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Wanted to try this one out after seeing the stream -- I really liked the premise and the art! I think the character designs in particular really stood out, you did a good job using distinct shape language for everybody. The gameplay got pretty satisfying when all the different puzzles started coming together. I could totally see this expanded with a slightly more involved combat system.

I thought you did a really good job hinting at the mechanics using the player's dialogue -- the player remarking that the coins made them heavier was clever and pretty funny writing. I enjoyed the color swapping mechanic the most, although you should be aware that I wasn't able to jump or move left when holding R G and B -- some keyboards only accept a certain number of inputs on certain channels. The visual effect making everything distorted was really cool. 

Thank you so much!! I don't know where to begin -- your feedback makes me really happy. 

I also dropped p3 reload to make this game... you can probably tell from the game itself.

I'm glad you got a lot out of the investigation mechanics! Those were most of the features I had planned for it -- learning about suspects, finding aberrations and learning their routines -- though I wish I'd been able to include more examples of each in the actual game. I'd planned to include more ways to spend downtime but didn't get the chance to implement them this time. I can definitely take some of your ideas into account if I end up expanding on this game. Also I had no idea about the currency thing actually  LOL-- must be a function of the method I used to convert the number into currency. I'm glad I know that now.

I feel pretty lucky that the artstyle came together as it did since I was worried it'd take too long to make presentable illustrated artwork, but I was able to find a workable style pretty quickly. I owe everything to the Procreate Terraleah brush. A lot of the visual identity comes from compromise but I don't think that's a bad thing -- it helped make it unique. 

I'm really happy you connected with the characters so well! This was the first game I ever released with a focus on dialogue and story, and I wasn't sure my writing would be up to snuff. The time limit forced me to write without second-guessing myself, and occasionally sloppy dialogue aside I think that helped me pull the script together.

Thank you again for all your feedback!! And thanks for wishing me luck on midterms -- they're in god's hands now.

When I was playing Maintenence I kept thinking that all the mechanics clicked together in a way that just felt right, but I never stopped to think about the trial and error it must have taken to land on that simple but perfect set of mechanics. This was a great read for learning your thought process and also inspirational to me in how I can approach game design problems and develop tighter games! 

I think you made a lot of really clever decisions that paid off. You mention that you wanted to avoid overwhelming puzzles and that's something I actually thought about when I was playing your game -- a lot of puzzle games (especially the shorter ones you find in jams) ramp up complexity to a degree that I look at a level and I don't even know where to begin, but your restraint in designing even your hardest levels encouraged me to keep trying different movements and patterns until I got to the end. In a way, playing the game itself is like an act of constant iteration, so that's a fun bit of meta.

Awesome game, and awesome dev log!

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for playing my game!

They weren't my strongest midterms... but it was worth it to finish the game.

Thank you!! I'm really glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed your time with it.  

These are all good points of criticism -- some parts of the script aren't as polished as I'd like, and there's definitely some pacing and balacing issues. I'll make a note that the Butcher is proportionally more central than the others -- ideally, I'd actually like every character to have as much influence on each other as the Butcher by introducing more events and items that crossover. 

The event balance is definitely wonky -- right before release I lowered relationship threshold levels on all the NPCs and boosted their availability times in the hopes that anyone playing the jam would be able to see all the game's content. Unfortunately that means even slightly optimal play can leave you with a lot of waiting around time, so I considered adding a skip-day button but ultimately didn't implement it.

Thanks for your thoughts! I hope to make an expansion of this game and I'll definitely take your feedback into account when I do.

That felt like a really nice, kind of transcendant experience.  The text at the beginning of each level set a nice thoughtful mood and helped hint at the mechanics (fly away -> you can double jump to escape). Watching the cube morph and meld into the floor was pretty mesmerizing to watch -- honestly, the whole artstyle was really beautiful and original. I don't think I've ever seen or played something like this before. Amazing job!

