itch.io

Thank you for playing! I am happy you thought the game fit the theme well.

Thank you for playing! I do agree with you that I should have put more puzzles and perhaps some additional mechanics to include in those puzzles to make the game better and harder! Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to implement more levels which was a bummer :(

Interesting game! I like the concept of how you cast shadows by moving actual 3d objects in order to help you complete the level in the 2d platformer that the shadows are casted to!

Thank you for playing! I am glad you liked the lighting game mechanics!

Great game! I liked the visuals and especially the sounds and music that you put in the game making it very relaxing!

I also love the concept of being in a planet and collecting stars that are above it to grow life in it!

I would love to see more game mechanics in the game to keep things interesting, maybe some power-ups or maybe milestones that could add to the game feel without adding too much difficulty!

Thanks for playing! I agree that the jumping may be too floaty, especially because of the small levels! In my next games, I will probably take into account how big/small my levels are and adjust those values accordingly.

Additionally, I think shadowy particles would indeed be a great way to polish up the game more!

Thank you for playing! I’m glad you liked those parts of the game!

Cool game, I like the game idea of darkness increasing the difficulty while you collect items from monster drops!

My feedback for the game is that right now the difficulty, especially without any upgrades as people have said already, is a bit too high as it feels like there’s an unstoppable horde that just comes after you that feels tedious to defeat.

Something that I would suggest is improving the pacing, maybe make the enemies easier or less frequent to allow the player to build up their strength to later handle huger hordes of enemies when it becomes night!

Additionally, a health bar would be nice for the enemies because it could promote a strategy of prioritizing lower health enemies to get to upgrades quicker.

In any case, good job on the game!

Great game! It was a unique puzzle game that wasn’t just a matching game, but instead, it actually combines multiple different game mechanics and has new challenges that make things very interesting for the player.

Great and unique game! I like how each level gives the player different potions that can be thrown while the player tries to take advantage of their effects! Additionally, the shadow effect as a recall does come in handy because it can be used to propel myself towards the objective which I thought was interesting!

Some feedback that I would give is that at the beginning of the game, it was very confusing on what to do and it took me a few minutes to complete it with the help of the shadow recall. Additionally, the staff cursor that I see felt like it added to the confusion at the start, and I think it would have been better to switch it out for a potion. Maybe the potion that you are currently holding could be the cursor instead (If this is possible).

In any case, I loved the game mechanics and I think you did a good job putting shadow and alchemy together!

I am using Godot, and I just tried switching Process Callback to physics, but I still see those jitters unfortunately :(

Hopefully I can find some other solution that will fix it, it’s probably related to issues with the Tilemap and me using pixel art.

Thanks for playing! I know the scope is pretty small and I did want to introduce new game mechanics to new levels, like temporary blackouts that the Talking Computer could cause to help the player, but it was too much for me to add in the time given.

Thanks for playing, I’m happy to hear that you liked the shadow mechanic from the game! And yes, the camera smoothing making sprites jitter is a problem that just persists throughout all of my games so I will highly consider trying to put an end to it in my future games!

Thank you for playing! And yep, I could probably have improved on the robot AI so that they wouldn’t spin rapidly like that sometimes.

Thanks for playing! So sorry that it ends very quickly, I wanted to add more levels with mechanics like blackouts, which the Talking Computer could cause, to help you sneak around the map more which could have made the game more interesting!

Thanks for playing! I didn’t think about randomizing jump sounds but that will probably be something I will highly consider now when polishing up my games in the future to make things less repetitive for the player!

Thank you for the valuable feedback! I agree that there was potential to introduce more mechanics in this game but of course, I was hit with the common issue of time limits in game jams!

I think you’re right that restarting should be easier, I didn’t think about this factor at all, but it would definitely have made the game more player-friendly and less frustrating.

Additionally, the bug that you mentioned about dying in the first room was something that I should have prevented because going through the entire dialogue of the intro again is probably frustrating.

Great game! Despite my struggles I actually like how the puzzles make you think ahead. Usually I just go for the closest objectives and later find out that I need to think about where I go first before I just press the button.

