Flat Galaxy: An Idlemare by NOP Games
Flat Galaxy is a one-button arcade game which was submitted to 4 different jams and doesn't fit the theme all that well. The main character's a robot, there's not much story besides a little blurb before each level. It is not a romance story, at least not as far as I got.
The soundtrack is nice! It's not stock music. The pieces of text are flavorful, if scant. The thick lines on the vector graphics make the character hard to read sometimes.
Let's talk about the gameplay.
It's a good arcade formula, a very simple setup with a looping level made of blocks that you're slowly plummeting into, and you have to laser away the blocks before you crash into them. You can get a good idea of what it's like from the youtube channel.
I found it frustrating at times, as my reaction times aren't the best, and the levels seem to have a very tight tolerance for how many mistakes you can make, even the early ones. When you miss a pillar that you know is going to be too high the next time around but still have to go through the whole thing, it feels bad. I wish there was some way to regain height. I think maybe you do when you laser a block that's close enough underneath you? I'm not sure, it plays a different sound effect but if it does gain you height it's subtle enough that it's hard to tell and it definitely doesn't make enough of a difference to save you in such a scenario.
Later levels increase the number of blocks you laser at once, but I wish there was more gameplay variation. Maybe special blocks that give you some sort of powerup? IDK
This seems to be the demo for a piece of what the developer intends to be a larger game. I'm not following, but if I happen across a full release of "FLAT GALAXY" while browsing Itch at some point in the future, sure, I'll check it out.