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June Mejos and the Moonlit Curse's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #3 | 4.111 | 4.111 |
| Graphics, Audio, and Polish | #4 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
| Overall | #4 | 4.067 | 4.067 |
| Originality/Creativity | #6 | 4.111 | 4.111 |
| Engagement/Fun | #6 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Magical Girl Design | #7 | 4.111 | 4.111 |
Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the Magical Girl genre?
June Mejos is a Magical Girl who defends Basin Lake City with her magic powers.
Which theme(s) do you pick?
7. Perfect [Cherry] [Blossom]
8. [Imperishable] [Night]
15. [Legacy] of [Lunatic] Kingdom
How does your game fit the themes above?
7. June's attacks are Cherry Blossom Themed.
8. An endless curse will overtake the night without June's help.
15. The Moon looms large above the cursed Sanctuary. The Sanctuary itself is June's legacy.
Are all your graphics assets made by yourself during the duration of the jam?
all of it were made during the jam period
Are all your audio assets made by yourself during the duration of the jam?
all of it were made during the jam period
Comments/Suggestions about the jam
The full original soundtrack and SFX design were created during the Jam period for this game by the talented Facemelting Solos! Check out his other work at facemeltingsolos.itch.io, @Facemeltingsolo on Twitter!
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Comments
Amazingly executed shooter. Pure commercial-level quality polish in the animations, music, art, and story. My only frustration was not being able to enjoy using the power ups because I'm bad at the game! :P
I suppose one minor complaint I had was that it was hard to distinguish the tiny blobs from regular bullets at a glance.
I had the good fortune to be playing this late enough to be able to enjoy the B-side, and I found Camilla's combat system more unique and interesting. It felt good having the knowledge that I was as powerful as I could be at all times.
I was pretty hyped to play this after seeing all the mindblowingly good progress gifs you were posting on Discord. I'm very happy to report that it lived up to the hype and beyond! Great work and I'm super excited to see what you do next!
Thank you so much for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Also glad to hear your feedback on the Camilla section... you're the first to comment on it. I was worried about the alternate combat system, but sounds like you were able to play it with no problems!
I had flashbacks to the arcades of the 90's while playing this game. No doubt this game would have devoured my measly weekly allowance back in the day. The art is very polished, and the audio design fits perfectly. I especially appreciate the voice acting, which not only adds a dimension of immersion, but also helps reduce the burden of the UI to communicate what's going on so I can concentrate more on the action. Making the health meter switch to the bottom of the screen when June flies to the top is a brilliant touch, too.
The first stage is HARD. Maybe not Silver Surfer-grade hard, but it's still pretty unforgiving, and you go all the way back to the beginning when you die. I also don't like how easy it is to lose powerups - I'm lucky if I can keep one for more than a few seconds due to the amount of damage I take through the level. I couldn't finish the first level because I would get to the boss, then die and have to start over. Something about the balance should be adjusted, whether it's making powerups "stickier" or reducing the amount of bullets on screen at a time, and add a checkpoint before the boss so the player doesn't have to lose all of their progress.
Overall, this is an excellent entry and can be enjoyable if the player is either really good at dodging the bullets or willing to overcome the frustrating difficulty factor.
Thanks for playing, and thanks for the feedback!
I actually have several updates built that will be releasing at the end of the month. First, movement will now be precise (no more acceleration and deceleration), so dodging should be somewhat easier. Second, there are now difficulty settings... "Hard" will be the same as it is currently, and "Easy" will have a doubled health bar and the ability to retain weapons (laser, rocket, etc) upon hit. You'll still lose other power ups, but I think this mode should be more fun/forgiving to players who aren't big into SHMUPs.
Expect this update to be released around Oct 30th, for the end of Devtober. I hope you'll give it another look then! Maybe ignore the new B-Side button though... that's a set of 3 new, even harder stages, lol!
First stage took me three tries; second and third stage took me no retries, fourth stage took me ~4 retries I think. But I finally did it. Really took a while to get used to the control and the hitbox.
First, the good parts:
The graphics are top notch, especially the background. It's apparent the amount of effort put into this game.
The boss designs are awesome. Putting ominous overpowering boss right at the start -- love it.
The theme interpretation is pretty creative -- and I like the story with the ancient sanctuary.
And the music -- as expected. Esp. the one for the last boss is epic.
Kinda hard to believe you started somewhat late.
I can't overlook, however, the issues I had with this game:
Overall still a good game. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for playing! Glad you were able to complete it, despite the issues. Also, thanks for the thorough feedback, it's appreciated!
Your at least the 3rd player who has mentioned the movement, so I guess it's time to accept that needs another look. I'm going to leave the hitbox as is though, as I'm really not going for true bullet hell. I've been referring to it as "bullet-heck". With the large health bar, and power ups healing the player, I feel like there's plenty of room for error. I've never played a bullet hell game personally, and was really going for the feel of a 90s era SHMUP overall.
