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Haru: The Armada of the Astral Void (Alpha Demo)'s itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Art / Graphics | #4 | 4.857 | 4.857 |
Sound/Music | #15 | 4.286 | 4.286 |
Overall Fun | #16 | 4.286 | 4.286 |
Controls / UI | #23 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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I am going through all submissions to make all developers aware of an important Google form I've made.
I'm joining the IQ folks to help organize smaller events in between the main FQ event in order to help prevent us from getting too many games in main events. Right now, I have a planned structure for these events but I would like to hear from everyone who was in this event in order to tune things better. The survey is a bit long, but it covers as much as I could think of. If you can take the time to do the survey by June 1st, I would immensely appreciate it!
You can find the form here: https://forms.gle/P9LPYwERhJtpZzteA
Played your game tonight and enjoyed it!
MY ONLY COMPLAINT: Not a fan of how finding the base to upgrade is so challenging. Does it move around, as well? I tried killing enemies at the base and left a trail of coins... and when I followed them back... the base was gone. It would be nice if there was a small mini-map or even some sort of navigation that pointed you toward the base. Especially since you need to upgrade pretty quickly.
OVERALL FUN: It was a good time (with the exception of my complaint above), but I overall enjoyed it. The hoard does appear to expand quickly and get faster... so finding that base and upgrading seems important early on. Maybe it was just me, but I had a difficult time finding it to upgrade and keep up with the growing hoard. I may have been playing it wrong, too.
ART/GRAPHICS: Very well done here! Love the artwork of the ship, enemies and background images of space, plus the planets passing by, was all done nicely. Weapon fire and explosion animations looked great, as well.
CONTROLS/UI: The controls and movement, when I first read them, scared me. Some space/flying games with forward and reverse thrusters are challenging to control... but you pulled this off. They weren't challenging at all (which is good). Movement felt nice and fluid, and I love the reverse thrusters so I can still move and fire at the oncoming horde.
SOUND/MUSIC: Music was fitting and gave me that sense of dread. Kill this stuff quickly. Audio of the gun fire and explosions were nicely done, as well.
Hey GrayBardGaming,
We are glad that you had a good time. Thanks for your kind comments, we have put so much work into the game, every nice comments makes it worth while.
About finding the starbase, you'll be happy to learn that there is a scanner on the ship that points out the interest points. It's E on the keyboard or B on an XBOX controller. We added the mini-map to our to-do list a while ago, you can expect it in the next month or so.
Thanks again!
I missed the scanner button. I'll give it another try! :-)
I liked playing this game! I appreciated that the controls were somewhat intuitive: the ship would fly forward/backward based on my mouse cursor, which is much easier to control than controlling left/right thrusters or something.
I didn't realize the going into the enemies would lower my hp until I died the first time. I suggest having some sort of visual or audio indicator would be good. I eventually realized I had a hp bar at the top right and it was decreasing, but by then it was too late for my first playthrough.
I played a second round and did better! I encountered and maybe killed the first boss. I feel like given enough rounds, I would get a better hang of the controls and play much better. I went to the upgrades screen and appreciated how many things there were to upgrade, even though I didn't get far enough to purchase any.
From the end screen, it appears that there are other weapons too, but I didn't experience them in my short playthroughs.. lots of content, which is great!
Another thing I really appreciated was the music after I died. The game itself was quiet which fit the space setting, and when I died, the ending theme was both celebratory and sad, if that makes sense.. and it fit it well!
Thanks a lot for your review and comments!
Here's some notes based on your message:
The visual/audio indicator when damage is received is definitely in our to-do list.
Some people find the controls difficult on their first few games, so we're happy that you managed to make it work on your first game.
We have 7 weapons in the demo. We should have 14 weapons and 11 systems when we release.
The fact that the music was absent is definitely a bug that was introduced in the last week, we're investigating.
We're really glad that you liked it and we hope that you come back to it in the future!
Played this on stream and it was a good time! LOVE the music, and the atmosphere has a great setting! Would love to know more story and set-up with the main character specifically and his role up there in space-Also not being able to stop made it a little difficult to control with the thrusters-Really appreciated the scanner to help find items, but there were so many enemies around, it was hard to focus on anything but dodging. Overall a great start!
We're glad that you had a good time!
A story is definitely in the pipeline somewhere. We are also talking about adding more control schemes and movement options.
Thanks for playing and for the nice comments :)
Excellent work, I really love the art style and how versatile the movement is and all the tricks you can do.
It's a little too easy to evade enemies, so I would suggest making them faster.
I also had a bug were text wouldn't appear for some reason? But how the game guides the player is so good that I didn't need to read anything. And the music got cut off.
10/10, amazingly well done
Thanks for the kind comments, it's really a passion project for us so it means a lot!
One of the next step is to scale enemy difficulty based on the player strength and item levels. So you will never have a too easy run (nor too hard).
If you have the time and you can screenshot where you saw the text, send it to us here or via Discord and we'll check it out! Also, did the music cut off suddenly or it did not transition between songs?
Thanks again for playing :D
Hi
The music was a sudden cut off, and the sound effects became louder after that, which is strange
Rn im not at my pc, but will make sure to send images when I can!
Hello from tonight's stream! I played this game for a while and I was very impressed by it. I like the constant momentum, the shifting field (I'm assuming the purple outer field marks an area where the base is in the middle), and the refusal to use invincibility frames. That said, I do think bosses should apply a knock back to prevent the player from dying fast. If you happen to mess up the controls (which I find happens a lot), you end up stuck on enemies for a moment. For bosses, this guarantees death. A knock back for bosses would the player to correct their mistake faster without being as punishing.
Also, it was the general opinion of the stream that the music could use an update. We assumed it was stock audio.
Hi Hythrain, we just finished watching your stream's recording and it was a lot of fun. All your comments were very constructive and we were able to learn a lot from your experience with our game. We learned that the use of the Shift key for going faster was not that obvious, but we loved the part where you found it at the end. Your comment for the knock back is noted, it could be a good way to be a little more forgiving with the players. For the music, the only stock track in the demo is the Game Over one. All the music in the menu and gameplay is licensed from the artist Tonebox.
Thanks again for playing, your awesome feedback helps us improve our game!
P.S.: We fixed the second control mode in 0.2.34
Graphics and sound are very solid. The one thing I really don't like are the controls however, having to manage drifting everywhere combined the up and down being dependent on the rotation of the ship is rough. Maybe it is accurate to the physics of space but to me it feels awful, maybe I just have to get used to it tho not sure. Also, one minor thing, there needs to be more indication when the player takes damage. It is currently hard to tell.
Hi Barribob,
Thanks a lot for playing our game and taking the time to give us such constructive feedback.
For the controls, we will add different control schemes and add side-thrusters for better movement. It will give the player more flexibility.
Your comment is noted for the player taking damage. A vignette, SFX or more effects on the ship are all considered.
Thanks again 😊