[Mild Spoilers ahead!] Cool idea, interesting game and definitely thought-provoking on how this kind of puzzle could lead you to the solution. Very cool that you did this in a day! I do crosswords semi-regularly and I completed this puzzle with liberal use of the “check” function. One hard part of the concept is that the clue doesn’t indicate which part of speech the solution is. (To be fair, sometimes crossword clues don’t either, but they typically do, and if they don’t, they almost always narrow it down). Part of the puzzle here is also that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” so the commonalities between the images are needed to guide the player to the correct solution. The AI worked against the puzzle a little at times in that regard, as, e.g., where a mallard and a goose are apparently pictured in the vertical word on the far left, which could lead one away from the answer, or where the images for the horizontal word across the top don’t seem particularly related to the word, and are probably referencing a movie that was made with that word as its title. The fact that that’s a hard word to make an image of is likely why the AI ended up leaning on movie images. Anyway, as you can tell I had fun doing this and thinking about it – nice work!!

Nice work! I saw this new game had posted and was looking forward to playing a new installment in this genre – I played to the end and it didn’t disappoint! There’s a great, dark narrative told here, and you do a good job of breaking it up and weaving it into the gameplay so that the player isn’t overwhelmed with text. The flashlight and its limited charge were well done – it makes you really feel the darkness.

The game forced me early on to figure out how to fight enemies with the knife, so I actually felt more comfortable fighting that way than with other weapons; only for the final enemy did I use the gun. (I also didn’t realize there was a dash until after I finished!). The fighting was ultimately nicely tuned so that there was a strategy that required dexterity that would win if executed, but that also was challenging (I died many times).

No bugs to report, I had fun – nice work!

Great game! Once again you really excel at making a character with a lot of expressiveness in her movements and mechanics, which makes the game more fun to play. I laughed out loud the first time my character was “rescued” – very fun. Great art, played smoothly, and I played to the end and enjoyed it.

Great game! I played to the end and enjoyed it. Love the artwork and palette, love the NES vibes, great music, and the character art and animations were excellent. You implemented a lot of mechanics here and they played smoothly (I didn’t end up using roll or phase, but loved the phase animation). It’s rare to see a solo game dev do both artwork and mechanics/level design so well. I got stuck at the final boss and couldn’t figure out how to do damage (like others, I attacked the eye, gears, hands, but wasn’t noticing any progress; a comment here gave me enough of a tip) – the scene is pretty chaotic, so perhaps more audio/visual feedback on gear destruction would help? I had fun, awesome work!

Yes, that’s it! The opening above you is not shown on your screen shot, but the game window should auto-launch large enough for you to see it (otherwise, perhaps maximize the game on your screen?). But yes – you’ll have to figure out a way to get out through that opening above…

Nice job on this! - I played this until Level 1 stage 4. The hand-drawn artwork is excellent and has a cohesive charm. The infinite-runner pacing is nice and controls are intuitive. There was a satisfaction to hitting a series of jumps and rolls that made it fun - nice!

Virtually all of my deaths were from beehives, as the timing of the roll is very tight on those. I enjoy challenge in games and even frustrating challenges (part of the fun), but the gap in difficulty between beehives and everything else (timing platforms, clearing ground objects, etc.) was quite large for me, which gave me the feeling that beehive colliders would benefit from being smaller, and other types of challenges might be emphasized more? Or perhaps start the player with a narrower/easier overhead obstacle? I wasn’t improving much with practice on beehives over repeat plays, which is why I didn’t make it to the end. I hope that’s helpful player feedback – Nice job on this game!

Nice – you very nearly beat the game! Hint: look for some light and signs of life from above and see if you can escape that way. Thanks for playing the game!

Nice! The sense of place in this game created by the art, music, and storyline was great – having never been to Singapore, it was interesting to read. I played it to the finish, with the third game definitely being the trickiest for me – was happy when I finally got it – nice work!

Very cool – beautiful artwork, engaging gameplay, and a really nice balance between narrative/text and interactive play. The story here is creative and I like the sense of agency you give in this game, with multiple endings and choices. Really impressive that you created this end to end – nice!

