Venture To The Beginning - What is it about?

First GameJam here and oh wow!

I thought a week long jam for a beginner is a good start, and maybe for most it is, but I was wrong. The hardest part was submitting it knowing all the things that could and should be done. Nonetheless, the first jam to was all about getting it done. I would like to explain a bit more what I envisioned the game to be about since I don't quite feel like I delivered it in the game, sadly.

Game Idea

After a good few hours of pondering about the theme "rewind", and remembering that I have to keep it simple (I did not), the idea for the game was born. The player starts at the end of the game: all the power gems are collected except one and all you have to do is jump! Close to the submission date, I added the animation of the player looking up to nudge them in the right direction. What I didn't realise was that it was too quick. Most people missed this visual clue. Players left alone with no instructions. Bad design.

--Baam! The gems scattering around and counter goes to zero. A thing from another dimension emerges. The little speech the creature (fun(?) fact, it's coded as the time monster. very creative.) was suppose to explain very briefly why you were collecting these weird shapes, the fact that you are actually at the end of your quest and why should you not get along with this talking oval. Soon a little gem starts to float towards you. Again the player looks up, other than that no visual clue as to you should jump. The oval giggles in a loop, mimicking the famous villain behaviour: endless monologue instead of executing their plan. It made me giggle, so I added it.

Once the gem is collected the time slows. What I really wanted was to give the impression that the creature's rewinding got interrupted, you broke free from the space-time continuum. As you go back in the map and collect the gems, the background colour changes. From night to the sunset,then a cloudless afternoon to a sunrise. You also start to move faster.

The slide... Though the first version made me laugh so much, it was a pain to control the player while sliding. So I made that into an animation. Right after the slide there is a steep jump that I found it rewarding when I finally jump across.

Finally, when you recover the 10 gems, the last encounter occurs. Either you get reverse the time on the creature or it does to you.  My understanding is that even the trigger for how to reverse time didn't.

If you get hit, you are shown the following

Unfortunately, the final scene was seriously bugged due to my last minute additions and lack of testing. After tweaking the gameobjects and the code that were causing the chaos, the final scene becomes better: