itch.io

hey! we briefly interacted a couple of years ago over our shared connection and love for bitsy (i made "care" which was inspired, in part, by your "novena"). i keep coming back every now and then to check out what you have been up to and i'm always greeted with the most wonderful things!

this was great, i was completely enraptured by it. i have 2 free days coming up and i feel this has colored the way i want to experience those days in a very peculiar (good) way.

thank you for the chance to live in this light stupor this game left me in - i'll go out and enjoy it now, thinking on things in a park somewhere. 

good luck with the rest of the project - excited for the full release! o/

(PS: over the years, a silent interest in someday visiting melbourne has cropped up thanks to your work often mentioning it's name. fun little side effect!)

If you can't play through the whole demo, play through the first section of the game, about 5ish minutes. 

It is an incredible well put together sequence that I wanted to especially highlight among the already many comments praising the general quality of the demo (true). 

Well done! Very cool! I am captivated by the world you have crafted.

Wishlisted on Steam.

What a sick game. The superimposed angles of your own platform in the sky is the game mechanic equivalent of that one piece of art of a banana taped to a wall:

"I could have come up with that but i didnt."

It's so elegant, mind bending and easy to understand all at the same time. It's like you are playing on the coin thrown out by V3 in Ultrakill, and considering the coin is one of the best parts of that game, it's telling of the quality of PSYCHE.

The execution is incredible too! I loved how convergence (wonderful name btw, really captures the "feeling" of the move) is implemented as a ricochet, making your positioning the key in being able to actually use the technique. The selection of enemies is great, with the bell being my favorite, as it stamps out the less exciting play-style of standing in the center of the field quite quickly.

You've also made the game appreciate it's own weird edge-cases, such as you being able to shoot at a reflection of an enemy through that same enemy standing right in front of you. It's a design approach I myself really love and am trying to kindle in my own work. I'd love for more strange angles to be accounted for like this.

Maybe something if you shoot through a row of enemies without hitting a wall, possible if the player stands close to the edge of a platform and shoots at the closest reflected platform above them?

Maybe shooting an enemies reflection through that same enemy yields some sort of movement/crowd control benefit, to help them escape being cornered if they have the awareness to capitalize on that angle? The game is such a rich design space that you probably have endless ideas for where to take this game going further too.

To summarize: good game. very good game. good job, keep it up! Much like all the enemies in PSYCHE, I too will be keeping an eye on your work with keen interest 👁️

Cheers!

I really enjoyed this. Came here after watching Sagan Hawkes' Youtube video partially covering it. 

The writing and atmosphere of the novel made me feel like the game was picking away at my chest, rearranging it like a jigsaw puzzle: 

feelings of unease and comfort ended up sitting closer to one another than they probably should have.

It was electrifying. 

Good job!

Thank you! Your comment brought me a lot of joy - it's nice to know that the game still connects and holds up several years later:)

Re-encountered some of your earlier work by pure chance and thought: "hmm, wonder what else they've been up to". 

Glad I acted on this thought, since you've been up to some great stuff! Going to check out more later, but for now, this was a wonderfully eerie, inspiring start to my day. Thank you!

hell yeah, glad you liked it! It's fun to know people still stumble upon this game over 5 years after the release

I enjoyed the art a whole lot! The sfx used were also really well selected and heightened the experience. As other's have mentioned, it wasn't very clear that the cards drawn on the dawn of each day are permanent. "Daily bonus card" led me to believe that the effect expires after each day.

The writing was so incredible cute, I cannot overstate how impressed I was. I was amazed at how much character you were able to infuse into these creatures with only just a few lines of dialogue. Wonderful work!!

Thank you so much for the feedback and for playing!:) I agree, an alternate control scheme where spacebar is used for jumping would be really helpful. As for having a dedicated button for both tools -that would mean there'd need to be a dedicated button for picking up / droping seeds as well as using them. That's a total of... about 4-5 non arrow key buttons for a simple game such as this, which feels wasteful. Maybe the ability to store a tool / seed in a water bubble that the follows you around would be a more interesting solution to the problem.

Thank you so much!:) I'm glad you like the colors haha, struggled with unifying the pallet quite a bit in the early stages of development.

Wonderfully creative take on the theme! I also really like the visuals and theming of the game being a monkey themed operating system. I also appreciated that the game was very lenient when determining whether the player was overlapping a red reset zone or not. Well done!

I enjoyed the artwork of the game, though I feel it would have been more elevated with some sound effects as well. 

As good QoL improvement would be letting the player start stretching out the tail even when they haven't reset the power on the ground yet. This would let the player kinda "prime" a launch for the second they touch the ground again, allowing for what I'd believe is a more fluid gameplay experience.

Well done!

The simple gameplay was elevated thanks to the game oozing style and atmosphere. Audibly gasped when I started consuming whole stars! Your choice of music was also good, helping set the tone of the game. Great work!

