1000 Rules To Live by by Wooshdude
Kind of a Risk of Rain vibe with the item effects, except without the random, since it appeared that item placements were static. I had a good laugh at the hotdog one because I joked on my stream that I thought it looked like a hotdog, and it was. Fun and weird. I like it.
The actual combat wasn't great, and the wall collision needs some work.
Great little soundtrack too, loved the piano dude hanging out.
A Game for 8 Colors by DEGLIS
Another fun and interesting puzzle game.
Whilst I loved the idea and general vibe of this entry, I had a lot of trouble remembering how the colours worked. When I went back to play it later, I understood the game much better. I'm not even sure how you could communicate it better in game since your "How To Play" section was pretty succinct.
I think all this really needed to shine was a more visually interesting colour palette, the same colours obviously, but maybe with different saturation and light values. Something more interesting than flat squares. But for a jam game, this is great.
The white bar that moves down the screen was odd and I'm not sure what you were going for there.
Break! (don't brake) by Kalzme
This was a fun game, I could play something like this all day, probably on my phone given how simple it is and the visual style.
Not much to say, it was a simple idea executed pretty well. You could easily come up with multiple hazards and obstacles if you were to continue working on it. Chuck in some online leaderboards and you're good!
Cute art style too, and the music you chose to use seemed to fit well in my opinion.
Cannibal Rules by ZombieLawyer
Kind of fun management game. Funny idea, I dug the humour.
I think it mostly just needed more variety in the scenarios, and less repeats. Also, a way to gauge the size of the population, since that seemed to affect outcomes as well.
Restarting also seemed to be bugged, possibly the population size not resetting, so I could instantly fail on a replay some times.
Coco Bombs by Adam Games
I feel like you had a good concept, but the game is way too unfinished.
The few animations that are in there are great, like, wow, I really dug them. And the background looked really good.
The hot potatoness added a nice sense of urgency and chaos. Just needed to be more finished to shine.
Coco Cards Casino by GameDevDan and NAL
Another interesting twist on Rock/Paper/Scissors.
Idea is neat, but I'm not overly fond of chance games. That said, this one is less chancey than your dice game at least. Still enjoyable, since there is a little bit of strategy to employ.
The different AI behaviour is always nice, and I do enjoy the characters you usually have in these games. Though, I see a lot of familiar faces this time, heh.
Collect Build Kill by Lukan
A crafting game isn't much if you can't craft unfortunately.
What's there though, does work pretty well. I amused myself at the very least.
Color Wars by Rui Rosario
Shame you didn't have more time, because this seems like the basis for a cool game.
My struggle was constantly trying to remember which colour beats what, and then which button shoots that colour.
The shooting itself should be faster in my opinion. No one like slow bullets.
And some more variation in enemy types and behaviour is a must.
Conquer and DRILL by Cpsy1714
Haha, Russians telling the American president what to do... How unrealistic... ha ha ha... ...
Anyway, I appreciated the idea, and I liked that I could pick fights with anyone, but I'm already bad enough at these kinds of games and I felt lot there was a lot that wasn't explained. Despite not knowing what I was doing, I still had a good time. Bumped you up a rank or so soley because you made Australia the strongest. XD
I didn't need to hear the voice over every time I restarted by the way!
Fire Realm by Red Phantom
Pre-emptive strike on the fire people seems a bit sketchy to me, man. Are you even sure they plan to invade? Seems a bit rude to bust into their place and just lighting them up.
First thing I noticed was the menu. Black text on a dark background is not a great idea. It's still readable, but the text should stand out more. White text or a white outline would work.
Seems sort of Space Invadery but more random. I only had one issue with the controls, in that historically, up arrow makes more sense for doors. Down arrow for shield would have made more sense. Not a big deal since I barely used them.
Shooting was unsatisfying(What was I even doing? Shooting bubbles out of my mouth?).
Some hit effects for enemies that have health would have helped add a little bit.
Not sure what the electric enemies were even doing there. Maybe that's why the fire ones were so mad, all these foreigners in their realm making a fuss. The moved too fast and were less of a challenge and more of an annoyance.
I dug the variety of enemy shapes, but some of them were really weird, man.
Fishy Clicker by sylvain_I
Clicking some fish. I mean, at least it's not false advertisement. The whole game is in the name.
Grow A Plant by Poizen
What a wonderful little puzzle game. I could probably play something like this all day.
