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Maledictus's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| VISUALS | #2 | 4.800 | 4.800 |
| AUDIO | #5 | 4.429 | 4.429 |
| FUN | #9 | 4.343 | 4.343 |
| OVERALL | #10 | 4.343 | 4.343 |
| THEME | #29 | 4.029 | 4.029 |
| EASY TO GET INTO | #47 | 4.171 | 4.171 |
| CREATIVE | #67 | 3.714 | 3.714 |
Ranked from 35 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Do you have any bullet or projectile in your game?
You added some projectile or bullet in your game
How does your game implement the theme? (If your game doesn't use the theme ignore this field)
Two ways.
Firstly, if the player ceases fire for ten seconds then they can unleash a devastating supersonic lazer attack.
Secondly, in CURSED mode the player can only withstand ten seconds of sustained fire before they die; unless they find a way to heal, of course.
What was the size of your team?
Three, my partner on art duties, and me on everything else except the voices, which was a friend.
Credit all team-members that worked on this project (you can link itch.io/twitter/youtube/twitch)
Jay X Trent
Harry CK Trent
Steve Vallance
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Comments
Extremely polished game! Loved theme, graphics and music. The patterns were cool too. Overall an extremely solid entry for the JAM, one of my favourites I should say!
I only have a single issue that has irritated me quite a lot. I’m not sure if I’m missing something, but I keep getting game over’d for no apparent reason in the middle of the boss fight, even though I have lots of hearts left. I’m playing on Normal Mode so I don’t think it’s the “10 seconds shooting and you die” mechanic. I also tried stopping shooting every 10 seconds anyway just in case, but I was still getting killed without anything hitting me. So I’m quite clueless what is the cause.
Ah, that would be the time over for not completing in the two minute time limit. I could've made that clearer, yeah, it's been mentioned. Waiting til the jam's over to roll out some improvements in an update though.
Thanks for the comment anyway, glad you enjoyed it! <3
Oh wow, I completely missed that. Just realised it says “2 minute game” in the start menu, haha! Maybe including it in the description more explicitly would have been nice for blind people like me :P
P.S.: Congrats for 2nd place in Visuals! Really deserved!
Thank you! #10 overall is pretty good too, I'd played most of those above my game and that's some damn fine company to share.
This whole jam has had some excellent entries on the whole, definitely a better average than most jams I've been in. Good stuff from everyone involved. <3
Really awesome game! It takes the bullet hell theme and changes it into a fun, fast paces dodge the enemies game. I love it! The art is super nice, it reminds me of a game I played on a ps2 a while back.
One thing I can say is that when you die, there should be a reset button instead of it taking you back to the main menu.
Awesome entry though!
Thank you! Yeah, MediEvil had a great atmosphere, I love spooky games like that.
As for the menu thing, missing polish elements like that are just casualties of having ran out of development time due to the jam. Perhaps the post-jam tweak rollout will address this... :)
I love the spooky theme of this game, really fits well in every aspect!
The gameplay is also no joke - The player hitbox is super clear, the firing rate is really tasteful, the hit feedback of enemies and their death animations are amazingly satisfying and the enemy patterns are really inventive and full of personality. The death animation is also really well invented. But who can forget the "IMMA FIRING MAH LASER" moment when you stop firing for 10 seconds? SUPER satisfying, and amazing use of theme!
The only complaint I have is with the first warning of the game about gamepad controls. First of all, this is a jam, which you should consider that most people are probably using a keyboard, so saying that the game is gamepad only may scare them away (which by the way supports other controls either way). In addition, there is too much text in that warning to read in such a short period it stays, had to reset the game 2 times to read it properly, also the font does not help much for clear understanding...
One thing you could do to prevent that, is to do it like the Yakuza games do for their ports on PC, on Yakuza 0 for example, the game starts with a screen with a gamepad image and below it is written: "Real Yakuza use a gamepad", which it implies that other controls could be used but the best experience is achieved using a gamepad, it is simple and short but conveys the message well.
Thanks for the comments! Glad you like and appreciate the work that went into this game, that means a lot.
Sorry you didn't like the "warning" screen, in itself it's less an actual proper warning but more a reference to seminal bullet hell game Dodonpachi's questionable 'Engrish' warning screen:
Might be a little obscure a reference, but I thought it was a nice little nod to the genre and its roots. Perhaps this could be re-worded a little? My bad, either way.
Again, thank you for the comments. <3
No problem!
