Don't worry yourself with getting donations running "soon". It can be a bit of a hassle because of legal issues. I have only done it myself recently when I've had lots of free time on my hands. Though itchio itself wasn't a big hurdle, only the bureaucracy that comes with making money from something.

I also just checked back on the music as that glitched out on my playthrough. It is really good, I like such atmospheric spacey synth tracks. From the very little I know they can be hard to make due to how much possibilities there are with synths. To use that for an atmospheric track needs atleast a basic understanding of sound engineering/sound designing or whatever it is called.

But I shouldn't really try to analyze beyond my own knowledge. What I can say for certain is that you managed to pull off a really good atmosphere with the music on this game.

Eyy thanks a ton for playing!

I spend a lot of effort making the artstyle feel familliar to SMW (so much some people thought I straight up just took assets from there).

I don't feel like this is much of a puzzle platformer. There's a few puzzle-esque things at the first half due to the unique jumping mechanic, but later on it derails into Kaizo.

I might do something more in the puzzle direction though. But first I wanna make a proper level editor so I can more easily make and playtest levels.

But when I finished that I could do some more interesting large-scale levels.

Making small games as hobby is fun, I also don't expect to get anything out of my games too. But I like giving something in return for things I enjoyed.

So I send a few bucks your way, I hope it wasn't too much setup for that little bit.

Heyope, this game ended up my favourite Itch game of 2024 (tied on the top spot).

I already ranted on why I love this right below this comment. So happily I can keep this short (though I am itching to another wall of text here).

Gave it a tiny shoutout on my yearlyblogpost (hyperlink), and would absolutely donate 10 bucks if you had them open.

Heyope, this ended up being my favourite game I played on Itch in 2024 (tied on place 1).

I love everything about this little project. It got me so drawn into it I did multiple runs throughout a multitude of days.
This game is insanely satisfying to play, I love the insane comboes you start doing after figuring out how to properly play it.

I feel I should really spend yet another hour with this.

Anyways I did a tiny shoutout for this game on yearlyBlogpost. And would donate 10 bucks if the donations were open.

Heyope... I really feel like I am cluttering the comments here (especially that accursed masterpiece right below me).
But hey, this ended up being my secondish favourite itch game of last year.

With my walls of text below I don't think I have to justify myself any more than: 2D PIKMIN LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Anyways, I did a small tiny mini shoutout for the game on my yearly blogpost (hyperlink) and WOULD donate 10 bucks if you had them open.

Am excited to get around to checking out future updates.

Heyope, I remember really loving this, and it ended up being my ~3rd favourite Itch game I played in 2024.

I already explained what I liked in my original comment a little below this, so I'm just here to say I did a short shoutout in my tiny yearlyBlogpost and am donating 9 bucks... If PayPal didn't glitch out. If you know anything of why that could've happened do inform me. Would really like to throw a few bucks your way.

Also I saw you recently uploaded another project for GGJ. Even if it's just a Jam Project I am really excited to get around to playing it in the next few days.

Heyope, this ended up being in my favourite games of 2024 (place 4).

I really like the level design of this. The gimmick isn't something I'd expect to work that well for so long, but you really managed to make it work for quite a few levels.

On top of that I also just have to place this in my favourites because from what I know ya'll also make Mario Maker Troll levels. Which I've absolutely fallen in love with after watching way too many (I really gotta get around to playing them myself). And I have the deepest respect for the amount of experience it takes to make Levels of that quality.

Anyways, I gave a tiny shoutout on my Blogpost and am donating 9 Bucks.

I see Hifuu Club I like...

Oh yeah, this ended up being in my favourite itch games of 2024 (place 5). It's very cute.

I gave it a little shoutout via my Blogpost and would give 8€ if you had donations on.

Nothing else to say really, I gotta play more of your other titles too, they are also fantastic (especially touhou flight simulator)

Heyope, this ended up being in my favourite itch games of 2024 (place 6).

I really like boss battles and this game has some fun ones. Especially the last boss seemed insanely interesting. Though sadly I didn't beat it because of how long replays took.

Maybe I'll get around to it now.

Anyways I gave the game a little shoutout on my yearly Blogpost. And I would absolutely donate 8 Bucks if you had them open.

Anyways, sorry for the second comment just to advertise my Blogpost, your other games are looking real good too I'm really excited to find the time to play them.

Heyope, just wanted to notify you that this ended up being in my favourite free itch games of 2024 (place 7).

I don't think I gotta mention my thoughts on the game anymore.

I gave it a little shoutout in my Blogpost and would be willing to donate 7 bucks if possible.

Heyope, this ended up being in my top free games of 2024 (place 8).

