Mildred

Excellent audio and visuals, which with the game design do a great job of creating an atmosphere. But, the controls are very frustrating, beyond what I would accept as "intentionally frustrating", and the randomly-timed kill-walls don't help.

Millie woke up.

Millie learned to jump.

jumps into a pit and explodes brutally

Mille commited suicide.

Beautiful and cute, but as has been pointed out, quite frustrating. I ventured off the cliff to the right, where nothing seems to await but being stuck and getting randomly .. exploded.

I also think it's frustrating. The idea behind the mechanics is good though.

There is nothing random about those appearing/disappearing walls. They aren't timing based, the phase in/out based on your rolling direction. I thought that would be quite obvious but guess that isn't the case.

I really found the checkpoint system helpful because the game would simply not be possible without it. I also really loved the unexpected death particles and the well picked sounds.

Its really interesenting, very clever mechaninc, a did realized the rolling direction thing, maybe an introductory tutorialy part of the level could haved helped to make it clearer. I'm not sure if you wanted the controlls to be that way, but, it felt al little bit annoying that my inputs can't actually control the physics in the game. Also a was not aware of the goal of it, I assume it was to collect the leafs, however nothing gaved me any motivation to explore all the world

The sound its very good it gets you in the mood, and the death animation is brutal, but it works haah

Good job!

@Toxicvipa Thanks! Oh yes, I was very generous with the checkpoints on this since I did understand that it is not the easiest of games (not sure I even beat it without any deaths). With all the backtracking and exploration required, having to replay longer chunks of level after a failure would have made it even more frustrating. So yeah, there is probably always at least one checkpoint on the screen where ever you are on the level.

@RodMolina Thanks for playing! The character controls pretty much exactly as I wanted it to. And I do think the inputs do control the character physics… you press right and it rolls clockwise, press left and it rolls ccw. Sure, you couldn't control it in the air but that is how rolling objects actually work. Not that I was really aiming for any realism really ;) But yeah, such a control schme most certainly isn't for everyone.

You're exactly right about the goal of the game yes. But yeah, guess I failed in the player motivation part. You know pandas (both red and giant) only eat bamboo which has horrible nutritional value. So they pretty much need to be eating all the time. Which in turn means that Millie of the parallel universe of your play time probably starves to death. Not motivation enough? You also denied her of finding a mate in the end.

AND they're endangered too. So…. shame! :D

@anttihaavikko Holy. . . I´ll go back to her before that happens!!!! xD Nice backstory.

I beat it. It was very violent… >.>
The ambient music was great and I liked the art style. The VFX were pretty nice too.
The game was hard, but it didn't feel very punishing except when I accidentally rolled into some sort of chasm that would take a while to get out of. There was one moment that I thought I found a piece of cake partially hidden by some grass, but it turned out it was my chopped off ear.

I think you could've done a little more with the theme, although the mechanic based on it was fairly interesting. It took me a bit to figure out.

Still, good work!

@CMLSC Nice! Didn't really expect anyone to actually beat it. Good to hear that the difficulty is even somewhat decent. Yes, based on the comments, the theme mechanic should have probably been introduced better. I thought it would be pretty obvious (kinda like boos are in mario), but guess that is not the case when it is based on physical attribute like rolling instead of just plain input. I should have designed a better introductory part for it. Something like a dead end (with a flat ground not to interfare with rolling direction that much) that forces you to change direction. The bit in the left side of the start is pretty much that (seen on the gif below) already but the freedom of choice kinda messes it up.

And now that I think about it, the flow of the game in the start is quite bad if the player only starts going right. The first jump is fine I think. It's a learning bit that kinda teaches the player how they can't control the movement while jumping etc. But after that there is a huge traversal to the right with nothing hard or even interesting (at least without knowing about the mechanic). Then they finally hit the right side of the whole play world and that bit it not good at all at teaching the mechanic. And it's not supposed to do that either, it's one of the hardest parts of the game. So it's quite of a design flaw that the player can get the still oblivious to the whole mechanic itself.

Thanks for playing!

by the way, the jump button didn't work for my controller, so I had to use my keyboard.

@CMLSC Oh damn, what controller and platform? Did any of the buttons map the jump?

I used the logitech gamepad f310 and I tried all of the buttons on my controller. It's never had mapping problems before, so I found it kind of weird.

@CMLSC Yeah, Unity is quite bad with controller inputs without any plugins. On hindsight, I should have made all the buttons jump since that was the only other input other than moving.

the keyboard still worked, so it didn't matter that much.

Really adorable and… violent. xD
I liked the feel of the game and the little upgrades were cool, too.
I didn't find it too difficult, either.
Nice work, dude!

