This game is a blast! Getting those chain combos off is so much fun, and the eggsplosions are very satisfying! Normal mode was very accomodating to my bad first timer build, I will have to cook up something better for the next run!
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Reactive Survival's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Playability | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
Artistic Style | #401 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
Theme | #645 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
Cleverness | #755 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 3 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.
- The game, looks, sounds, and plays great! I would have rated this game higher if the alchemy was implemented in the gameplay, as while there are elements with different effects and stats, they don't combine to do anything. The shadowy elements are also not there outside of themeing being generally dark. Good game that can be expaned upon to be a great game, just not the best game jam game
- Honestly loved this game. It was really fun to play and the element-based reactions is a great implementation of the theme, even if largely taken from Genshin with a twist. I'm impressed by the level of polish and balance shown which is hard to do in such a tight time frame in addition to making the game functional. The art is great, though going back over the secondaries and improving the UI could have been nice. Your GDD is also well fleshed out - I'd love to see more about where you'd head with the game next. Well done! Strengths: - Adhering to the theme - Polish Weaknesses: - No major weaknesses
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
Yes
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
Yes... I think... Did I? Yeah I did.
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes
Tell us about your game!
A simple shoot-em up roguelike based on elemental effects and reactions.
Comments
This is a fun game! It's simple enough yet takes some time to master. The game is extremely addictive too. Played a few rounds because of that. Quite like the synergy of different elements, that should spicy up the game play and adds a bunch of replayabilities too. Nice job!
For some nitpicks, I feel like the game is getting a bit stale after reaching certain levels, there is less choice for upgrade during late game where you are no longer choosing strategically. Maybe because there aren't much to change at that point in the game? I am not too sure. Also, although the elemental attack system is nice, I seldom use that during late game, where it doesn't even matter what you are using you are still killing enemies with the same speed, and the split of attention changing attack type often bring more harm than good. Such that in all of my playthroughs, the whole elemental system are just not being used.
But other than that, the game was so nicely built, I'd say its a job well done!
This is really fun, the scaling is at a surprisingly perfect rate so that you have to be extremely conscious of what upgrades you pick. Overall it's perfectly balanced and really fun to play with a nice learning curve and progression. My high score after a few attempts was 800. I love being able to use reactions as well. This game is super fun and I hope to see a full version in the future.
There are only 3 minor things I would change it would change:
1. A way to rearrange the elements you choose in the hotbar and also be able to save elements for later in your inventory so that you can get a full inventory of every element, just not usable at once. To balance this elements may need to become more uncommon though, and I would maybe even mix them in with the standard loot pool of upgrades.
2. More enemies! The ghosts scaling was fine and still lead to really fun gameplay as enormous hoards of powerful ghosts covering the entire screen move toward you. However, it was a bit confusing at first that I couldn't one shot a ghost with 20 damage upgrades later in the game even though I could with none at the beginning. To avoid this it would be nice if there were some other creatures that appeared as you progressed and all had set health values, speed, and damage.
3. Optimization. I couldn't really tell if all the ghosts were loaded all the time, but I assume they were as at one point there were hundreds upon hundreds of ghosts on my screen, which lagged the game to about 10 fps even when I ran away. Another option to fix this may be to remove collision and just have some checks be used to keep the ghosts from running over each other, but that might not work and would make pathfinding tougher.
Only the last one is something that really needs any attention and the others are more so quality of life. That's just my opinion. Overall I really enjoyed the game, it had a really nice artstyle, memorable music, and super engaging gameplay. I will be playing it more in the future. Looking forward to a full release!
Thank you for your reviews and opinions, you gave me a couple of ideas.
The elements being a permanent unlock sounds like a GREAT idea, maybe instead of cards you need to kill different elemental bosses? Maybe choosing and spawning them yourself in different zones of the map!
For the enemies I was thinking of just adding various type with different abilities but actually, just changing their stats and maybe making them spawn in unique ways is easier(like single ghosts, hordes of wolves etc), and the idea of just separating them without collisions sounds good!(they do both, mainly for the knockback that doesn't even work really well... that's probably why it's lagging) maybe I can enable collisions for the ones on screen and disable when they exit the screen, thanks for the advice!!
Also the exp make the game lag a lot, so I need to make them join and create a bigger exp when close to each other or just delete them after some time.
Again, Thank you for playing and the review!
Very fun game! Exciting music, fast pace, high degree of difficulty (eventually) and a good feel of progression and accomplishment. I would be excited for some leaderboards. Is my 700s on Super Hard good, IDK
Good job!
Insane shoot 'em up, amazed at how chain reaction does their job!
I reached level 78 and 751 seconds in easy as there were so many things going on, on the screen.
Super fun and I like the music and animation, GG!
Really great game! I really like the mixing potions mechanic; it definetly makes this game stand out from the typical shoot-em up. The particle and sound effects are also very well done. I had a lot of fun playing! Keep up the great work!
a cool take on the survivors genre. You really start feeling powerful once you get the hang of mixing the elemental effects. The HP bar is hard to read once the action gets going. I wish there were no numbers, just a clearly visible bar that you can check quickly from the corner of your eye. It could also use some variety in enemies to give you more feeling of progression besides just stacking bigger numbers for minutes. Fun to play! Hope you will do some little updates once the voting is over.
Honestly, just a blast to play through. The sound and visual effects are perfect and when you get the combinations going, the ensuing explosions have that sweet crunchyness, that impact that it needs to be really satisfying. I'm not entirely sure if it's intentional, but at one point, everytime I'd level up, two of the upgrades would be Special related, which didn't really fit with me since I didn't use the Specials a whole lot (I probably should've lmao).
With all of that being said, this game is very satisfying to play and also quite well optimised. It only really started to get some small lag in the last 5 minutes or so of my run, and only when I'd stack a bunch of enemies after me.
Nice job on this game! I had a lot of fun playing it!
Satisfying game that scrubs that roguelike itch. Good music, good visuals, good sfx, the perfect blend of juice.
My criticism is that having one kind of enemy that scales in health doesn't really give you that feeling of being strong. I always say you're only as strong as the enemies you go against. When there are enemies that actually do interesting things and can kill you not just because they have a lot of damage or health, it feels even better to get strong and beat em up.
Overall nice classic juicy game!
OOOOOH YEAH BROTHER INJECT THAT DOPAMINE DIRECTLY INTO MY BRAAAAAIN. I was 3 seconds away from your record on my first run!
As a huge vampire survivors fan from the start who absolutely loves the game and everything about it I knew instantly this would be my thing. Now it has more of a Brotato vibe I think with having to aim your shots and stuff but that's just splitting hairs in my opinion.
I probably didn't explore the elements as much as I should have. I discovered really quickly that purple + red = BOOM and did that for the rest of my playthrough and I don't regret a second of it. When the music changed (I think at 5 minutes?) I got really hyped and thought it was boss time, sadly no bosses or enemy variety. Hopefully coming in future updates cos I need MORE IN MY BRAIN! Pls and thanks.
Music is boss. The game mechanics are not apparent initially but get more and more fun the longer you play and understand. It's easy to get in the middle of playing this and forget it was done in two weeks. Awesome entry and great work!
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