Despite the insanely bleak setting, I don't particularly remember my time with it being bleak. It was somewhat fun flying thought that dystopian future.

And I really gotta say looking at your other stuff I am getting excited to play more from you. Especially LiDAR Exploration Program is looking absolutely gorgeous. Even if horror isn't my vibe I love too much when people do such cool things.

Anyways, I have a short shoutout to this project on my yearly Blogpost (hyperlink) and donated 7 bucks.

Heyope, just wanted to say I enjoyed this game enough it landed in my favourite itch games of last year (place 9).

I think the comment I made earlier reflects well enough why I love this game lots, so I won't reiterate.

I gave it a little shoutout on my yearlyBlogpost, and would be happy to send a few bucks your way if you had donations on.

Heyope, this landed in my list of favourite free itch games I played 2024 (place 10).

Just wanted to say I've shouted it out in my blogpost and would give 6 bucks if you had donations on.

I think my score showcase right below this should be explanation enough of why this ended up on my list.

Heyope. Ah, yes the classic "battle against some cubes", because there wasn't enough need for proper enemy design... I like myself some fancy looking cubes. I just spend 59 minutes grinding this. Sadly only got to 140 seconds (goal was 200). Without using cheese of course, I got some good RNG where I could've just hidden away between some blocks, but that wasn't any fun.

Anyways the real reason I am here and posting is because of Robes. It ended up being one of my favourite games I played on itch last year (place 11).

I really like the styling you did on that game. Same goes for this project. Really makes me try some simmilar styling with that harsh contrast in the shadow and the neon 3D-Sprites.

So I gave it some shoutout on my yearly Blogpost (which this game delayed further by one hour, and donated 5 Bucks to Robes.

Heyope, this ended up being one of my favourite Itch games I ended up playing in 2024 (place 12).

I really like the atmosphere of this thing. I think the Ice area is my favourite one. It has a great sunset and I remember the nightsky being rather good. Though the godrays in the high grass are also fantastic. (I really gotta replay this sometime, this is mostly base don my notes from a year back)

As little thanks I gave this a small shoutout in my yearlyBlogpost (hyperlink) and spend some bucks for 0n0w.

This was cool.

Am really impressed with how varied the levens get. I really like the use of fake blocks as clouds and obstrucing... uhh.. somethings.

The Trampoline also got some fun usage especially in W3 L3. Having to jump between the spikes in the upper layers of the cloouds was fun.

Sadly I couldn't find the exit in that level, so that was my endpoint. I had a simmilar issue with W2 L3. A labyrinth kind of level which had some ok ieda but felt a bit too over the place, especially as I never had any idea where to go (Did find a cool hidden cross-thingy though... But I think I was soft-locked in that area... still cool secret).

Some of the levels are lagging for me (playing on Firefox). Especially W2 L3.

Had a fun time with this even if it was a bit rough around the edges. 

I got 221... So I can verify that yes:You are cool!

Very fun and cute. The gameplay is really well implemented and quite intuitive.

I'd say the biggest issue is how many enemies appear in later stages. Especially due to them stacking up it becomes hard to play the game the "proper way". The most effective gameplay-style starts becoming a "circle the Aunns around". Which is REALLY fun, but also feels a little bit like playing the game wrong (though it is fun so this isn't a big issue).

Also really happy about the amount of enemy variety this little project has. It gives it a neat amount of extra spice, especially the snails.

Just spend around 2 hours making and validating a level called "TheRainbowCave". I didn't know there was a time limit when building so I had to speedrun it extremely tight.
Game crashed while uploading... really hoping it finished that.
Should've screenshotted the level atleast.

Well was still fun. I really like the deflecting mechanic. Lead to some interesting passages in my level. Didn't play any online maps.

EDIT: IT GOT UPLOADED YAY
will check out the amazing levels by other peeps later

Yup... that was fantastic. One of the most fun games I've played this year (not saying much yet but I think it'll manage to keep that impression till the end of the year)

I absolurely adore how unique the Karts are. I can't even decide which one is my favourite.

Got a good score. Was quite fun.

I the ship is quite fun to control, though you have to be extremely carefull when going for a high score. Using the full speed is way too high for this camera-zoom and this density.

By the way there's a bug where you can extend your i-frames by just getting hit again. I really like this bug, very fun. Would be hilarious to see a TAS abusing this bug.

YAAAAY (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ I finally got around to playing the updated variant. Took a bit because I've had my hands full with getting my current project into the final stage. (I've also taken myself WAAAYYY to little time last year to play games)

But I am really happy to have gotten around to it now.
I am really happy to see how well the project already works at this stage. It was sometimes a bit hard to notice how an enemy would attack but overall the combat translates surprisingly well into 2D.

