itch.io

I really like your choice of radial bullet patterns for this, for a lot of twinstick shooters you see a lot of aimed bullets, but this combined with the dodge roll makes the patterns feel really engaging.

I liked the main gimmick. Having to hit the enemies in order to regain health reminds me a lot of the Bloodborn rally system encouraging aggression by making it the only reasonable way that you'll survive. Honestly after a bit I started to dig the sheer chaos of the bullet patterns because it gave a feeling that you're going to be taking damage regardless of how good you can dodge, so you have to be constantly damaging enemies in order to compensate for all of the garunteed damage you would be taking. I think it's simply engaging to have the aggressiveness be the primary focus while you can work on dodging after you get good at it.

I thought a lot of the light gimmicks were very fun. It's like a fun minigame collection that's changing up how you play to keep the game from getting stale every couple minutes.

I really like the charge mechanic. I also really appreciate how you designed the game around it. A lot of the enemies stayed in place long enough to actually be able to line up your charge shot with them. It's really nice to see when level design is made very intentionally with the gameplay instead of just just slapping a gimmick on top of a generic schmup.

I thought that the idea of having the two colors that you're swapping between was a fun idea. It makes it so the player has to decide what color they want to risk empowering before starting a round. Like I personally spammed one color early on so that harder content early on would have less power on the color I didn't choose, but I could also see why a player might want to simply switch off between rounds for a gradual rise in difficulty. This kind of design where you have to make decisions based off of risk and resources is what really drives player engagement. Keep up your smart design sensibilities!

It was so refreshing to play a traditional schmup when so many entries are more so in the vein of twinstick shooters. I almost screamed when I saw there was an item get line. All around this is just really solidly designed. The gimmick of being encouraged to destroy every enemy feels really balanced between the high volume of enemies/ bullets on screen and the increased player range of shooting in multiple directions.

Honestly this is probably my favorite entry I've played this far. It's just a kind of loose fun that while not taking itself too seriously, still remains very competently designed.

Holy crap dude I boomed so friggin many jaundiced babies. I think this game was fun on the way that it was purely about kiting enemies around. I like the design choice to not have any babies spawn from the bottom, it gave me more of a feeling of only having one axis that you get to manipulate the babies around.

The pixel art is definitely your strong suit, all of your designs are super fun and you really have a talent for choosing pallets.

That's actually a really good idea I never thought about. Of course the point of the trail is so that the "consequences" of the player's movement is they can't move immediately backwards ever (in addition to the trail as a whole), but you're right that that doesn't mean it has to be punished with death. That way the same effect could be had while being less immediately frustrating by having the "consequence" result in an immediate death. Thanks so much for your input!

Yeah, I wish I had prioritized communicating a lot more information than I ended up with. Like I think not having killable enemies on the first level is good in theory for getting the player used to the gimmick and having low initial tension, but I 100% agree with you that it's just plain confusing and worse off for doing that while not communicating any of those intentions clearly enough. And yeah I probably gotta agree with you on the second point too. Of course the intention was to give a second of downtime for the player to process what just happened when they die, but if the way it's implimented is that confusing then it would probably be better to just have the player be functionally stationary for a second with a respawning animation or something.  

Thanks for your words, I always love well reasoned criticism!

Yeah I get what you're saying about communicating the movement range of the enemies. For testing I had circles drawn for the movement ranges, but seeing as they were just literal radiuses of how far they would follow the player for I thought it would be too confusing for having diagetic game elements being drawn outside of the play area (that and a single pixel wide bright colored line is a little ugly lol). But I totally agree it would be helpful to better communicate the movement ranges of enemies when the player has to manipulate the movement of said enemy. Maybe I can come up with some shader that will help with elements like that intersecting with the play area. Thanks for your comment, I really appreciate well reasoned criticism!

I liked how the shield system was implemented. The enemies that you shoot for oxygen feel like you can only reasonably shoot them head on, and because they're shooting forward you have to use your shield to walk in front of them to shoot at them and get oxygen. It's like the cooldown of your shield is a resource where you have to decide if you want to use it to position yourself for the boss or use it refill your depleting oxygen. The choice between upgrades makes it even more fun because you essentially get to choose how you want to prioritize your time between the boss and oxygen management. Overall all of the systems are really well thought out with how they all interact with eachother to make a complete product. Keep up the good work!

I enjoyed how all the enemies and your bullets followed your movements. It's engaging to have to consider how your inputs effect not just your movement, but the enemy's too. It just felt really fun to move in a way that it feels like you're kiting enemies to walk into what is essentially a beam that you're shooting upwards.

I really liked the main gimmick of this one. Having a limited number of bullets is fairly intuitive by itself, but I like that you refill your bullets by grazing. I feel like the easiest option most people would have thought of would be to just have enemies drop bullet pick-ups when they die, but for me personally the grazing was a lot more engagement. The two systems combined give a fun loop of going back and forth between positioning yourself to shoot enemies and around bullets to refill. How all the systems interact makes the game as a whole feel very intentional and not just a schmup with a gimmick slapped on top.

I thought the way the player moved with aiming was engaging. It essentially made the player take their position into account when aiming at something to shoot, necessitating thinking two steps ahead of shooting at any specific enemy. I also thought that the speed at which the tank aims was really smart for the concept. It would be easy for the player to cheese the system by making snap mouse movements to aim, shoot, and stop moving again in an instant, but having a limited speed to aiming forces the player to interact with the system.