I've been looking forward to playing this one as soon as I saw the spooky art theme (which i love the art in this!) This is a very, very impressive entry and especially amazing considering the short amount of time. Gameplay was very polished and very fun! The music was awesome too! Overall amazing work! :D
Thank you for your comments, it means a lot considering that I played your own game just now and got that same feeling of "wait, this was done in a WEEK?!?". Glad to see Maledictus didn't disappoint; again, thank you so much. <3
Everything in this game is extremely polished. Very impressive! It was very fun trying to figure CURSED mode out. A few personal impressions about the stage design:
- Making the mini-boss completely immune to the 10s beam is a bit counterintuitive given that the actual boss is extremely vulnerable to it. Makes the boss fight feel anticlimactic, and also felt like a cheap way to take ~8 hearts away from the player. I don't know how to fix this within the framework, though -- perhaps the boss fight can be reworked to involve more regular enemies for healing?
- It could be made more obvious when the player dies to the 2min timer. The first few times I died to it (see immunity to beam above), I was completely oblivious why.
- The player shouldn't be able to gain as much life as they do right now from using the beam, as it renders the early sections completely irrelevant for survival -- simply beam the enemies before the mini-boss and you're back to full.
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I never really understood how scoring worked. I see that there is a multiplier but there is no indication what made the number go up or down. This should probably be explained somewhere. In the end, I got 125m (or was it 129?), which I assume is a pretty low number, but I have no idea how should I go about to improve it.Ah, I figured it out! It's just the level of your weapon. Up to 170 now. Regardless, I feel like this could be explained in the game description.Those are just my personal feelings, and by no means criticism. This is a wonderful game for a jam regardless of all the points above. Great work!
Thanks for the comments! I'm never expecting a full-on analysis of a game that took just a week to make, but it's always a good sign to me; shows the game was at least good enough for someone to care about enough to share their thoughts -- which is very welcome.
And I don't disagree with most of them. I'd have loved to have fine-tuned the mechanics to address some of the (excellent) points made, and I definitely intend to after the jam period is finished, but a week is a week and all that.
Again, thank you for your thoughts. As with everyone else's comments, we are taking note for the tweaked post-jam version. :)
Again, I played it many times because I liked this a lot! Those did not have any effect on the ratings :) Anyway, I guess I'll call it a day at 178m. Looking forward to a post-jam version!
FWIW 178m is pretty damn good. Playing on CURSED, I take it? (The boss gives double points on CURSED)
And again, I'm glad you liked it enough to give such an analysis. I can tell from your own game that you have a passion for this genre that I share, so I know your comments come from a good place indeed. Thank you, once more. :)
Yes, on CURSED. Thanks for a good game!
Top tier visuals and good level design.
Some areas for improvement:
Thanks for the comments. To answer your questions;
- Yes it does, doesn't it? Some mild balancing is planned here post-jam, we often found that getting hit once could lead way too easily to a cascade of failure that would lead to Game Over quicker than we'd like. So yeah, we'll address this at some point after the jam.
- Because it felt right to have the health loss be a bit more than CURSED mode's penalty for sustained fire. But, yeah, I suppose NORMAL mode should only sap one heart at a time as it doesn't have the penalty mechanic. Good catch, another thing to look into post-jam.
- That's actually the idea; if they player hadn't used the ten-second charge until then (and in NORMAL mode that's very possible), then they need to use it at least once to clear the game (that's right, with enough time remaining after the mini-boss it's possible to super-zap the boss once and then continue with regular firing; although I wouldn't advise that).
Again, thanks for the comments. :)
Easily at the top of the jam, pretty much everything about this game is impressive and polished.
I've got a bit of feedback though, some design decisions I would've done a different way:
Thank you so much for the comments! As I've said in responses, we're aware of a fair few tweaks this game could do with; we just flat-out ran out of time for additional tweaking and balance. After the jam rating period is over, we will definitely revisit Maledictus to make it the game we wanted to make. But nonetheless, comments such as yours make my day. Again, thanks so much. :)
Very impressive for a jam game, incredible visuals and audio. The stage construction and patterns are really solid as well.
So difficult I couldn't manage to beat the boss on either mode, but it was frustrating/addicting enough that I tried for well over 10 (20?) times. Feel like I'm missing something in the relationship between the mechanics even though I'm pretty sure I understood all of them, including the healing.
Like they've said before, the swords coming from below and the tiny bullets feel very unfair and unpredictable. I have no idea what to do with the boss pattern that uses these bullets. A slow button would've been nice.
Thank you for the comments! It may interest you to know that we are taking note of feedback (especially re: the small bullets and swords, stuff like that) and plan to tweak and improve this game after the jam rating period is over.
Again, thank you! <3
Really nice visuals, audio is great and shoot 'em up style is really satisfying. I really like how theme was incorporated in cursed mode. Overall, very polished game and I had a lot of fun playing it. Great job!