The Moonie death animation will haunt me for the rest of my life just as much as the Pikmin one.

I am insanely happy with how you've made the sunset effect. When I first saw the palette change I was scared it wouldn't have a very goof feel to it, but I was proved very wrong. It isn't the absurd beauty which Pikmin 4 presents you with, but instead absolute terror after the palette changes to a dark blue and the music stops playing being replaced with some really well fitting ominous atmosphere.
I think a reason why it works so well is also because of the strong dark-blue tint making things a little more hard to notice.

Anyways, had lots of fun returning back here. Pretty sure this will come in my favourite free games I played in 2025 (though sadly that list won't be too large because I didn't play many games).

A little late, but I'll give some hints in base 64:

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--- VGhlIGZpcnN0IGlzOiBZb3UgbmVlZCBhbiBvZGQgbnVtYmVyIG9mIGNvbnNvbmFudHM=
--- VGhlIHNlY29uZCBuZWVkcyBhbiBu
--- Rm9yIHRoZSB0aGlyZCB5b3UgaGF2ZSB0byB1c2UgYSByZWFsIHdvcmQ=
--- VGhlIHllbGxvdyB3YW50cyAyIGNoYXJhY3RlcnMgdGhhdCBhcmUgYmVoaW5kIGVhY2ggb3RoZXIgaW4gdGhlIGFscGhhYmV0
--- VGhlIFBlbnVsdGltYXRlIG5lZWRzIGJldHdlZW4gNSBhbmQgNiBjaGFyYWN0ZXJz
--- VGhlIEZpbmFsIG5lZWRzIDIgdm9jYWxzIGluIGEgcm93Lg==

--- QSBwb3NzaWJsZSBzb2x1dGlvbiB3b3VsZCBiZSBBTU5FU0lB

Spoilery Base64 comment (do give it a try yourself, is a fun puzzle):

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

I felt for quite a while like I had to check back up on your games because of Kaizemo being stuck in my head.
And ohhh damn, it was a good idea to finally do so.

I absolutely love this mechanic. It's probably one of the coolest ideas I've seen in quite a while. Might even be one of the coolest mechanics I've seen this year...

Okay I just checked up and the only games with possibly cooler mechanics are (no particular order):
Tiny Companions,I have put the creature into my Gun,PicoHOT (I know it's just ultrahot but still gotta go on that list), Ore from the age of Gods, Miss Paint,Context CatacombsA game Greenpixels in currently developing but the page isn't open for everyone and I dunno if I can just show it around
(Special shoutouts to: Environmental Station Alphas latter half, and Yuuma Toutetsu in Touhou 19)
Pretty sure this is the most unique mechanic I've seen this year (if we don't count ESAs second half as a mechanic because holy moly). So congrats, lol.
Just checked up on a few other ones. And I totally forgotThe Sapphire which I am still playing through. So I sadly gotta undo your congratulation priviliges, as much as it hurts to do.

Still, absolutely fantastic mechanic. I may steal this in some manner when I inevitably finish my current project and finally make another platformer.

Will now also finally look at some of your other projects!

Hatte es gerade ausgefüllt und das hier als Referenz benutzt damit ich alles richtig mach. Hat geholfen, also vielen vielen dank.

Hier ein screenshot von der Bestätigungsseite die Gefehlt hat.

Nah nah, it's not a negative term to most people. There's definitions ranging from booth "judgement about boothnegative andpositive qualities" and "the act of judgement usuallynegative". The first one feels like the more common usage currently, and also what you used.

Me disliking the term is mostly because the word has been used for "insanely long opinion pieces that are surprisingly negative". Imagine a book called "Critique of Pikmin 4's Artstyle" spending 500 whole pages explaining why the Author dislikes the Artstyle, with a mere 10 Sentences saying very small positives, and 30 pages saying it is objectively bad.
I've kinda seen too much of that recently to like that word... But that's just me personally and I understand that. So you did not upset me in the slightest.

I also think praising positive things without giving any improvements wanted is one of the most helpful kinds of feedback.
Of course there's always endless lists of improvements people can give you. But those lists will differ from person to person. You will then have to decide which part of the "list of improvements" actually fits what you're wanting to do.
Recently I showed off a Boss-Battle-Project on a local Convention. And I did have such a situation.
Many people had an issue with their depth perception on a specific attack. But one of the people, which was more in my target audience, did not. And they also said that was kinda the point of the attack (which is 100% true). My reaction to that was slightly cleaning up the attacks visuals. It wasn't to take one extreme side, but to just see what fits the type of game I wanna make. Which is a Boss fight that has some pretty patterns where you gotta look closely what is happening, while not being "figure out which of these 20000 bullets is going to hit you in .5 seconds - THE GAME".

