Play game
Stained Gem: Cleanse the Tarnished's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Theme | #2 | 4.325 | 4.325 |
Overall | #6 | 3.885 | 3.885 |
Ambience | #9 | 4.225 | 4.225 |
References | #17 | 3.875 | 3.875 |
Innovation | #24 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
Gameplay | #24 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
Ranked from 40 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
GREAT game. Really love the application of the theme, and how corruption wasn't completely a disadvantage (i.e., where if you took too much damage/corruption your attack would actually get wider allowing you to hit enemies easier). I wish there was a bit more lore for Corrupted Nature, but it all worked out in the end. The corrupted creatures could have also been corrupted versions of fans that fit the forest, like Hoomans, Risuners, or Matsurisus. Also, while I appreciate the size for clarity, the UI is a tad too large and it obscures a good part of the screen and I lose Biboo when she goes under it (especially the boss HP bar when I fly too low. There's several ways you can approach this, but as it is now isn't working for me. Music is fun and I like the references to their songs (or was that my ears playing tricks on me >.<). Also, the pause screen is cute. I appreciate you all giving us the option of both coffee and tea. In all, it's a wonderful job. Great work from everyone involved!
IMA FIRING MA LAZER BRAAGGH!!! love the precure aesthetic and you turning corrupted yourself as you take more damage, an interesting risk vs reward indeed! I also agrees with the other that the control for Biboo is quite float and not precise making it quite hard to dodge bullets at times. Another nit picking that I have is the charging enemy going off screen can slow the game down/annoy me just a little but that's only a minor issue.
Aside from that, charming spirts and fun gameplay despite the current issues, thank you for the game!
I was really impressed with the presentation, it almost feels ready to release as is! Most of the issues come in the form of gameplay and balance issues, as is expected for a jam game with limited playtesting opportunities.
All of the things I noticed have already been mentioned by others, but I’d still still like to point out what I feel was the biggest issue: Biboo felt very difficult/imprecise to control. I think this largely comes down acceleration and (more importantly) deceleration being much too high for a game focused on precisely positioning yourself, both to hit enemies and dodge incoming attacks. The fact that you can’t move left while shooting right (unless I missed something) is also something that I personally didn’t like.
The idea of a corruption bar filling up, instead of a health bar ticking down, was also really interesting. I can see the risk-vs-reward mechanic here having a lot of potential for expansion (such as having an altered moveset at high corruption, including a different ultimate).
The original plan was to have completely different attacks for corrupted Biboo
This is a really good game, my only gripe was that I kinda forgot which bar was my health and which was my ult.
Great production value on this game! I think things like having an attractive title card and an intro cutscene actually go very far in terms of making the game feel polished. I was certainly impressed when I first started.
I think Biboo's hitbox is quite big. I found it very difficult to dodge things and instead relied mostly on hoping to hear as much as possible from the tea and coffee drops. Fortunately that seemed to work out as I was able to beat the game by taking and healing a lot. However, it does mean detract a bit from the game design when you can heal your way through fights. I tried pretty hard but always seemed to get hit by the bosses's attacks. But the relatively plentiful health drops meant i was able to make it through anyways.
I don't think I was quite a fan of the healing items changing your movement, as they made Biboo a bit too uncontrollable for me, which made it even harder to dodge attacks.
I tried both weapons. The heavy attack seems to be a clear favorite against smaller enemies, being able to take out groups with just one burst. But the light attack's range and safety made it better against the boss. I did get pretty tired of mashing the attack button at the end though. I think I would have personally preferred 2 attack buttons or swapping weapons so you could hold to fire rapidly but it worked well enough for me at the end.
Great work on the art and the music!
I just stayed on the title screen vibing to the music for a while.
Oh I also like the pause screen composition XD
Some improvement opportunities:
- The game was fun to play but I think the movement was a bit too floaty for my taste. It made navigating around enemies and attacks harder than it should be and felt sluggish.
- If an enemy is defeated near the left/right edge of the screen, the dropped item cannot be reached
- If the screen change happens while pressing the attack key, it considers it as charging at the start of the next screen, even if the key was not being pressed.
- Can still activate the pause screen after game over screen.
- Volume controls would be nice.
- Offscreen enemy pointers would be nice.
I managed to beat the game on my 3rd try! Good job, team!
Offscreen enemy pointers! We didn't think about that!
Thank you for playing our game and for the feedback, we're glad you like it!
- If the screen change happens while pressing the attack key, it considers it as charging at the start of the next screen, even if the key was not being pressed.
Note to devs of this game: this comment from David reminds me of how you can keep charging your Buster Cannon through screen transitions in Megaman. So if that sounds like a concept you wanna explore, you might want to consider developing and implementing this as a feature instead of removing it like a bug. Just a thought. :>
Had a good time with this, special shout out to the art and music, it's all very engaging (I especially really like the parallax background).
