Falling Thingies

Terrific presentation on this one, I really like the sound design and visuals! I also enjoyed that some of the offered upgrades are polar opposites from another. So you can really develop your own playstyle.

One thing that was slightly bugging me was that I had to use mouse to interact with the menus. It's annoying to take off your hand from the keyboard in a game like this.

There's a good bit of polish put to this. Like the fact that after you pick an upgrade the objects hang for a while in the air to give you a slight bit of time to get back to the game. Good job!

Graphics/Audio
Very well done. The game feels very cohesive and polished due to these categories not being overlooked. 10/10 for both.

Gameplay
The gameplay was very good, and replayability is there because of all the upgrades that can be picked. Due to it's nature of being a mobile game, the mechanics are kept very simple. I think relative to other games that have more mechanics that take advantage of playing on a PC/controller scheme, they will have a higher gameplay rating from me. 7/10.

Originality
This game puts a twist on the "catch falling objects" gameplay by adding upgrades and level up mechanics. But the general game idea has already been fleshed out plenty of times. 5/10.

Theme
With that said, "catch falling objects" gameplay does very closely represent our theme of gravity. 8/10.

Overall score: 8/10.

This is my highest rated so far. Especially in audio I believe this one deserves the win. Played for quite some time.

Wow wow wow
This feels so polished and nice. The ramping up sound as you reach the next level, the graphics, the menus, the music even changes. You guys did this in 48 hours??? It even has mobile support?

I'm playing the game while pausing to type this, and it keeps impressing me, the background is changing now, the music keeps going, the combo, oh man. Even the theme of having constantly a increasing gravity.. Truly a professional and incredibly polished experience. Amazing!

Update: got a high score by spamming regeneration, fewer thangies and xp, if you raise the arms too much thingies accumulate and lag the game (which does make it easier) I gave up after a while and let the thangies get me because the game is seemingly infinite, and dodging waves of thangies while waiting for thingies with no thangies was a viable strategy :)

I didn't realize I had to click "NEXT" to get to the actual game for a minute there 😅.
Simple score based game is good, although it seemed like there were contradictary "upgrades" like "narrower paddle" and "lengthen Paddle". I'm not sure if this was to reward/punish the player for paying attention or not or if there's an advantage to either.

@Soul Thanks so much for playing and my bad for the "NEXT." The tutorial was done last so it was kind of rushed. The story behind upgrades going in both directions for the paddle and arms is that i wasn't actually sure which one is objectively better, if any. So i let the player decide what they want! Although i have to say, I should've probably removed the other one from the pool of possible upgrades when the player chose.

@Mobuos Yeah! I had the help of a very powerful game engine for rapid prototyping that cut the time cost of a lot of stuff. I also re-used some code, for transitioning scenes, playing audio, adjusting audio volumes, and a few other things. I have a game jam template that i fork for each jam :) Thanks for playing! And good tip about the arms, I gotta do something about them getting jammed in a post-jam update.

@Jesus hello almighty Jesus, thank you for playing! I'll make sure the audio lad gets to see all the kind words everyone has said about the audio :)

@fisherbitgamedev oh wow! Quite a lengthly and thoughtful review. Thank you very much for that. I'm glad you think the overall score is 8/10, thats a great score.

@bradur Thank you very much! I'm glad you picked up on the upgrade varience allowing for all sorts of potential stuff. Regarding the mouse stuff, I agree, its a bit clumsy. You can move the paddle with your mouse, so perhaps the game should be played entirely like that. If you have any suggestions about what i can do for picking options via keyboard let me know in a reply! Perhaps a number key coresponding to the upgrade? Not sure :(

@BluePinStudio

I should've probably removed the other one from the pool of possible upgrades when the player chose.

Let me just add that I liked having the option to go back on my decision to close the arms for example haha, so it was nice that it didn't get removed from the pool of upgrades. Plus there might be some benefit to closing the arms at the beginning and opening them up later after some other upgrades for example.

Perhaps a number key coresponding to the upgrade?

For picking options with the keyboard I would argue for Q, W, E. If my hands are already at A/D for moving, QWE are pretty close by I believe. Though numbers would be good too and something like arrow keys + enter/space would also be ok. I agree that at the end-game upgrades come very frequently so having a shortcut would be nice.

