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Spinborne's itch.io pageGame's Take on the Theme
Main Mechanic + Other subtle elements such as Attack Patterns and Animations
Did your team make the majority of the art and music during the jam?
Yes
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Comments
Cool game. I liked the roguelike elements. The bosses are difficult and interesting, it took several attempts to get through. It’s good that it doesn’t roll back the game from the very beginning, as usual in roguelikes. I liked the spin mechanic, each weapon has its own speed.
Honestly we struggled around the decision of adding checkpoints but It seems like that paid off. Thanks for playing our game and I'm happy you enjoyed it.
(P.S, Just as a curiosity, what weapon is your favorite? I'm trying to collect some data so I can establish a list of fan favorite weapons.
hammer is the best, no questions about it)your game is cool i like it and is is easy to play but my game is harder no one can beat it can you try it and rate it please link ame =https://itch.io/jam/boss-rush-jam-2025/rate/3292181
I'm glad you liked our game, though I feel like a game that no one can beat isn't really made for anyone(my two cents)? I'm glad skilled players like yourself were able to speedrun the game. Honestly it gives us a reason to make a harder version so thanks for that!
the secret is the hammer it make alot of damage make the game easier than any weapon
Awesome to see another hammer user out in the wild. I just love the hammer cause of it's reach, its so nice.
The DL version is great with mouse, but the browser version is VERY great on a tablet. First game that isn't OSU that goes this well on a tablet, I'd say. I imagine you didn't design it with that in mind, but perhaps that is a niche you could try to pursue if you were to take the project further.
The gameplay and boss design have an idiosyncrasy that I'd like to know your philosophy behind, though. 1)Spin the mouse around to attack 2) while spending stamina to continue spinning 3) against a moving boss. 1 can't be removed, but I think without 2 or 3 the experience would be more fun. Having limited stamina against bosses that move this much on an attack system that gets a while to get going gives a feeling me a feeling of being on a leash. The damage output isn't that absurd to need a limiter, and the boss isn't that static to get them on an infinite that melts their HP instantly. I'd even argue the real stamina bar is out-universe, in that it's how long the player can spin the mouse (perhaps an interesting approach to engage with this would be that the longer you spin, more mouse spinning is necessary to perform a spin in-game, so the player themselves can feel theyre out of stamina as they spin, rather than the game telling you so after a while. the different weapons then would have different timers or growth rates to when they start becoming harder to spin?). Or, if stamina is really necessary, bosses could have stronger attacks to keep the player dodging, but move less, to not have your mind split between survival, pursuing and mouse spinning.
Lastly, and this is less professional and more personal, the worm boss shouldn't come so soon, this battle isn't very interesting or as fun as the others, and you're so little upgraded for it too... (And to not leave it as a plain complaint, a concept: the worm coils around the stage and attacks by constricting; some of its segments are walkable/rollable and you have to escape through them while attacking to survive the battle.)
Overall, fun game with a lot of room to become a full game
very much appreciate the detailed feedback! its more than most would give. We implemented the stamina system as a limiter to being able to automatically spin the weapon, before it took no stamina and more or less just negated basic spinning since you could do it infinitely, so we took the approach of adding stamina to it. I wanted it to be a balancing act of being on the offense/defense a bit, in the sense you cant permanently deflect bullets while spinning super fast. I also thought about removing the auto spinning altogether but i didnt think that would feel very fun to do for extended periods of time.
I see, sounds like either way there was something to be lost and you made a choice you had to.
Maybe then you could have best of both worlds by adding a random drop that can spawn randomly rarely, a bespoke Mario star, that gives you infinite stamina for a while, just to let those mouse-spinning juices flow freely. No need to rebalance everything, while still giving the player that golden chance to go wild.
This is such a fun implementation of the spin theme! Had a lot of fun trying out the weapons, right after I tried to click the extra powers for a full minute before realizing that I need to click specifically on the "Select" haha!
I ended up skipping an upgrade for the same reason :3
We're going to work on a better user interface for later updates, but I'm glad you had fun playing our game!
That's a good game with a good mechanic implementation and it's fun to play but a fine tuning may carry this game further.
I'm glad you had fun playing our game!
Though I'm curious what fine tuning you'd do to make the game better.
While this game isn't my cup of tea, it's definitely fun to play. The spinning controls were a bit funky at first, but I like how unique it is- I've not played another game like it! The art style is gorgeous and I love how it looks. The animations were very fluid and smooth, as well! I liked the first boss design the most, but the third boss was very difficult and that's where I'm at still. I understand if it's not wanted for the difficulty of it, but I would appreciate the option of health pickups if there were any other updates to this. I hope to see more games from y'all!
I'm glad you had fun playing our game. I'm also happy that you got used to the controls quickly, helps justify some of our design decisions. You'll break through geo-mans sooner or later I promise. I'm happy you had fun though!
The game was fun! The designs were interesting. The clunky weapon controls were a bit difficult as they weren't super responsive, but that added challenge made it unique
The clunkiness of the weapon was due to us building the control system around momentum. It's a feature of the game, a super light weapon would have little to no clunkiness while the hammer is a pain to use for those who don't understand the system. I'm glad you found it challenging and you had fun playing our game!
