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IN PULSAR's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #41 | 3.481 | 3.481 |
| Visual | #51 | 3.778 | 3.778 |
| Theme | #60 | 3.444 | 3.444 |
| Fun | #60 | 3.370 | 3.370 |
| Overall | #72 | 3.296 | 3.296 |
Ranked from 27 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Did you use any third-party assets or skeleton code?
I used Construct 3 as my engine, not sure if this counts tho. Other than that, yeah, I did everything during the jam, and the music was too.
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Comments
It felt quite polished, and the mechanics are interesting! It takes a moment to get used to the movement, but it felt fun. Nice visuals and audio! Well done!
I liked the "braid physics" on the main character, so to speak. :D
Innovative mechanics and unique art styles create an immersive experience. The difficulty curve could be better balanced, but overall a solid entry for the jam. Congrats!
The gameplay visuals are really polished, especially the boss telegraph animation is subtle but really feels right, and I also enjoyed the game's soundtrack quite a lot ^^ makes me want to hear more of it, or something like it. Any recommendations?
For the gameplay, I didn't manage to beat the boss fairly, it just stopped moving on the left side of the screen after I poked it with the scythe a few times and let me shoot it - though I drained about 75% of its HP on several attempts without abusing it. There were some factors (to be fair, my own skill issue was part of it) which prevented me from finishing it:
- The player controls and shooting felt clunky. The damaging weapon's spread is really high and the long range damage is diminished, however getting close to the boss for full damage is not only difficult due to the hard to control movement and dense patterns, but also because said shot makes you fly all the way back, possibly back into the bullets you just dodged. Due to this and the boss' limited number of attacks, the process of chipping down its hp really felt like a slog
- For the damaging shot, there were a couple issues, possibly bugs: 1. Reload times seemed to be random, sometimes way longer than usual. 2. Shooting upward while hugging a wall made some bullets disappear entirely. 3. When staying at the bottom corner, then shooting up at a 45 degree angle, it would propel you upwards, when logically it should really keep you in the same spot
- The impulse shot and scythe not dealing any damage really felt like a missed opportunity - for the impulse shot, even if it dealt small damage, it'd still be a satisfying option while the main weapon is reloading. And the scythe could also be a really, really fun option to use. Even if you don't want it to deal damage, it could be used to erase bullets (perhaps with some attack speed and melee area balancing). Or maybe both deal damage and erase bullets! Melee weapons in bullet hells tend to often have those characteristics, and I find melee in bullet-hells/shoot'em'ups really fun personally.
- The boss' circular pattern really felt random and luck-based. There are several variations, each requiring a different approach to dodge it, but not giving the player much time to recognize which pattern it is and how to dodge it. Most of the time I just prayed to RNGesus and stayed in one of the corners. Still got hit one too many times and died a lot. Could be skill issue though.
Overall - you've got a really solid audiovisual foundation for your game. The gameplay needs improvement and perhaps more boss attack variety. I think you can do it, the game could turn out pretty fun with some extra effort, imo ^^ Congrats on finishing the jam!
Hey, thank you very much!! You have no clue how I excited I get whenever I receive an essay comment lmao xD
About the soundtrack, Falcon actually has a music channel if you wanna see more of his music stuff, altought he didn't release the music for this one there, at least not yet, but I could ask him to if you wanna hear it anytime x) (https://youtube.com/@imlowgame)
Most of what you said was stuff I was actually already aware of, like the Boss softlock that I already adressed on the game page and how it has way too much HP, wich was just a misdecision on my part I admit. The scythe not actually doing anything was actually an issue of lack of time, on my initial plan it was actually going to have a way more important role on gameplay as a bullet slicer/parrier and style score giver, but as I said on the game page, I just wasn't able to implement it on time. (I was really just overscoping all those system honestly, so much that the idea was for the boss to be multiphased even, wich you can clearly tell that it didn't happened lol)
About the shotgun manauvering those are fair points, altought the bullet spread is actually very little, what made you feel like you wasn't hitting the boss properly was that the boss's hitbox is very small, wich was a little oversight on my part, I should have made it's "damage-receiver-box" to be bigger and leave the small one as only the "contact-damage-on-player-box", this would probably have felt way better. How I was dealing with the high recoil on my own playthroughts to chip away a lot of boss health tho was to always get close to it and spam all three shells instantly, and then quickly do a little pulse shot while holding Z to cancel momentum and regain control, wich honestly, actually feels awesome to do ngl, but since I rushed the game I wasn't able to properly tutorialize any of the mechanics so I really wasn't expecting people to try doing any kind of advanced tricks like that anyway.