This game is a really impressive example of how a lot of really small presentation touches can combine to significantly impact a player's engagement. The gameplay in and of itself is fun, but everything around it feels tailor made to catching and maintaining attention.

I thought that the way that all of the "bullets" were sea critters was very fun. I also liked how the sharks and dolphins acted like a few more persistent bullets that were constantly following you, that's a fun change of pace from most bullet hell games where you're dodging lots of impermanent bullet. I really like this and hope to see it developed more!

I really enjoyed the sonar mechanic. Making the player limit themselves based off of risk is really engaging in this type of game. Having to choose between moving in an area you have no idea is safe or not and waiting to move when you know is safe is a fun way to give more options to the player movement by restricting it.

Thanks for the kind words on the gameplay. And yeah I wish I could have implimented the cutscene better lol. My wife made all of the images for me and I had to quickly gather up all of the images and program them within two hours before the deadline. I gave it the ol looney tunes "have text be on screen for as long as it takes for you to read it in your head three times" technique. But yeah it definitely deserves more attention and priority next time, I agree.

I thought the spikes moved felt really fun to do. The loop that I found was to dodge the cloud cat's bullets so I could find an oppurtunity to place the spikes and get back while they activated. I think that your implimentation of multiple different kinds of attacks make it engaging to choose how to dodge bullets to position yourself for different attacks.

I really enjoyed the turret mechanic. It's kind of similar to one of my initial ideas for the jam before I decided to go in a different direction. I'm glad that I got to see that idea still come to life and in a fun & engaging way too.

The aesthetics of the game were very fun, the overall feel of the game from story, visuals, and sound were my favorite part. I also thought the story was a fun enhancer to the experience.

I thought that the way that you turn the character was a fun twist on how you would normally aim in a twin stick shooter like this. I also thought the rat on the player character's head was very cool.

I thought that the way that the player is inside a stationary room was fun and engaging. It felt more like an arena than most traditional schmups and bullet hells do. The stationary arena combined with running around to reach the yellow orbs kind of gave me Super Smash Brothers Break the Targets feeling.

I thought the design of the level itself was engaging. With how you have to wait for your gun to reload it feels very intentional to have have cover everywhere that you can hide from enemy fire while you're left vulnerable. It's impressive how you combined a twin stick shooter and cover shooter in such an intuitive way.

I have a particular appreciation for the art style of this one because I used marker in the concept art for everything in my entry, so I feel a kind of kinship between our entries. I thought the gameplay was fun, a lot of the bullet patterns were very well designed and I enjoyed the variety that the obstructing buildings brought.

Yeah, this being my first jam I didn't know you don't go to each game's itch page when going through submissions. Because of that I thought I could leave instructions on the itch page to save time. Now I know lol.

Thanks for your words. Yes it is indeed endless, but that's more so out of necessity than intention. I initially wanted to have a bunch of waves followed by a boss, but I just kinda ran out of time after designing five waves. My first instinct was to just set the wave number back to zero after the last one's completed rather than just end suddenly. But yeah if I develop it more it definitely won't do that lol.

I really liked this one, and not just because I love CHEESE. It was refreshing to play an entry with actual schmup sensibilities like a slow-down button and hitbox that isn't just the size of the player's sprite/ model. I thought that the rewind mechanic was fun too. I appreciated the ring that would force you to utilize the rewind so that the gameplay necessitated the mechanic and felt like the game was designed with the mechanic in mind instead of being a generic schmup with a fun gimmick slapped on top.

I thought a lot of small touches for the cyberpunk western theme were really nice, birds being security cameras and neon saloon signs were fun. I really liked the honky tonk theme inside the first portion of the game felt really nice and fitting for the level. I also like the gameplay gimmick with the cards, having to be discerning with which ones you pick up instead of just going for every pick up that you see.

I actually really liked the gameplay gimmick. It kind of felt like Break Out but you actually have to time your swings to knock the bombs back instead of just positioning yourself under the ball like in Break Out. It also gave the vibe of tossing a baseball in the air to hit it, which I thought was a fun and intuitive feel.

I really dig the robot's design, the music was fun and fitting for the aesthetics too.

Yeah, this is my first jam so I assumed that when going through submissions you would be taken to each submission's itch page so I put instructions there instead of taking the time to have some kind of tutorial/ instructions in game. Learning opportunity lol.

The movement in this one felt really nice. I've played a lot of submissions so far where acceleration/ deceleration on the player makes it feel clunky, but how it works here feels very intentional and like the entire game's built around it to the point that I feel like I couldn't imagine this game with tight movement.

I enjoyed the whole thing. The main "consequences" thing of enemies that fire back when killed was one of my initial ideas (lifted/ inspired from stage 3 of touhou 15) when brainstorming for my entry before deciding on something else, but hey I guess great minds think alike lol.

I liked how each wave had the same bullets shooting over and over again so the screen essentially became one static pattern. I found it fun to view the game as trying to identify a safe spot on each new wave and trying to get there as fast as possible.

I thought the lore, characters, art, and music were all really fun. All of those aspects came together in a way for a vibe I really liked.

I liked a lot of the aesthetic stuff. The whole game looking like an rpg maker game and the main enemies being magical girls made it feel like we're invading and fighting more traditional schmup characters.