I really enjoyed the theming of the scaling mechanic - usually it's some sort of raygun or the like, but a magnifying glass is something I hadn't see up until now! Well done!

I wish the luggage didn't drop from the same direction I have to throw them in - I lost a lot of lives due to luggage spawning in at the last second and bouncing off in the wrong direction. Otherwise a really creative take on the theme!

I liked that in addition to scaling size, which a lot of games of this jam have done, you also opted to scale "time". I do feel that the time gun could have given more feedback that it actually did something to the turrets (some kind of prompt similar to how when you hover a box it tells you that you can scale it). I also enjoyed the little posters everywhere. A solid puzzle game, good job!

Doing big loops to build up speed was very fun and I caught myself getting in the loop of "one more try". Unfortunately, the princess remained unsaved as after losing loads of progress, I gave up:(

A super enjoyable experience that I played through in its entirety in one sitting (save for the secrets, of which I found one and know the location of a second). 

Perhaps it was just me and the way I play, but I only used one hand for the entirety of the game - using two felt like it complicated things more than anything. Perhaps make some jumps require 2 hand in some way?

All in all, 5-stars all across the board - great job!

Thanks so much! I'm happy to hear you enjoyed your time with the game:)

I really enjoyed the visuals of this game. Drawing all the different sizes of objects by hand and not letting the engine do the scaling itself was a great bit of polish that I appreciated.

The way the game explores it's mechanics is very thorough. When I first saw the mirror, I thought "I hope you can scale yourself with those at some point too" and the game followed through, which made me real happy! 

I feel you struck a nice balance between all of the different scales and their pros/cons. Many of the "scale objects" type games in this jam I feel fall in this pit where the middle sizing doesn't really serve a distinct purpose, however in Port-a-Scale, I felt the middle size served a rather distinct role.

I enjoyed that you changed the way items behave on a far more interesting way than most (the way that ballista bolts start dropping down if they are big was great).

My only criticism is that the ray gun bullet was really small which made timing some of the shots a bit more difficult than I feel a puzzle game such as this needed. Of course you could lean into it and make the ray-gun more of a platforming tool, but even then I feel the bullet itself could have a bigger hitbox in relation to the player.

All in all, great work! Definitely one of the highlights of the games that interpret the theme as "making objects big and small".

PS: I encounter a bug where a box fell on my head and caused me to clip through the floor. Nothing too bad, considering you can restart the level, but still wanted to fill you in.

Thank you so much! And I totally agree, increasing the size of the platforms at the lower levels is a good idea!

Wooo I'm glad to hear you reached the end, congratulations!! And thanks so much for the kind words:)

Thank you so much!! This really made my day!:D I am definitely considering working on this game more and seeing where it takes me - if all goes well it totally could be a fully fledged, longer experience on Steam!

I loooved the intro sequence! My sweet, dumb little chameleon friend had no idea what they were getting themselves into <3

A really creative concept! Moving around was very intuitive and I enjoyed the sound effects. Interestingly enough I felt more like the movement was akin to an inch-worm wiggling across the ground as opposed to a slime, but that's just me!

I didn't get far enough to encounter bacon, but I assume that mechanic forced the player to stretch themselves wider to grab all of the bacon at the same time - if so, I really like it and wish it was introduced earlier!

All in all, great work!:)

I quite enjoyed the game and the varied use of the proportionator ray, however I feel the game was held back a bit by awkward camera and obstacle placement - often an obstacle was placed right after the screen transitioned from one position to the other, which made it hard to see what you were getting into. 

The long respawn time also made repeated attempts harder to do, as I had to wait what felt like more than a second between every attempt.

I did however really enjoy the good amount of juice you added to the game. Using the proportionator ray felt satisfying and I loved the little "bounce" that objects made when they grew. Great touch!

Well done on finishing what seems to be your first game on itch.io!

I quite enjoyed my time with the game. I did get soft-locked once after being introduced to shrinking. The movement felt a bit stiff, but it kind of worked in the games favor in certain platforming sections, as you could jump between platforms very precisely. I enjoyed the ticking clock as it both let me know that the game wasn't very long and gave the game a good intensity (only magnified by the amazing music!)

Most of all though, I really enjoyed the character design - made a quick fanart of the lil guy:) Thanks for the game!

Definitely the best comedy game I have played so far in the jam! The dialogue was quirky and kept me looking for more people to talk to. Stacking dudes was a very interesting mechanic and I enjoyed flinging the top one off into the stratosphere, though it was hard to do consistently, which hindered my enjoyment of the game a bit. The music was fantastic and I feel was what brought the whole experience together for me - that really rough, bass-y instrument was incredible!

Congrats to the team on making a great game!

What a great platforming mechanic! Honestly wanted to play more even after I got to the ending. I do wonder if there is a way to fine tune the mechanic so that you don't need a dedicated button that both jumps and shoots an icicle at the same time. It was very much needed in this version of the game, but it feels a bit.... unnecessary(?) to have a separate button that does something that two other buttons already do.

