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Mira: Prairie River Pyre's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Artistic Style | #88 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Playability | #487 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Cleverness | #876 | 2.000 | 2.000 |
| Theme | #1153 | 1.000 | 1.000 |
Ranked from 2 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- A pretty Vamp Surv clone that does nothing to add to the genre, fails to adhere to the theme, and ends before it begins.
- Very fun! love me some vampire survivor esk games. i can see where the theme would have fit, fire spreads, but it doesnt actually do that here! otherwise, excellent, id play more of it! i played it until it became unplayable from preformance, due to so many enemies on screen :)
Did you include your Game Design Document in your downloadable files?
Yes
Tell us about your game!
“Mira: Prairie River Pyre” is a love-letter to bullet-hell survivors, that takes place on the mythic ancestral plains of Saskatchewan. Young Mira summons an anxious fire spirit and gains magical powers after failing to return her late Baba’s ashes to her final resting place, her hometown of Prairie River. She must collect enough pieces of her Baba’s ashes to gain enough power to sooth the frightened haunting and bring peace and rest to the Land of the Living Skies.
Players take advantage of the water claw attack to fight back the horde of haunts. Hiding behind obstacles can provide temporary shelter, but beware of flammable materials. The game takes a casual simple approach to gameplay, with no button mapped to any attack buttons. Controller support is available during gameplay. Players are able to defeat enemies to pick up ashes to gain levels.
Did you remember to include your Game Design Document?
Yes
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes
Extra Notes
For best performance, play on Windows.
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Comments
Top-notch art style! I also finished the game, would like to play more! :D
Really nice for 2 weeks! got a good vibe between the art and the music.
Game's art is cool. Sound FX and music were good. Controls were smooth. Would love to see more mechanics added for sure!
A surprisingly emotionally vulnerable take on the genre. I loved the atmosphere of the narrative as well as the mechanics. Having the indicators of my rotating attacks forced me to think about things in a more deliberate way than most bullet heavens.
Omg, this is fun. The perfect amount of need to run and fight back. Perfect to the theme and great art. Getting the ashes are great way to make you want to go back into the mess of things to replenish your power. I loved it, really fun.
Awesome work. I played this when you asked for playtest on the final day, and liked it then. I still think it's great! I quite like a game that has one movement mechanic and you just focus on positioning. I must admit, I didn't realise that the things I was picking up were ashes! I thought they were water droplets that replenished my fire-putting-out powers XD
Really well done, great submission.
Ah thank you for this feedback. Yes, I suppose they don't read absolutely obvious. Were you at least compelled to collect them without being explicitly asked?
Yes, absolutely!
Very good game, super polished feeling in both art and gameplay. The only concern I had was the lag after each level up, and also when there were too many enemies on screen. But other than that, very fun!
Fun Vampire Survivors-esque game! Loved the music and the art, and the upgrades were fun though sometimes didn't feels too impactful overall.
Biggest gripe would be the lag, I know that a bunch of enemies on screen means a lot of things to render and check but that's the biggest programming issue to solve with these types of games, so I hope that you work on this further and figure out how to optimise that more. Outside of that add a volume slider please.
Really fun game though, hope y'all keep working on it post-jam!
Loved the music and the art, and the upgrades were fun though sometimes didn't feels too impactful overall.
Oh yes, so absolutely true. I must admit they were added on the final day, so behind with solving many other bugs and issues. I definitely peppered critical hit % and heal-up to make sure the player wasn't 100% guaranteed a more favorable choice like a new powerup or speed / damage boost. I'd love to expound on what we have so far.
Biggest gripe would be the lag
Oh so, so true. I learned a ton through the process, and I definitely intend on at least updating the game to address this severe issue.
add a volume slider please.
Ah, great catch!
Very fun, good art, no notes. Just wanted to keep playing.
well done.
Great game! The concept of spreading ashes, spreading fire tied into the theme well. The lighting and glow effects stood out the most to me as an excellent design choice. The attack feedback felt great as well.
Thanks for playing!
Awesome game! Really enjoyed the art and music and I definitely see ways that this can be expanded upon in the future!
goody game i approve
Had a lovely time playing this.
Thank you so much for sharing your journey all throughout the game jam, was great to see your progress. ❤
Yes, you're right I've gotten that feedback. The lag should be a lot shorter, just long enough to let the player get their hand back on the keyboard.
music goes way too hard (in a good way)!
Fun! I wish it lasted longer before stating to tank the FPS! Addictive loop too
As also told on discord, this was very nice game, looking forward to your next ones! :)
There's some special source in clobbering a whole bunch of the fire elementals in one go, cruuunch haha. Nice job, love the music too.
There's some special source in clobbering a whole bunch of the fire elementals in one go, cruuunch
I feel bad because there's no limiter on this, so it might clip if I made a few updates to the game. :O
Nice job! I love the music and the art style is really great too. I found the game strangely addicting too, the less straight forward combat actually added something fresh to this kind of game for me. It took a bit to get the hang of timing/aiming my attacks but once I did I had a lot of fun. The upgrades were also great, the new weapon options were great.
Thank you so much for playing my game!
"the less straight forward combat actually added something"
Would you mind expounding on that? I want to know what I did right haha.
Haha no problem! My gut thought when I saw how your combat worked was that I would hate it. Typically in a top down game like that (such as the one I made) you aim and fire an attack on input. Having more control over the attack makes it less frustrating etc. So I figured not having control of frequency or aim would be annoying.
But I think why it worked well for me with your game was how fast you made the attacks fire off. Usually not having control over it means that there is some amount of 'down time' where you are waiting for the game to do something and just hoping you'll live long enough. I really didn't get that with your game. Because the attack switches directions so quickly and executes fast, pretty much all my time was spent trying to correctly position to take advantage of that. So instead of having frustrating down time, the usual gameplay loop of aim-and-fire was replaced perfectly with carefully positioning. Sorry, rambling a bit there but trying to figure out exactly how to phrase what I mean. I hope that helps!
I think you explained yourself really well. You got it just right! Although I wish I had time to warn the player (such as a character select screen, explaining starting powers) that's just the effect we were going for! The 3rd weapon was going to give the player more control: Ice Shotgun, which shoots in whichever direction the player is pointing
Congrats on your game!
The art style is very nice and the gameplay is very smooth.
I couldn't tell if leveling up actually did anything though and the monsters stopped spawning at around the 4 minutes mark for me.
unfortunately I ran out of time! Hopefully in the next 8 hours I can polish it up a bit! Haha
Hehe all good! Just thought I would report it in case it was an issue in the browser only.
You already did a lot, be proud of what you made!
Cheers
thanks! Yes ill tell the player the game is over so they aren't left in the lurch haha.
Added an actual leveling system to the build!