In contrast those "lists of things that are great" are things people already liked. You don't need to do any complex weighting of your options, different opinions people had and the goal of your project. You just got the thing that people liked, which you (probably) already know how to do, and now you can do more stuff like that. And if you didn't notice that aspect and don't know how exactly it got in: GREAT! YOU JUST FOUND A NEW WAY TO ENJOY YOUR OWN THING!!!

This also reminded me to ask more directly what people liked about my projects. I kinda didn't do that on the convention because I wanted to focus on ironing out mistakes and stuff. But I do wanna have a focus on what people liked when I am reviewing gameplay and opinions.
So writing this overly lengthy comment helped me get those thoughts sorted out. So thanks for that, hopefully it can help ya too and didn't take too long to read.

No problem, take your time, there's no need to rush.

Happy to hear that the "criticisms" are helping.
I'm not really fond of the term "criticism" in general. To me it has become kind of a symbol of someone being negative, just to make themselves sound smarter than the other people who they think are just blindly liking things.
Under no circumstances I wanna pride myself in saying negative things about a game. The exact opposite is true, I absolutely love video games. I wanna pride myself in being able to say good things about the worst games I played.
So whenever I say negative things about a game I feel I gotta be as respectful with it as possible. And I might do that a little too intensensively.

Anyways I'm excited for the next update! Am happy to know the project is able to move forward!

Heyope, welcome to itch. There's all kinds of games here.

My first recommendation would be to try check out anyone you see. Be it the comments on this post, the comments on other posts or the comments on games. Many people on here are developers so it is easy to find games by just clicking on someones profile.
And of course you can search via Tags on itchio. If you use RSS feeds you can even subscribe to them and get all the games of a specific genre.

Some stuff I can recommend specifically based on your current interests (they are either atmospheric, Puzzle games, or have some unique/experimental mechanics):
Context Catacombs - A really fantastic Puzzle game. It got a fantastic atmosphere and really unique mechanic. The Puzzles are also some great stuff.
Miss Paint - A simple Puzzle Platformer with a very unique mechanic
Drone delivery Despair - A dreadfully dark atmospheric game... Though it kinda made me wanna speedrun it
Yuuma Game - Really Unique Bullet Hell game
HEDGEWIZARDS - Unique jumping Mechanic
Birdsong - Very Unique short Metroidvania
A time Travellers Guide to past Delicacies - WEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIRRRRD (seriously I have no clue what this is meant to be about)
Dire Decks - Classic Unique Itchio
We Become What we Behold - Thoughtprovoking small game about news
let there be Knight - Puzzle Game
Fragments of Euclid - really atmospheric Puzzle Game
(Do check out all their Developer pages too)

And for any further recommendations I am sadly too lazy.
I do have a list of all the games I played last year. It is in my2023 Lookback. There's quite a bunch of games there which are really cool.

If you're interested in my games, I usually try to make smallish games with maybe a little interesting thing, but nothing too special. Currently I don't have many projects on here because I've been polishing a single project for A LONG time now. Though that'll be finished soon

Ok first off... Sadly the portals gave me a headache, and I gotta rant a bit on that.
My GPU gives me a little bit of screen tearing on this game. And my eyes don't like screen tearing at all. Which gets made extra bad with the portals which have an even more headache inducing effect.

I think the most important part is to get our that delay the camera movement of the portals has. It really messes with the head for me. (sadly I have no clue what could cause this as I haven't used UE a lot yet)
The low resolution I don't think is that much of an issue. But you could hide it some more with an overlay effect, just like you have when the player is a bit further away.

Anyways onto the actual meat of the game:
It looks really fantastic. Certainly very well made.
There are some issue with random insanely bright light shining onto the ground, as well as the water looking very basic, especially in comparision to the rest.
But other than that, the art direction here is fantastic and execution is great.

It genuinely had me just walk around and look at the... walls. They're pretty.
Jokes aside, I love the last puzzle rooms look. It's really gorgeous.
The switch from the previous greyish palette to that golden one is fantastic. Had a neat wow effect on me.

Now when it comes to gameplay, there's not much to say. The puzzles are so light that I classify this as walking sim. But I do like myself some walking sims, especially when they make me look at walls.

As a last note:
I am pretty sad the end just instantly ports you out.
I'd like to have just stared around a bit more.
Maybe instead of automatically fading out allow the player to jump off to do the fade out.

Only got to a High Score of 25, at that point it starts ramping up really hard. Felt nearly impossible both times I got that score.
Was still fun.

