I just finished your game and here is my review:
Good points:
👉For the menu, the music is really cool. It's the main focus and the core mechanic of the game, and it is very well done. The kind of action music with big bass, I love it. The menu effects, like the particles, match well with the music, very cool and smooth. The UI of the menu is simple but with very smooth animations, it feels great, and I also like the option to change settings 👍. Also, the audio spectrum at the bottom is cool.
👉Now for the game: the rhythm effect at the bottom of the screen is a bit classic, but it works well, so no issues. The environment is simple yet very cool, with the green squares being very intuitive. One important thing you did well is the addictive feeling of killing all the enemies. The shotgun is very pleasant to use, and I'm not frustrated when killing enemies , this is nice. The sound effects are also very good. I noticed you didn't make some SFX from scratch, and we all know that SFX can be hard to create, especially during a jam with so many other things to do, so no problem for me.
Bad points:
👉Maybe the game doesn't fit perfectly with its theme. Perhaps another mechanic could fit better. For example, if you fail to jump, an enemy could spawn or something else could make the game more chaotic. Because, except for the final boss, which is a bit chaotic, the rest of the game isn’t very chaotic. Also, the escape menu doesn’t pause the game, which could be a choice, so I understand. The final boss might be a little too easy if you just spawn, reload, and shoot, I can kill it in like 5 seconds. Maybe add some wait time before the player can shoot again in the future. And to finish, it could be great if you could, though I understand it might be hard to do, disable the red fireballs from enemies. What happens is that when a red fireball from an enemy touches a white box that is at the other end of the map, this white box moves and disables the connection to open the door. This is a small thing but could be frustrating for the player, especially in a rhythm game where movement is relatively slow.
Here is also a small list of bugs using the downloadable version:
- Screenshot: The fireballs that spawn from the black things sometimes don’t spawn. I reloaded the game and it worked perfectly, so it was just a small issue. (In the screenshot, it’s working, it’s just to show you where the issue occurred.)
- Screenshot: You can enter the black things (not really a bug, but just letting you know).
- Screenshot: The white box passes through the walls (I think this is why you put the red button).
- Screenshot: Sometimes, the marker for the turret mob doesn’t disappear when it dies.
👉Conclusion: After all of this, I have to say your game is really great. When I mention all these "bad points", I just want to help improve your game. It's not to put your game down because I honestly think it’s better than 95% of the games in the jam. I really enjoyed playing it, and since I’ve never played rhythm games before, I’m not sure if my advice is totally accurate, but I’ve tried to be as clear as possible.
To both of you who worked on this game, congratulations! I can't say it better: the game is really cool. I give it a well-deserved 9/10, great job 👍
If you want to check out my game and rate it after all these critiques, here is the link: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-13/rate/3344617#post-12216760. It’s way less good than yours, because you did a really great job. 🙃
