itch.io

About the ending:

--- SPOILER ---

--- SPOILER ---

--- SPOILER ---

MC wants so solve their problem by creating an endless loop, Amelie by a quick death.

MC used the bark from the tree to create medicine that induces memory loss, which they can do as a pharmacist. As Amelie suspected it to be poison, MC had to take it too. To not appear suspicious from the memory loss, and to still continue the plan every loop, they wrote down a conversation (which they did in the first loop, long before the start from the view of the reader. If you read the first lines again, you see they don't know Amelie, because they already have memory loss).

To keep the endless loop going, they have to make more medicine every few loops. And after an even longer time, to regrow the tree, which grew old and had little bark left, so they buried seeds.

What it means:

It's a metaphor for how people deal with having a life they consider void of meaning and purpose ("driving a boat through emptiness"). Many people fall into self-destructive, purely pleasure seeking patterns (like doing reckless extreme sports, or taking illegal substances), others into obsessive repetition (work all day, then eat the same food, watch the same show, never do anything new because it is dangerous).

And while those sound like two opposites, and the second group feels morally superior to the first, is it any different? They might technically live longer, but to me it's just as self-destructive. Both are just distracting yourself.

So the "solutions" of both characters are supposed to be dissatisfying to the reader. I want the readers to think "pull yourself together, and work to find your way back" (so to find meaning in your life yourself). Because even if it is hard, it is something we all have to do at some point.

Thank you, glad you liked it.

This is really cute. ^_^

Thank you for your feedback, we appreciate it. ^^

We just added sliders for text and auto speed. Should have been there in the first place, if not for the NaNoRenO rush, haha.

And about the window size, you can freely drag the borders of the window to resize it. Content and resolution will fit to the window frame automatically.

Thank you, this means a lot to me, really.

Thanks. <3 I'm planning to make the next update only after it's 100% complete. I'll post here as soon as it's done.

Thank you! Knowing that somebody enjoyed it gives me the strength to finish the story. ^_^

Hey. I'm Halfstar. I'm looking for a team to join.

I can code visual novels with Lua and Defold. Because I use a general purpose engine, I can also add non-standard features like minigames or a complex UI. Visual novels I made for game jams:
My Crush Wants a Yandere?
Melancholica
my other projects

Besides making music for my own games, I also composed for "Anise Flowers", "The Demon Lord is Mine", and more. I can do different styles, mostly classical and lofi retro synth. You can listen to my music here: https://soundcloud.com/halfstaratelier/sets/showcase

You can reach me on Discord: Halfstar#9644

Nice. That last pit was evil, but I finished it.

This is a great concept. I love the art, and Rika is so cool. But the ending was very abrupt so far.

(Btw the Twitter link on this page isn't working.)

I liked the cute sprite. The random food bowls fit the theme well, jumping all over the room looking for food is a very authentic cat experience. And I always appreciate more platformers.

Running and jumping felt good, but the collision detection is very jittery and should be more stable. It's either a frame to late or overshoots. And there should be walls on the side to not fall off. But for 3 days with your second Unity project its fine.

Cool concept and looks good.

It would be nice to have a button to retry a level, like press R to instantly die and restart.

In level 2, I couldn't jump high enough at first. I changed my display to 30Hz and then I jumped much higher, so I could beat all 3 levels. While the movement speed per frame should change with fps, the total height shouldn't. If you use delta_time to integrate the speed from acceleration, you also have to do the same for integrating position from speed. So v += a*dt, but also x += v*dt.

Thank you!

Oh wait, you are in this jam too? I remember your bullet hell game was awesome. I have to check out what you were up to this time.

I think I fixed the issue now. Turns out some browsers ignore the frame cap. New version with no frame cap, no vsync and variable frame time should work for all refresh rates even for the HTML version. I hope...

Thanks for your feedback.

The game is supposed to be a bit faster than the average platformer, but not extremely fast. Because I have a 60Hz display, I'm not entirely sure if the frame time works as intended for faster displays. I updated the Windows and HTML version. It would be super nice if you could tell me if the speed changed for those on your machine.

Yeah, that's what I was going for.

Many older shoot 'em ups were arcade games, where you continued by paying coins. The pc and console versions of those let the player use coins by pressing a button. But many players try to do them with a single life (1cc), even if they don't have to. So basically anyone could beat the game, but the community creates their own challenges.

So most shoot 'em ups either

• use a coin metaphor, which doesn't really make much sense outside of arcades anymore, or 
• have limited lifes and Game Over, so non hardcore gamers can't see most of the game

I was thinking, how can I recreate the first type in a way that makes more sense for a pc game?

Thank you for all the feedback!

The movement is basically about fast speed, making sure that input delay and frame time are as low as possible, and to not ruin it by adding any momentum. I saw games with floaty controls and probably rigid bodies, but realistic movement is the last thing a bullet hell needs.

The feedback video looks cool. I know from playing games what it should feel like, but I knew from the beginning that it is out of scope for the jam for me, it's the first time I made a game involving shooting. And when I tried to put all parts together, my pattern creator script crashed and burned. So last day was super hectic, I was 90% I won't make it. I even made the lines for the art extra squirmy, to give it more of a "child drawing" look, instead of a "the backend dev opened paint and had no time" look. Better ugly but cute than boring.

About the zoom, I intended to give the player options to interact with the computer and Yuri at any time instead of dodging bullets, but it had to wait for a later version. With all the positive feedback so far, I think I will continue to work on the concept.

It crashes every time I enter the second room. I tried five times, the game stops and just closes without any message. That's taking the 10 second theme too literal.

It's really cute and I like the freezing mechanic.

The HTML version does not start, and the zip folder is a Godot project that players can't start, that folder is only for you. To play the game, you need the exe and pck in the same folder, so you should put those two files in a folder, make a zip from that folder, and upload that zip, instead of the three current files.

Also, because the CRT filter darkens the picture so much, and the bullets have almost the same color as the background, I can't see the bullets at all. It looks much darker on my machine than one the screenshot, like this. I can't really give feedback without being able to play the game.

There is no executable file, just a Godot project. You need to export a Windows build to create a folder with an .exe file, or nobody can play it.

The animations and effects feel great, it gives shooting enemies a satisfying feeling. There isn't much, but it's well polished. 

Aiming doesn't work for me. No matter where I move the mouse, it always shoot up. So I can't defeat the laser boss. I start above it, but can't shoot down.

Poor bunny, don't splatter it! (っ °Д °;)っ

It's fun. The first 20 levels were quite well balanced, but 21 is way too hard. How many levels are there?

The art and music is nice. But the bullets are so fast, I can't defeat the boss at all. Maybe slower, but more bullets would work better?

Thank you for playing and for your feedback. I wrote this novel mostly to see how well I do at all the steps to create a finished project, and where I need to get better, so I appreciate honest criticism. Writing dialogue and drawing characters were the hardest parts, so I will work on those for my next project.

With Melancholica, I basically started writing from the end, and wrote the scenes before to fit that. Which works well for mystery, but for slice of life, it is important to make the dialogue flow naturally. As a reader, I thought those scenes are mostly there to fill time between events, but actually they are just as hard to write as plot heavy scenes, if not more so.

So for my next big project, I'm trying my best to fix those issues. I hope I can show my progress here next year or so.