Very smart with the game jam template ;) Might need to do something similar to have this basic setting adjusting functionality and what not on my games. Congrats again!

Incredibly polished for a 48 hour jam, great job. The sound/art design alone makes this game super great. I love the option to choose colors at the start and I love how the tutorial takes you through everything slowly and at your own pace. The only couple of things that bugged me were that I didn't notice the health at all until I died the first time, and I only saw 2 super thingies in my second run and none in my first. I spent 4 level ups on doubling the super thingy chance and felt like I maybe should've seen more than two? Idk, either way, this is a contender for a jam winner imo!

When the game get's going it looks very cool.
The background effect really lifts the visuals up. Also great music! It fit's well together.

I really like a simple concept with added upgrade mechanics.

Although not all upgrades are created equal. Increasing/Lowering arms, changing paddle size etc are as much positives as negatives. Even though they change the gameplay more than the stat upgrades there's not really an incentive to pick them.

Obviously it's great that a player doesn't have to parse too much information when picking an upgrade, I still feel like you would greatly benefit from bundling stat and gameplay changes.

Eg instead of just having 'increase xp from thingies' you could have 'increase XP from thingies and make your paddle wider', 'reduce gravity, but increase thangie spawnrate', 'lower arms and double super thingie spawnrate' etc

By constantly changing the gameplay variables, you would make choices more relevant and can push players out of their comfot zone. Eg create scenarios like "I want more health regen, but my paddle is already so big, I can hardly dodge anything"

Very cool entry either way!

@elZach that is really clever! I will do this for the post-jam version!

Lovely game, I especially liked the audio. My only nit-pick is needing to use mouse for choosing upgrades. I'd love to play this game with my gamepad, too.

Fun game, bullet hell meets classic catch game is something I'm surprised I haven't seen before. I think a bit more juice would go a long way in making this feel more satisying than it already does. The particle grid in the background rippling combined with the fact that the thangies and background always match in color makes it pretty difficult to parse at higher gravity levels. That may have been intended, but I would be curious to try a version that is a bit less demanding to read graphically.

Man, I love thingies! Hate those thangies tho. Great to see likeminded people making games for me.
Ok, but in all seriousness, thangies are the worst.
I think most of the feedback has already been given in the comments. I really like games with upgrades like these. There's a choice which is not clear like lowering/raising arms and making the paddle wider or narrower. And then there's the "more XP" and "double the rate of super thingies" which are also not necessarily a good idea. You get more levels but you use levels to get that and therefore it takes longer to get the other upgrades.
I was sure I got the highscore but @Mobuos was even higher! I did get the super thingies to spawn at 8796093022208 (2^43) times the original rate. Funnily enough, I didn't see any… Maybe there's some number that overflows and results in 0 super thingies?

Wow this is really amazing, ngl cant fathom how you made it in 48 hours, very simple yet extremely engaging and so incredibly well polished with a great presentation, SFX and Music, and even a simple in-game tutorial! Great job!

Fun! The gameplay loop felt very much Vampire Survivors-like, with a similar level of not-too-difficult engagement with "the game", regularly interrupted by small decision to make. The graphics and especially the audio were great, though sometimes it was a bit too busy due to the particle effects, but I guess it's not meant to be a super precise game anyway. It was interesting to see that the "upgrades" fell into different categories: ones which are actually "permanent" (increase XP gain or HP regen), ones which are just catching up as the game scales (reduce gravity), and finally ones which allow you to go back and forth (arms, paddle size). I tried at first to make the arms go as high as they would, but I think I quickly got to the upper limit of what the game offers. It also still "worked" but the game was starting to hit single-digit FPS in this situation:

which is when I decided it's time to take the next "lower arms" offered :) If I had one criticism, it's that the game doesn't keep getting more exciting. It's possible to hit a steady state and get to a point where you cannot really lose, at least I think: in the score I submitted I got to 1st place, then died on purpose. With the right arms set up it seems to always be possible to collect thingies from the stream, then step aside whenever there's a wave of thangies. Sure there are still some unlucky bounces to ruin combos, but not to actually end the game.