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Hey, Paul! If you are still looking for a team, I would love to offer you a spot. Let me know if you are interested and I will send you my Discord. 

This is one of the most polished and feature rich games in the jam! I won't reiterate what has already been said about the super-fun core mechanic and great boss designs, but I will add a thought about a mechanic that likely goes under most players' radar, the altar in the main hub. Firstly, like all of the other menus in the game, there is no way to use the altar menu pop up with just a controller, but even when you use it, trading your life for opening up boss rooms doesn't feel good. The menu for the alter doesn't clearly explain that this is what's happening, and if you give all of your life to open the boss rooms, you now have now have less health to face bosses that you have not gained the experience to beat, even with full health. I would suggest that the tradeoff for health is more firepower, or that the mechanic be removed altogether and the alter become a place where the player brings some energy orb thingy that they get for beating the bosses to open up the next boss room. This will allow the player to feel a sense of progression and keep the gameplay balanced.

Overall, this project is on a level above most of the other games in the jam! Great work from everyone involved!   

The game looks amazing and the level of polish in the menus is top notch! Now, while the gameplay concept is a good one, I feel that there are some design tweaks that could make it less cumbersome, mainly the way that the player interacts with the cards. As of now, the moment-to-moment gameplay requires a lot of UI management, since the player has to swap between cards after every use if they want to get the highest DPS. I would suggest that the player cycles between cards automatically after each use, eliminating the constant need to press the swap button. And if you want the ability to stay on one card, maybe there is a button that locks the selected card until released? I also noticed some smaller issues, such as the lack of sound effects and visual issues with the character creator when playing the game in my browser, but those should hopefully be easy fixes.

Overall, I would say that this is a surprisingly polished game for a game jam! If you decided to take this further, I believe that it could easily be made into a commercial release. Great job!

Thanks for trying out our game! You know it's funny, we had a very similar idea about how the boss would attack the player after being stunned earlier in development, but we had some "staffing issues" that made us scramble to do most of our 3D animation and modeling in the last week of the jam. For this reason, I can't give enough praise to Yawadwipa Studio for the amazing 3D work that they did for us in such a short amount of time! That being said, we will look at adding an attack animation for the boss in our post-jam update.

Thanks for trying out our game! And I agree, the controls and the "feel" of the combat are the first thing that need to be looked at when we give the game our post-jam update. We went back and forth on how the controls should work, and I agree that a second look will do the game some good.

Also, I'm very glad to hear that you like the look of the game. Yawadwipa Studio came in late in development to work on all the 3D assets and really saved our butts! And Genkics created all the UI and menu art, on top of doing much of the coding and in-engine work. I'm sure that both of them will be glad to hear that all of their hard work paid off!

Thanks for trying out our game! And yeah, I had the same thought when trying out the game on my laptop, so it's not just you. That being said, the difficulty will definitely be the first thing that we look at in our post-jam update. 

Your comment makes me think of something, too. In the early stages of development, we thought about adding controller support. I don't know that we will get it in there, but that would be a good way for folks that are playing on laptops to better control the game. Maybe that's something we consider for the next game jam.

Thanks for trying out our game! And yeah, we noticed some of the same issues with the player's attacks. That will be one of the things that we look at in our post-jam update. And I'm glad to hear that you like the fruit! That was something that we added very late in development, so I'm glad to hear that the last-minute scramble to get that in there was worth it!

Thanks for trying out the game! We had some of the same thoughts about the VFX and the "feel" of the combat. The VFX was something that we got working and then put on the backburner while we got everything else playable. Goes to show how the game jam scramble can affect a game. That will definitely be something we look at in the future. And we went back and forth about how best to balance the combat, too. In one build, we had the player doing more damage, but they also had less health. This made the player die much faster, though, so we decided to revert the changes. I think we will revisit those values when we take our post-jam pass at the game.

I'm very glad to hear that you like the look of the game. Yawadwipa Studio came in late in development to work on all the 3D assets and really saved our butts! And Genkics created all the UI and menu art, on top of doing much of the coding and in-engine work. I'm sure that both of them will be glad to hear that all of their hard work paid off!

