fun little thing, I definitely see where this is going, and I'm very curious, if im frankly just not that good at platforming, i love a thing where i can Tinker With Stuff and i appreciate that theres Some measure of options to bruteforce the jumping puzzles for those of us who werent doing those since age 4
some sprites kinda had clarity issues to me? i couldnt really tell what an unlit torch was for a while and the fairy altars have symbols on them that i Think represent objects in the game world but i just cant tell what theyre supposed to be i dont think. i got the impression some objects are ambiguous on purpose but the more basic ones i dont think so much are?
it would also probably help more folks get to the specs menu to tune it down if it didnt run in 4k on startup. if someone really wants to run a pixel art game in 4k i wont stop them but no need for it to be the default. my screen cant even do that its just wasting resources.
developers do tend to forget i think that the average person owns something with the specs closer to a thinkpad than their own rig so, while i know this is an early gameplay test, youre most definitely excluding more people than you think you are from giving it a spin by doing so simple as having it start up with maxed graphics
you are also Most Definitely a console-first dev it seems bc some of those keybind choices are... inspired. Why am I pressing "L" in a real time game for literally any reason much less a frequent action thats hilarious.
On a more serious note I am an unnecessary long-press hater, both from the acessibility angle and that they feel kinda bad. I do not think the 'start run' door needs that extra confirmation of the long press, both because accidentally starting a run is not worse than accidentally buying an item [no long press, arguably more consequences?] but also, at least as it stands right now, the portal for that is kinda out of the way, you already need to intentionally get there, i dont think that extra bit of confirmation is worth the annoyance and the hands unpleasantness, especially on the keyboard where its a lot more unpleasant than the controller
[even if i owned a controller i could plug in i wouldnt because i did not grow up with controller games its kinda like asking me to write with my non-dominant hand, im getting nowhere with that]
theoretically i see the idea with that, long presses, thematically, kinda are connected with Conducting Rituals and the like, but since thats the only instance it feels incongruent and not super intentionally picked so far
also, i believe some text scrolls weird/doesnt fit the scroll and cuts off in the 1x ui scale version if youre keeping that ui anyway
Thanks for checking this out and for giving so much feedback!
On performance: it's definitely a struggle to work out how much optimisation to put in place at different stages of a project. This build had some culling etc. in place to enable the map building. Gleb [our other programmer] also pushed a hotfix to address an issue where some hybrid laptops were not having their GPU detected by GameMaker. But yeah, the project was not really at a stage of proof where I would be concerned about extended the playtesting reach beyond "hey, play it if you can!". We'll definitely set the settings lower by default in future builds - and do further optimisation. I think a recurring issue we're also going to have is just people expecting any 2D game to run on anything, because they think the job of a GPU is to render realistic 3D graphics... I don't think we're going to escape from that no matter how much we do.
All of your UX/controls feedback is valid. We haven't dropped an update in a few months but the next one with have key rebinding (it's already in, we're just not updating the build until some other stuff is ready as some of the core design has pivotted a lot). I wouldn't necessarily think of myself as console-first, but I do tend to play character/action-driven PC games with a controller, and when it comes to platformers I have a hard time empathising with keyboard players! The next build will have better controls generally - and some of the contextual long-presses will be gone as the teleporter concept is leaving the game in the next stage of design changes. There's also some wonk around the character controller where sprinting momentum doesn't transfer to jumps etc. which is on our list of things to address.
I really appreciate you taking the time to play and I hope if you play the next update it'll work better for you! The only reason it's taking so long is that this was always a strange design and it's only really in the last 2 months that certain aspects of the loop have come together in a way which makes it easier to see what the final game might be.
oh yeah i will say that since my setup is fairly "standard" [2016 budget build with old ram, intel cpu, middle of the road for the time gpu no hybrid anything] lowering the settings did very much help it just was an adventure to get to them on startup
its not a huge issue at the end of the day since final releases tend to have at least some crude specs detection just something thatd definitely help not prevent people that Could run your playtest specs wise from actually being able to, so nice to know thats coming! i am a big fan of "weird" mechanics combos so im definitely looking forward to what this might look like in the future!