Really cool concept. Was a bit hard to grasp at first because I didn't quite get why only 1 of the little guys returned to me, the checkpoints are a bit "overfrequent", so much that at first glance the return mechanic seems like it counts for all the guys.

But that's just a microscopic issue.
I really enjoyed the level design here. It varied quite a lot for the little amount of mechanics in there.
I am just a big fan of "big drop into a deep hole" levels. And the drop here was accompanied with the really neat orange guys.

Which in the end carry you a good ways back too. A neat hint towards getting to the Win screen. Also liked the 3 guys and the passage you could see early on in the level.

Completing it had a really cool feeling. Especially as I love those types of YOU WIN screens. Might be SMW nostalgia.

Some more tips for minor issues:
1. Took me a while to find out there's a loose animation. Maybe you should add a delay to the respawn input after getting hit.
2. The Air Ability of the blue guys confused me a bit. The wall slide looked like I could wall jump, but when I tried to do so it seemed like it was a glitched wall-jump. Maybe setting the abilities onto a secondary button, like c, would help a bit there.

This was fantastic.
Am surprised how well the... moonies (?) work. Especially with them grabbing onto you during the jump. If the ground group following you looked as majestic as it does in Pikmin then it would be the perfect mixture between the army of Pikmin following you and the cute mass of Pikmin on Oatchi.
Maybe have some of the moonies folow on a bigger delay  so that it spreads out more? Though hard to give advice as I don't even know how I'd implement that.
However, as is they do sometimes stack up a bit too much by default, that includeswhen just standing around. You can kind of cram as many into a small minimal space so its hard to gauge how many you got somewhere, could be 1 or 50.

That out of the way, gotta mention again I love the moonies. They look super adorable, really good job on the animations there. Generally the designs are well done. The player character looks great and so far the UI is very cute. I really like that Tileset for the cavern with the moons and stars inside (though it looks like you gotta patch up some missing tiles or fix a few placements).

The weird walljump is not much of an issue as of right now, but I feel as it gets bigger it might become a problem.
To walljump you really wanna hug the wall as a player, and having to let go to walljump makes that wallhugging kinda hard.
Maybe you have an issue with the player input overriding the walljump. If that's the case you should be able to just skip the player input for something like 0.2 seconds. Not sure how well that would work, haven't implemented a walljump yet myself.

Also it's hard to distinguish whether moonies are fighting, sitting around, or following you, a little color change of the sprite or its outline could help.

I'm sounding way too nitpicky here, don't take that the wrong way.
I am really really really really loving the concept of the project, it made me super happy to see this pop up. And I already had a fantastic time playing through this early version.
Really excited to see where this is going

Played this for 28 minutes while jamming to some music.

Got this as final Boss while Star Conquering Traveler was playing
(Very scary due to the monsters only ever throwing 6 at this point and the previous monster I fought having like 20 HP):

And then I was met with this choiche:

Maybe I should make a Boss that's impossible. This situation kinda cool:

Especially when some madman inevitably does it anyways. Sadly in this case that wasn't me.

Very fun short game.
The platforming had that weird issue of the player sliding around but isn't too bad (becomes a bit of an issue when the Firefly moves the Beetle, because then the player just slides away into the spikes, but that's one of those issues which I don't even wanna think about fixing during a game jam).

The abilities are extremely unique in a way, having them be tied to a secondary character... is something I actually had recently in a demo I played. But that doesn't make it less interesting.
I really like the carrying, super cool way to get across spikes or while keeping a very puzzle-esque feeling and not evolving quick movement mechanics.

The puzzles themselves were well designed, I enjoyed them even if their visual aspect couldn't convey everything perfectly, but that's just game-jam things.

The level design on the other hand has some rough corners... And I mean that literally, there's just a few jumps that don't feel right or are slightly buggy because of the needlessly small space they use, or convey things in a weirdly unclear manner.
Maybe that's just me being too critical of level design, gotta do more myself so I can get a better feeling how good I am at it and how hard it can be.

Finally the end was a nice surprise.
I did not at all expect that dark red area. Was a fantastic change of atmosphere.
Though I am confused by the end... I just pressed a button, got ran over by a Spider and was got the "Together we are One" screen.
Guess I made a spider friend and am chilling with 'em now... Cool.

Anyways, overall I really enjoyed this.
Had a boring moment that nearly would've affected my entire day, so this helped brightened up my mood real quick.

Really cool, yet another seriously impressive PICO-8 game
(haven't played many yet but PICO-1K jam is destroying my perception of what PICO-8 can do)

Got a high score of 128
How much am I missing to break the game?