The arrow key thing... I'm aware of that problem. I always recommend AWSD, but with other keyboard arrangements and settings, I feel like I'd get complaints if I took out the arrow keys. Googling around, it seems this is a hardware issue, with most consumer keyboards "locking" the number of inputs of certain buttons. Higher end keyboards may not experience this issue. Another solution is to use the mouse + arrow keys. I always use the mouse, though I realize this may not be every player's preferred input. Though I guess I'd have to rethink the dialogue advance button if I expect arrow keys + mouse.
Good catch on the wavy shot! I rarely use that one, once I was past testing it, so that problem slipped by me. I'll have to change how the bullets get culled.
For my Devtober project, I'm updating and expanding this with a new play-mode (a Camilla play-through) and three new stages for that mode... I'll see if I can address some of these issues in that update as well! I'll be posting it at the end of the month, before Devtober is over, but at the very end of MGGJ2 judging, as I don't want these updates to be considered on this jam's judging.
I hope you'll give it another try then!
Not really complaining about the hitbox lol I do realize you are not aiming for Touhou; for the hitbox it just took me a while to get used to was all (since y'know... Bullet Hell games I play usually have really tiny hitboxes). I do think it fits your game well with the amount of bullets on screen
Hey that Devtober project sounds cool.
Just make sure precise control is possible the next time you make a SHMUP. Slippery control is very, very uncomfortable when playing SHMUP games -- and the more bullets there are the more necessary precise control is.
I think if you check the controls of the more normal 90s SHMUP games like Strikers 1945 (II), Raiden (I played Raiden II), G-Darius, Raptor CotS, etc., their movement schemes are usually either instantaneous speed (i.e. pressing a direction instantly gives you a certain speed) or at least very high acceleration/decceleration (from what I remember).
For further reference Touhou's (...which technically is a 90s SHMUP game since the less well known earlier games were released since 1996) control scheme is instantaneous but it has got a "focus" button for moving slowly for more precise dodging :P
good stuff, I died like a bajillion times to beat it eventually.
Thanks for playing! I'm glad you were able to make it to the end, though sounds like further evidence the difficulty may be too high on this one.
I was really, really hyped for this one. A Change of Heart and Within Her HeART were amazing, and the teasers you posted had me salivating. I ended up let down though this wasn't any fault of yours- I'll get to this shortly.
The art and music are great. I really like the opening animation, although I'd seen that before it was a treat to see it again. The menu is also very polished and even has buttons that light up and make noise.
It is very small in my browser, so I can see why fullscreen is recommended.
I really, really wanted to play this game to completion. Unfortunately I never got past the first level. I do agree with Thoof that the heavy movement with a lot of inertia is kind of questionable given how precisely and quickly you need to move, though I think one could get used to it. I've also stated my thoughts on positive feedback loops earlier in the Discord- I don't like how starting to lose makes the game harder. I'm also terrible at bullet hells in general, so there's that.
That being said I think the gameplay is mostly solid. I didn't really have much of a chance to get used to it is the thing.
I couldn't play much because this game gave me horrendous eyestrain. I don't know why that is. The last game I played that did that to me was Zombie Driver- another game which I really liked but reached a point where I couldn't play any longer- and I have no idea why that did it to me either. I don't think it's anything you did, and I don't think the majority of players will have an issue with it, but I was only able to play a few minutes.
I'm not sold on the status bar moving from top to bottom, and I found it very hard to read at a glance, but again I didn't play much and... eyestrain.
Finally, June can fly now?
I still do think this is one of the best games in the jam, though I'm not sure if I should try to rate it because I didn't/couldn't play much of it.
Oh man, sorry to hear that! That's weird... maybe too much constant parallaxing, or the color combos?
I'm intending to put out a desktop build, maybe a resizeable window would make things easier on the eye? Not that I'm asking you to strain your eyes more... but thought I'd mention that in case you want to give that version a whirl.
As for your question about June... she's a girl of many talents ;) That said, the flying isn't really cannon to the universe. It was just convenient for the jam, haha.
It was a little bit better for playability and I got further, but ultimately I still had the same problem unfortunately.
I think it might be because there's stuff going on across the whole screen and you kind of have to look at everything at once rather than focusing on the center of the screen. That means my eyes are constantly darting about and it kind of fries my brain too. To be fair all shmups might be like this, I don't really play them much. I mostly play first person shooters which are pretty much designed around your field of view.
It's a hypothesis but by no means scientific.
Well, it was worth a shot! Thanks for giving it another spin. :)
I added some music from touhou in my playthrough since there are non. I think the game begs for touhou music. Thank you for the game~!