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A jam submission

POWERCHORDView game page

POWERCHORD made for Bigmode Game Jam 2025
Submitted by Jamless, DrHoodie, MrDucks, RagingClue, EMCIEL — 1 hour, 5 minutes before the deadline
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POWERCHORD's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme#534.1604.160
Presentation#1553.8803.880
Fun#1733.4403.440
Originality#2843.4403.440

Ranked from 25 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game represent "Power"?
Both in the musical term of power chords and in a universally themed energy "POWER" bar the entire game is built around!

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Comments

Viewing comments 24 to 5 of 24 · Next page · Last page
Submitted(+3)

Once you get rolling, nothing stands in your way. I like how many health bars you can have. Good stuff!

Developer

Thank you so much for playing our game! Glad you had a good time with it.

Submitted(+3)

Liked the sound and graphic design alot. Especially that each laugh was assigned to an enemy type. It's a small detail but a very good one! Sometimes I died suddendly and I didn't realize that my Power was away. So more of a warning and indicating would've been nice.


nice Game!

Developer(+1)

Thank you! Yes, we only had three people on the team submit their voice to the game, but I wanted to make sure each character spawned specifically using one voice set, haha.

I think it's a very common and completely understood complaint that it's hard to read the power bar not only because it doesn't typically show where your red health is, but in combat it's very out of the way and difficult to look up at when planning attacks.

Thanks for playing! <3

(+3)

very fun game! It was fun deciding what to buy in the shops, took me a little while to realise that I was just killing myself by buying stuff in the shops haha, well done getting a fun re-playable game together in such a short time! Loved the sprites, sounds and music!

Submitted(+2)

Awesome beat em up. Title screen is really cool. I like the character sprites too, I just wish I could see them a bit better lol. I think if the camera was zoomed in a bit that problem would go away, and it might not feel quite as slow to move around either. Gameplay loop is fun, even if it does get hard pretty quick in Room 3. Great job!

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for playing our game! The title screen was a collaborative effort between Jamless (programming and art), MrDucks (theme song), and myself (art). They did a great job and I'm so happy with the way it turned out. I'm glad you liked it too!

Submitted(+2)

Genesis-like beat-em-up kickass fun! Love the combat, sprites, and overall vibes 😎Great job!

Developer

Ahhh thank you very much! Glad you enjoyed! <3

Submitted (1 edit) (+2)

Great game, thank you for making it, enjoyed a lot! Beautiful style, nice animations and effects.
Combat flows pretty well, wonder how would feel with a dash and a bit more movespeed.
Will you be working on it after the jam?

Developer

I'm glad you enjoyed it! I think a dash or dodge or something would be nice to not only add mobility, but a way to cancel your own charge attacks without taking damage, haha. Also might make the stages a bit smaller so the lower movespeed wouldn't be as taxing. We're hoping to work on the game after the jam, but definitely need a little bit of a break before diving back in. :P

Submitted(+2)

I Absolutely loved this game!!! As an action games fan, I have to say it's everything there, I felt like playing Doom or DMC, it's nice having to pay attention to your life when attacking, as well as your positioning, it felt like a great combination! I just wish the theme of the game involved a gambler rocker or something like that, it could suit more the gameplay! You could also make the map a bit tinier so that it would be easier to look at the life gauge and the combat. Amazing game overall!

Developer(+1)

I'm glad you loved the game! :D

Having a health bar that is tied to your charge felt like a really solid idea, but I agree we definitely needed to make the charge amount and damage more visible and nearer to the combat, it's too easy to ignore looking at it where it is while being far too crucial to the gameplay.

Thanks for playing! <3

Developer(+1)

That's a fun thought. I guess we ARE essentially gambling with our lives.  Thanks for playing our game. I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Submitted(+3)

didn't need to spend any time tuning and my fingers didn't hurt. does that mean I'm good at the game

Developer

Your fingers don't need to hurt, but the baddies need to! As long as that was achieved I think you did great at guitar the game!

Submitted(+2)

heheheh
very satisfying beat em up gameplay loop, crunchy sounds!!

Developer

Thank you very much! :D My buddy EMCIEL did a fantastic job with the sound effects!

Submitted(+2)

tried hard to get to round ten but alas, my performance as a guitarist was lackluster. >:'3 great job on your first jam game, the assets and concept were a fun endless format. i will forever live in terror of the dog man.

Developer(+2)

Thanks for playing it, thanks for that interview! And it's OK, I helped build the dang thing and I see a lot of people way better at it than me. :<

Maybe if we push the game further we can flip the script and have a dog with the stats of a man!

Submitted(+3)

heck yeah,  aesthetic is sweet, character that plays power chords to attack is like the perfect 80s arcade beat em up character that never existed. nice work!

Developer

Glad that you liked it, thank you very much for the kind words! :D

Submitted(+3)

Absolutely loving the art style and thematic unity going on here, really nice work!

Developer

Thank you so much! That means a lot. We had a blast putting all of the different pieces together!

Submitted(+3)

I love the vibe of the game and reminds me of classic arcade games like tmnt. the power bar works great!