I saw your youtube videos and came to check this out, and I really love this concept! I am a Blue Prince fan too, and you are doing a great job at capturing that feel of the room draft mechanic here. I had fun discovering new features and items and mechanics, and also being confused at others (what goes on these pedestals? (and the delight when I got one correct!), why are there flowers in this room now? what does this new item do? why am i suddenly shooting out fireballs?), which is a good thing, if they can eventually be learned! I enjoy games where I have to learn and discover things like this on my own, and this is on the right track for that.
I like the Blue Prince "new day" style of it too, where when you die, you can start a new run with a fresh set of keys and resources that you can permanently upgrade. When I first started I feared I would have to start fully over every time and was delighted to see it saves permanent progression of upgrades and the food you give to the boss. I would have stopped playing pretty quickly if it was a roguelike where you start from scratch, but this I would def keep playing. It hurts to lose a 'day' if I had gotten far, but not in a real punishing way, because I can just jump back in to try again without having lost everything I accomplished before. This also allows experimentation without fear, I can try something new without losing everything.
If the way rooms can overlay each other right now is intentional and not an alpha quirk, well, I love it: the potential new combinations it can create to get you where you want to go, or the ways you might ruin your own run by erasing something you needed. It makes for some interesting decisions.
I found the jumping/platforming rather diabolical in it being hard to make precise jumps, especially when, say, climbing up the sapling, and then learning there is fall damage and plummeting to my doom when I inevitably missed a platform. I also accidentally fell into traps in just about every room that had them, and things like accidentally sliding off a floor and falling to the abyss outside of the room. I think this lack of control is mainly when sprinting, sprinting is necessary to reach places but its too.. slippery? i'd love to see the feel and the control of the movement and jumping refined down the line.
I enjoy the art style and the little details in the pixels, it has an unsettling-but-cute vibe!
Anyway, yes, this is a great concept, the discovery is fun, and I think you've captured the mechanics and feel you talked about in your videos. I'm def keeping this on my radar and will play updates :) Thank you!
I was not able to play the game due to performance issues (FPS was low enough for me that the player never landed on the floor in the beginning.) Granted, the computer I attempted to play this on doesn't have great specs, but it is able to run several other less resource intensive 2d games at a steady fps.
One issue we had with some systems was GameMaker wasn't detecting the GPU and was running something else [so higher spec machines weren't actually using their hardware]. I thought we caught that in one of the recent updates but we'll look into it more over the next few months.
At this stage we're still validating the gameplay concept, so getting the game optimised isn't so much of a priority yet. Thanks for trying though.
I loved that I can create a room from either side of the door. It was fun to generate a mine, and then generate another room on top of it, and watching the treasure fall to me.
I never figured out the fairy alters. I tried offering many different things.
:(
This alpha is more complete than some early access games.
Clearing save data doesn't appear to clear all of the save data. If you have given the wizard a particular meal, it will stay checkmarked. Also, two of the meals are checkmarked from the very beginning for some reason? And is there any reason that dying in the hubworld takes away all your gems? because it feels very bad to lose 25 gems you just earned from a meal you can never give again because you accidentally died from fall damage. This seems to be an interesting game, but these issues make it really hard to progress at all.
All of this is on the "to do" list; thanks. it's a gameplay prototype to validate what is interesting or fun about the core gameplay, so we are not focussed on catching every small bug at this stage. Thanks for trying it out.
As of 12/11/2025 only getting about 10 fps. Something's definitely bogging it down. Wish I could play it but it takes about 2 minutes for even text to render.
Thanks for checking it out - we found some issues with "start fullscreen" which were doing some strange stuff to some GPUs... new build is going up in ten minutes.
Did you do this? I have similarly bad perf on a steam deck with proton. I bound alt+enter to a grip button and was able to leave fullscreen but the performance seemed about the same.
new version has the ability to turn off the pixel-art upscaling filter [seemed to be the main culprit in tanking performances on some people's machines]
I find keyboard controls very confusing: - Open door with arrow + enter but selecting room with space. - Reading sign with up + E but closing it with E (but not ESC). - down + space when on solid ground jumps
Controler feels better.
