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Daiyousei and Cirno Have a Calm and Relaxing Winter Day's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Story / Writing | #21 | 3.107 | 3.321 |
| Audio / Music | #22 | 3.374 | 3.607 |
| Challenge | #29 | 3.307 | 3.536 |
| Use of Theme | #34 | 3.341 | 3.571 |
| Overall | #39 | 3.140 | 3.357 |
| Gameplay | #39 | 2.906 | 3.107 |
| Visuals | #40 | 3.174 | 3.393 |
| Concept | #43 | 3.207 | 3.429 |
Ranked from 28 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Team Members
CYCzen, Kiroko, Prismriver, Saishoo. The following proof read the script: cetaceanHussbuster, Vinyis
Streaming Permission
Yes
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Comments
"Relaxing winter day"? It's interesting, but it feels more like psychological experiment than a relaxing day. The way there is no background, I get the same feeling as when looking out of a train at another train leaving the station: "is it me or the bullets moving?". Every time I move in this game, I get this feeling. It doesn't help that the mouse controls are weird. To move at a constant, velocity high enough to actually pass through the lanes of bullets, I have to rapidly jerk my mouse all over my mouse pad to try to move it ever further away, and if I fail, I still get the illusion of movement since there is no fixed reference. Even the animation of the borders of the arena give me the illusion that I'm moving when I'm not. The way Daiyousei is always at the center of the screen probably adds to it as well. Why is it even mouse controlled? There is nothing here that requires mouse controls. It really feels more like a psychological experiment than a normal jam game at this point, because everything I can think of to mess with people's sense of movement, you did.
It's interesting, though. I've never experienced anything like it. I could see this getting passed around as a way to see how people react to not having any fixed references while dodging.
I somehow managed to almost beat it once (or I think I did, the pattern seemed like a suitable climax), but I was never able to consistently skip between lanes after that one time. The patterns are pretty cool. The intro is beautiful, too. How am I even supposed to rate this game? As an experiment, it's brilliant, but if you intended for this to be a normal game, the visuals and controls are really interfering with my ability to enjoy it as such.
The introduction is so beautiful and comfy, I think I said "aww" out loud. Good job on that one to the artist and composer combo. (The drum hit on the lost life was particularly fun.)
The gameplay concept you have going here is awesome. Very floaty and free-style danmaku gameplay that feels natural and lived-in. I know some said the control scheme was a bit strange to get used to, but for whatever reason, I picked up on it right away. Loved it, gave it a very high mark.
Some issues emerge deeper into the game though; I had a hard time knowing if I was hitting Cirno at all, as there's no UI or indication she was taking damage. At some point, I found a soft spot and hit her for 30 straight seconds and... nothin'. But I won't let that detract from what was overall an excellent idea made possible. Would have loved seeing this get some more time in the oven.
"The mouse dances a bit too much in my hand".
I can appreciate the game a bit but it didn't go smoothly for me.
Even after managing to clear the Jam version, and attempting the postjam one, the movement controls still feel uncomfortable to me. I have to lift up my mouse quite frequently to recenter it.
Probably worsened by the fact that the play area is a single unified color. It really makes it hard to gauge where in the play area the player is, AND how fast they're moving. (Maybe the camera being solely focused on the player doesn't help to this end neither)
This one thing will greatly affect the perceived difficulty of the game, methinks.
Anyway, some of these patterns are really hardcore (especially considering the movement controls). For example, there's the 2nd phase where Cirno flies a square shape. You can barely land a few hits if you don't figure out where to place yourself. I've seen a fair share of placement-puzzle-like danmaku patterns (looking at you Subterranean Animism), and I do think this 2nd phase is slightly overboard.
The last phase is of course the one that takes the cake. After 4 gameovers in the last phases I decided to just tank the last phase's closing ice walls and stay at the border of the play area. Yeah, I'm not trying to stay and dodge the last phase up close, I find it barely possible if it is.
At least the BGM is a pleasure to listen to, and the vibe of the story's good.
Yeah, in retrospect regarding controls, I should have allowed an option to modify how much your mouse movement corresponds to player movement (like a dpi modifier for the game that you could edit). Having some sort of indicator for the center of the map may have helped a lot too to avoid the getting lost or ending up sticking to a wall as I saw some people doing, which is pretty important to communicate since getting lost is not part of the experience and takes mental load away from dodging, also it'd be pretty good to show the center since hugging the walls is not how you dodge or do damage for the majority of the fight and not knowing where the center is makes not doing that harder.
I think one of the main problems is I was basing these controls off a previous bullet hell I had played and as such was already familiar with the control scheme more than the average player and found it personally more natural than keyboard or controller. Anyway, I ended up balancing things around what I was consistently able to perfect which uh, turned out to be WAAAAY TOO FUCKING HARD for most people. Its not like I didnt play test the hell out of a lot of the patterns, its just that my pool of play testers was just basically just me which was a big mistake. Now, I would like to use a similar control scheme in the future for something, but it's quite clear that I should dial back on a few things, clearing up positioning a bit better, communicate some things better, and at the very least include a lower difficulty version of the fight so more people can actually finish the game. It was a mix of bad choices that I didnt catch since it didnt effect me as much as others and a disregard for accessibility that I didnt realize was as needed as it was.
The controls are kind of unorthodox and I wish you could move using arrow keys - but otherwise it's a cute snowball fighting game! Patterns are good and well-balanced and presentation is very cute.
It's a Danmaku game with really nice character art.
The music is smooth as well.
Took me a while to understand how the control actually works, though.
Game's controls are really neat, it took me a little bit to get used to, but making quick movements with swipes of the mouse is a cool feeling. Switching between Focus to Unfocused feels really neat too. I really like the art, and the patterns although kind of tough, are really fun to navigate around the battlefield dodging.