speed up or something like that), but I did like how it set the scene. I also found it a little weird that Y was shoot instead of X or B, but that's more personal taste than anything.

Overall, I wish I could have a copy on my GameBoy Pocket.

Really great submission! I love the sprites and palette. It has a great coherence and the overall atmosphere is nice. :) I like how you can mark the year in the sign. Although I would have wished for the generation gimmick to be a bit further expanded. Nice to see those skeletons on the way! Gameplay wise, it wasn't perfect. Feels like the spikes' hitbox are a bit too large though as I sometimes didn't feel like I was actually touching them. Felt like it made the game harder than it should. I like how there were handy shortcuts! And it feels fun shooting. I agree that the wait after each death is rather annoying~

Great game, both to look at and to listen to.

It's also great to play, but not as much, I got kinda frustrated with the controls, and the level design was super evil, In the end I just have to git gud tho.

The art is fantastic and simple at the same time. The concept is great for a descend game. The music is a nice touch.

Found several glitches in the game. Sometimes the sprites wouldn't load correctly and turned into red and blue boxes. During my frustrated twitches I kept hitting the shoulder button, which promptly restarted my character back at the beginning.

Speaking of frustration... == this game. It's ridiculously difficult, even after dying a considerable amount of times before realizing I could press down to drop down through some objects. The parts of the level you can drop through and can't aren't marked well at all and while there's a tutorial spot for "don't jump on spikes" there's no tutorial parts for how to get around properly.

Also found out that you can still move down through those ledges that let you drop down while dead. So, had some fun moving my corpse around before the reset.

This game was a great addition to the Jam! I found myself really enjoying the challenge this game gave me. I especially have a love for the sprite work. Everything is so well animated, and you incorporated a four colour palette flawlessly!

I instantly thought of Cave Story while playing through this-- the platforming, the block-destroying missiles, the retro style, the level of difficulty... those god forsaken spikes...

My number one complaint has to do with the corpses, more specifically, when the corpses fall onto the low spikes. Whenever that happened, I had a much harder time trying to figure out how and where to jump to, since the spikes were then nearly invisible. Maybe giving them a small black outline while keeping the current collision mask would make it a little easier on us? Also, I know it's already been said multiple times, but being able to skip (or shortening) the death animation.

I really loved this game! I can easily see this placing in the top five.

It all feels polished. Good music, good art, but the gameplay is lacking. The generation concept can be a fun thing to play with, like "Rogue Legacy", but unfortunately nothing really comes out of it here other than have to watch the calendar every time you die.

You can jump at the very beginning to get on the platform to the right, and then jump off screen to the left, and then over the gap back to the right to get off the map. Actually playing the game as intended, its a little too difficult for me to finish without a skip button for the death screen, but the game plays well and the mood is set right. One of the better games I've seen so far.

This game is brutal! I love the art and music and the feel, but I couldn't get very far into the cave. It's a tribute to your style that I must have played the game about 20 times, but I was never able to get past the tutorial phase. You made that great gun and I never got a chance to use it on anything!

Granted, I suck at platformers so that's my problem, but it really would be nice to add an easy mode where you can save, or at least add a few checkpoints.

Great job overall though!

So this game looks and sounds very good and the sign at the start where you record the current year is cool, it really hammers home the generational theme of the game. The hitbox on spikes seems a little iffy, bit larger than I'd expect looking at them. Also more air control would be nice.

The main problem with this game in my opinion is that the animation when you die is far too long given the amount you're going to die and is impossible-ish to skip. Reason I say it's impossibleish is because you can hit start to restart the game and effectively skip the 10 second respawn time, which I did every time I died until I learned that there are shortcuts at which point that habit became more of a curse. 10 seconds doesn't sound like a long respawn time but the game is rather hard and if you die 100 times that's over 15 minutes just of waiting. You have to watch all the blood flow, then the calendar stuff then for some reason you can't control your character for about a second after spawning.

Amazing entry, very polished and great atmospheric music.

I'm awful at platformers and I died a lot so the respawn time and the time it took to get back to where I was was a little annoying, but I liked how you added a little checkpoint shortcut thing.

I get that the game being difficult and having to retry over and over is part of the theme but it wasn't great gameplay-wise. I also felt like it was missing something to make the gameplay more unique but like I said, I kept dying so I didn't get very far.

Overall, a great entry, one of my favourites so far. Good job!

(Press backspace for hardcore mode)

Nice but hard game. There was something funky with the controls for me. I am not sure why but it resulted in me dying a lot. It might just be a bit too much feedback from the controls or the gravity being a bit too light. So I didn’t reach the end but what I saw was nice. I especially likes the animations and the music. I would maybe have added checkpoints or the ability to save so I didn’t have to go all the way down again to where I had reached. Oh, and a skipable game over screen even if it looked nice :D All in all great work, even if I didn’t see the ending.

Hey this is super good! Those darn spike those! I'll get to the bottom some day..... or my offspring will.

The game is really good. The sound design / music is great, the artstyle looks fantastic, the game controls are very responsive. The only thing that annoyed me was, that i can't skip the animation after dying. Good luck with your submission! :)

Here's a bug i found: When the window isn't active / the mouse is outside the screen and the game resets after dying, the screen shakes like crazy.