8.9mil clear on first try. Didn't feel particularly difficult, though the last enemy's patterns were pleasantly tight and made me take the most hits out of the rest of the game.
Very polished, clean and pleasant to play, no rough edges whatsoever. Clearly made with LOVE. Very natural ship hitbox size for the amount of bullets, every point of damage I took felt fair. No first-time kills, no patterns that have to be memorized, ample opportunity for pointblanking. Lots of things I personally love in a shmup have been converged into this one.
Now, I should probably mention something worth improving, but since the game is so small-scoped and barely manages to miss with anything, I've only got a few nitpicks:
- I don't really understand the scoring. I guess the point is to kill as many enemies as possible and collect their crystals, and then there's this weird mechanic of reinforcements that only come when you kill an enemy with the blade attack for some reason? But why specifically the blade..? (People who can't read will never figure this out and may think it's random. I suggest to change reinforcement conditon to "kill green enemy in close range" at least, regardless of weapon used)
- For the final cutscene, I think the animation is too slow and doesn't look so great compared to how fluid the gameplay was (especially at 144fps). Feels like a cut for time, understandable if true.
- When I took hits my ship would jump away somewhere? Or was it some kind of speed-up? Didn't really understand what it was or its purpose.
- Theme implementation felt on the weaker side, a minor mechanic (and kinda obscure due to first nitpick) that didn't feel important during play. Not a dealbreaker, though.
Overall - great accomplishment for a 10 day jam game. Really not sure what else to add, very clean game throughout. Well done!
Viewing post in Void Call jam comments
That is crazy you cleared it on your first try LOL , very well done ! 8.9m is higher than anything I've achieved haha .
The scoring is a race to get to max level / kill 150 enemies so that you get the increased multiplier- and then kill as many extra enemies as possible to benefit from the increased multiplier . Regarding the speed boost on hit , you get a zeroranger style knockback on hit- but you can animation cancel it if you hit a directional input during the disabled input , which boosts you in a direction and instantly gives you input back- it's easy to hit accidentally , but super consistent once you get into the habit of pressing a direction when you get hit .
Thank you for playing , and for the in-depth notes too ! . It's interesting you felt the hitbox was fairly intuitive , as it's been a fairly common complain that we'll likely have to address at some point .
Cheers Aru ! appreciate the notes a lot <3