Really like it, nice little experience there. the music is great and I'm a big fan of simple 3d environment. The axis is a little too sensitive for my mouse. I would have love to dig deeper into the ascension.

Great work :)

The visuals are cool! I might have clicked too early at the end though, and the credits came abruptly. In any case the audio design is top notch!

I concur with Lokior about the controls, and the collision was very strange too.

Nice little experience. I liked the aesthetic a lot, felt very immersive for something so simple. I think the controls and collision were a little off though, nothing impossible but a bit weird to get the hang of.

Top-notch scores for Graphics and Audio. Very impressive entry — I fear you’ve outdone the rest of us. I especially like the positive message and the relaxed pacing — good to see something different.

Thank you so much for the positive feedback so far! I can shed some light on why the controls and collision feel weird. First is mouse controls - I'm trying a system here that squeezes mouse inputs to between 0 and 1, forcing those values (which can be all over the place depending on device and settings) to behave roughly similar when it comes to camera speed. It works ok I think, but of course it feels different - which is almost never a good thing when it comes to controls and messes with muscle memory. It's a bit wonky and unfinished and makes you play exactly how I feel the camera should feel (or I just adjusted myself to it, can't say). It's an experiment and has to be iterated on. :)

And when it comes to collision… there really isn't collision but rather a groundcheck going on, determining valid walking ground and setting height based on that. This works well to limit movement, but directly creates issues with what we expect from collision. As there is nothing being cast to the walking direction, the movement direction cannot be adjusted to walls - that's why walking on edges can feel like you're stuck, because there is no sliding or recalculation happening. Just "you can't walk here". The implementation is really basic. Also something to look at in another gamejam.

The weird movement inertia was a bit annoying, but given that I am the formless friend, who am I to complain? I liked the build up to getting big robo on their feet and enjoyed the original visual style. What a sparkly robot! Genuinely excited to get picked up by such a shiny friend. Thanks for making something so interesting and experimental!

I like that you're leaning into these narrative experiences - Robot Ascension is a bit more refined and focused then Icewind, but also lacks the dope voiceovers.

I think a touch more environment design, like floaty blocks or cables running through the level and the construction area could've been great.
Still though, the most important thing in the end was making a friend and being taken to new heights. :)

Also the soundtrack turned out amazing! (Have had it run in the background for quite some time now)

I really liked the 3d graphics, especially the lighting. the gameplay was not too engaging but i liked the "cryptic" text on the boxes.
I liked the story and the music was pretty good. good job!

This is a nice atmospheric experience! Nice job for a solo entry. The music set the scene in the beginning really nicely too. And thanks for the run button :D

This is not a game, but a beautiful work of art. The world feels really big due to the fog and the huge, nondescript shapes all around you, and yet the weirdly configured depth-of-field makes it feel small and toy-like at the same time. The bloom and grain effects just make it all the more surreal.

All the time from the moment I realized that the thing in the middle was going to be a humanoid shape, I was wondering what its intentions were. My "useful" friend? The Cthulhu Unicode trickery? Access denied? Am I being tricked here? And then we slowly ascended together, saying good-bye to the factory which slowly fell away beneath us, and we looked towards the stars, and I wondered whether I ever had any choice at all.

People are commenting on the collision, but I liked it, because it lets you lean over the railing to get a better view at the robot.

That's the nicest feedback ever, thank you all!

The way you put it @thomastc is the way I hoped it could eventually play out. I thought it's fun to combine patterns that make robots/AI scary with a robot that just isn't able to communicate that well, but means no harm. It would be reasonable to not trust them, but after all they really just want a friend and are eternally grateful for being woken up. And after all, there's not much left than give it a try and find out. Only time will tell if it was the right choice. Really happy you liked it so much. :)

You made third place with something that can barely even be called a "game", so that must have been outweighed by other merits. Congratulations!

Haha, I guess I deserved the low score in gameplay fully - doesn't feel good, but I clearly didn't focus on mechanics enough. I do love however that people still liked it and it shows that games can be entertainable or memorable through different methods. It's cool for me to see three games with totally different genres on the winners staircase. And thanks :)