Coming back to this for the other ending, there's a crazy amount of depth for a jam and makes me curious about how the world might have been expanded with more time. The setting has some really dark implications, and matches the nightmarish atmosphere created with the audio, lighting, and lowres filter. And although the shooting timer feels a bit too slow at times, its definitely made up for a bit by going mad with power and crunching all the red flowers.
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Touhou ~ Phantom Assembler's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Gameplay | #12 | 3.672 | 4.034 |
Challenge | #18 | 3.484 | 3.828 |
Overall | #20 | 3.610 | 3.966 |
Story / Writing | #23 | 2.856 | 3.138 |
Use of Theme | #23 | 3.390 | 3.724 |
Concept | #26 | 3.767 | 4.138 |
Audio | #30 | 3.107 | 3.414 |
Visuals | #33 | 3.390 | 3.724 |
Ranked from 29 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Incredible atmosphere and addictive gameplay loop only really brought down by it's short length (I got to the door without about half my days left and just kinda hovered around until I could get it open) which makes sense given the time pressure. I'd love to play more game in this style, it was very well done!
Once I figured out the mechanics it was a pretty neat loop. The atmosphere was pretty compelling.
i am rating this having only gotten ending a but i think i can say it is a banger. you always got those 3d danmaku games but this time its more intense even with way fewer bullets. the stat increasing system is a tiny bit obtuse but other than that it is very cool, whatever pixelfilter youre using is great, not much to complain about
i will be trying it out again later and getting fabled ending b
It's hard to believe this game was made in 4 days. There's clearly a lot of thought put into the level design and the dream item system, and I enjoyed playing around with different combinations of stat boosts to maximize my experience. (The Stamina items are probably the ones I ate the least?) . Audio is very good and I love the boss theme. Surprisingly, the battle controls were quite smooth and I got used to them quickly.
The story is... cryptic, to say the least. Even after obtaining both endings I was still a bit confused by how the plot went, which may be your intention.
Overall amazing work!
This control scheme is smooth as silk and perfectly contributes to the atmosphere. The ease of aiming combined with the inertia in turning and moving... mwah. The boss fight's patterns absolutely capitalizes on that tension, making it challenging while staying relatively restrained and reasonable. Seconding create2019 here: I'd absolutely play a full game of this.
The graphics are super neat and while the reload time is intentionally frustrating, it was fun to see how far I could stretch each magazine with each run. Good stuff!
I think you nailed the tense atmosphere of early-game King's Field. And you start the game on a beach too, yeah...? I'm still not entirely convinced about that description, though.
Actual spoilers (I'm trying to make the text as small as possible)
I got the chills when the hidden stat appeared and the classmate mentioned feeling powerful after eating the red flowers.
You absolutely nailed that moment. The first dialog with the "surely dreams can't be dangerous hehe" also really stood out to me. It ended up being a very good horror/adventure experience for me. I got ending B first, since I couldn't resist.
And that Shadowman on the bridge made me shit my pants and fall down to the onis below. Which is a good first encounter, as it made my future encounters with them more tense (until I started farming them for Spider Lilies and lost all respect). Out of all your jam games, this is probably my 2nd favorite, and by far the most mechanically accessible. I'd play a full game like this.
And a bug report:
One of the walls in the first corridor with enemies, just before the mirror room, actually isn't solid. It's to the left when entering from the turn after the tutorial signs. Player's looking for a way to get behind the mirror (like me) are likely to fall off the map here and lose a few days of progress.
Really, you ought to implement something that kills or respawns the player if they fall out-of-bounds. I think I've managed to enter the void in all of your games that I've played. Just add a simple check on the player's z-coordinate already. It's like 2 lines of code.
whats ending B? i keep getting ending A only... i increased the hidden stat to 100, lost to the boss (without the stat on 100 cause with that amount of health losing is impossible unless u stand still for 30 minutes...) i won against the boss with hidden stat over 100, kept talking to the classmate every day while my hidden stat increased. no ending B no matter what i tried....
faster than 1 per day so have it over 10 by day 10?
Edit: thanks i got it. pushed hard this time to reach the checkpoint/classmate at day 0 already only shot the blue guys to advance to that point and ate the red lily u find after the big drop. was a bit tough to go for the dark red eyed enemies on day 1 already but managed to get em all (except for one on day 1 that fell off) on day 5 i already knew i was locked into ending B because of the color change. but DANG ending B bossfight is MUCH harder than ending A. ending A boss only need 20 bullets. ending B boss takes much less dmg and has much harder patterns.
had to change my rating for "Challenge" from 3 to 5....
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