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Crystal Wick's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Adherence to the Theme | #290 | 4.316 | 4.316 |
| Overall | #549 | 3.766 | 3.766 |
| Design | #585 | 3.544 | 3.544 |
| Originality | #980 | 3.439 | 3.439 |
Ranked from 57 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Challenging game! I included it in my GMTK Game Jam 2019 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :)
I think you shouldn't have put all the controls on the mouse because it ended up feeling kinda weird and combining that with the enemies short reaction times to shoot made the game felt harder than it needed to be. Maybe you could add an option to move with the keyboard.
Ps: Don't know if you remember me but I'm the guy that was talking with you about action games, You seem really knowledgeable in that genre so I would like if you could check out my game and give me advice on how to make it feel better, or perhaps reference some games I should check out and take notes.
Hey there, I played through some of your game at the start of this video
This is a pretty fun and addictive arena shooter. I found the controls challenging and the slow-mo I thought at first was the game lagging but I think there is utility to both. I never found the control scheme 100% intuitive but maybe a little more time with it would fix that. I had fun seeing how well I could do though the answer was never great. Thanks for this.
Nice game here! It is addictive!
Oh god seeing that crystal with a john wick face is actually hilarious hahahahah
This is an interesting game design-wise because the control scheme is so uncommon. It's quite original, and because you don't have WASD to move around you really do need to learn a new skill basically, kill something as fast as possible, use the slowmo to calculate the roll and try to gain some space so you can aim with focus. It's really interesting!
The game really comes together when you get a combo with a gun, specially the SMG. The slowmo helps you shoot accurately and you get to feel like a super efficient killing machine, just like the dude himself, hahahah. I really think the game would benefit awesomely from more of this slowmo-combos like this.
I would add a different/alternate key for the roll, however. It's just way too uncomfortable to press the middle mouse button for something so important!
Also, i don't know if it was intended, but you can leave it pressed down and john wick will fling himself full speed across the stage like an invulnerable ball of death.
One thing: Enemies with katanas have a really weird attack hitbox. Sometimes i'd swear they killed me before the animation played, or that i was far away enough. It's kinda weird. Probably would need an animation before attacking to communicate the player they will slash!
Overall, this was quite interesting! An arena-shootemup game controlled with only the mouse. Huh!
I appreciate the difficulty this game presented by limiting all controls to the mouse, it was a little awkward to stop and shoot at enemies, but that was part of the challenge I felt. You could only move or only fire (at least at I could only move or only fire, there's probably someone who could do both but I'm not that good) which gave a good sense of tactics to the game
I can smell the Superhot inspiration, and you've done a good job with it. The weapons feel good, and the glass aesthetic is satisfying.
I actually didn't mind the mouse movement that much, but I don't see why it's necessary. There's a reason why WASD + mouse is the norm. It's natural. Even Rocket League, which has no business with mouse movement at all, preferred to use WASD + mouse for its default input scheme.
I personally find picking up items a bit awkward (just a bit, not a major issue). Have you tried auto-equipping?
Overall, solid entry to the jam!
As already mentioned by others, the control feel kind a "bad" BUT I this isn't quite right or fair to say. I think you tries to break the perception of this genre by establishing an different control scheme. Which is by the way totally ok, it's your vision! BUT the most common control scheme are well established and need to be "abandoned" in order to adapt the new one. I think if there is no crucial benefit from "giving up the one" and switching to another one then the people won't accept the change. And those benefits are often subjective, so it's a risky decision.
However, I actually like the game. After multiple (a lot :D) fails I kinda get use to the control scheme and had fun playing it. The only one feature I wish to had behave differently is the roll. It would be cool if I could roll sideways instead of forward. So, I used it only to get faster to the enemies instead as a feature to avoid bullets.
But! :D This is a very solid game, which is fun to play! Well done :)
Hey nice game!
Small pain point is that some enemy will shoot and kill you when they appear on screen which make it near to impossible to evade that shot since you did not know they were coming so I would suggest a minimap or distancing the camera a bit more or reducing their range. More enemies and weapons and patterns is a logical next step!
Thanks!
I had fun with this game! But there were still some kinda ehh things I noticed.