This game doesn’t have it yet, due to scoping issues that are common in game jams, but sounds would definitely have made this game a lot better. Although it is already satisfying to complete the puzzle after pondering for so long, it would really make completing puzzles feel even better!

Great job on the game and great concept! This reminds me how when I play Terraria, I would use my guns flash to explore caves all the time by using their lights and now it’s an entire game!

Also, it was funny when I reached the end of the level and then I had no bullets to open the door because I unfortunately used them all to see around (rip)

I loved the concept of the shadow puppets fighting in this game! I also liked the visuals of your game and the sounds that you made!

Some feedback I would give is that sometimes attacking doesn’t feel like it registers an attack because maybe the range is short. Maybe it is because the opponent blocks and if so, I think it would make the game better to give the player more feedback when they do so it doesn’t feel unfair (even when it is fair after all).

In any case, very good job on the game.

Very interesting game, I loved the game mechanic of mixing ingredients during combat to help defeat enemies and increase your score!

Thank you for playing the game!

About that bug, it was a real head scratcher cuz I had set it to remove the game over screen after you pressed restart, but somehow, it just doesn’t go away :(

Thank you so much!

Thank you for playing the game! I am glad you thought those bullets were fun to dodge! Also, I am very impressed that you no-hit clear those hard levels, because I can’t do that!

Also, would it be possible to display this video for the itch.io page of this game?

Thanks for playing! I’m glad you thought the music and rhythm of the game was good!

Thanks for playing! Glad you had a great experience playing the game and appreciated the bullet sync with the music!

Fun fact: There already is an unintended dash feature that never should have made it in the game! You press ‘space’ and then you go invisible since there is no ‘dash’ animation and also become invincible to damage for a little bit. I didn’t do too good of a job implementing a dash though, so I planned on scrapping it.

If I ever update the game, I think a dash would be a good idea!

Thanks for playing! I am glad you enjoyed the game and thought it was both fun and challenging!

Personally, I haven’t played Just Shapes & Beats but I have seen gameplay videos and was a little inspired I guess hahaha.

And yep, I think this game idea could definitely be expanded with more enemy types and songs. Different enemies can have different behaviors (One can lock on to a player, but not mirror alike the game) and also different projectiles (Homing? Accelerating?) that could represent more sounds in the music better!

An idea that I had was different themes w/ different art styles for the enemies, projectiles, backgrounds, and players depending on the song genre like Muse Dash does.

To address shooting, I was planning on having a little rhythm input game within the bullet hell game itself so that the player could shoot homing projectiles to the beat as well, maybe with enemy & player turns, but this turned out to be too much scope for the jam and the time I had, so I had to cut my game ideas.

Great game with lots of polish! I liked how the objects in the game were synced, which does help in knowing when it is safe to move or not. Also liked the idea that you have to bring the two characters together in order to complete the level!

Some feedback that I have for the game is that the music could have been looped instead of just killing the player after it ended because after a couple of retries and understanding the level, I finally get the 2 characters together and right before I can win the game the music has already ended and the game is lost lol.

But other than that, its a great platformer with rhythm elements to it!

Great game! It is similar to ADOFAI and as a player of the game, I like how you additionally added other components as a twist like the key, door, and spikes! I also enjoyed having to create the path itself in order to reach the end of the level, I think that was nice part of the game (And the editor itself was great!).

For my feedback on the game, and after reading some of the comments already posted below, I think the offbeat movement does ruin the rhythm part of the game and that the dynamic music idea would have been great to fix that, though highly over-scoped for a jam lol. Also, I am extremely bad at puzzle games, so please forgive me, but I did get stuck at level 7 for too long and gave up because for some reason I couldn’t figure out how to map the movement right to complete the level!

In any case, this is a highly polished game and additionally has tons of potential for expanding as a nice twist to ADOFAI!

Great concept and lovely visuals for a game where choosing the direction of your player determines the note pattern that you have to hit for the music!