And I don't know if this is by design bu if you approach closed doors from void side you can override existing rooms
the newly unlocked rooms overwriting parts of already uncovered map is super interesting.
i like how dangerous the void feels and the concept of the void in general.
interrupting the return home animation by releasing Y early thus opening up sections of the map felt very exploitable in a great "I'm a genius" way.
beware the stink gas.
not sure if you can eat the food or need to cook it first either way my good friend the Gnome was eating so good he closed up shop.
unsolicited suggestion:
it could be fun to have a mini boss/difficult encounter attached to the Reliquary or a treasure room as a big risk, big reward. kinda like elites in slay the spire.
bugs:
played v0.03 but version number in top right said v0.0.0.1.
no way to exit the game except alt + f4.
up + B button prompt to read sign in blue room is covered by tile.
compared to the footage I've seen of the game, it ran really sluggish despite getting 800fps with no rooms drafted.
- changed some button-mapping based on initial playtest feedback [still not keyboard compatible yet; making sure things make sense with xbox controller first] - new build has had some of the late-game content removed; you'll only get grey, green and red rooms and you'll see what the game is like for a player in the early-game. - new room; "Market". Sell food items you find or make at the gnome wagon. You can also now purchase relics [although you won't know what they do until you own them] This room is an earlier precursor the blue room "Automarket" which is meant to be an upgrade of the Market Gnome. new relics allowing you to; survive longer in the void before freezing; punch through mud and fungus; receive coins for defeating enemies. - made some optimisations
Ohh, this is really cool already! I definitely have a lot I could say, but I absolutely want to see more of your ideas in the future builds! It'd be nice if you had a way to export a portable version of the game (no installer) and featured keyboard controls. Cheers!
Thanks for playing! Everything is in place to make the keyboard work, I'm just working out the control mapping for it (still unsure about some of the gamepad inputs and I want to make sure I know what those are before I convert for keys). Shouldn't be long now.
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fun little thing, I definitely see where this is going, and I'm very curious, if im frankly just not that good at platforming, i love a thing where i can Tinker With Stuff and i appreciate that theres Some measure of options to bruteforce the jumping puzzles for those of us who werent doing those since age 4
some sprites kinda had clarity issues to me? i couldnt really tell what an unlit torch was for a while and the fairy altars have symbols on them that i Think represent objects in the game world but i just cant tell what theyre supposed to be i dont think. i got the impression some objects are ambiguous on purpose but the more basic ones i dont think so much are?
it would also probably help more folks get to the specs menu to tune it down if it didnt run in 4k on startup. if someone really wants to run a pixel art game in 4k i wont stop them but no need for it to be the default. my screen cant even do that its just wasting resources.
developers do tend to forget i think that the average person owns something with the specs closer to a thinkpad than their own rig so, while i know this is an early gameplay test, youre most definitely excluding more people than you think you are from giving it a spin by doing so simple as having it start up with maxed graphics
you are also Most Definitely a console-first dev it seems bc some of those keybind choices are... inspired. Why am I pressing "L" in a real time game for literally any reason much less a frequent action thats hilarious.
On a more serious note I am an unnecessary long-press hater, both from the acessibility angle and that they feel kinda bad. I do not think the 'start run' door needs that extra confirmation of the long press, both because accidentally starting a run is not worse than accidentally buying an item [no long press, arguably more consequences?] but also, at least as it stands right now, the portal for that is kinda out of the way, you already need to intentionally get there, i dont think that extra bit of confirmation is worth the annoyance and the hands unpleasantness, especially on the keyboard where its a lot more unpleasant than the controller
[even if i owned a controller i could plug in i wouldnt because i did not grow up with controller games its kinda like asking me to write with my non-dominant hand, im getting nowhere with that]
theoretically i see the idea with that, long presses, thematically, kinda are connected with Conducting Rituals and the like, but since thats the only instance it feels incongruent and not super intentionally picked so far
also, i believe some text scrolls weird/doesnt fit the scroll and cuts off in the 1x ui scale version if youre keeping that ui anyway
Thanks for checking this out and for giving so much feedback!