I really like what you did with the art and the atmosphere! The bloom was really effective with your color choice of combining bright colors with generally darker tones. The movement was very responsive and I liked that double jumping reset your dash allowing you to get two dashes in the air if you spaced them out right. I think the game could be more exciting with complex enemies, such as enemies which shoot bullets at you for example. The movement is really tight so you could throw some difficult attacks at the player. Since the goal is finding and killing all enemies in a level, it also could help to have secret powerups to find in the level to help you win. Good work overall!

The snow effect looks awesome. I was enjoying searching around until I realized my guy was slowly dying... definitely fits the theme with the idea of things slowly changing. Made me think of "To Build a Fire."

Nice game! Definitely an original take on the idea of aberration, having a world that shifts around you when you get spotted by enemies. The game looks really nice and being chased by the monsters in the distorted world felt super tense. I had a bit of difficulty with the game crashing after a few minutes of playing, unfortunately. 

Thanks!!

Thank you! Crossovers between the mechanics of different characters was an important mechanic and one I want to expand on more. It was a good way to improve the pacing by encouraging players to spend an equal amount of time with each character.

I think I must have been a little insane to decide I'd make 31 days of content for a 2-week jam but fortunately I got it done. I'm glad you enjoyed it! I'm really interested in doing a full steam release with better pacing, deeper mechanics and a tighter ending.

Thank you!! I'm really glad you enjoyed the characters and the message of the game. I'm glad I made a highlight of the jam for you :)

Interesting control scheme, sort of like silent hill except top down. The graphics and atmosphere are really nice -- you get a good bit of tension from the lighting system. Only thing is -- I didn't realize I was able to shoot at first, and was able to reach the end of the game without shooting any enemies. Not sure that's the intended way to play.

Tiny wings is GOATed. Also, awesome :) excited to hear what you think.

Got to the ending! I think I definitely had it bugged out the first time since I didn't see any of the camps. I died a lot my first go around and then tried loading my saved game later, so I think the bug might have to do with saving/loading not keeping track of how many camps you need to destroy. I was able to get the ending by starting a fresh save and destroying the portals without dying. Anyway, good work!

The art is fantastic! The different aberrations are wonderfully unsettling and the atmosphere is oppressive and extremely detailed. I thought you went down a really interesting avenue for the gameplay, but I wish there was a little more to the mechanics. I think I found the good ending -- I discovered the hidden formulas for eyes teeth and legs and sent in the result -- but I'm not sure if it wasn't just a game over. Let me know if I missed something there and I'll definitely go back and check it out.

Np, thanks for letting me know! I did another playthrough with that in mind and got to the end without dying. Also, I was able to listen to the audio this time which you did a great job with. The different tracks blending together did amazing things for the atmosphere. I imagine the message at the end of choosing your own direction and going all the way with it is something really important for you, so I'm glad you got to express that so well through the game's mechanics.

Really lovely game! The very visceral and crunchy mechanics were satisfying to play with and kept me engaged all the way through. Each level really felt like a clockwork machine that fit together just right if you use the right moves in the right order, which is perfect for a one-screen puzzle game. I liked the breaks between levels to add a little extra tension and atmosphere -- it's always memorable when you take the game mechanics out of the usual context to make a kind of interactive cutscene like in the final level with the 5 timed pillars. 

Thanks!! I appreciate your detailed comment and I'm really glad you enjoyed your time enough to play through to the end :) Since this is my first real dialogue-driven game, I'm really glad to hear that the writing hit the mark I was aiming for. I know the pacing can be a little wonky, I was attempting to balance around both players who understood the mechanics quickly and players who had trouble figuring out what to do, and ended up in a bit of a limbo. I've also heard from a few people that the Engineer and Occultist were a lot of fun but the Teacher was hard to get to know -- I'm certainly going to look at the ups and downs of my character writing here and use that to improve my next work. Thank you for being a fan, and always make positive changes :))

Gotcha! I'll try again later today

It's like Resident Evil meets Super Mario Galaxy which is super strange and extremely compelling visually. I'd love to know how you did these backgrounds. I reached the end and I don't know what it means!