I don't have a great deal to say about this game, as I think you did a great job already.
Simple to understand, but I still had trouble with some of the later puzzles. The variety of blocks was good, some of the stages felt like a weird combo of those slide puzzles with a match-3 game, with some sunlight and water physics on the side. There is a lot going on here for such a simple looking game!
It made for a very relaxing and enjoyable experience.
If you were to keep working on it, I'd love to see some more complex stuff like multiple seeds to plant, or different types of plants that require different conditions. I feel like there is quite a bit you could probably do with something like this.
Guess Who Hostage Rescue by Mightyjor
I had the instructions backwards at first and accidentally kept killing the hostage. Whoops!
Fun idea, just needs something extra to keep people playing.
Great overall presentation too, I loved the variety of features you used for the people.
HookLab by Lambda
I wasn't expecting two jam entries featuring grappling hooks!
I like the simple concept, the classic kind of block pushing game, with the added grappling hook twist.
Puzzle design was great, some of them had me stumped for quite a while, and it felt rewarding working it out.
My only real issues with the game are cosmetic. The player sprite doesn't match the style of the background tiles, which seem to be more detailed. So a more cohesive style would have been nice.
Also, your menu requires the mouse when your game doesn't... That's a bit of a pet peeve of mine, since it makes no sense.
Igor by Ninety
Another good use of theme, and a solid experience all round.
Firstly, this was a really well made platformer. Jumping felt great, with a good amount of hangtime. The climbing worked well too.
You introduce the rules one by one at first, as part of your tutorial(I enjoyed how you made the tutorial instructions part of the levels, like a big poster). This works great, as once you get into the meat of the game and start needing to juggle the rules, it becomes more important to know what each icon means.
The nice gameplay twist of only having room for 3 rules and having to remove some or avoid collecting others, I feel that was a bit inspired, really made for a clever and fun experience. All this made for a great progression of difficulty, and a good length for a jam game too.
The art was very nice. Well animated sprites with a bit of juice, good simple backgrounds and tiles, but lots of little nice details(Poor Igor's shack of a house).
Fun story too, just Igor trying not to be late for work(His commute is a nightmare to be honest, don't know how he does this every day), I enjoyed the intro and ending dialogues. A few NPCs scattered throughout the game was nice, they didn't add much, but it did make the world feel more lived.
Inconvenience Store by TehPilot
Topical *and* fun!
I'm glad I had you in my stream while I was playing this, as there were a lot of little details I wouldn't have figured out on my own.
This idea sounds so simple and easy, but making it turn-based really messed with my brain. I really loved playing it.
The way each level sort of adds complexity was handled well, we start with one item to sell, then you add more, then you add cleanliness on top of that, and that's where the stress comes in.
As was pretty evident from my playthrough video, I was very bad at keeping things clean! Without your tip about the coloured squares, I would have had a much harder time with it. I think you pointed out that even a green square was still a level of dirt, but in my mind, I see a green square and think green = good, so I was ignoring them at first.
It really pays to plan out your route before you start just blitzing around the shop, I had a lot of fun trying to figure out which order I was going to do things in, based on previous failed attempts. I was playing too reactively, but you really need to be proactive in a game like this.
Great sprites, and I loved the bouncy movement, though I think some of the sprites needed to stand out more from the background, as I did notice sometimes I would lose track of the newspaper for instance.
Also, a great length for a game jam game too, though I would love to play more.
Lava Jamp by sk8dududu
I don't mind these kinds of games usually, but they really need solid mechanics to be any fun.
The jumping was mostly ok, but short hops felt weird. A game like this really needs some sort of jump buffer too for when you land or when you jump just off the end of the ledge.
The ground collisions seemed to be a bit inconsistent too. I would descend, and I would see the character stop momentarily indicating I hit the ledge, but then he would just fall through it, which was frustrating.
And while I like the idea of the extra obstacle of the enemy behind shooting things at you, it just wasn't balanced very well. Your only defense is to jump over, but you already need to jump so precisely half the time, so most of the time I was getting hit because I had no choice, or rather, I had to choose between getting hit or falling off.
I did like the art, even though I'm pretty sure we see the little demon guy's wang every time he jumps. How embarrassing.
Mage's Quest by Calepiaro
Short and sweet.
