I like the writing quite a lot-- clean, consistent, efficient, and entertaining. The artstyle is not to my preference, but it gets the job done. The music choice is good but it was noticeably a bit awkward when the peppy fight theme immediately cut to the docile street theme. The gameplay was functional; I would have liked some feedback for hitting enemies, and I also found it odd that there was a delay between me pressing my fire button and the gun actually firing. In addition, the magic didn't seem quite balanced; the sun explosion was much more helpful than the wand shot at a negligible recharge time. If you expanded this I'd prefer the magic to have more interesting utility or at least different arcs from just another straightforward projectile. Great work!
Viewing post in In The Middle Of The Night jam comments
Thanks for playing! I'm glad you had some fun with it.
I understand what you mean about the artstyle not being your thing. I'm a bit weird in my own preferences here; I'm really not a fan of the modern "lowpoly" style and I'm pretty meh on pixel art.
I'll admit that I was just too lazy to fade the music in some places. I really ought to write some convenience methods for fading from one track to another.
There's some feedback for hitting enemies but probably not enough. The audio effects especially tended to get drowned out in the testing I did. The Shades do have pain states but it's not really as obvious when they're in the pain state as it would be for a more recognizable humanoid.
Technically the gun fires on the same frame the input is registered, but there are a few things going on here that could make it feel sluggish. The sound effect- especially on the pistol- has a small but noticeable delay to it, and the animation is probably too slow. Bullets are also projectiles, not hitscan, so there is a time to target. I do see what you mean here- I found the pistol felt a bit sluggish in testing but not enough to be a problem so I left it.
I actually found the magic bolts more useful than the big blast because they can be spammed so quickly. The magic blast definitely is a lot more powerful, though, and has a proximity detonation effect. The idea was that bolts would be more useful against individual enemies and the blast against groups. I think a greater speed difference or making the blast move in an arc like you suggested would have differentiated it more.
A lot of the weirdness in the mechanics comes from it being designed for a completely different concept that I abandoned early in the jam. I'd also intended at one point to have multiple magic elements and required players to swap between them as some enemies would be weaker to different elements but I ended up dropping that because I felt it would be too complicated in a fast-paced game.
If I ever do a sequel I'd like to do more with the magic system. I'll also replace the assault rifle sprite, because- let's be honest- even compared to the rest of the art in the game, it's hideous. On that note I do have an idea for a sequel but I fear other projects will take priority.