Nice job making it past the boiler room -- people usually say that's the hardest part!  

[Hint follows:]

You're on the right track -- there is a way past that maid, but it's not the same way you got past the maid on the top floor.  Maybe, without knowing it, the maid herself can help you!

Thanks, guys!

Great work, this was fun to play and it fits nicely with the NES tradition of vertical space shooters.  I was feeling pretty good at that halfway point -- alas, an illusion!  I played to the end end and had fun.  In level 1B, the long strings of blue enemies (and maybe also the single red ones?) kept coming down and encircling the screen while I was fighting the boss, which i assumed was just a step-up in challenge that forced you in closer to the boss and required quicker player movements/reactions, but when the 2B and 3B bosses didn't have that, I realized it may have been an accidental overlap of game phases.  But it actually worked really well!  Nice job on this game.

Nice!  After I got the hang of it I got to 326 and saw the Princess float down -- fun to get a little reward like that after seeing my guy faceplant several times.  Love how it became a kind of percussion rhythm game where you had to read the music quickly.  

Thank you so much for your kind words and feedback!  I wish I could have made it longer -- especially after putting in the overhead time to get the mechanics and animations working -- but I was working down to the final hours and had to keep it short to get the game completed.  I usually do longer jams but I couldn't resist an NES one that only comes around once per year.  Thank you for playing it!

Thank you so much, and thank you playing!  I appreciate it!

"The princess was finally found" -- whew!   It's like you knew how many tries it took me and added that "finally" in advance :).  Nice job on this and congratulations on your first game -- you had several levels here with many different types of platforms and different mechanics, which is great.  The grappling-hook mechanic seems like it's notoriously difficult to get to work right in games, but in the portions of platforming that were designed for it in this game, I thought it worked well.  I also enjoyed the platform that carries you a distance and then ejects you -- those are just fun to ride.  And perhaps most of all, I liked that this game had an otherworldly strangeness to it, in the abstract backgrounds that are often just barely indecipherable, and in the coloring.  Nice!

I'd echo the point made elsewhere that the script on your camera should track the player in such a way that there is always some distance between the player's feet and the bottom of the screen (and head and the top of the screen), particularly in a game like this where you are descending downward.  I got some feedback on an early game of mine that there should never be any blind jumping at something you can't see below, and I've avoided that ever since.  (As an alternative, you might have the camera fixed vertically, but colliders that you touch that shift the camera down one full level, and then remains vertically fixed again). I'd also look into "coyote time" and how to add that to your character controller, for a nice feel on all these close jumps.  Finally, I'd suggest either giving your character a full double-jump (with the jump force about the same on the first and second jump, and limited to only two jumps), or none at all -- here, one could rapidly press jump to have the character descend indefinitely up into the air, and with small/uneven amounts of upward force.  Sometimes I'd do it and hit my head on a collider that was probably intended for falls from the level above, and I'd be killed.  As you've probably heard before, if you have the luxury of a non-participant who can playtest while you watch, that always unearths issues one is often blind to in development.  I hope that's all helpful feedback -- nice job again on this!

Nice work!  I played this to the end and it did a great job capturing that Zelda vibe.  It was very engaging and kept me in the zone to the finish.  At times I was stumped on what to do next, and at times I had to take a few lives and some trial & error to beat a boss, so I liked the challenge level as well.  And of course I love a good NES-style secret!  Nice job!  On further development, you might consider constraining the knock-back of enemies (when struck with e.g. sword) to the single x- or y-axis on which it was struck.  When our hero can only attack on even 90-degree angles, having an enemy (who the player has "lined up" for attack) be knocked slightly off-line from the direction of the strike, and then continue its walking path into the hero to hurt the hero (and the hero's sword can no longer make contact) -- this somehow didn't "feel" quite right, maybe because I've been conditioned on the knock-back of grid-based walkers in NES Legend of Zelda?  Just my two cents, others may disagree (and enjoy the new combat considerations it presents), but I thought it might be helpful player feedback.  Nice work!

Thank you for playing and for your kind feedback!  Thank you also for pointing out the bug -- I had never seen it, but I went back and reproduced it and will try to update it with a fix after the jam ends.  Thanks again!