@OatMealPal Thanks! Good to hear that the difficulty is ok for some people at least. I'm a big fan of difficult games myself and when combining that with the fact that getting jam game difficulty right is hard in itself because you get so used to playing it and the lack of proper playtesting. And yes, one of my favourite things is the contrast of making a game look cute enough to be considered a children's game and then suddenly sprinkling in some unexpected gore.

Well, you did a very fine job, good sir.
I commend you.
xD

Really good! The first climb almost felt Bennett Foddy to me, too much sliding off.

Feels good to play, even if the controls are a bit wonky on purpose. The mechanic with the walls should be somehow better indicated, and also know if i'm inside a wall or not and I'm safe to change direction, but it works nice. Also doing half of a path and realising you cant continue cause you're lacign something, and you'll have to do the first half again, feels a bit bad.

The art is super cohesive and the music is clean as heck. Everything feels so dang nice. If Millie didn't feel so stiff this would look almost comercial.

The tie with the theme is a bit loose, but it's an amazing game.

@Raindrinker Thanks! Yes, that climbing bit might be a bit too much especially if that is the first direction you decide to go and are still getting used to controls. I was indeed toying around with the idea of showing the outline of the invisible walls or something like that but then decided it would be a better fit for the theme if they were completely invisible.

I could spend an entire day watching her blow to pieces with that, ah, so satisfactory splat sound. 5/5.

I can appreciate a healthy dose of unexpected cutesy gore every once in a while. Refreshing!

The visuals are great and audio doesn't lag too much behind. The ambient is maybe too ambient to match what's happening on screen.

My biggest gripe this time is the interactivity. Exploring a world, collecting powerups is fine. The controls combined with the visibility gimmick are not fine (for me at least).

With physics based movement the level design needs to be spot on. One of the spiked pits (right most in the underground tunnel, coming in from the right) is so tight that Millie always hits the ceiling when jumping and has about 20% chance of flying over pit when not jumping due to how steep the ramp is. I was reminded of Elasto Mania at this point. Those levels were always fair (and must have taken loads of testing to get right, to be fair).

Then there is the right most section, let's call it the stairs. These stairs are extremely tricky to climb due to the gimmick. Millie needs to be positioned just right, very slowly as not to trigger the gimmick, at the end of the first stair and then jump three times switching movement direction mid-air just at the right time to not be squished by the closest stair or falling off the left side. Millie must have died good 30 times getting up there (for one measly leaf!)

Good job nonetheless. The negatives do drag the overall down a peg, unfortunately.

Overall: 6(Above average)
Graphics: 8 (Great)
Audio: 7 (Good)
Gameplay: 4 (Below average)
Originality: 7 (Good)
Theme: 5 (Average)

Thanks for playing @HuvaaKoodia

Oh yes, ACross/ElastoMania/Trials were indeed one of the biggest inspirations on the controls side of things. Dunno why people seem to find this so hard and frustrating while those games have two of these rolling objects, and a bike on top of those, and a rider on top of the bike which you need to balance and protect. The difficulty here should pale in comparison.

But yeah, difficulty isn't for everyone and the level design here isn't quite as smooth as it should be. Totally agree on the pit, it was supposed to kill on jump and let you just roll through but ended up being way too inconsistent.

The stairs bit was intended to be the hardest bit in the game (actually 2 leaves up there, one requiring double jump unless you can pull off some sweet wall jumps). So I don't really think even 30 tries there is too unreasonable. After all, I did make checkpoints abundant and retrying quick. And those 30 tries probably added up to only few minutes, is that really too much of a hurdle for the final challenge in a game? My biggest gripe with that part is that it ended up being way too easy for the player to get there pretty much right from the get-go without any familiarity with the controls or the mechanics.

Yeah, the Elma bit wasn't supposed to be a direct comparison, more of an accidental memory. In fact got into playing MotoX due to it and I have to say the formula has not gotten stale. Instant restarts with the same starting position everytime are the key to avoiding frustration. Not that you could apply that here directly.

The stairs are the worst part not because of challenge, taking too much time, or taking too many tries. The segment is simply too finicky. One wrong input at the wrong millisecond (slight exaggeration) and Millie goes boom! The stairs instantly appearing and disappearing is the culprit here.

Might as well do the unfair comparison then: in Elma you only need to protect the head (and there are no obstacles phasing in and out of existence); here Millie has a big kill-box, everything is vulnerable apart from the tail.

That's why I found it frustrating at least.

Loved the graphisms and use of physics. Also this starts with precice, in-game indications, which is always a pleasure in a game jam. The panda had a little bit too much inertia for my taste though, I would have liked some kind of double jump or air control to compensate the lack of maniability.

Very solid overall, also nice background music.

@oparisy Thanks! There is indeed a double jump and other powerups which you unlock the more leaves you find.

Definitely makes sense then. Thanks for your answer!