Mostly just a simple platformer, but the abilities you can find add some nice variation with some light puzzle solving. Really needed some more levels.
Also, I know it's just a jam, but menus shouldn't use the mouse if you don't use the mouse in the game.
Catchy little chiptune soundtrack too.
MEGADOME by The M
I'm not really into battle royale type games, but this was a bit fun.
The mining thing to bolster your stats was neat, but I found the best strategy eventually was to just go straight for players before they get too strong, and ignore the mining completely. In my later playthroughs I was winning consistenly by doing this.
Controlled well, but the sensitivity was way too low with no way to adjust, I had to pump my mouse up to 11. Also, no crosshair feels like an oversight(Pun intended).
The cooldown for shooting was a good idea, but I found it frustrating how long it was, I just want to shoot, man! Haha.
Also I feel like 3D games like these need some sort of fog effect for gauging distance, or any kind of lighting effect that makes every appear less flat than it does.
Using GMCers as your AI units is a fun idea(But it would have been neat to play as myself haha), and the voice over thing is a fun idea but the quality of the voice acting left a little to be desired. I could barely hear the voice over the other sounds, as if you were trying to keep your voice down while recording it.
Obviously out of scope for a jam, but this could be more fun with humans, since the AI is a bit naff haha, and they don't know how to spam fire, so I always have the advantage.
Morning Commute by Yothebob
World's neediest girlfriend simulator.
The idea was neat, I liked it and I think it was mostly well made. Very challenging.
The main issue I had was the car decelerates way too quickly, making it difficult to manage. Either let me keep accelerating or make the deceleration more gradual.
Also, I would have highly recommended swapping the Enter and Space key functions. That kept tripping me up, since Enter makes more sense for sending messages.
Anyway, the idea itself is fun enough still, just takes some really specific strategy to win(and because the win screen is so similar to the lose screen, I didn't even realise I had won the first time! )
Nice simple backgrounds, but could have used more detail and some scenery.
Night Of The Winning Dead by Pat Ferguson
Lemmings but a zombie game... I can't believe this wasn't already a thing. It's just a perfect idea.
You really nailed that old DOS/Amiga aesthetic that I originally played Lemmings on.
What really put this at the top for me was all the extra work in the intro and the music. It just feels so much like a finished game as it is, with all the splash screens, but then you have this whole voiced intro with the newscaster and and ending. I hope you polish this up and sell it for real.
Nod Zombies by BigDallas
A fun twist on Frogger.
I think my main complaint with this was that the people who mug you don't stand out much against the background, so I had trouble seeing them half the time. That and I think the garbage truck shouldn't be green, since it's easy to mistake for the money car. But maybe that was intentional?
The effect of the screen darkening and the sounds distorting was done very well, so gradual that I didn't even notice until I reset it with adrenaline. Nice.
Out of the Square by ericossiqueira and Benjamim
I feel like this could have been a really interesting puzzle game with the shape changing, but unfortunately there's nothing like that here. When I first realised I could change shape, I expected some sort of situation where I might need to be octagonal to fit in a hole or flat to block something, or anything really. But in the end there was just some light platforming and box2D collisions. The cage enemy was neat, but buggy. In my second playthrough it saw me, missed once, then flew out of the level.
The ending is strange and I'm not quite sure if it's supposed to mean anything, but it did make me laugh.
PUSH by Toque
Funny idea using the GMC avatars for the blocks.
I would have liked the game much better if I didn't feel like I was dying unfairly to blocks that barely moved or barely touched me.
Also, hell yeah for recurring characters!
I think what bugged me most about this game, was I was forced to rewatch the intro animation every time I restarted. Put in a skip button, man! It's funny the first time for sure, but I don't want to sit through it every retry.
Robber Rules! by KPJ
Great concept, but I think the difficulty to start off is too high. I think this was the first game I played in my streams, and as you could see from that, I had a hard time getting through it!
The concept was simple enough, but the enemies come up behind you much too fast. I would recommend slowing the whole game down to begin with, then ramp it up later when players are comfortable.
The other issue is that it ends up being pretty easy to exploit and cheese your way through(Which is the only way I ended up beating it during the stream).
I think part of it was the controls, I know personally I would have preferred some controls closer together, like Z X C or the arrow keys or something like that.
Simple art, very readable. Cool music too.
Robo Royale by bandman28 and Josh Chen
First mistake is requiring both hands on the keyboard to play, while also having the menu be mouse based. I only have two hands.
