Nice little game, simple yet fun mechanics. The plot was decent.

Would have liked some more enemy variety and some way to dodge the enemies (like jumping, or maybe have the angel fly around the stage?)

Would appreciate if you'd check out our game as well!

Although I was confused at first, I ended up enjoying the gameplay - flying around to avoid enemies while your power meter recharges is surprisingly fun, and I think you should design levels around that more! I definitely think the game is in need of some kind of tutorial, as I wasn't sure how to attack or who to attack at first. But nice start overall

It’s always challenging to critique someone’s first attempt without seeming discouraging, especially not knowing how they’ll take the feedback. That said, I want to be honest with you. While constructive criticism is often more beneficial than praise, making your first game is a huge achievement, even if the final product has areas for improvement.

The artwork is fantastic, though the animations could use some work. With time and practice, I’m sure you’ll get better at this.

As for the theme, I didn’t notice a clear connection to “Calm Before the Storm.”

Regarding game design, there are some notable issues. The WASD controls feel unnecessary. The weapon’s damage radius is quite large, and since the enemies automatically move toward you, there’s little need for movement. In one of my playthroughs, I stood still and simply spammed the attack button without taking any damage. To make the combat more rewarding, you could adjust the attack mechanics to only damage enemies on the side the character is facing.

When it comes to the enemies, they’re described as “dark” and fly towards the player, disappearing either when they intersect with the character or are hit, which dims the angel’s light. While the concept is solid, the execution needs work. It’s hard to tell whether enemies are disappearing because you attacked them or because they hit the angel. This ties into the earlier issues I mentioned, but you could address it with clearer animations, sounds, or by adding effects like a temporary stun when the player takes damage. Even something as simple as dimming a halo of light around the angel could improve feedback.

Lastly, I recommend incorporating brief moments of calm after all enemies in a level are defeated, giving the player a chance to regroup. Right now, the screen changes instantly after the last enemy is defeated, which can lead to accidental button clicks.

"Well done! Keep up the great work. I really enjoyed the game."

I liked the art. Especially the enemies I felt it was different in a good way. The music was good and supported the classic betrayal plot well. Would have liked some more variety in gameplay. Felt a bit bland there. Overall a really good one. 

Kudos!!

Nice on, keep up good work. Enjoyed the game

has got to be my favorite game this game jam. loved the characters, i'll be looking out if you guys ever release more to the story 

Well done for the first game. Keep up game development =)

Solid submission, but there's quite a bit of feedback I have about this:

• The art can use a lot more consistency. At the moment the game has a lot of pixel art assets mixed with hand-drawn/painted sprites and backgrounds, which doesn't look too good. Plus, the pixel art has filtering turned on, so if youre using Unity you can turn if off in the Inspector if you click on the sprite in the Project window.
• The gameplay can be easily cheesed if you just spam the mouse button. I would probably add a cooldown for hitting to encourage the player to dodge the enemies more. The jump is also pretty floaty.

I know it's really hard to make a game in only seven days. So honestly great job for even pulling it off!

I thought the art looked good, audio was good. My biggest takeaway from the combat is that there's no real feedback when you hit something (sound, animation, etc) so I wasn't really sure when i was killing something or if it was just damaging me. Good work overall though. Congrats and good luck!

Like the theme of it! The feedback Mentel gave sums up everything pretty good. I would like to add that the jumping looks a little weird in combat. But for 1 week and your first game this is really, really good! Sad that the ending isn’t there yet but I like the concept. Good job!

Alright so as this is your first game I would just like to tell you don't take this feedback too harsh these are just mistakes that we all make when we start. Speaking of starting where do we start...

- Textures: Probably here, so it's not hard to notice you are using unity so few pointers, when you click on a imported texture you'll find options where you can find compression and filtering. Both of these are the bane of pixelart, first filtering is responisble for the blurry edges around sprites, for pixelart you should turn it off, compression is the thing that combines close colors together leading to some artefacting on pixelart. Also try not to mix pixelart and traditional digital art as it's hard to mix them together and make it look good.

- Combat: As I see a lot of people already have touched upon it... it's not the best, generaly a good combat allows for both player expersion and strategy, making melee combat ain't easy ( checked that out this jam ) for it you usally want the combat to revolve more around distance, timing and croud control, meaning restricting the speed the player can attack, making attacks have a distance ( you have that ), and making the enemies follow simullar rules so that when a player is surrounded he'll need to think on his feet and deal with combat on many fronts, but... there is no one recepe game design is all about the needs of the game and making good combat is complex, so those are only pointers of what I would do, but I also have a lot more years behind me to back up those systems in code.

- Small Things: The bar at the top is wierd as it never resets between levels, it would be probably a better decision to just make it depleate faster but reset between levels. UI is scaling the whole background sprite, you should generaly do 9 sliced textures meaning that you set it in engine to keep corners scale edges in one direction and middle in both so there is no wierd streaching. Sound design the game lacks sfx for enemy attacks and getting hit both important informations to translate to player. Visual cues or lack there of I can't really tell if enemies actuall attack me or not it's honestly hard to judge if I'll get hit so health becomes less something to keep and more like a counter of how many enemies I delt with.

But hey it's still a solid entry and I wouldn't want you to discourage you even slightly. Making a game in a week is overwhelming and getting it done is a success in it of itself kudos.

It's been said before, but needs to be a cool down on the attack! Love the look of the game and the dramatic feel. Would be really cool to play if combat was a challenge (timings/different attacks/enemy attacks etc) - but appreciate that there's not always time in a jam. Good job!

beautiful artwork, reminds me of .hack/ games :)

A very nice game ! Totally digging the art and music but like someone mentioned below, attack spamming is too OP !

Overall not bad, good job:3

Pretty great game tbh, only downside is that there should be a cooldown to the player's attack, because I can just spam the attacks and there'll be no challenge :)

i can not play your game on my Mac, but rated it based on your beautiful screenshots and the comments of other people :)

i loved the simple fighting mechanics, but health would have given the game a lot more depth. 
i got to the level with the purple shrine but i couldn't figure out what to do there?
instructions at that level (and instructions for controls at the start) would've been useful

great game!

For a first game this piece implements quite a few important game design practices, like the length of a jump hold influencing the amount of time a jump lasts. Really great effort on display here, especially with the art and music, this is leagues above the first game I ever made haha. Nice work!