Some feedback that I have for the game is that it does get a bit repetitive with the gameplay, and that I didn’t really feel too much of the rhythm when the notes came down. So with some more variety in both the mapping and the songs, I think it would be a good rhythm-puzzle game!

So with that said, good job on this! I think with the concept, the game has potential to grow!

Great concept with shooting to the beat, and forcing the player to shoot on the beat which I thought was nice because it forces you to dodge and move around because you can’t just shoot them all up right away.

Some feedback that I have for this game is that it gets pretty repetitive with the shots, and the only thing that changes is that sometimes you shoot multiple times quickly to the beat which I thought was nice. This is probably unintended, but you could go into the corner and just aim at the bots and you wouldn’t have to worry about dodging since you could kill them fast enough from there. So a suggestion would be to have some projectiles from the enemies, a way to predict the next shots so you could quickly aim at multiple bots if you are going to be rapidly firing, and maybe even switching weapons w/ different attacks to make things more interesting!

But yeah, good job, I really think you could expand on this idea with more game mechanics!

Great visuals and music! I like how the notes are accelerating when they appear from the side which makes it more satisfying to hit them!

Some feedback I have for this game is that the difficulty is too high! One game I can think of that is similar to this is Muse Dash which has notes coming horizontally instead of vertically on 2 lanes instead of 4. I think that it would be a great idea to start players off with less than 4 lanes to get used to the horizontal inputs like 2 or 4 so that it is more simple. Either that, or you could start the player off with slower, single notes, so that they can get used to the controls of the game instead of being frustrated with high level gameplay right away!

Additionally, as takokiko said, I also ended up with a delay of ~120ms, and setting it to 0ms did make it better for calibration.

In any case, good job on the game because I think this has potential for more levels and more mechanics if possible!

Game is alright, I like how the characters cycle while playing the song which is a nice touch and the game looks great!

Some feedback I would give is making the fake notes more obvious to the player that they can’t be played. Since they have the same shape as regular notes, but without color, players can mistaken that note for an actual note which could be confusing to players just starting the game. Also, I would love more game mechanics other than the fake note because the game at the core is the same as a 3-key VSRG with mines, so maybe something that has to do with the characters switching could be a game mechanic (Of course, time is a factor during the jam)!

Additionally, when the second song came up, the charting/mapping of it felt wrong as the first one was better (Maybe this is a browser issue when I played on web?).

In any case, I think it has potential because it is pretty beginner friendly with 3 keys, and maybe you could even expand it to 4 keys or more later for songs that are more challenging for players!

Thanks for playing! Glad you thought the game was really fun!

Thank you for playing! Glad you found it a good game, and yes, it would have been helpful/better to have more visual variety! For the bullets specifically, changing how they look depending on pattern or enemy who shot it could make things more easier to read and improve the game!

Good game, I like how you shoot bullets to defeat the enemies, dodge their bullets, and hit the notes on the sides to attack back.

Some feedback would be to make it more easier and noticeable to hit the notes on both the left and right sides because you do have to focus on both dodging and shooting as well!

But yeah, I liked the visuals and sound of the game.

Good game, I like the concept of switching lanes to the one that has the note in order to hit it!

Some feedback I would give for this game is a way to change scroll speed in case it scrolls too fast for the player, and changing the hold note’s color so that players would recognize it easier.

Additionally, I think it would be better to put the game explanation within the tutorial level at the level select menu instead of having a separate “How to play” button so that people that want to get right into the game can get themselves started!

In any case, great job on this game!

Hi, sorry you feel that the hitbox doesn’t feel right! Probably it needs to be more clear to the player which is why I mentioned it in the description of the game.

It is, however, more lenient than it looks as the hitboxes of the projectiles and the player are slightly smaller than what a player might expect to make it easier and less frustrating!

Hi, thanks for playing the game and making a video for it! I have watched and I am glad you thought the idea was cool!

Hopefully later, if you have the time, you could give medium/hard difficulties a try, because they are the same songs but represent a lot more of the music!