itch.io

Thank you very much, I appreciate the kind words! Yes, orchestrating all the mechanics and the level design and notes placement to make them click was fun. Doing it without playtest felt very wrong though, I wasn't sure I was making it too hard or making it too obvious. I also had a ton of other ideas, like a harpoon that would stick to the dirt and work like a grappling hook, which would combo with the box + red shard combo that would create more dirt in some spots for you to hook to. Luckily, I got a hold of myself and did not let scope creep get the best of me.

About the graphics and audio, the 1-bit rule gave me the idea of a retro type of game, one you could imagine running in the old Commodore or older PCs, so I made everything 1-bit-ish, which meant low res with pixel perfect alignment, chiptunes music and low bit sound effects as well. That menu that always shows on screen was very common at the time, even Shovel Knight had a form of these menus with the black background. It was also a good way to make up for my lack of art skills, you can see the pixel art itself is not good (just playing the other games here I can see A LOT of amazing pixel artists) but because everything felt like it belonged next to each other, the game "looked" better.

Thanks again!