Unfortunately this seems to be quite unfinished. At least once I spawned outside the play area.
Rules of the Rhinoceros by Yal
This was probably the most insane jam game I played. I'm still not a fan of the weird blurry chromatic abberation look. I find it hard to look at it, starts to give me a headache. There's just so much going on constantly too.
The rules twist was another neat one, but some of the random rules were just not fun in the slightest. The money damaging you one probably hurt my enjoyment the most. But I still sort of understand why it is in there, I just wish I didn't draw it so often.
The main gameplay loop was mostly fun, but chaotic(which itself can add to the fun). I felt like the knockback from enemies was wayyyy too high. I would get flung into a corner and just have to wait several seconds until it's done, only to get hit again and repeat.
The guns were wild, it was fun trying out the different types. I didn't get far, or unlock many upgrades, mostly because I kept getting the coins hurt rule a lot.
Rush, Kill, Repeat by filiprb
Cool idea, but there were a lot of smaller issues that made this tough to play.
First off, it seems you didn't set controller deadzones, so having one plugged in made me think the menu was broken.
While I thought the lighting system was a cool idea, it was just too dark, dude. Everything was too dark.
I was told mid way through my stream of the game that shift would let me run(Which would have been nice if it was explained in the game or in a readme file). My opinion on sprint buttons is, if there's no reason for me to not sprint, then the sprint speed should be my normal speed, and I shouldn't need a sprint button. In this case, there didn't seem to be any point not sprinting, as the normal movement speed was so slow.
The timer based gameplay is a neat idea, but the random enemy spawns makes any successful run based a bit on luck. Some sort of indication of where enemies might be is much needed in a game like this. If everyone had a slightly larger and brighter light circle, that could have helped immensely.
The different kinds of guns were pretty fun to shoot though.
Snakes on a Plain by Richerama
I thought I had beaten the game with an exploit, but it turns out the game was just being polite and waiting for me to stop spamming punch before it triggered the next set of dialogue.
As I said on the forum, this game reminded me a little of a mobile game called Punch Quest(which is actually quite fun), as it had similar controls.
I tried to think of how you could improve on your game, but I just kept coming back to Punch Quest haha.
The sprites and background were neat, really dug the 3D effect on the background.
Dialogue was funny too.
Spielcomm 2020 by Bart
Topical!
It was a strange entry for sure, racing to find a bin so I can change masks, washing my hands, avoiding everyone possible, all while trying to collect coins.
The AI was frustrating, but that's pretty accurate because people are just as frustrating. It took me a few goes to get the hang of it and finally get to the tram thing, but several attempts and I still wasn't able to survive the tram ride!
Just like the other 3D game, some lighting or fog effect to gauge depth and make things look less flat coloured would be ideal too.
Subside by HyprBlu
Grappling hooks are always a bit fun.
Good variety of enemies and enemy behaviour. Didn't expect there to be boss fights, and they weren't too bad. I think all but the giant ceiling bug boss were cheesable, but still a good challenge.
Shooting felt good, good amount of screenshake too. Great progression of difficulty and challenge, each stage becoming more complex and more full of enemies and hazards.
Some nice sprites and backgrounds too, though, the bosses being sized up normal enemies looked weird, but fine enough for a game jam. Good way to reuse resources and save time.
The Faults in our Code by Evanski, CloakedGames and Joseph Ellis
References: The Game(I later made that joke in Evanski's stream too)
I was surprised to see a "Papers, Please" inspired game in this jam, but it works quite well. The gameplay itself is quite simple. Click the cross or the tick, that's it. Where this game shines is the humour and dialogue. You have to decide whether or not a robot is defective or not based on Asimov's 3 laws(Kind of perfect for the theme, heh). Eventually you start to realise there is an actual story underneath(which was unexpected), and you are in control of how it ends. Multiple endings is always cool in my book, and the ones I saw were a lot of fun.
There were a tonne of references throughout, about half of which I got. Much appreciated, references and easter eggs are fun. Like seeing you had 42 written out in binary gave me a chuckle(Squirrel Girl taught me to count binary better than any IT teachers I had), and the Short Circuit reference I got was wonderful. It was also nice to see FAZIL again, good past jam entry haha.
Great art throughout, fun and creative looking robot designs. GIANT HAND CURSOR. Great menu, and some sweet music.