This is absolutely fantastic, I had SO MUCH FUN spinning my mouse around! Perfect implementation of the theme, and I like how the different weapons cater to players' playstyles (I personally like the scythe). So well done, congratulations!
I for one am a hammer player but I'm glad you found a playstyle that suited you. It took a while for us to fine tune some of the weapons, so to see a healthy community spawn behind each playing style is fun. I'm glad you enjoyed the game!
The bosses are great, and I love the take on the theme.
I think once the theme dropped we just kind of knew we wanted a core mechanic to be a spinning *thing*. I'm happy you liked the bosses too, since it took us a long time to iterate on them until they were fun to fight. I'm glad you enjoyed our game!
The game and the art are well made. It has a high level of polish. Great job. I enjoyed how the boss are well designed. Great game.
I am so happy we iterated a lot over art and boss design then. I said it in a pervious comment, but every boss went through at least 4 rounds of iteration if not more, and I'm glad the time we put into that worked out. Thanks for trying our game and I'm happy you enjoyed it!
Great game! I really enjoy how some of the projectiles move and I think it makes for a pretty fun boss fight! Parrying projectiles with the auto spin feature also feels good, and every boss is pretty well designed and fun to fight.
The bosses took so long to make, we went through at least 4 rounds of iteration per boss (some bosses had more). I'm glad you found the boss designs fun! Thanks for trying out our game.
Absolute gold star submission right here, this game is absolutely brilliant. Wears its inspirations on its sleeve, yet still does something really cool with it. I found the boss design to be really engaging even if the giant sandworm is gonna haunt me for the rest of my days, and everything about the game feel is just A++. I did feel like the roguelite-esque upgrade system felt a little superficial, particularly because when I saw them I immediately got the impression that this was gonna be a one death and you restart type boss rush when that wasn't really the case. I think if you're gonna continue to build this, then do away with the passive powerups and instead have all your powerups be dependent on the weapon you're using IE hammer raising your HP by a lot, or the sword increasing your stamina gain significantly. I just think that'd help streamline the experience and put the entire focus on the weapons and spinning.
Phenomenal job overall though, this is a proper proper indie project in the absolute best of ways and I had a complete blast playing it!
We planned to add quite a bit of items that are weapon specific, but we weren't able to get them good and working in time. Glad you enjoyed the game!
I absolutely agree on the upgrade part. We initially had a more ambitious upgrade system that did what you suggest, but we cut it in favor of doing more polishing on the bosses. Maybe we'll do a post jam update and flesh things out a bit more :) Thank you for playing!
Very fun game! Big fan of the hammer weapon, great job!
I'm happy the hammer is getting the love it deserves. Thanks for playing our game and I'm super glad you got to enjoy it!
The controls and the way you attack were very difficult to get used to, it generally didn't feel that good to try and do damage and focus on dodging at the same time. It felt like I had to fully commit to one or the other otherwise I'd either have no damage or take hits. The worm boss also felt a bit tanky compared to the other two. The deflect mechanic seems a bit overtuned as you can deflect basically any boss attack and not really learn the boss attack patterns or movesets.
I do like some of the smooth animations on the arena in the final boss though!
hammer forever, love the game fun to play
AS A STAN OF THE HAMMER, I have to agree. It doesn't get enough love. Thanks for playing our game and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Great art and music. Fun mechanic. All the weapon have it advantage and disadvantage, make a different playstyle each. I think the base movement is a bit slow and the dodge consume too much stamina. Overall it's really well done!
I'm glad you got to try all the weapons. (Though I have no idea if you are also including blade storm after you beat the game). I'll send the dodge feedback back to the developers but I'm glad you enjoyed our game!
Obviously a great use of the theme, nice job I think I played this game at least 3 or 4 times now, it's definitely enjoyable.
It took us a while to get the loop just right, SO I'm glad you got some enjoyment out of it. Honestly makes our day, and we're glad you got to have fun playing our game!
Sick game y'all, awesome art and music - very fun! Hammer is goated.
Hammer is always goated. I'm glad you enjoyed our game!!
Good game, I personally don't vibe with the player's controls, which is completely personally and doesn't reflect on the game's quality. Spritework is great, the sound design is great, and the boss design is pretty cool.
I feel like outside main way of attacking, 'Spin' isn't too big of a focus in the game, which isn't a flaw. I feel like being able to deflect bullets in a large AOE around yourself for an extended period of time kinda makes it so you don't have to learn bullet patterns or anything, since you can deflect almost everything.
I do see how deflecting is kind of a crutch. Though it seems like the game is still difficult as is, a good chunk of our first time players don't get past the worm and have to try to learn the worm's timing to play the game. Though we are working on rectifying and reworking the difficulty issues and the deflect mechanic.
Aside from that I'm glad you liked the game!
Fun game, love the artwork! Controls are a little confusing at first, but I like when games use both mnk for controls, it’s a good challenge. Hammer feels good to use when you get used to it though, good weight
We do admit that the controls aren't the typical boss rush controls. Though I'm glad it was easy to get used to. I'll relay your kind words to our amazing art team and I'm glad you had fun playing our game.
(P.S I also love the hammer, its how I beat my first run soooo)