The little pulse shot doesn't deal damage on purpose tho, I tought there really was no point on that because it's really almost impossible to actually hit one of those lol, so it wouldn't make that much of a difference.
I can assure you that neither reloading nor the circular boss pattern are random tho, or at least they shouldn't be (the only random thing about the circular pattern is where on the screen the boss will hop in, but other than that the pattern itself always move the same way). They could have glitched on whatever browser you played the game in tho, we never know. You were the first one to mention the bug where you bounce off of the ground tho, wich I was also aware, I actually discovered it a little after publishing the game, I have an idea of what may cause it but to be really honest I don't know if I really know how to fix it xD
Don't worry about the skill issue tho, as I said one of the main consequences of rushing the game out was that I really had no time to make a proper introduction to the gimmicks so it's really not the player's fault that the game feels more punishing than it should be.
Just dropped both you and the musician a follow, would love to see and hear more stuff sometime ^^ (listened to their latest track and something about it felt unsettling and familiar at the same time, it's quite intriguing)
The shotgun cancelling strat you described is actually really cool - I haven't used the scythe mode much and was left wondering if movement would have been a lot easier with it. And I did notice that the reload became slower after each third unload or so, but I don't really understand why - some kind of weapon specific characteristic? Perhaps some visual or sound feedback would have helped me understand... Could also be a browser glitch as you said, Mozilla seems to dislike some of the jam games this year lol
Glad the "essay" comment was useful, haha~ I think many people get overwhelmed, but personally I enjoy reading (and writing) long comments and messages myself. Always lots on the mind, and it's quite fun to read and understand the other person's thought processes too ^^
The shotgun really shouldn't be extending it's reload time I swear x)
It's either a browser glitch or purely psychological on your side. I do wish I made a better indication for it tho, it do feel kinda lacking right now, I honestly just forgot about it at the moment.
Thanks again for the comment and the follows tho! :D
Honestly I feel the same about essay comments, I love hearing everything someone has to say about my stuff x)
Overall, solid entry. I will say this, I was able to just spam the fire button and cheese the boss while staying on the left wall and taking no damage. I love the sprites but the mechanics might need a little more polish.
Thanks for playing!
I knew about the safespots actually, but they're more of a consequence of me not being able to do more patterns in time lol. I like keeping them tho, kinda serves as a hidden difficulty option for whoever may be having trouble dealing with the bullets the more fun way. You could just choose to not cheese it, but yeah I'll be keeping an eye on those if I ever work on this game again, they may be a little too safe x3
Just from the title screen I went DAMN
So much juice and props for using Construct! The movement is fun and gameplay is really satisfying.
"Yu ded" omfg
Wow it is amazing , good job!
I really liked the backstory and gameplay was very fun too. My only recommendation is to maybe have a pixel font to fit the art better. Nice work!
Oh boi, nice timing, I had just responded the other person lol.
Thank you, I'm glad you like it :3
The font was actually a last minute thing lol, the entire UI was actually, and Construct's default pixel font is really ugly so I didn't wanna use it lol, but yeah I wish I had used a better one
This may be the winner, I'm saying it right now haha I love every aspect of it, the theme is soooo well integrated and in such an original way, I loved it. The visuals are great too, and the patterns with the little warning before them it's really polished. The music is really fitting, the sfx too, gosh I think I can't point anything bad yet, maybe it'd be good to explain the controls, but to be fair, they aren't that difficult.
Amazing job, congrats. I hope this becomes a full release ^^
Wowie, thank you very much x3
I don't know if you saw it, but the controls are written on the game page, if you didn't you wouldn't be the first person tho... Wich sucks since there are some useful inputs there.
Maybe I should start putting the controls as the first thing on the page to be sure nobody will miss it, but I think it looks kinda ugly to be the thing that appears on the little pop-up for when you're hovering the mouse above it's cover lol
Really glad you like it tho, but to be humble there are quite a few other entries that are way more top tier imo :>
To be fair, I've read the story and I liked it so much I got excited and started playing right away hahaha so that may be my fault
That makes me happy to hear actually, thank you pretty much hehuehue x3
Wow, this looks absolutely gorgeous and so polished! I love the color design, and the trails animations behind the player and bullets. While the shoot-to-move controls are definitely on theme, I had a lot of trouble wrapping my head around, so I was not able to get very far. It might be easier if you could click and hold to do constant shooting? If you fine-tune the movement and difficulty a little bit, this would be simply incredible. Excellent work!
Thank you very much!
Holding the mouse down would have been a nice touch, I'm actually impressed by how I legit didn't think about it tbh.
Don't worry too much about it tho, I already knew those controls were weird-ish for the most part, I just wasn't able to properly introduce them to the player lol.
