Play game
Soul Torpor (Boss Rush Jam 2024)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| BOSS DESIGN | #13 | 3.935 | 3.935 |
| USE OF THEME | #15 | 4.043 | 4.043 |
| Overall | #36 | 3.652 | 3.652 |
| FUN | #37 | 3.609 | 3.609 |
| CONTROLS | #39 | 3.565 | 3.565 |
| SOUNDS / MUSIC | #89 | 3.326 | 3.326 |
| ART / VISUALS | #119 | 3.435 | 3.435 |
Ranked from 46 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Game's take on the theme
Exchange affinity by dashing, exchange energy to shoot or heal, exchange boss souls or life for progress.
Did your team create the vast majority of art and music during the game jam?
Yes
Did your game use PlusMusic?
No
Did your game use Playroom?
No
Did your game use generative AI art?
Absolutely not.
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Comments
This is a great idea, but from some angles it’s hard to tell the position of bullets. They need to cast some shadow on the ground.
Good job! Will come and play it more thoroughly, trying to get through a basic test run and at least give it a try! Trying to get to everyone I can!
3.5/5 after 2nd look
if you can re-save or re-rate ours all of our previous ratings were deleted by mis communication… sorry for inconvenience
Best of luck! If you get the chance to read in time!
Solid boss design and polished presentation, was surprised to see cinematic. The gameplay feels more tactical than most bullet hells which I can appreciate. Great job!
This is one of the most polished and feature rich games in the jam! I won't reiterate what has already been said about the super-fun core mechanic and great boss designs, but I will add a thought about a mechanic that likely goes under most players' radar, the altar in the main hub. Firstly, like all of the other menus in the game, there is no way to use the altar menu pop up with just a controller, but even when you use it, trading your life for opening up boss rooms doesn't feel good. The menu for the alter doesn't clearly explain that this is what's happening, and if you give all of your life to open the boss rooms, you now have now have less health to face bosses that you have not gained the experience to beat, even with full health. I would suggest that the tradeoff for health is more firepower, or that the mechanic be removed altogether and the alter become a place where the player brings some energy orb thingy that they get for beating the bosses to open up the next boss room. This will allow the player to feel a sense of progression and keep the gameplay balanced.
Overall, this project is on a level above most of the other games in the jam! Great work from everyone involved!
Thanks for playing the game, and for the kind words, and feedback!
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you don't have to sacrifice anything to be able to fight the 4 bosses.
"... and the alter become a place where the player brings some energy orb thingy that they get for beating the bosses to open up the next boss room... " - That's basically how it works. You either need to sacrifice 4 health, or 4 boss souls to open the path to the final boss.
I do give you that it's not "badly" explained, it's not explained at all. A bit of exploratory design if you will.
The controller support for menu's is on point, no excuses. I just didn't want to deal with it.
Tergesa looks wonderful, I'll be sure to give it a go in the upcoming days!
Damn, I’ll have to come back to this one. Really cool core mechanic. It’s really rewarding to completely absorb most of an attack pattern with careful dashing. I also love games with a big charge-attack. I love how the 3-stack charge attack deals way more damage than 3 1-stack attacks.
My only real frustration with the game is: It’s actually really hard to intentionally get hit by a bullet. Most of my frustrations came from just barely dodging a bullet while TRYING to get hit by it while dashing. It might be worth adding some kind of hidden assist where your hitbox grows a little when dashing (but only to same-color bullets nearby). Otherwise, when playing with a keyboard and thus only having access to cardinal-movement, it feels a little harder to intentionally get hit by stuff to charge up. That was my biggest difficulty with the ‘core’ fight, a lot of the bullets would just whiz right by me.
Really cool game though. The core mechanic of absorbing-through-dashing is genuinely really interesting and rewarding to learn.
I only fought 3 bosses so far (the first boss, the assassin, and the core), and they were all really fun. I’ll come back and beat the other 3 a little later. Awesome job!
Could not get passed the first boss. I keep hitting the bullets with the wrong colour XD. But I can see with a lot of practise and the way the Boss moves are made you can hit some dodging combos for energy. The exchange mechanic is a nice idea, one time bullets can be good for you, one time its can be... YOUR END!!!!
Awesome entry! The bosses are all very fleshed out and creative! The designs are all so cool. You definitely put a lot of love into the bullet hell attacks :)
Great game. I got very close to beating the first boss several times but eventually gave up. Maybe a slower skill jump per boss is needed, at least for a game jam. I thought the controls were tight, liked the shooting feedback. The boss cinematic was cool! Maybe a passive energy gain would be cool, for just staying alive.
I didn't get into the main mechanic of the game sadly, the whole dash through projectiles of your colour thing would work for me if you could manually change your colour not just by dash, but also on the key bind or something? Now if you don't play perfectly, you just wasting too much time on the state change, so the pacing of the game suffers massively and ruins all the fun.
The second giant problem for me is the dash in the direction of the character look, not the coursor, it's really hurting the whole bullethell gameplay a lot.
But the movesets are nice and with a little tightening up and polishing it would be a great game with cool ideas! So best of luck!
Very fun game but too difficult for me D: I was only able to beat the first boss.
Thanks for giving the game a try!
Had a bit of trouble with the last boss of SLAM PUNK, but got there in the end :)
I like this game because of the controls. This bullet hell game was really fun and dodging the projectiles was also really fun. I loved the dashing and used it a lot. Good Job.
