itch.io

I was surprised to see such a "hard" game in the competition! I'm a big fan of difficulty in videogames, I always like a challenge, and most developers are afraid of rejection towards their game if it becomes too hard,  so props for delving into that!

The game was vibrant all the way through, very consistent art style, and magnificent level design. I played Kirby Canvas Curse when I was younger, and I've seen Celeste multiple times, so I was familiar with the concepts. The autoscroller towards the end was tough but fair, it's by far my favourite level.

My pet peeve for this game is the wall-jumping. My instinct was to press the directional key away from the wall before jumping, but that made the character un-cling a bit too fast for my taste, which resulted in me plummetting to my death several times. I also thought it was a bit inconsistent to grab a ledge and jump upwards instead of away from the wall. There was several instances where I wanted to do one thing and ended up doing the other one, once again resulting in gruesome deaths.

Other than that, I had a lot of fun playing. Every level was thought out, and I had to switch from good platforming to good "ink" management, to both at once. Other people have said this as well, but this feels like a finished game too, not just a vertical slice. Congratulations!

Very fun concept, really good delivery! It shows that you put a lot of effort into making this game funny as well.

I'm a sucker for extra objectives, and the ability to be "extra evil" made this game twice as fun! This is a great concept, and it honestly felt like it was just the first level of many more.

Movement was a bit unintuitive, and maneuvering around wasn't as smooth as I would've liked. Pooping was hard to aim, but hitboxes were very forgiving, which made up for it.

Cawing seems like an underwhelming ability to have, since there is no purpose to it unless one of your extra objectives asks you to do it (but it's still optional).

I read the diary before starting the game, which made me enjoy the the game a lot more. If you don't want people to miss it, I would suggest to make it mandatory (with the possibility to skip it) before starting the game.

Overall, I had a good laugh, and I had a good time playing. Great job!

You nailed the alien planet vibe! The underwater effect for the algae is really cool, and the overall glowiness on the plants in a dark cave makes the player feel stranded in an unknown world.

I liked the remote boat control. It took me a while to figure out that you could only move it while seeing it, but once I got that, puzzles got a lot more interesting and fun to figure out.

The plant DNA sequences in the console felt a big meaningless, since there wasn't any punishment for getting it wrong, and you could essentially brute-force it. It's a cool concept nonetheless, and could very easily be expanded upon. I also got stuck in the terrain too often for comfort when walking around.

I think this game could make a very good use of camera panning when entering the puzzle-areas. It was confusing at times what needed to be done and how to do it, just because there wasn't any overarching view of the area, and I couldn't see a path to the places I needed to be.

Overall, this was an awesome experience! I spent a good half hour playing this, and I was left wanting for more. If you have plans to develop the game further, I'll be more than glad to playtest it and give some feedback!

Awesome vibe, love the sound effects! Glad you didn't harm any heads making this game, that would've been awful.

Both of your suggestions have been discussed internally, and none of them are discarded for now. We will keep you posted in this same page!

- Guillem Blanch, programmer for KeyRivals

Glad you like the game!

When you say it "stops you from playing" are you referring to the stun mechanic after losing 3 HP? If that's the case, I'd suggest you take a look at the tutorial (accessible from the Main Menu) where we explain how to recover easily.

If you are referring to a crash, we would like to hear from it so we can fix it.

- Guillem Blanch, programmer for KeyRivals

I'm very happy to see that people like yourself are excited for future features!

This game was originally designed to be played with a custom input device, but we couldn't finish building the prototype for it due to the Covid-19 situation (and we obviously can't provide it through itch.io anyways). We tried to make the controls as comfortable as possible considering it's a keyboard. If you have any other feedback we'll be very glad to hear it!

- Guillem Blanch, programmer for KeyRivals

I'm glad you like the game :) There is currently no plans for handheld device support, but it's not out of the question. Thanks for the suggestion!

- Guillem Blanch, programmer for KeyRivals

Thanks for the kind words :)

The tutorial was a bit rushed, our initial intention was to let the player practice each bit, so the information is trickling down as you learn the game, but we ran out of time to do it. We plan on re-designing it in the future with less text and more targeted practice rooms!

As far as the key prompts go, the original idea for this game was to pair it up with a custom controller with colored keys, but as the Covid-19 situation developed, we leaned over to keyboard controls as building the custom controller became increasingly difficult. The result is a mix-match of both ideas, we'll keep working to make it consistent to one of them.

We're not done improving the game yet, so receiving feedback like yours is extremely helpful for us to know where to direct our work in the future. 

Thanks!

- Guillem Blanch Riambau, programmer for KeyRivals