Agreed with some of the comments below, just want to add a couple small things. The movement is a bit slippery, so when trying to hurry and squeeze in a small gap it's likely to overshoot by sliding past it. Hold to shoot is a good accessibility consideration. And I think a moment to pick up the health before the screen moves you to the next fight would be helpful (though its nice the boss fight starts you at full regardless).
Very solid entry! I love the style of sprites used in the game and the ost. I am also impressed by how soothly it runs. Hope to see more from ya'll!
Thank you for playing! Hopefully we'll all join forces the next jam!
The game is fun because we have to focus in different directions, and the controls are easy. The music is good too, but for some reason, it stopped for a while. Is it not looping? I'm not sure. The art is great, and the effects are awesome too. It's really fun!
Noooo... I switched to an older implementation of the music transition and broke the transition between intro and loop 💀
Thanks for playing and pointing that out!
Interesting mechanic of corruption transformation. Love the art and sprite work, game looks really pretty.
Like Aquors mentioned below, would prefer if player's hitbox was smaller. Dodging attacks are extremely difficult due to how big the hitboxes of some attacks are.
Overall, I enjoyed my time with it, thanks!
Short and fun game! I really like sprite art style and thought this was made perfectly! The only thing I wish I could've had was being able to get the tea/coffee drops prior to moving to a next level. I'd kill the last two enemies or something while low on HP and could not grab the drops cause I get moved to the next level. Really enjoyed it otherwise though!
Also check out ours! https://itch.io/jam/holojam-5/rate/3050148
The transformation was cool and shows the corruption theme really well. I forgot that there was an ult ability, showing the keybinding would be good to let the player know that it is ready.
Glad you liked it! It should show the keybinding when the ulti is ready. We also wanted to add more feedback but we couldn't fit it in our scopeðŸ«
i actually wanted to make the gemstone that's next to the ult meter play an animation when it was fully charged, but stuff happened and i wasn't able to add it. maybe something for a post jam update!
It's like a space shooter; I love it :)
I didn’t use normal attacks since the Heavy Attack is better for killing multiple enemies at once.
The transformation was a nice touch too.
Nice game.
This game is pretty fun and I feel like I might get a bit nitpicky but here we go. I like the idea of transforming into a stronger version of yourself. That's a cool gimmick. The spritework and music are also very clean. I especially like the intro to the game, the player sprite, and the Fauna sprite. The Fauna boss fight was also pretty challenging and I liked playing through it. The ultimate was also pretty funny. Having her summon pebbles from the sky is awesome.
I actually think that the charged attack is kind of useless since its so short ranged and you have to basically run up to the enemy to use it. That means you just get hit by whatever Fauna wants to throw at you. Also this might be a hot take, but I didn't really like having the charge attack be mapped to the same button as the regular one. I personally just like being allowed to hold down the fire button for rapidfire instead of mashing it.
Being allowed to fire to the left was also a bit annoying since most of the enemies come from the right so it made strafing harder. The enemies that did come from the left also caught me off guard a lot of the time since that's where I was. I'd maybe make it so you could only fire to the right and all the enemies spawned in on the right side of the screen.
I also thought the tornado hitboxes were too big. Since the Biboo sprite is so big, at least compared to how big your bullets are, it might be worth making the hurtbox a bit smaller as well? I kept getting hit by the spread attacks by Fauna when I feel like I dodged them. Trails would also be nice for when the charging enemies are coming at you or for enemy bullets so that its easier to tell where they're going at a glance when there is so much happening, especially in the later screens.
Speaking of Fauna, I noticed she had two different spread attacks: the one that aims at you and the one that just goes in a circle. I actually like the circle one a lot more since its more predictable and easier to dodge, whereas the one that aims at you got me into some undodgable positions. Maybe consider swapping them or getting rid of the aiming one in a future build and replacing it with a different one? idk. Bullet patterns are hard.
Anyway, this is still a fun and cute game. I really liked playing it and I think the concept could go crazy if you ever decide to take this further.
Fun Game! Though for the Attacks, the normal attack kinda has zero to none usage over the charged attack. It is too slow, and does little damage so you hurt yourself more trying to hit the enemies than if you were using the charged attack. The hitboxes for the tornados also felt a little off. I kept getting hit by them even though it seems like i dodged them? Not sure in that regard though. Other than that it is a really nice concept and REALLY love the sprites!
Thanks for playing! We adjusted the light attack a bit and increased the speed & dmg to make it more usable.
We'll look into the hitboxes :)
Art and atmosphere are really good! This take on the theme is also very fun. Gameplay is pretty good too, although I think it might be easier to dodge and shoot at the same time if either you were locked facing only one direction or you could hold a button to stay facing one direction.
I love low health boost gimmicks and I believe I experienced everything the game has to offer, from the changed form's more powerful attacks to winning and losing the game and the experience was great! Love the references too! Very fitting for the theme!
The game looks awesome reminds me of those classic early japanese arcade classic games. It was hard to hit the enemies and land the charged attack with such a short range though.
Got to the fauna boss fight and that tornado attack was hard to dodge.
Really enjoyed playing.