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Bitswarm_'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun | #26 | 4.088 | 4.088 |
| Audio | #64 | 3.824 | 3.824 |
| Graphics | #117 | 4.088 | 4.088 |
| Overall | #184 | 3.642 | 3.642 |
| Game Design | #203 | 3.706 | 3.706 |
| Innovation | #638 | 3.059 | 3.059 |
| Theme | #790 | 3.088 | 3.088 |
Ranked from 34 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
In what way does your game fit the theme?
Collect more bits to gain more power! Your bits are stronger together, they can move faster and shoot more rapidly!
Did you write all the code yourself and made all the assets from scratch?
Everything was made during the jam, yes
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Comments
Aight, where to even begin!
Shall we start from the obvious one, the visuals. Post processing makes simple shapes look nice and your color choices weren't horrible. The things that really stood out were obviously the displacement effect on explosions and somehow the triangle shot pattern was quite satisfying looking. But that was pretty much where it ended. No effect at all for getting hit (super annoying and sometimes you just didn't know where you lost health), hitting enemies, stuff dying or even yourself dying. You just slap on a game over screen as soon as something hits the player for the last time. Very imbalanced when comparing these shortages to the explosion effect. Hell, you could have just pretty much reused the same effect (maybe scaled down and recolored or something) for triangle enemies and player death too.
And of course those missing visual bits don't only affect the look of the game, they would serve an important role too, feedback. They give the player instant information for for example that no you can not collide with enemies because they are hurting you. All that without having to look at UI which the player will not do in the heat of action. I would have liked to see scores pop up on the field too while killing stuff which also would have made it easier to try to understand how the scoring worked.
Audio feedback was also missing for the majority of these actions. The constant shooting kinda overpowered over the music which by the way got way too repetitive way too fast. It was nice but adding some length to it with some needed bits of variation would have gone a long way.
And where were all the particle effects and other juicy bits? You really gotta step it up with the stylistic choice like this, it's very hard to go overboard with juice. Camera shake was another thing I was really missing which would have put some all needed oomph to all the actions. And speaking of camera, that could have used some TLC too. The camera damping sure looks nice but it is very ineffective because you're showing more where the player was and not where they want to be. I think more focusing on a position somewhere between the ship and mouse cursor would be the ideal focal point for camera.
And that reminds me of another thing I almost forgot to mention which is mouse cursor. A custom bigger and more easily visible cursor would have been a welcome addition. Lost my mouse so many times and had to kinda follow the bullets to find it again.
The UI stuff on the other hand looked very bland. It could have used some of that same love that other parts got. That health HUD was very prominent on the screen and but was so damn basic. And not like it even mattered much since everything seemed to do quite random amounts of damage. I don't think it even updated on death so you could end up with game over screen and that meter still showing four. The main menu keyboard controls were oddly setup so that you could only get to quit by looping around and then it didn't go up from that at all. So it was kinda like if the quit button was the first item and there was no looping around.
And then there were some not game breaking but not great either bugs. You could totally ignore the turret forming which cut your speed to half by double clicking the shoot button. But the biggest bug was really the edges of the playable area where enemy and health spawning just came to an halt and the edges were really affecting the shot aiming too. The size was really not a factor in the gameplay at all so it should either have been a lot smaller or then scrapped completely and had an endless world.
The scoring system was confusing and boring. I couldn't really wrap my head around how it worked either. There was some kind of multiplier system but very unsure of what it really did and never got it to go past two. Somehow I feel like it was always super quick to get to around 30k and then it became a slog. But when I tried to pay more attention to the scores, it seemed very linear. Obviously a proper multiplier system would be a key to making an interesting scoring system where a good player and a beginner would achieve a vastly different scores in the same amount of time. And then there was that annoying negative score bug which made you need to check your score each start of a new run and hard reset if it went negative. Very unfun!
Another thing that made the game miss out in some of its potential was the actual shooting. The inaccuracy combined with small bullets and enemies made missing your shots quite easy and obviously missing isn't fun. Slapping on a spread shot on that bad boy would make the fun factor of the game much much more. Or having the shots home at the closest enemies even just slightly would have served the same purpose really, not just being that fun. But having homing spread shot, now we're talking... 🤔😎
All right, I think this is my final bit. The game was too unfair! Enemies spawn right next to you without any warning and they even shoot quite was after that so you can't even react. Quite often you might not even notice the whole thing until they've got few shots/bumps into you because the lack of feedback and you're usually paying attention to where you're shooting. Just having a simple spawn animation and increasing the delay before they can shoot would solve these really. And increasing the range where from how far of the player ship they can spawn at would be nice too.
Okay, that was it. I hope I didn't come off too critical, I think just pointing what is wrong and can be improved is the more constructive feedback. And I know you can take it too! 😉
Good job! 👍
what a review D:
Very nice game. The Art style is nice and fitting and works well with the music.
Only "problem" I had was that the map was really empty when i moved in one direction and i did not find much other bits to get stronger.