Developer

Sorry for such a late reply, but I'm very glad you enjoyed the game! :D We were hoping to get a nice arcade beat-em-up style, glad you liked it!

Submitted(+3)

oozing with style. damn. love the art, its so well done. and the music is so good, complimenting the art and vibe perfectly. i like what you did with the power bar, its very well done. and i love wacking the shit out of enemies with my guitar.

Developer (1 edit)

Thank you so much! I spent a lot of time on the background art, so it really means a lot to hear that people like it. MrDucks and EMCIEL did a great job with the music and DrHoodie worked very hard on the power bar. Glad you enjoyed the experience!

Submitted(+3)

Game softlocked here but this is how far I was.

At a certain point it becomes basically impossible to loose I think.

Here is some feedback:

  • I kinda wish the randomization of stats wasn't that aggressive. It makes the combat a bit too random in the beginning and can really screw you over. Later on it doesn't matter as much as because you are just insanely overpowered. 
  • Movement vector doesn't seem to be normalized, this makes it feel a bit jank in my opinion.
  • Shooting is just objectively better than melee. In the beginning there is a point to be made that melee makes the sniper enemies easier to deal with but after the range upgrades hit critical mass there is just no reason to use it anymore. 
  • Passive power regen is something that makes passive play very appealing. You can just stall out the time after only one enemy is left and fill all of your power meter and then just purchase every upgrade. 

Really liked the music and artwork. 

Great game overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit and would probably have continued if it didn't softlock. Great stuff. 

Developer(+1)

Nicely done, glad to see you get so far and enjoy it! :D

Yeah, I definitely wish we could've spent more time balancing. We had the right idea of dividing the coding between multiple people, but we merged it a bit too late and didn't have as much time as we hoped to figure out the randomized stats. It was a lot of "This is too strong, maybe try this number instead?" and hope for the best, haha.

We had some cool ideas to make both forms of combat have their pros and cons, but it is incredibly in favor of having that range for sure.

We also had hopes of having a central power source that slowly deteriorates over time that would eventually stop giving you passive power.

Ultimately, we had a lot of lofty goals and ideas and just not as much time as we thought. :<

Thank you for your feedback though, we would love to work on fleshing this game out more in the future someday and it's nice to see how people feel and what they'd like to see! Thanks for all your thoughts and I'm sorry it eventually softlocked on you! New ending unlocked, I thought the gunner girl coordinates crashing the game was the only ending, haha! :P

Submitted(+3)

Ey, just played your game i loved the sfx sound bits and like previous peaplo say here, it reminded me of the old genesis games, really cool, i hope you guys keep updating the game, cause it has good potential, a lot of this games in this game jam have a good potential, so i really hope you guys keep updating these game later on, its was so cool ^^

Developer

I hope we can keep working on the game in the future for sure, it was a really cool learning experience!

I appreciate you playing the game and I'm glad you enjoyed!

Developer

Sounds we're a very fun process to make for this project. Glad you enjoyed them <3

Submitted(+2)

Really creative idea! I love the very Genesis/Megadrive style sprites. It's an interesting design decision to tie player health to "mana" essentially. I found it a little irritating to be honest but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. I killed myself twice on the first level before I realized. XD

I loved the way the enemy health bars would indicate how much damage you would do as your charged up a chord. super satisfying to chain together three or four quick kills in a row.

Great work!

Developer(+1)

Glad you enjoyed! One of the issues with the game was definitely a lack of visual clarity on both buying and attacking spending your POWER meter; Something we had planned to address but too many issues clogged up our time before the deadline. :P

Submitted(+2)

I definitely understand deadlines sneaking up on you. XD 

I saw other people were perplexed by the shop system and I understand that it could probably be reworked. However, I think it's a really interesting idea, deciding if you want to upgrade and go into a level with really low health, or play more conservatively and risk being to weak it the later game.

Submitted(+3)

A nice, classic beat-em-up.  Feels very retro.  Art, music, even the sound effects are seriously retro.  I'd recommend enhancing that feel by using a CRT visual effect, so you really feel like you're playing on an old computer or arcade machine.

Felt odd to just be able to pick every upgrade, every time.  Maybe give people a choice of major upgrades, like new attacks, faster movement, etc.  Didn't find any other faults.

Developer(+1)

A CRT shader would have definitely looked very at home, definitely something worth considering in a future release sometime!

Yeah, a common complaint is the low prices in the shop and/or the improving of stats. Would have liked a bit more time to spend on balancing for sure. :P

Submitted(+4)

Game is good, tho buying system is kinda dumb if i just buy everything and dont refresh the list (for money) ;) could be a huge upgrade. Good sound. Would try out later on

Developer

Glad you liked it! The shop definitely could use some more balancing and ironing out, hope to have another version of the game eventually, maybe after spending a lot more time on it, haha

Submitted(+3)

This game is so charming! The opening feels especially nostalgic for me like I legit feels like I booted it up before. I'm also a HUGE fan of how you interpreted the theme!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the kind words! I'm glad you were able to enjoy and that we could capture a bit of that nostalgic feel!! :D

Viewing comments 24 to 5 of 24 · Next page · Last page