The environment is wonderful. Amazing work on the depth of the backgrounds, the reflections below, the different lighting -- all amazing. I enjoyed the little dash-platforming in the caves, but I wasn't sure where I was meant to end up as I got to the pier and nothing happened, and I tried destroying the goblin coves but it seemed like they respawned -- lmk if I missed something and I'll have another go at it

Very goated use of chromatic aberration, very pretty and I enjoyed the different mechanics you incorporated into the aberration/character splitting mechanics. I got to the end, but I think I might have missed some area since I only found two of doc's chromatic echoes. The chromatic golfing was a lot of fun, but it took me a long time to understand what was going on there.

The visual style is beautiful, the UI and soft colors and effects are just so good! Connecting the constellations correctly is a fun if underexplained mechanic, but I did laugh when I completely messed up Taurus and got a "Taurus...?" at the end. Unfortunately I had a bit of trouble playing it for a long time because of the way the screen rotates itself entirely when you turn -- everything spinning around you plus the player's heavy turn radius was pretty disorienting. The polish was incredible and it felt like a popular mobile game.

Was intrigued by the story, definitely wish there was more variety to the gameplay or more of an evolution to the mechanics. The boss was a neat fight, wasn't expecting him to have HP regen so I tended to stand next to him and tank damage in order to deal damage to him faster -- kill him before he kills me strategy. Hope you keep going with this though -- if you do, lmk and I'll certainly try out the completed version!

Yuhhh subversion of expectations in a well-established genre! Big fan. I thought it was cool that you had to be clever to defeat the red dudes and couldn't face them head on. Also funny getting negged by the tutorial voice. Unfortunately on my way back I got hit by a red wall with no dude and had no way past it -- wasn't sure if I missed something.

Clever use of resource/action economy! I enjoyed searching out optimal paths and figuring out when would be a good time to refresh my materials for the journey ahead. The chaos void always being at maximum about three tiles behind you always kept things tense, and also made me realize that trying to get as much distance as possible is less optimal than moving twice and crafting once.

Clever puzzle game! It took me a lot of thought to get through even some of the earlier levels, but it was really satisfying to find the right moves to reach the end. I got a little overwhelmed with some of the puzzles later on and was stumped. 

This was a cute game! The ways you 'broke' the conventional 2D puzzle platformer type deal was really fun -- I just wish there was a little more. I liked how emotive boxboi is too, hahah

I did around 3 runs and enjoyed making different builds each time! Good variety of weapons and items, and nice attention to detail on making each stat increase type feel meaningful. I wish the stat increases could be a bit more impactful than a few percentages.

Great job with the visual effects and the overall presentation, it was chilling watching things shift and walking through the darkness to different patches of light. The game with the hills reminded me of this old game Tiny Wings I used to play all the time!

The aesthetics were perfect, very satisfying visual effects and crunch when you hit enemies, very effective color palette. I thought at first enemies would alert police if they witnessed me killing someone, but I think it's smart you have to hit enemies twice to defeat them and they run faster the second time -- you have to take into account spacing before you attack.

The backpack mechanic/inventory management puzzle is really interesting and provides some tangible buffs for the game. I wasn't certain if I was getting anywhere, but it's fun becoming stronger and creating good builds.

Got through all the levels -- some I thought were especially fun and clever like the heat map one, the timestop one (loved that you stopped the music for that too) and the ghost level with the detector. Nice variation of challenges and complication of mechanics introduced each day.

The socket system was a cool mechanic -- combine a puzzle with equipment system to get stronger. I also liked the enemy designs, but I wish I had more direct control over my abilities and would've like to see more variety in enemy behavior. Good game!

I really like how you slowly amp up the complexity of the mechanics from this game when it comes to the name-finding mechanic. Nicely polished and satisfying game! I was hoping the final level would be Jay St though lmaoo

Thanks! Those were two of the biggest inspirations for this game actually