Maybe its just me but i feel like dashing on keyboard is quite hard as you can only dash in 8 directions. I think dashing using mouse would be better. Other than that, good mechanics, good visual, over all good game!!
Really enjoyed the bullet hell patterns of projectiles at times, very satisfying chaining dashes through different colours. Great job!
I didn't really like the game, the change of color and dodging bullets confused me a lot, the white border on the black sphere confuses too, the gameplay and the use of the theme are perfect.
Thanks for trying the game out!
It certainly takes a bit of time to get used to the mechanics in the game. Maybe an option to have simple style bullets would help a bit with the confusion.
You already know because I was playing with you on call, but I had quite a lot of fun! The game can feel slow, some phases can be really long and I would have liked just a little bit more of difference between areas, but apart of that every boss felt different, had an interesting second phase and the final boss was a decent enough challenge as well! The main mechanic was on point too. Really nice job friend ^^
I know, I know!
Thanks again for playing it!
Valid criticism on all level, and I'll be addressing them in the future. Thank you for the feedback!
This game is sweet, I love the concept! My only complaint would be that I wish I could dash based on the mouse's position for more accurate dashes, so I recommend playing this with a controller. Good stuff overall, one of my favorites so far!
Thanks for playing the game!
Dash based on mouse cursor should definitely be a control option! Thanks for the feedback, that's going straight on top of the to do list!
Yes bullets! I like how you can chain your dashes one after another if you'll pick right color and spot. Secret boss (i guess?) was "High priest" no damage chalange, giving me ETG vibes. Difficulty was just it for me, but for the jam it could of been easier.
incredible game. my only issue is that the altar wasnt really explained, so the first time i played i just put all my hp in and tried to do the last boss like that, so i had to restart the game. other than that, this game is incredibly fun and i absolutely love it, spent like 2 hours playing it just to beat all the bosses!
Thanks for playing the game!
Yeah, the altar needs some flavor text and explanation. It's a bit of a cruel way of implementing exploratory design in this case.
Thanks for sticking with it, and playing it all the way though!
Man, that was intense. Had to bring back my old muscle memory of FURi to really beat this
Mind you I couldn't beat the assassin though lol. Had to sacrifice a health point ( Thank you for allowing me to do that. Makes me wonder what masochist out there will beat the final boss with only a few hp XD )
Anyway, great boss design here. I love how some patterns were for you to primarily regain some charges, whereas others were primarily for you to dodge ( Although you could still collect a stray bullet or two )
The character designs were cool as well ( Especially loved the druid and the final boss, although I have some qualms with the final boss )
The player felt nice to control and shooting and dodging felt good as well. Charging up a shot and aiming was also quick, snappy and fun
The environments looked somewhat bland imo though. Especially when the character models looked great and had a good amount of personality to them. I get that you were going for simplicity overall in terms of visuals, along with a mysterious atmosphere, but it just felt a little too devoid of character ( Although the path forming as you walk on it was cool ). The final boss having that red tint for the level was cool.
Now while I think the visuals could have been better, this game was still readable AF which definitely helps a lot for the type of game this is. So i guess sacrificing visual style was worth it in a way kek. However ( and this is arguably my biggest problem with the game ) ......
I'm really not a fan of the attack where the entire level goes dark and bullets come out of every nook and cranny. It feels kinda cheap, especially when every other bullet pattern feels fair. And it's especially the case in the final boss where the entire level has that space-like look in it halfway through the fight. Tbh, this may not bother too many other peeps, but I'm personally not a fan of sacrificing readability in a fast-paced action game where you really need to see and know everything that's coming at you.
The game also really needed some juice and maybe some more sfx in general. Felt kinda weird that the bosses were making little to no noise sometimes. It also really needed some sort of indicator that a boss took damage. Regularly having to check the boss's healthbar sometimes took me out of the action. That said, I guess it's also a good thing that the only sound that was really audible was the sound indicator that played after a dash and the sound indicator for when you took damage.
All in all, I think this is an actually really fantastic entry. It's got some very interesting mechanics and utilises them beautifully in every boss. All it really needs is some slight overhauling in terms of presentation. Amazing work and kudos to your team
Thanks for playing the game, and an extra thanks for the exhaustive amount of feedback!
Regarding the low HP run, it has already been done. I think only doing the final boss, but who knows :D
Absolutely agree on the environments, even though it should be the same circular arena, even just a few boss specific props/colors/effects would have greatly helped in setting the scenes and mood.
The Assassins darkness attack can be lessened, by switching to light affinity, to actually see your character, although I do agree, that it should have been put on a cooldown, and take it out of the attack cycle for at least 10-15 attacks, maybe even more.
Same goes for it with the chaos boss as well. Hopefully the player is pretty familiar with the arena, and the general spatial movement by the time he reaches it, but, yeah. Should have had a timer on it, and a cooldown as well.
The juice and the sound effects suffered the most because of my procrastination. I have no way to weasel out of that point. Sorry about that.
Thanks again for the great feedback and the many kind words as well! I honestly appreciate it, and will refer back to it, if and when there is ever a post jam update!
Great game, really felt like every time i died it was my fault, very tight controls, and clear bullet patterns, tho some could use a bit of telegraphing at first once you recognize them it becomes a true test of skill. Loved every second of it but wasn't able to completely beat it unfortunately would recommend it 9/10!!
Very Kino game! I didn't even know what to think anymore!!!
Absolutely agree on the telegraphing, but I don't own goblins. Beating it sounds like a skill issue to me.