Great game!
fun game, i dont really have a lot of feedback but just want you to know i made it on that leaderboard and feel like a pro athlete
Enjoyed alot! good job!
The graphics are really cool but when you get hit the liney boxey background bends and it made me feel a little sick :( Really fun gameplay and neony graphics though. Solid game but felt a little sick after :(
This was a lot of fun. Graphics, sound and particle work really well together to make it a smooth experience. The leaderboard was a nice touch and it certainly kept me going until I had a decent score. Only real issue I had was that you sometimes started with a negative score. Maybe there is some hidden mechanic behind it that I missed but it seems like a bug to me and it can make getting a high score a little annoying.
This is a great title. The gameplay is very satisfying, the movement feels fair but challenging. When I finally got overrun I felt like it was my fault, not because the game cheated me. Loved the music and sounds, and they meshed really well with the cool neon aesthetic. I did seem to have some trouble getting blue pickups to spawn sometimes if I ran too far away from the enemies though. Definitely going to come back and try to climb up these leaderboards more!
Here’s my game.
It’s impressive that you managed to get a leaderboard up and running. I feel like scrolling sensitivity (using the scroll wheel, it’s fine when click and drag is used) is a bit too low though
AMBERLEWIS012 has a negative score in the leaderboard: https://gyazo.com/75ca900c2cabc7a1e00d7965a4572e24
Great visual feedback
The art and color scheme is very nice and clean
I really like the background. The ripple effect is very cool
It’s a bit confusing at first. I think a small tutorial would be useful
My biggest issue with the art are these pentagons: https://gyazo.com/4c880e590c48ec6a3ea2bc1c3c0f2371 They feel quite off when compared to the rest of the game’s graphics
The music is good but it gets quite repetitive. It also resets when you restart which is a bit jarring
Someone else mentioned this but the score doesn’t reset properly which probably explains the negative scores: https://gyazo.com/0558f5ca38ae4707ad465d61b53af2f7
When you kill enemies it seems like their explosion damages the player but it’s not very clear. I think there should be a better indicator of what hurts you and what doesn’t
I think it would be better to remove bits when they die instead of turning them red. It’s a bit misleading and makes it seem like they still do something (I’m assuming they don’t)
You can go off the map: https://gyazo.com/a72db1bc0f3f831c5888981b33262f18
I’m not entirely sure if this is intentional or not but sometimes you can shoot while not being in the “shooter form”: https://gyazo.com/ef6b79559dcbd9eb3e56b60137aa006f
It’s not very clear how combos work
Maybe I was just unlucky but I played one game where I just stopped seeing any bits to pickup after a while
I’m not sure why but sometimes I’d see a pentagon with a darker shade of blue instead of a red one: https://gyazo.com/316ec1d3135c812a8b36a28166c84ec9
If it wasn’t for the leaderboard I don’t think I would have played for nearly as long
My highscore is 61000: https://gyazo.com/70f689f19b0b69014669924b4f0a0d82
I really liked it ! Good job!
Sound and art is really polished for a Jam Game. I think the Score does not reset properly, sometimes I started with a negative Score. I enjoyd the gameplay, but sometimes the collision of the exploding enemies seemed to me a little off, as well as the spawning of enemies. After playing a few rounds, the player stops for no reason , so I get shot from all over the place and die. Overall it is a lot of fun and I am still trying to beat the Record. Pretty cool, that you have a leaderboard as well.
The art style is pretty simple, combined with the post processing looks pretty good. I tried for a while... got about 31000 xD
The enemy AI is very polished. I love how they move. There is one time the enemy spawn into my face and kill me instantly...
I feel a lot of impact when I hit an enemy shape, but the game is not really responsive when I earn bits or getting hit (no sound effect or visual)
I also personally think the screen get too messy sometimes I can't find which is the bit to collect while focus on shoot/evade.
Nice job! love the shader!
this game has awesome post processing graphics lol.
i got like 6660 points. this game has really good visuals
nice :D
Awesome game, but i'm just bad.
I really like your entry, but felt it was to hard, then I seen the leaderboard, and realized i'm just bad :P
Although the music was really repetitive, a really cool feature to add to combat this, mind you extremely difficult would be to have sfx upon enemy death that matched the audio. This way as your killing the enemies your also making a really cool soundtrack.
Again, really cool game :)
pretty cool game, and that blow when the enemy dies is the best death effect in the jam so far.
i like how there is a full leader board it's really cool :)
I absolutely loved this game! I played it for over 10 minutes trying to get in top 3 on the leaderboard. I would love if this game was on mobile! I loved the music and the simplistic art with shapes. It was very fun to play! Good job! I would also appreciate if you would check out my game :D
This was good fun. It got very hectic very quickly! The leaderboard is a nice touch.
Deserves more ratings bro
Really nice, arcade-like gameplay and it looks great. The sound from the blaster gets a little repetitive after a while, but I could just lower the SFX volume so it was fine. Leaderboards were a really nice touch since they made me motivated to continue playing. Good job! :)
Online leaderboard is really cool, and the pace of the game is great. It was a bit difficult but pretty fun!