As a narrative-focused game, this works well, but it does sort of make the randomised robots feel less interesting and those parts of the game more pointless. Some sort of indicator of how well you're doing, or some consequences for your decisions would be a good addition to flesh this out more.
The ritual by finh2003
I like how instead of having 3 rules to follow, you went the opposite route and had 3 forbidden rules. Very nice twist on the theme.
I ignored that because raising the dead is fun, and also makes things so much easier. The potion effects were fun too.
I also completed the ritual, and it I got a good laugh from running around as the pig, I put up a good fight too! Well, I ran a lot. Still fun.
The curse meter I didn't understand at first because I instantly forgot what I had read in the tutorial. My later playthrough it made sense to me though haha.
There were some good simple animations and backgrounds. I liked how the wand rotated on the hand, but the fireballs appeared from the player's center, not the wand, so that was a wee bit disappointing.
Good sfx too, the fireball sounded great.
They Bleed Red Too by SoapSud39
The intro was very unsettling, well, all the scenes with the father were really. Well done.
Once I understood the rules, this was a fun and interesting entry. Some good platforming and controls. Hiding in the shadows was cool.
My first playthrough I jumped outside the level and fell forever. Completely ignoring the exit sign at the end level.
Simple sprite designs, but the colours and shading gave it this neat embossed feel that I was into. I enjoyed stealing identities and changing my appearance.
The backgrounds were a bit boring, but that's how jams go.
Three Nights Of Knights by chris24
A fun little platformer with some light combat.
The main part of the gameplay was breaking open chests, and boy did I enjoy that. I just love breaking
. And I get money? Hell yeah. The little bit of screenshake helps sell it even more.
The platforming was basic but worked well enough. I would consider adding variable jumping(Jump height deteremined by how long you hold the jump button).
The combat was simple, but could be improved with some small changes. Firstly, I would make the block/parry more timing based. You have to press it right before being attacked to parry. That would add a small amount of challenge.
Obviously, the AI is a beat weak, so there's plenty to improve upon here, but it's fine for a jam game, just a bit easy once you work it out.
I did like that I could use my hard earned gold to revive the enemies as friends, just a shame they served no purpose. I imagine you wanted them to help fight bad guys which could have been a lot of fun.
I think all you would need after that is some other enemy types and some bosses and you're good.
The sprites and animations were fine, just needed some background art.
Three Rules Make a Riddle by Ghandpivot
If you watched the stream, you'll see I struggled quite a bit with this one. I'll chalk that up to stage fright ^^' Solving puzzles with an audience watching is stressful haha.
I feel like most of the clues were well written with only a few that maybe were too vague or confusing(The brushing teeth one threw me because of the bleeding clue). I would have likely been stuck for much longer with some vague but helpful clues from people watching me play.
Apart from that, a reasonably solid word puzzle game. A good use of theme too.
The keyboard input worked well, and the jumbled letters as a sort of extra hint to unscramble was a nice touch.
Great presentation too, I know there wasn't much happening, but it looked good.
Three Rules Standing by Alice and Mercerenies
If we were ranking purely on how much time I spent on a jam game, this would be #1 for sure XD
This is the kind of idea I was hoping to see this jam. I think I've been pretty vocal about how I feel about this theme(and some other recent ones) but this kind of game makes the theme worth it.
I had some trouble understanding some of the rules at first, but the game makes it easy to figure out, which was very helpful. The puzzle progression was done really well. You could have easily left this game with each room having 3 rules to obey and make all your puzzles based on that, but instead you started adding extra rules to a room, but with the caveat that you could ignore some as long as you are still following three of them. That was extremely clever, as it gives the illusion of more complicated puzzles, but you really are still following 3 rules, just like the older rooms, only now you have to figure out which ones you can ignore. But then on top of that, you'll revisit rooms from a different entrance, and now some of those rules you ignored before are rules you need to follow. So wonderfully complex. I think I was only able to cheese like, one or two of the puzzles too which is a sign of good puzzle design(I'm still embarrassed by how long it took me to solve some of them, I am going to blame stage fright from streaming).
Alice's art has been steadily improving recently, which is great to see. Quite a few portrait images of the characters and they all looked great, I'm glad you've found a style to work with. Your walk cycle animations could still use some work, but they are really solid, well done.