On performance: it's definitely a struggle to work out how much optimisation to put in place at different stages of a project. This build had some culling etc. in place to enable the map building. Gleb [our other programmer] also pushed a hotfix to address an issue where some hybrid laptops were not having their GPU detected by GameMaker. But yeah, the project was not really at a stage of proof where I would be concerned about extended the playtesting reach beyond "hey, play it if you can!". We'll definitely set the settings lower by default in future builds - and do further optimisation. I think a recurring issue we're also going to have is just people expecting any 2D game to run on anything, because they think the job of a GPU is to render realistic 3D graphics... I don't think we're going to escape from that no matter how much we do.
All of your UX/controls feedback is valid. We haven't dropped an update in a few months but the next one with have key rebinding (it's already in, we're just not updating the build until some other stuff is ready as some of the core design has pivotted a lot). I wouldn't necessarily think of myself as console-first, but I do tend to play character/action-driven PC games with a controller, and when it comes to platformers I have a hard time empathising with keyboard players! The next build will have better controls generally - and some of the contextual long-presses will be gone as the teleporter concept is leaving the game in the next stage of design changes. There's also some wonk around the character controller where sprinting momentum doesn't transfer to jumps etc. which is on our list of things to address.
I really appreciate you taking the time to play and I hope if you play the next update it'll work better for you! The only reason it's taking so long is that this was always a strange design and it's only really in the last 2 months that certain aspects of the loop have come together in a way which makes it easier to see what the final game might be.
oh yeah i will say that since my setup is fairly "standard" [2016 budget build with old ram, intel cpu, middle of the road for the time gpu no hybrid anything] lowering the settings did very much help it just was an adventure to get to them on startup
its not a huge issue at the end of the day since final releases tend to have at least some crude specs detection just something thatd definitely help not prevent people that Could run your playtest specs wise from actually being able to, so nice to know thats coming! i am a big fan of "weird" mechanics combos so im definitely looking forward to what this might look like in the future!
I saw your youtube videos and came to check this out, and I really love this concept! I am a Blue Prince fan too, and you are doing a great job at capturing that feel of the room draft mechanic here. I had fun discovering new features and items and mechanics, and also being confused at others (what goes on these pedestals? (and the delight when I got one correct!), why are there flowers in this room now? what does this new item do? why am i suddenly shooting out fireballs?), which is a good thing, if they can eventually be learned! I enjoy games where I have to learn and discover things like this on my own, and this is on the right track for that.
I like the Blue Prince "new day" style of it too, where when you die, you can start a new run with a fresh set of keys and resources that you can permanently upgrade. When I first started I feared I would have to start fully over every time and was delighted to see it saves permanent progression of upgrades and the food you give to the boss. I would have stopped playing pretty quickly if it was a roguelike where you start from scratch, but this I would def keep playing. It hurts to lose a 'day' if I had gotten far, but not in a real punishing way, because I can just jump back in to try again without having lost everything I accomplished before. This also allows experimentation without fear, I can try something new without losing everything.
If the way rooms can overlay each other right now is intentional and not an alpha quirk, well, I love it: the potential new combinations it can create to get you where you want to go, or the ways you might ruin your own run by erasing something you needed. It makes for some interesting decisions.
I found the jumping/platforming rather diabolical in it being hard to make precise jumps, especially when, say, climbing up the sapling, and then learning there is fall damage and plummeting to my doom when I inevitably missed a platform. I also accidentally fell into traps in just about every room that had them, and things like accidentally sliding off a floor and falling to the abyss outside of the room. I think this lack of control is mainly when sprinting, sprinting is necessary to reach places but its too.. slippery? i'd love to see the feel and the control of the movement and jumping refined down the line.
I enjoy the art style and the little details in the pixels, it has an unsettling-but-cute vibe!
Anyway, yes, this is a great concept, the discovery is fun, and I think you've captured the mechanics and feel you talked about in your videos. I'm def keeping this on my radar and will play updates :) Thank you!
really makes me feel like a golem with brains made out of clay. in a good way
I was not able to play the game due to performance issues (FPS was low enough for me that the player never landed on the floor in the beginning.) Granted, the computer I attempted to play this on doesn't have great specs, but it is able to run several other less resource intensive 2d games at a steady fps.
do you have system specs?
We're not really focussed on optimisation at this stage as the gameplay is still being validated, but appreciate you giving it a try either way.
Performance is abysmal. Turned all the settings down and still like 0.5 fps.
do you have system specs?
We're not really focussed on optimisation at this stage as the gameplay is still being validated, but appreciate you giving it a try either way.