I faced the stuck boss bug a couple of times but fortunately it was always close to the beginning so it really was never irritating and I eventually managed to beat it fairly.
The game looks, sounds and feels really good and is pretty fun to play, those two patterns are both super cool and the difficulty is on point (the loop could probably be slightly harder while the boss would have a bit less health in return but it's fine), it's satisfying to beat the game.
Very cool entry, thanks for sharing.
Yeee, the initial plan was for the boss to be multiphased, I do agree it gets a little monotonous after a while.
Thanks for playing tho, I'm glad to know at least one person tried to not take advantage of the bug x)
Oh wow! The game felt way better than I was expecting, a very pleasant surprise! I do wish the death screen was as nice as everything else though
Love it, really like the color palette.
The game feel is really juicy and I love the music , grat job !
I liked the idea for movement and the game felt really good but I found it pretty hard to dodge effectively and the boss had so much health. Very difficult but definitely some really nice things about the game. Nice job!
Thank you :3
I wanted to make this boss multiphased so there was going to be some "controls-getting-used-to" easy patterns since I was already expecting people to have difficulty with such a weird control scheme, but as you might already know, my plans had to be cut short lol.
And I also admit I only made the boss tankier so you could hear the entire song before it dying since the coolest part of it is at the end, but yeah this was completely unecessary xD
Even though it's short, this is actually really polished! The visuals are nice, the music too, i just wish that you had time to implement the scythe. Hoping you can finish this after the jam rating is over.
Ladies and gentleman we got a jam winner.
Sorry I got ahead of myself because my jaw dropped the first seconds I played the game.
The game intro and the animation from the boss made me OH SHIT, and without thinking I immediately went and give my regards
But after playing through the entirety. It's not a game jam winner, but it's still good! And I was not expecting such an absurd amount of juice from the get go. Like WOW. The recoil felt good and the shooting felt really good as well...
But the game is sadly not done and the boss just stopped moving after a while. Which is a shame, I really liked the concept but it needs more time in the oven. And more room for the mouse , it's tough to get out of corners. Maybe make the game happen in a bigger rectangle that way we can have more space. Good entry! Also I liked the Celeste style hairstyle!
Lmao, thank you very much xD
Yeah the boss softlock is something I really shouldn't have overlooked, I won't be letting something like this slide again on the future, that's for sure.
And the game was pretty rushed indeed, I planned on doing way more stuff (even overscoped a bit for the fun of it), but hey, I'm glad everyone is already having fun with what I got out done :)
Also, for the mouse space issue, you can hold Z to invert your aiming, so that makes Yu shoot herself to the direction of the mouse instead of the opposite of it, this should help you manauver more efficiently.
Okay the movement became 3X times better when I applied what you said and I realized that you have a sick scythe attack as well. The movement and combat is really solid! I really love the mechanic. Idk if you plan on continuing it and I'd understand if you did not, but I hope the best for that game.
thanks again :>
Control scheme is actually something I'm very proud of, so I'm really glad you like it!
A little sad fun fact is that the scythe was initially going to be a parrying tool and there was gonna be more mechanics related to that, but I didn't had time to do it lol, so it ended up as just a very cool looking way to move slowly.
I've been considering to continue this game for a bit, but honestly I'm still unsure since I'm also aiming to participate on the next Metroidvania Month which starts already this week, and I also have some other projects on my head I wanna do for the funsies, both game dev and non-game dev related. But who knows, maybe I can get back to this again someday
THAT WOULD'VE BEEN SICK!!!
Would it be possible to add you on discord ?
I'd love to see your other project and talk about it! I'd understand if not of course. In any case have a good day/night!
Sure thing, it's LordPillows#5939
I'm not actually working on anything at the moment tho, I'm mostly just taking a break and playing other entries when I feel like it x3
Move with pushback is a great mecanic. It's different to move only with arrow or WASD. It was fun to play ! I don't know if it's bug but the boss stopped moving and attacking. I don't know if it was in the pattern of the boss or if I had to reduce his life to pass to the next the step.
Thank you!
And yeah, the softlock is a bug. As I said on the game page, I already knew about it before publishing the game, I just didn't fix it because it needs some very specific conditions to happen so I didn't feel like it lol.
Altought I certainly underestimated how common it actually is since other people I sent the game for on Discord also reported it pretty quickly x3
I understand, bug like this are horrible to debug :'(. But your game is even good !
Took me some time to realize how I can move around and to get used to the controls, but from there it was a blast! fun game, well done! Really liked the animations of the boss and the screenshake / effect on the teleport and game intro!
The gamefeel of the game is very good, and I found the recoil mechanic when shooting very satisfying. Amazing job!
Thank you!
Gamefeel is usually my priority so always happy to hear about it :3