The story was great too, this could have easily been a cynical game given the totalitarian society portrayed, but it was full of puns, and jokes, and laughs, and pancakes, and more puns. Also a nice little twist ending that explains why you can use the computers, heh.
Lots of fun and funny dialogue, which only makes it more of a shame you didn't have time to flesh out the emptier rooms with the NPCs you planned to have. I'm looking forward to seeing the post jam version when I find some time after voting.
All this really needs is some more interesting backgrounds and tiles, maybe tweak some of the animations, and flesh out the empty rooms. Oh and a better failure popup.
Trichotomy by FrostyCat
Your affinity for these kinds of strategy games, and your own implementation of them is impressive. There's no way I could come up with a board game half as interesting as some of your jam entries.
I did expect to see some Rock/Paper/Scissors type games in this jam, but I think this was the most impressive one.
I'm not an overly strategic minded person, so I do struggle with these games a wee bit, but I still had fun. Still managed to win against the AI.
The directional attack of the pieces was a nice touch, though I feel like this meant there was a bit more luck involved in winning, but not so much that it outweighed pure strategy. I briefly wondered if letting you rotate your piece would work.
I think from a full version I'd like to see different board sizes, (I was going to suggest multiplayer but on my second playthrough, I noticed you already added human second player!)
Upside Down Tower by Armored Dragon
I don't think I have played a puzzle game like this before. I don't have much to say besides that I think the block timer needs to be longer.
The art was great, loving the shaking chains and the effect of the falling elevator platform, very cool.
Vaccine Maze by Lucas Poeiras
Another game that uses mouse for the menus, but then not for the actual game...
The maps layouts were ok, simple ideas like this are nice. Just a few small issues that add up in the end.
I noticed some wall collision issues, probably due to sprite origins. In a game like this I recommend using a sprite mask instead, keep it simple.
Using the soap to stun enemies was good, but they were still able to sneeze in that state. Intentional or not, I found it a wee bit annoying.
I did manage to beat all the levels, the first two were good, but the last one was a big random mess. I didn't realise though that I didn't have to collect every syringe to win.
Sprites were good, just could have used some more interesting wall sprites.
Weapon Master by DreadedDruid
The three rules weren't obvious to me at first, but it was a neat interpretation of the classic weapons triangle.
Making enemies only vulnerable to one type of weapon works well, especially with the variety of enemies matching your own capabilities.
Colour coding them is always a good idea, but I feel like some colours would make more sense switched around. Like, fireball should be red, no?
Either way, it was a neat idea in a well made game. The lighting effects and level layout, keys to find to progress, and a boss fight. All great.
The boss fight was cool, but needs some tweaking on enemy spawn behaviour. Nothing worse than having an enemy spawn on you, not fun.
I didn't notice until my second playthrough that you have a fully functioning map in your pause menu! Impressive.
Good sprites and backgrounds too, just a shame there was no sound or music!
Whack (only) the Mole by awlred
This was a great twist on Whack a Mole. I never would have thought this game idea could be improved with extra animals, and the way you adapted it to the keyboard layout was wonderful.
I obviously struggled with the full keyboard layout version. I think my main issue came from trying to remember which extra key to hold before pressing it, and I don't have a solution on how to make that easier.
My biggest complaint is that it seems that even if you correctly press the right keys, and are in the process of patting a bunny or giving mushrooms to a badger, it can still register failure if you do it too late. Clearly the disappear timer is still running during the interaction, which should be an easy fix.
Sprites were fine for a jam game, but I would love to see a fully polished version with improved sprites, and some nice backgrounds. The music was great btw, very catchy.
You Only Have 3 Minutes by Evanski
Joke games are fine, but at least pick the right theme?
YOUR RULES by Gravedust and Tomato
There was a lot to like about this game. Controlled well, and there a good variety of enemy with varying AI. The eventual gimmick of destroying the rules once you realise they may be impossible to follow is great. I assumed I would be able to destroy them at first, but didn't think I would have to fail first before trying it again. Lovely ending btw.
The space background looked fantastic, and the player and enemy sprites were really well done. Like I said in my video, I really liked the stretching effect on the projectile, it just looked so cool.
All the effects looked good to be honest, lots of little and cool details.
I know it's not the point, but I would have liked a proper game out of this too, with bosses and more enemies and locations, and powerups. It just felt and looked so nice that I wanted to keep playing.