Thank you! That means a lot to us! <3
Quite well done traditional shmup! Love the presentation & ghastly theme. The normal mode's 10 second "hyper charge" implementation was pretty lackluster since it takes forever and goes against the caravan-y mechanics, but CURSED mode is a lot more interesting and should have probably been the main feature despite how strict and punishing it is. The only complaints I have are pretty small like the very slow movement speed, those tiny green bullets that are needlessly difficult to see/track and the nasty swords coming from behind with no warning. Very impressive & fun overall
Funfact: CURSED mode was planned as the default mode, consider 'normal' to be an easy mode of sorts -- apparently people don't like to play 'easy' modes though, so I hear, so it was renamed. CURSED is definitely the game as was intended. ;)
Noted about those swords. Would've given those a better telegraph if (and I keep saying this) we didn't run out of time. Glad you enjoyed the rest though. :)
It's a shame since I imagine lots of players will see CURSED as some bonus and judge it solely on normal mode's very simplistic implementation of the 10 sec gimmick, hell I almost did that
It's a tough call, yeah. Ratings don't matter too much to me though, my partner and I have been wanting to make a game together for years and this jam happened to be at the right time when neither of us were too-deep in our own projects, so we finally did it. :)
We are, however, making a list of improvements for after the jam's rating period, to improve the game; with basically everything we should've done had we more time. Among these, I think I may rename 'normal' mode to 'novice' because, yeah, it basically is. ;)
You could just name it something like "simple", "orthodox" or even "traditional" and default to cursed mode. Getting players to play the modes you want without making other modes feel illegitimate is definitely a very tricky balance
Super polished presentation and sound i gotta say, and i like the little castlevania inspired loading which is fitting for a game where you play as a bat XD
pretty interesting mechanic to have made a super shot on a 10 sec charge when you stop shooting altogether that's a clever use of the theme
Solid overall and i don't know what more i could add, had a fun time.
Good job to you guys :)
Well, we love a bit of CastleVania... ;)
Thank you so much for the comments, glad you enjoyed our game. <3
Haha well the inspiration shows and thats good, and like i said considering you play a bat that felt spot on :)
Pretty fun shmup with interesting incentives to not shoot the entire time. Presentation is also excellent. Only complaints are that the green diamond bullets used by the sword enemies are really small and hard to see, and the player’s non-shooting speed feels a tad bit sluggish considering you are already forced to slow down while shooting.
Thank you for your comments. The team agree on those particular bullets, I was going to revisit them and make them better but we plain just ran out of game jam time. Glad you enjoyed the game and, again, thank you! <3
Love it! I really liked the implementation of the 10 seconds theme in this one, I wished that I could turn down the sfx volume in addition to music volume, because the bat was screeching pretty loud :P
Really nice job, I very much enjoyed it
Fair point on the sound volumes, might be a post-jam fix (I didn't normalise the effects to make a volume slider work because of time constraints, y'know how it is). Really glad you enjoyed the rest though, thank you. <3
Loved it! the 2min counter makes it really addictive, we always want to go further haha. The music is really good too, and the sfx are ICONIC. I love every one of them (the voice of the big bat at the end made me smile hard haha). Congratulations, you have my heart ^^ (also I saw that it's your first BH game, so congrats with that, what a great way to start)
Thank you, so much!
And yeah, I've been meaning to make a BH for a while now because I have a great passion for the genre but am usually busy with larger projects; my partner (this game's artist) and I basically leapt at the chance this jam offered to finally make one, and hopefully my passion shows. <3
It DOES! I know I'm stuck on repeat but... congrats! it's so good! The art is great! and I lack word to say how much I liked this lol
Awesome game! I played quite a lot of rounds, trying to lift the curse. Unfortunately I just couldn't get past the big bat :(
The 10 second mechanic feels really great, as others said the risk-reward of it is cool. But additionally it also provides replayability: When I failed, I tried to figure out at what times it makes sense to charge the special attack. Leveling up feels very satisfying. Great job!
Thank you! Comments like this really make my day, where you just get what I've gone for, totally. <3
I'm so impressed by the quality and polish of everything on your game! It looks and feels great, and I really like the ten second ceasefire mechanic; it's risk-reward to such a high degree.
Amazing job! I loved the game.
Thanks for the comment! Always really good when someone appreciates what we were going for in that risk/reward thing. This means a lot to us, again, thank you. <3
Really great work on this game! Art and audio are amazing. The 10 second mechanic is quite difficult to use but very rewarding. Starts getting especially fun once the levels start building up and you shoot more bullets. Very fun to play!
Thank you so much! Really glad you had fun with it. <3
Amazing graphics. Fairly by the book in terms of bullet hells from a gameplay standpoint but the patterns are good. I would love if some of the bullets had better visibility but beyond that a strong game.
Really AMAZING Game. The art and animation is some of the best I've ever seen in a jam game. The gameplay is difficult, yet a masterpiece. I really enjoyed shooting everything down, then seeing the whole screen wipe as i use the special ability. Jay, Harry, Steve. All of you outdone yourselves with everything you done. Great, GREAT Job
Thanks! This means a lot. <3
gameplay is solid. top shelf visuals & audio