For a bullet hell this game is really hard to understand. Never was able to figure out how the sword or aiming works because I'd die every time. Maybe a quick tutorial before spamming bullets?
I think I found a bug. Does the level continue updating, even after entering the game over state? I died and it showed the game over screen, and then a split second later, my score increased slightly. I'm guessing I probably shot an arrow right before I died, and it hit something after switching to the game over screen. Might be intentional, just thought I'd let you know.
Hello. The game ceases updating once the game over screen reaches full opacity. Maybe you got a lot of score before you died and it kept counting up until you got the game over screen. I've got that a couple of times. It's not supposed to happen, but I didn't find it urgent to fix since I thought it was rare. Thank you for the heads up, I'll address it in the next build.
Was curious to see how much has changed since the last demo. I really appreciate having easier difficulty options for scrubs like me. Would appreciate a life system on top of that though. Nothing kills my mood more than getting hit by a stray laser during the first boss and having to restart the entire level. Speaking of which, that laser needs to be telegraphed better for how fast it moves.
I also still don't get why you have to move the arrow keys to have Hilly start shooting. Her starting position should just be her aiming upwards. As far as I can tell she'll never otherwise enter the non-aiming state so it's just a pointless input.
For some more minor nitpicks:
It doesn't seem to be possible to go back to the main menu or stage select from the game over screen.
Hildengarde's arrows are too dark and blend in a little too much with the background
Lombard's sword is still pretty unwieldy to use with its awkward angles. You are also still pretty much defenseless to bullets heading your direction from a more horizontal angle.
Story could use a little more substance but I'll chalk that up to personal taste. If the dialogue doesn't really add much to the experience then I'd rather not have it at all. Appreciate that it's skippable.
Hope you find the feedback helpful. Looking forward to further updates.
Thank you for the feedback. I'll be honest, I forgot about the game for a while so I just threw the second stage together in a week. Hopefully it still turned out better than the first one, however.
I think her "looking up" sprite looks dumb so I avoided drawing attention to it by making the game start on her zero angle sprite. After you die once, she should always be pointing up on restart. I've thought of a couple of ways to make this better, but I would have to animate more stuff. I might address it in a future update.
I didn't change the menu system much since last time, but I do plan to make it more user-friendly. Lives will be added soon (probably). I tried my hand at telegraphing in an earlier version but I'll have to fix the broken particle system first. I'm not sure what to do with Lombard's sword. I guess you can pretend it's a baseball bat and the bullets are baseballs. Please don't take the dialogue seriously.
Comments
For a bullet hell this game is really hard to understand. Never was able to figure out how the sword or aiming works because I'd die every time. Maybe a quick tutorial before spamming bullets?
Hello. There's a readme, but you're right that the controls should be explained in-game. I'll add it to my to-do list.
based SDLbro.
I think I found a bug. Does the level continue updating, even after entering the game over state? I died and it showed the game over screen, and then a split second later, my score increased slightly. I'm guessing I probably shot an arrow right before I died, and it hit something after switching to the game over screen. Might be intentional, just thought I'd let you know.
Hello. The game ceases updating once the game over screen reaches full opacity. Maybe you got a lot of score before you died and it kept counting up until you got the game over screen. I've got that a couple of times. It's not supposed to happen, but I didn't find it urgent to fix since I thought it was rare. Thank you for the heads up, I'll address it in the next build.
Was curious to see how much has changed since the last demo. I really appreciate having easier difficulty options for scrubs like me. Would appreciate a life system on top of that though. Nothing kills my mood more than getting hit by a stray laser during the first boss and having to restart the entire level. Speaking of which, that laser needs to be telegraphed better for how fast it moves.
I also still don't get why you have to move the arrow keys to have Hilly start shooting. Her starting position should just be her aiming upwards. As far as I can tell she'll never otherwise enter the non-aiming state so it's just a pointless input.
For some more minor nitpicks:
Hope you find the feedback helpful. Looking forward to further updates.
Thank you for the feedback. I'll be honest, I forgot about the game for a while so I just threw the second stage together in a week. Hopefully it still turned out better than the first one, however.
I think her "looking up" sprite looks dumb so I avoided drawing attention to it by making the game start on her zero angle sprite. After you die once, she should always be pointing up on restart. I've thought of a couple of ways to make this better, but I would have to animate more stuff. I might address it in a future update.
I didn't change the menu system much since last time, but I do plan to make it more user-friendly. Lives will be added soon (probably). I tried my hand at telegraphing in an earlier version but I'll have to fix the broken particle system first. I'm not sure what to do with Lombard's sword. I guess you can pretend it's a baseball bat and the bullets are baseballs. Please don't take the dialogue seriously.