Note that this feedback is based on the build(s) available at the end of the jam.
At first, I didn't expect to get much out of VING. Sure, it's a nice game, but the controls feel a little awkward and the enemies are a bit floaty. There's no audio, and the background sprites are repetitive.
What I found unexpectedly appealing about VING is the way that attention has been given to the experience as a whole. Instead of focusing on polishing individual facets of the game like enemy animations or fluid player control, the game embraces its rough edges and invites the player to master them.
I'm going to spoil what makes the game special here and talk about the way that I came to understand VING. If anybody reading would like to experience that for themselves, stop reading now!
This clicked for me when objectives shifted from "Kill X enemies!" to "Traverse the environment quickly." The role of enemies immediately shifts through the change in context, and the game stops being about getting projectile alignment just right for enemies who're creeping closer just below your line of fire and becomes about careening through the map's obstacles. At this point, damage rates and the relationships between enemy movement and player movement feel far more deliberate.
The objectives continue to reframe the game, culminating in a challenging bossfight that requires awareness and use of all of the game's nuances.
At this point, it's easy to assume that the game has revealed all that it is, but at the death of the boss, the player's attacks change to a supercharged auto firing version of the charged shot as all of the previously inanimate obstacles come to life and charge at the player with gaping maws and glowing eyes .
This final sequence requires far different behaviour than the single-focus boss fight and has more in common with a survival objective from earlier in the game. It's an absolutely wonderful moment where, for the first time, the game changes its mechanics in order to give a new experience that smashes the expectations that have been built up and morphed through the preceding stages.
I'm hard pressed to think of much that I would recommend changing or adding to VING beyond audio and some variation in the background sprite to make tiling a bit less prominent. There's definitely room for smoothing away some of the other rough edges, such as player movement controls, the "stickiness" of obstacles, the speed of the boss' "sprint" action, and the lack of enemy animations, but I feel that such changes would need to be handled delicately and thoughtfully in order to preserve the game's identity, challenge and charm.
VING was one of my favourite submissions this year! I really enjoyed the challenges it offered and the surprises it gave.
I'd also like to do a short interview with you for an article I'm writing on the 2018 Linux Game Jam. Shoot me an email via cheese@cheesetalks.net and I'll send you through some questions!