Hate to say it, but I think the controls are kinda bad. :( Not being able to backpedal in a top-down (well, kinda top down :P) shooter makes it feel awkward since you can't aim at a bad guy without either standing still or moving towards them. Being able to shoot and dodge at the same time would make the movement more interesting and less frustrating, in my opinion. That being said, the shooting is good. The slowdown after each kill feels great and lets you more easily dodge incoming bullets, which is awesome I think. :)
I also noticed that, because of the level geometry, if you stand on the edges of the arena you shoot above the enemies instead of hitting them, so that's a small oversight.
The rest of the game is solid. The graphics are clean and cool, the camera angle is a little jarring but looks nice, and the music is excellent! Swapping weapons all the time is exciting and frantic, perfect for this kind of game.
Overall I'd say it's a good game! It would be really good, maybe perfect, if the control scheme felt better to play with. As the developer, it probably feels very natural to you, but as a player it's tough to look past. Having just one usage per weapon is enough for it to fit the theme IMO, so I don't think having everything on the mouse was worth it. Of course, for a 48 hour game it's fantastic. It might be worth it to try and get a beta tester next time, since you've already got music, art, and code down tight :)
Im still on the fence about controlling it with the mouse, the feedback is loud and clear and they are hated, in their current form they are too hard to use and the difficulty wall at the start of the game is immense. But in my opinion with some modifications and a proper learning curve (plan on doing levels) the controls could be fun and challenging. My issue with WASD controls is that it boils too much of its difficulty and in order to balance you have to throw more enemies at the player, i will test a lot with mouse __and__ with WASD and see if people think mouse is more bearable, but that will come after loads of testing. (Also WASD is done to death in top down shooters, i want to come up with alternatives)
the sides and corners were intentional, quickly into playtesting i realized that hiding in a corner made the game exploitable, you could sit in a corner, kill, grab gun and go back to hiding, i tried to push the player into the middle of the arena although i failed telegraphing that.
Im glad you liked it, i really drop the ball on testing it and the difficulty is 11^2, but that will change.
JF and Paul had a lot of fun playing through this game on stream last night. The idea of one shot was a common one for this game jam, but you found a fun arcade-y way of making a game that they ended up spending quite some time with. The design of the arena leaves a little to be desired as far as cover goes from the onslaught of bullets but it didn't get in the way of a good time. The one hang up is the mouse being the solo method of playing, however you made some optimizations with it by having the middle button acting as the action roll.
Great job on this submission and we look forward to seeing how your other projects turn out!
Man, this game is haaaaard. The fact that you essentially have to stand still when aiming at enemies made the game very difficult (in conjunction with wrapping my head around the unorthodox movement controls). Also the weapons felt rather inaccurate, as unless my cursor was dead center on the enemy, it would often miss. Though I will say the game looks very pretty, and the John Wick reference was a nice touch.
Really, the biggest issue I have with the game is that it takes the "Only One" idea too far. It would have been enough to have the guns fire only once in my opinion, but the movement controls are too difficult to manage.
Oh yeah, the difficulty is way harder than it should and i think the controls are percieved badly because there is no room to breath so i will surely get on fixing that. I find it strange that you had collision issues, havent heard of problems like that but i will playtest to see if it comes up.
Lots of fun and challenging. Incredible that it was made by one person.
Really fun game, super well made, and very pretty. I enjoyed the bullet time and killing enemies and picking up their weapons. Oh, and dodge rolling.
What I would say is that the controls just kind of confused me. I get what you were going for with the mouse only controls, and I will say I got used to them after a while, but I probably would have been less confused if it was like, WASD to move, and mouse to shoot/dodge. Also, I don't entirely see the point in having to click to pick up items, but it's not that big of a deal.
Really great work here. A lot of potench, as Mark would say. Keep it up!!
This is so fun! I spend a lot of time with this one. It took some time to get used to the controls, but to my surprise after a few rounds i wouldnt have wanted the control in any other way. Great job!
This get's really intense. Dodge rolling + picking up a gun at the same time is satisfying. I mostly found myself dying to sword dudes and pistol dudes. Nice job.
I like how you make everything only with the mouse!
The game can get a bit repetitive with the time but that's something that happens with almost every arcade game of the style. Good job!
It's an interesting and fun concept, but the controls are a bit confusing... I kinda wish you could just automatically pick up weapons, instead of having to click the mouse.
Fun game! Shiny graphics! Really liked the color contrasts! Felt good to play! Took me too long to realize that the main character has a Keanu face haha! Great game!!