itch.io

The primary problem of this game is that it doesn't work. Most of the upgrades cannot be picked because the colliders of the cards that appear on screen are frequently impossible to interact with. Not sure what's going on there. For example, the book in the top right corner of the screen presented me with 3 upgrades. I could only pick the middle one, if I clicked around the edge of the card. I did notice that the icons on the cards themselves were also interactive, however, clicking on them produced no effect. So this bug robbed me of decision power.

A strange design choice is making all of your enemies have a very large amount of HP. I didn't count, but I think it takes between 20 and 30 shots to kill a generic ghost. This is not a good idea for the first enemies in your game. Even notoriously difficult games like Dark Souls give you intial foes that are easy to deal with, so the player can familiarise with the controls and the mechanics a little.

Further, the generic ghost enemy, the first and most common enemy you encounter, has a homing missile that is almost impossible to avoid. That seems to me to be a player unempowering design decision as well.

The music going down in pitch as you die is a nice touch, but I didn't find the music to match the mood and feel of the game, and it wasn't particularly pleasant to listen to from my perspective.

The art is alright, but there are various different pixel densities on display. For instance, when you stand close to a fly, the fly seems like it is a 4x4, or 8x8 at best, whereas the player, about 3 times as large as the fly, has a 32x32 sprite or thereabouts. This make the game look untidy.

I didn't see the theme there. In fact, I think this game would fit Ludum Dare 42 (Sacrifices will be made) or Ludum Dare 43 (Your life is currency) much better.

Overall, not a very enjoyable entry from my perspective. I only played it once, and I didn't want to play it again.