My favorite moment in the game was probably when you grabbed the golden icicle and the storm settled in. It felt surprising but really ramped up the intensity in an interesting way.

I really enjoyed the VVVVVV style "room names" as well, what a fun callback to a great game!

Oh and special props to David L. for writing the music- a banger tune! I think the background track played a big role in my enjoyment of the game.

Thank you so much, I'm really flattered!!!:) 

Thank you so so much for sharing your thoughts on my game! I really appreciate you going in depth like this:)

The seedlings try to avoid other stems as best they can, but they do have a habit of getting stuck! Thankfully it never hard-locks you from finishing the game, as you can always buy more seeds or wait for a bird to drop you one, but it would really help to add some sort of "preference" system to the seeds. At the moment they don't really differentiate between turning left and right when an obstacle is in the way, which results in them making a bad choice at random. I do believe that it would help a lot if the seeds preferred to turn one way or the other depending on if that direction leads them higher up or not.

The choice of being able to hold only one tool at a time was intentional for both simplicity and to keep the entire tree relevant throughout the game. If the player had all their tools on hand at all times, there would be little reason to ever go back to the ground except to buy more seeds. Furthermore, the player can add vine seeds to help with navigating up and down the tree faster as well as just leave tools lying on the ground somewhere higher up the tree. I do agree however that the game would benefit from having more methods of keeping your tools close by. Maybe some sort of seed that lets you create a "mini shack" somewhere up top to retrieve your lost tools from, or a whistle that triggers a bird to fly over with a tool of your choice. Something to consider for the post-jam release, I suppose!

The red seed does have the benefit of spawning more bramble and thus giving the player more currency, but I agree that the balance of the two seeds could have been fine tuned better. In the later parts of the game, once currency isn't much of an issue anymore, the player doesn't have much of an incentive to buy the red seed unless they simply want a more challenging platforming experience. Making the red seed grow taller as you mentioned could definitely help, as would maybe making the store restock seeds at random, so sometimes you wouldn't even get the choice of a blue seed, as the store would only be selling two red ones. In an ideal version of the game, there would be loads and loads of different seeds to choose one, each with a different type of platforming challenge that they offer to the player, resulting in this ever changing climbing experience. One idea was to add a seed that wouldn't spawn platforms, but instead little balls that the player could bounce off of. Alas, I did not have any time left to add that into this version of the game!

And I agree with the upgrading feedback! I think the core idea of this game lends itself pretty well to further development. Allowing the player some sort of meta progression in the way of upgrading tools, unlocking new seeds, having some sort of floating islands with treasure, different obstacles to overcome at different altitudes (like wind or maybe the cold) - the game is bursting at the seams with potential! Who knows, maybe this could even turn into the first game I ever release on Steam...?

As a little insider info, this game was inspired by my recent experience of moving abroad from my home country of Estonia. Having grown so much while living there, making friends and connections, it was all a bit difficult to let go of but nevertheless a very important step to take in my own personal growth. 

I wanted this game to reflect that - you grow and nurture this plant, interact with it all throughout the game, learn the best pathways up and down it, trim parts that hinder further growth while letting flourish the parts that help you on your way up. You put loads of work into it only to have to eventually let go and move on. I'm really happy you liked the little wave at the end, as that was a small little addition that meant a lot to me personally:)

Thanks again fo all the feedback! I already played your game as well (it was real good) and will try and return the favour in the coming days, but having moved only a week ago, a lot of my free time is still being spent on getting my footing in a new, foreign (but exciting!) place.

Thanks so much for the feedback! Unfortunately I did not have time to add any sort of undo or trimming functionality to the game, though I totally agree that it would help quite a bit! Could you maybe elaborate a bit on how you soft-locked yourself? Were you ultimately able to finish the game or did it hinder progress to the point that you stopped half way through?

And yeah, controls seems to be the biggest point of tension so far. Hindsight 20/20, but I do regret not adding some sort of WASD & Spacebar control scheme to the game.... oh well, something to add to the post-jam version and to learn from for the future!

Thank you very much!:) I'm glad to hear you liked the art style

Thank you!!!<3<3<3

Hey! What part of the game was confusing for you? Maybe I can help!

Tack så mycket min vän!!! <3<3<3

Thanks for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed it:) And that's a wonderful interpretation - made me look at my own game in a new light that I hadn't considered before. Thank you for sharing!

Just finished it and what a wonderful one hour it was! The art was great, all of the little mechanics you had to juggle kept me really engaged, and the scares were effective while not so scary that I couldn't keep going. I pushed through, escaped and had wonderful time! :)

Thank you so much for playing!:)

And I agree - the pathways are quite difficult to find. I originally made them as such to drive home the point that this is a place that has been neglected, however I think went a touch overboard with the execution haha