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Boson Hell's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #558 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Overall | #1042 | 3.650 | 3.650 |
| Style | #1060 | 3.850 | 3.850 |
| Creativity | #2283 | 3.350 | 3.350 |
Ranked from 60 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
Multiple mechanics involve size (arena, merging enemies, player shrink) and the game is themed around particles
Development Time
96 hours
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
Music from HOME:
The Atlantic Tapes - Chemical Separation
Resting State - 11
Everything else was made during the jam
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Comments
Love this simple little game! I only scored 17600 though, but I really loved the moment where I realized the space I had around me was also my life bar. It really played with the theme in a way I greatly enjoyed! Love to see more like this :)
Thanks for playing :)
Love to see those design decisions come through!
Really trippy game and I liked it!! The art style is gorgeous, and I like the shrinking mechanic to switch between offense and defense. Very well thought bullet hell with a simple yet very powerful core loop. Amazing!
I got a score of 126.900 :)
Wow, great score! That's higher than my own high score when first uploading the game, that's when the waves get insane and your strategy needs to switch a lot to keep going.
I'm really happy you had a good time with the game, thanks for playing!
Wow!!! Super polished, love the minimalist art style and juicy particle effects! There is well thought out risk and reward with the main game mechanic, of needing to increase the size of your hitbox and slowing your speed in order to actually defeat the enemies. The ever-shrinking arena really gets my adrenaline pumping, especially when it started to get real cramped towards the end of my run. Love it, no notes!
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it! Yes, these are all things I thought about while making the game, even though it kinda took shape as it went :)
Big geometry wars vibes.
It was a massive inspiration! Hopefully I included enough twists to make it distinctive.
I like how the mass of the players warps space. I'm bad at this but it's still a very fun experience playing the game!
Happy you have fun even though the game was hard! Thanks for playing!
Another bullet hell game? Count me in! It was super smooth and satisfying to change size and tear down your enemies. But having a few power-ups over time would be cool. Great job!
Power-ups are definitely top of the list for things to implement post-jam! (will be mostly size related of course)
Thanks for playing my game, I'm glad you liked it :)
I really like the game! No comments.(the first game on the game jam where I did not find any bugs )
I'm glad you liked it, thank you! I'm sure you can find more games without bugs, people did a great job this jam.
it looks incredible...
Thank you for that! Goes to show programmer art can be pretty too :)
fun game. And also thank you for the tool
Thank you for playing!
Very cool game! I actually wanted to keep playing and beat my high score (I like bullet hells), I think some more different types of weapons would be nice for stuff like fire rate and spread but other than that good job!
Yes! I always think my jam games lack that oomph in terms of variety in the gameplay, but I didn't get around to that between implementing visuals, core gameplay and optimizing.
Definitely doable, it's just that I had to learn a lot on the way. And I guess it keeps the attention on "size matters", so for the jam it wasn't too bad.
This is a really well designed game! I had a lot of fun playing too. The VFX are pretty hefty though. It might just be my crappy computer but the game stuttered when there was a ton of VFX on screen
Thank you for playing! I wondered if the FX could be too much, but guessed if my shoddy laptop can make it, most people will manage. Optimizing the physics and rendering was actually a first for me too, but it turned out well with loads of bullets.
The desktop version was surely smoother for me, if you wanna try that out.
The effects here are beautiful! So cool!
Thank you! It was hard to bend my mind around shader maths, but managed to pull through.
Nice work, love the juice and the bend effect also the controls feels smooth.
Thank you! I really wanted to make sure it played as nice as possible :)
Fantastic work—I especially like the warping effect on the background! If I had one critique, it’s that because your circle is constantly shrinking, the pauses between waves actually feel less like a break from the action and more a moment of anxiety because I can’t regain health.
Thank you! I kept considering if I should stop the arena in between waves, but ended up choosing not to do it. It creates this urgency feeling for a long time, but it only intensifies the "gasp for air" when players finally get beads to expand it back, or the long breath at Game Over. Powerful stuff while playtesting, and I kept it in.
Ah, gotcha. Playtesting makes perfect!
There's some fantastic game design on stage here! There's a stellar balance in the two sizes having their own strengths and weaknesses (being slow and large but able to fight back vs being speedy and small but defenseless) that gave the game that oomph to stand out from the crowd. I really like the way the 'health' is the stage getting more and more crammed, giving a great sense of claustophobia as you're close to losing (and a great take on the theme). Had a blast playing this!
I'm so glad you had fun! And yes!! I tried to apply a bunch of stuff Mark talks about in his videos: diagetic design, double purpose, push and pull... It turns out all of that game design theory does work a lot of the time!
this game plays really nicely, sadly with how punishing everything is, getting hit once or simply letting too many enemies be alive at once (which in inevitable due to the wave mechanics) You can’t reliably get past the first few waves without being crushed by the arena.
Thank for the feedback! It's a bit tough starting out, but you'd be surprised how far you can go.... A strategy my friends found was just waiting tiny for the wave to merge together and them getting all of them while they're big. It's hard, but doable!
Cool game, feels a bit too much like bullet hell at some points
Thank you for playing! I hope you had a good time!
Interesting take on a retro style, but the grid hurts my eyes way too much.
Thanks for playing! Sorry if the neon was too much, I think I'll implement a brightness slider and color palettes post jam.
i realy like the artstyle. looks realy good while being relatively simpel, also it was verry fun.
That's programmer art for you :)
I'm glad you liked it, I had a lot of fun making it.
My highscore was 70100... yeah I'm bad at the game. It was a cool retro game combining bullet hell with the sinking mechanics in battle royale game. I'd love to see this concept in multiplayer settings (like you and teammates both try to maintain the circle scale, while enemies and bosses overwhelm you.
70k is not bad! I had a lot of time to play and know literally all of the mechanics and strategies. Making multiplayer games is on my bucket list but I gotta start even smaller! That's the competitive Rock Paper Scissors game I'm working on