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Viral Villainy's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #26 | 3.762 | 3.762 |
| Visual | #69 | 3.810 | 3.810 |
| Overall | #82 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
| Audio | #117 | 3.143 | 3.143 |
| Fun | #121 | 3.143 | 3.143 |
Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Are you using any third party assets?
I made everything during the jam
Are you using any AI generated assets?
No
Did you use BulletFury?
No
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Comments
This was such a refreshing game! Loved to see the cool art and snake game mechanic incorporated
Interesting game, just now reading the comments I learned you could draw the enemies to your tail, I thought it was there just to hurt you, so I spent several rounds sitting in a corner. Having played it again after that, the game is fun and quirky, you could use some more enemies that track or rotate, or some that move in a set pattern and eventually get mangled in the tail, so the player would learn organically. But very creative overall, with some adjustments it will be very good!
Awesome game, especially the concept! I think there are two things holding it back:
The 1st level doesn't have any enemies which you can lure into your trail, which obscures the game mechanic a bit.
It feels a bit awkward how the trail doesn't immediately come back after respawning from taking damage. In my play experience this led to more inconvenience than help, as when my invincibility ran out I would immediately go back for some reason and hurt myself again. To be honest I'm not really sure why I did this, but for some reason I just kept doing it without meaning to. I think it would be better for the playable character to always generate the trail so that unusual behavior like mine is more swiftly discouraged.
Super creative and super fun entry. Love the art, love the music, love the concept and story - Well done!
Yeah, I wish I had prioritized communicating a lot more information than I ended up with. Like I think not having killable enemies on the first level is good in theory for getting the player used to the gimmick and having low initial tension, but I 100% agree with you that it's just plain confusing and worse off for doing that while not communicating any of those intentions clearly enough. And yeah I probably gotta agree with you on the second point too. Of course the intention was to give a second of downtime for the player to process what just happened when they die, but if the way it's implimented is that confusing then it would probably be better to just have the player be functionally stationary for a second with a respawning animation or something.
Thanks for your words, I always love well reasoned criticism!
Took me a few runs to get it, but once you find out you gotta lure enemies in to your trail you start to have more fun and get into the challenge. I found the intro story very charming and silly I approve. Safety is #1 Priority, but hey if we were safe we wouldn't be having as much fun.
I think a way to help with the trail system would be to make it similar to the game snake, you can't go backwards like in your game which might prevent some accidental deaths. Plus I do think this could become like a fun idea in the way the player would have to manage their trail with more precision, as it keeps growing. Overall a fun game!
That's actually a really good idea I never thought about. Of course the point of the trail is so that the "consequences" of the player's movement is they can't move immediately backwards ever (in addition to the trail as a whole), but you're right that that doesn't mean it has to be punished with death. That way the same effect could be had while being less immediately frustrating by having the "consequence" result in an immediate death. Thanks so much for your input!
A great tale about the dangers of improper lab safety. After a few runs I found myself really getting into the flow of the game!
At first I struggled to understand what to do, but I was very eager to help the scientist safe her job! Great story, and the game was simple yet fun
Very good concept!
This game is simple and charming I did have to do a few runs to figure out how to actually get score without being able to shoot back but once I figured it out, the game was relatively straight forward.
I really liked the art as it was simple and charming along with the music which wasn't too repetitive that it was annoying.
I think the snake trail was a innovative idea but I wasn't a fan of how tight it was lots of times I would go backwards on the line accidently when just spawning and lose a life because of it.
As for the seeking enemies my first few runs of the game I had no idea they would seek because they just sat in the corner and did nothing until I read the game page and learned that's how you get score by luring them and getting them to run into a trail. I think there needs to be some way to tell or increase their detection distance so the player understands that's how you get score.
All things considered a decent game!
Yeah I get what you're saying about communicating the movement range of the enemies. For testing I had circles drawn for the movement ranges, but seeing as they were just literal radiuses of how far they would follow the player for I thought it would be too confusing for having diagetic game elements being drawn outside of the play area (that and a single pixel wide bright colored line is a little ugly lol). But I totally agree it would be helpful to better communicate the movement ranges of enemies when the player has to manipulate the movement of said enemy. Maybe I can come up with some shader that will help with elements like that intersecting with the play area. Thanks for your comment, I really appreciate well reasoned criticism!
I loved the concept and the gameplay, it was a very decent game. keep going mate!
I think this was a pretty excellent entry.
The trail puts a unique spin on the bullet hell gameplay, favoring patience and planning more than reaction time. A simple but effective take on the theme.
Very cute and cohesive aesthetic. Fun cutscene and catchy tune.
I think a 'next' button on the cutscene slides would be nice. They stuck around a little long. And I'd be great to see the scoreboard at the main menu.
Thanks for the kind words on the gameplay. And yeah I wish I could have implimented the cutscene better lol. My wife made all of the images for me and I had to quickly gather up all of the images and program them within two hours before the deadline. I gave it the ol looney tunes "have text be on screen for as long as it takes for you to read it in your head three times" technique. But yeah it definitely deserves more attention and priority next time, I agree.
That trail is a great way to utilize the jam's theme. Very creative! I also appreciate the effort that went into making that cutscene
... I took me a while to notice I'm not supposed to touch the trail!
I thought I had to fill shapes and purify the sample, Qix-style.
Besides that, the game plays fun and well and is thematically accurate.
Yeah, this being my first jam I didn't know you don't go to each game's itch page when going through submissions. Because of that I thought I could leave instructions on the itch page to save time. Now I know lol.
The game is endless right? I quit with 12200 points. I think I like when endless games get impossible at some point just to be sure they don't loop for too long.
The game is fun. The introduction looks excellent, it gave me a LucasArts vibe. At some point I finally managed to stop turning back and die all the time, the trail does make the game unique. I guess the game could either stop of become harder but up to there the difficulty is pretty on point.
That's a cool entry, thanks for sharing.
Thanks for your words. Yes it is indeed endless, but that's more so out of necessity than intention. I initially wanted to have a bunch of waves followed by a boss, but I just kinda ran out of time after designing five waves. My first instinct was to just set the wave number back to zero after the last one's completed rather than just end suddenly. But yeah if I develop it more it definitely won't do that lol.
Nice! Too me a while to figure out what to do, but the Idea is pretty cool! Nice Job :)
Yeah, this is my first jam so I assumed that when going through submissions you would be taken to each submission's itch page so I put instructions there instead of taking the time to have some kind of tutorial/ instructions in game. Learning opportunity lol.
Pure artistic expression here! Love it
This is a cute little game. I like it. It also remind me to my childhood playing Tron.
I have a question though. It is possible to defeat the stationary virus? Because the enemy need to move to hit your wall. Sometimes they spawn on my wall and die, but is there any way to defeat them when they already on the map?
Technically yes they can die if one of the germs that charges runs into them. I initially programmed something where they would run away if the player was close to them so that you could chase them into the trail, but I simply wasn't satisfied with how them moving would make their bullet patterns more chaotic so I put off the idea and didn't really have time to try out anything else with it. Thanks for the question!
I really like the drawing style, very original 😊.
Thank you, it was actually my wife's drawings with my designs.