Intel core i5 and 8 gb of ram. That's enough for me to run most 2D games pretty decently.
One issue we had with some systems was GameMaker wasn't detecting the GPU and was running something else [so higher spec machines weren't actually using their hardware]. I thought we caught that in one of the recent updates but we'll look into it more over the next few months.
At this stage we're still validating the gameplay concept, so getting the game optimised isn't so much of a priority yet. Thanks for trying though.
I loved that I can create a room from either side of the door. It was fun to generate a mine, and then generate another room on top of it, and watching the treasure fall to me.
I never figured out the fairy alters. I tried offering many different things.
:(
This alpha is more complete than some early access games.
Clearing save data doesn't appear to clear all of the save data. If you have given the wizard a particular meal, it will stay checkmarked. Also, two of the meals are checkmarked from the very beginning for some reason? And is there any reason that dying in the hubworld takes away all your gems? because it feels very bad to lose 25 gems you just earned from a meal you can never give again because you accidentally died from fall damage. This seems to be an interesting game, but these issues make it really hard to progress at all.
All of this is on the "to do" list; thanks.
it's a gameplay prototype to validate what is interesting or fun about the core gameplay, so we are not focussed on catching every small bug at this stage. Thanks for trying it out.
You're welcome! I actually really enjoyed it after that. It's fun creating these little worlds in search of dinner.
This was fun. It took me a while to figure out the controls. That may be because I'm not used to an itch game having a menu with settings.
As of 12/11/2025 only getting about 10 fps. Something's definitely bogging it down. Wish I could play it but it takes about 2 minutes for even text to render.
Thanks for checking it out - we found some issues with "start fullscreen" which were doing some strange stuff to some GPUs... new build is going up in ten minutes.
Did you do this? I have similarly bad perf on a steam deck with proton. I bound alt+enter to a grip button and was able to leave fullscreen but the performance seemed about the same.
new version has the ability to turn off the pixel-art upscaling filter [seemed to be the main culprit in tanking performances on some people's machines]
I find keyboard controls very confusing:
- Open door with arrow + enter but selecting room with space.
- Reading sign with up + E but closing it with E (but not ESC).
- down + space when on solid ground jumps
Controler feels better.
And I don't know if this is by design bu if you approach closed doors from void side you can override existing rooms
cool game thanks for making it.
the newly unlocked rooms overwriting parts of already uncovered map is super interesting.
i like how dangerous the void feels and the concept of the void in general.
interrupting the return home animation by releasing Y early thus opening up sections of the map felt very exploitable in a great "I'm a genius" way.
beware the stink gas.
not sure if you can eat the food or need to cook it first either way my good friend the Gnome was eating so good he closed up shop.
unsolicited suggestion:
it could be fun to have a mini boss/difficult encounter attached to the Reliquary or a treasure room as a big risk, big reward. kinda like elites in slay the spire.
bugs:
played v0.03 but version number in top right said v0.0.0.1.
no way to exit the game except alt + f4.
up + B button prompt to read sign in blue room is covered by tile.
compared to the footage I've seen of the game, it ran really sluggish despite getting 800fps with no rooms drafted.
v0.002. update;
- changed some button-mapping based on initial playtest feedback [still not keyboard compatible yet; making sure things make sense with xbox controller first]
- new build has had some of the late-game content removed; you'll only get grey, green and red rooms and you'll see what the game is like for a player in the early-game.
- new room; "Market". Sell food items you find or make at the gnome wagon. You can also now purchase relics [although you won't know what they do until you own them] This room is an earlier precursor the blue room "Automarket" which is meant to be an upgrade of the Market Gnome.
new relics allowing you to; survive longer in the void before freezing; punch through mud and fungus; receive coins for defeating enemies.
- made some optimisations
Ohh, this is really cool already! I definitely have a lot I could say, but I absolutely want to see more of your ideas in the future builds! It'd be nice if you had a way to export a portable version of the game (no installer) and featured keyboard controls. Cheers!
Thanks for playing! Everything is in place to make the keyboard work, I'm just working out the control mapping for it (still unsure about some of the gamepad inputs and I want to make sure I know what those are before I convert for keys). Shouldn't be long now.