-SPROUT-

Beautiful little game, surely a top five, if not at the very top. Died 36 times, loved each attempt.

Great game. Stuck on 14th level. Gave up. Too hard for me. Haha. Even so, it was satisfying to play. Very good graphics, sound effects and music. Good work!

Holy cow Zed! This is awesome! I was actually sad when I reached the end, because I wanted more!

This has the whole package. Art, Sound, Gameplay!

I only had one very minor complaint, which was that the spikes were not as readable as I might have liked.

Wouldn't be surprised if this won!

Great job!

PS. I recorded a video of my playthrough: https://youtu.be/CU4I0UNwhXM

Well - this was very good! The only thing I wish for in these games is... let me use space (jump) and shift (dash)! Having never really ever played platformers, z/x/c/v controls for things just make me mess up all the time haha. But I know I'm in the minority there :D

But yes, aside from that minor personal request - very good entry, well polished, levels increased in difficulty well and they were varied enough to keep it interesting even in the limited space. Art is good too - reminds me of your last entry! Same Palette?

Great job!

Not sure what to say other than it was really good, albeit a bit unoriginal :P

Easily one of the best games of this jam, and without doubt the one that I spent the most time playing. I'm a big fan of Celeste so I expected to like this at least based on its game mechanics. I'm happy to say that my expectations were met.

Most if not all of its game mechanics are absolutely super duper inspired by Celeste, and I know you aknowledge it, so it wouldn't be fair to call the game very innovative. But you've managed to implement it very well and condensed the experience into teeny tiny levels that are beatable in seconds by the experienced player, and mastering them is a compelling puzzle.

The sound design is really good. There seems to be a sound effect for every single interaction and all of them are pleasant. The music fits the mood, but it's short enough that it might get a little too repetitive. With the current length of the game being what it is, it didn't bother me, but if you plan to add more content you should definitely consider adding some new music as well.

I love the visual style - extra large pixels, no outlines and a pleasant color palette. Plenty of juicy effects as well. The only issue I have with it is that the spikes aren't visible enough. They could definitely use a bunch more contrast against the ground and background.

The level design starts promisingly, teaching the player to jump and dash or wall jump by literally having the first level be unbeatable without one or the other. The keys, yellow floors and skull walls are also well introduced. I think the only thing that might still be worth improving is teaching the player the diagonal dash and the wall jump - I found that all levels are beatable without both, except for L05 and L11, in which you need either one but not both.

The controls feel very smooth and responsive. I only would've hoped that the left thumbstick could be used for moving as well. One thing still puzzles me: I had played it for maybe an hour before I realized that there is no variable height jump (hold to jump higher). I thought it was a "must have" feature in order for a platformer to feel good, but I suppose I've been proven wrong!

I think I only found two bugs in the game:

• The UI texts don't seem to appear where they're supposed to on a 2560x1440 monitor. On a 1920x1080 monitor they look fine. You can see it in my speedrun video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNpWt29QWmY
• Keyboard controls don't work if a gamepad is connected.

Extra: A couple of ideas for future development especially with speedrunning in mind!

• Being able to choose a level without playing all the way from the beginning until it appears. Being able to practice it again and again.
• A way to see your time for each level, not just the entire game.
• Tracking the best times per level and the entire game. A high score list, I suppose.
• Ability to mute sound and music individually.

Oops, that's a wall of text!

Ok, I have spent more time than I am willing to admit on speedrunning this, and my best time is 58sec (Which I heard was the World record) I tried for some more hours, but never beat it. I have never speedrun a game before, and I feel like this was a good start.

This feels exactly like playing celeste. My only complain is that the spikes are quite hard to see. They blend in with the grass. People might say this is a copy of celeste, but I think it's just the beginning of the genre "celeste like" :P

Really nice game! Controls are a bit confusing, though. Loved the look of the game and the music! Good job!

Finally saw the whole game through! Got stuck at level 11 with a mouse and keyboard and needed to see a buddy play through the rest with a controller.

Love the mechanics, can definitely see the Celeste inspiration. The art was lovely and I enjoyed the sound effects too. Really nice seeing all the flowers bloom at the last level. I liked the level design and the amount of thinking to optimise my path within the small map.

The whole game just felt very polished and well though out to me. Only thing is that the keyboard and mouse were quite difficult for me to do. But glad that was an option available anyway.

Do you think you'll keep the small levels in later development? Or stick to the "small world"?

Nice game!

What a cute lil game, I loved it. In my opinion, jumping should be mapped to the up arrow key, because the current system was a bit too complicated and unintuitive, at least for me. The spikes were sometimes hard to see because of the grass. I would also suggest changing the font size to be consistent with all other pixel art - this is a common mistake in pixel art games. Ideally, you should have all sprites true to their actual size (not resized), and then resize the entire screen at once to have a consistent pixel size.

I really liked this, was fun to control and move around :) Level design was really good as well!

Fun game! The pacing feels very good, both in terms of introducing new mechanics and difficulty ramping. Great job!

Love the way the flowers bloom on completing a level – so cute :) I didn't get very far, but that's because I'm terrible at this kind of game (I kept pressing jump instead of dash and my reactions are slow – my brain is filled with stupid 🤪). What I saw of the game was really impressive though, good work!

Wow, this is a really polished feeling game! All the little details with stuff like the dust particles and screenshake make it feel like a complete experience. Basically all aspects of the presentation are super well done with nice looking pixel graphics combined with appropriate sounds and good music. The gameplay is also fun and the levels are well designed. I guess my only complaint is that it doesn't do that much new as a platformer.

Wow. Gave me a total 'vania vibe in such a small space. Feels like it could be fleshed out to so much more too. Although for now I want to keep running it for a faster completion time. Great job!

Toby stole my main complaints, which were unreadable text and barely visible spikes. Apart from that, it's a really solid entry all around!

Very nice level design!

Love me some good screenshake, and I love the way the level blooms after collecting the orb. This game is a lot more fleshed out than most in terms of sound design too, everything seems to have a unique sound effect associated with it, and that adds a lot to game feel.

One thing that did slightly confuse me was the skull blocks you dash into, at first I assumed that skull=dangerous so I tried to figure out a way around it. Luckily the minimalist controls meant that I ran out of ideas pretty quickly and dashed into it anyways, haha.

It was good game. In my first try I managed to pass all levels in 8:54, with total of 99 deaths.

Most of the deaths were caused too tight jump, when you are on edge, and there is tile too low up on you. Which I think is moreover level design problem. For example it may be level 13, where you neded diagonal dash, you start with tight jump, but there is tile on top of you where I hit several times. Now game feel is really important in these kind of games, and I think controlling character was bit off for my taste, bit too easily overarched movement. UI didn't scale correctly.

It had nice pixel art and calm music, which reduces frustration. Good entry.

Very well put together game, all the components mix together perfectly. My main feedback would be not knowing the full abilities of the player character, and that leading to some tense moments in certain levels. Slight bug with the UI, but no big deal.

Very solid feeling overall, very good job! Congratulations.

[EDIT: I later realized that I in fact, do not know how to read instructions. All the info was there c:]

I was the most impressed of the attention put to the details: flora, effects and reactions to specific actions. They are so small and suitable parts of the world that they are hard to notice at first but you definitely feel their impact in the gameplay.

These kind of games aren't really my genre so wasn't able to make the jump/dash combination to feel natural even after lots of practice.

Wonderful job, very polished game!

Lovely game, I love the aesthetic and controls. Decently difficult too but not too much so. Very well done, you should be proud of this one. Release a full version sometime!

I loved this game. At first it takes a while to get used to the controls and not dash when I actually wanted to jump XD, but after a while it get easy to understand and to play with.

the animations were cute and I'm going to be honest, I just noticed the little flowers sprouting once you pick up the gems a bit later on the game but I've replayed it and it's just lovely. Spikes are a bit hard to see, but that also adds to the game difficulty which I loved, I think it was very balanced. I have some difficulties reading some stuff, so maybe a UI a bit bigger could have helped, but is not exactly necessary.

Music was very relaxing and capable of keeping me focused on the game. And the death count? A nice thotch to mochink my frustration, it made me wanna try to beat the game with the least time and death counts.

Overall, really cool game, although I did noticed sometimes when we died the hearts animation would play on two different places at the same time, aside from that, perfect.

Edit(since we cant answer back): I believe the best time was around 5 min(but my first playtrhou had almost 15 min when i raged quite to try again later XD), and the death count was at 27 last time I looked, but I did died some more on level 14 so I'm not entirely sure.

Simply impressive! Art is great and consistent, music is calming, the level design is just great and the difficulty curve is perfect! Felt like a charm breezing through this game and I was legitematly sad that it ended :D

Two things to note:

1. The UI scaled not correctly for me and I could barely read the ingame text (i had the same issue once and solved it with display_set_gui_size(room_width,room_height); in the first room, don't know if this is the case here)
2. The spikes could be a bit more clear to notice, maybe with a different color. The first few times I didn't get what I was dying to.

Other than that this is one of the best gm48 games I ever played and I can easily see myself playing a full version of this!

Wow! Very nice graphics and music, along with an impeccable retro feel. I was particularly impressed with the level design on some screens, which was clever and challenging on such a small canvas.

I'd love to see how you could explore non-linear levels in such a small space. As it stands right now, this game's levels are challenging, but don't take a ton of critical thinking to solve. Games like this (like Celeste!) tend to excel when they work puzzly elements into the more straightforward platforming, or even when they offer multiple routes through a world.

Sometimes, the sound effects felt a little hot, especially the dashing, which could overwhelm the music a little bit.

Great effort though, and definitely a wonderful first game for me to crack open as I work through rating them all. Nice work!

Nice art style and the mechanics feel good. The ending sequence was a nice touch.

This is very cute, I like the challenge of it and the charming art style, it feels very contained and fits the theme well but also presents an excellent challenge - great job!

All around a great game! I'm impressed that you managed to keep all of the levels within the same room size :)

Very charming game. The controls were a bit stiff and odd, i guess I should've used a controller, haha. But seriously, This was great.