Hello and thanks for trying out the game! And yes, we noticed a lot of the issues that you mentioned. It's funny, because there was a build that had some fixes for the hitbox problems, but the changes got eaten by Github and we didn't notice until after the submission deadline. And yeah, we went back and forth about the attack button placement. After the jam, we plan on giving the game a final pass, and we will try out some different control schemes. 

I'm glad to hear that you like the visuals! Yawadwipa Studio came in during the last week to work on the 3D modeling and animation and really saved our butts! I'm sure that they will be glad to see that all their hard work paid off. 

The "feel" of this game is its greatest strength. The sound design and the visuals come together to make a game where it just FEELS good to press buttons. Now, that being said, as a long-time fighting game player, I feel that the mechanics are a little forced. By that I mean the whole swapping mechanic. While I see the concept and can get behind it, I notice that the game is set up in such a way as to force its use. For example, if I dodge an attack and try to counter during the boss' recovery, they just auto-block or auto-dodge based on whatever state they are in, regardless of the fact that they are in an attack animation. This is also true when landing a counterattack during the startup of a boss' attack. Don't get me wrong, I understand that you want the player to use the swap mechanic, but I think that there are more elegant ways to do this. Maybe the boss takes more damage when you use the right move, or they get stunned. (Think about Punch Out, as an example.) As it is now, it feels like it's just random as to whether the game will let me get a hit in, which as a fighting game player, is not very engaging.

That being said, the game looks and sounds great, and it should only take a little tweaking to give the player more agency. I look forward to seeing where you take this project in the future!

This is a good framework for a fun game. The visuals and the sound effects are great and the little story at the beginning is fun. If you decide to take this project further, I encourage you to look at the combat design and the music. For combat, I noticed that none of the party members have any spells or abilities beyond attacking. Now, it may be that I didn't equip the right gear to unlock them, but a lesson I've learned is that most people will just run into combat without looking at any menu that you draw their attention to. You want guarantee that your core gameplay hook will be present when they get there, even if they don't look through the menus. Also, I would add background music, especially if you can get different tracks for the boss battles and the rest of the game.

That being said, I think you have a great start, here! Keep it up and you could have a fun, retro throwback!  

As an early draft, I can see the promise in this game. The controls work well and the art direction on the custom assets is fun. If you take the time to do more with the project, I encourage you to focus on the "vibe" of the game. Some of that is straightforward, like adding sound and environment art, but also, I would focus on making more gameplay mechanics. The throwing knife is cool, but what else can our character do? I'm sure you already have a million ideas, though! That being said, this is a great start and I hope you take it further!

This is fantastic! I love the cute little story and the visuals are fun. And I definitely didn't expect the goofy sound effects when the townsfolk carry the hero! The gameplay is also well designed with some legitimately good levels layouts. The only things I would look at if you take another pass at the game are minor and include showing the path that the units that are already placed, keeping the units placed when you fail, and making it clearer when you can't start the simulation because there are no units touching the hero. (That took me a minute to figure out. Lol)

That being said, I truthfully enjoyed this game! I hope you take the concept further in the future! 

Vampire Survivors but I have a weapon that I can actually aim?! Sign me up!

Seriously though, I had fun with this game. The gameplay is easy to understand, and the use of the theme is spot on. The only things I would look at if you take a second pass at it are adding in damage to the player and making it clearer when the enemies take damage. Overall, I'd say you did a good job with this. Keep it up!

Thank you! We didn't have as much time to make the game as we wanted, with the holiday weekend and all, but we tried to make sure that the game was very readable. This was especially important as we are a team of folks from very different parts of the world, so we had to collaborate asynchronously much of the time.  Hopefully, if we take a second pass at the game, we will be able to keep that high level of readability in the art assets that we add.

I really appreciate you trying out the game. As you can probably guess, we had planned on making many more levels for the game, but the holiday weekend made it tough to find time. If we take a second pass at the game, I'll be sure to shoot you a message so you can try out the rest of what we had planned.

I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed the game! I hope to expand on the concept in a future project. Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing the game! And yes, a score counter is a great idea! I was thinking of adding an endless mode where the player could keep fighting ever increasing hordes of enemies to try for a high score. Now that the basic gameplay is set, it should be pretty easy to make. Thanks for the feedback! 

Thanks for the feedback! It's funny, my son said the same thing about the dialog. If I take some time to update the game, I'll be sure to implement a system to allows the player to control when the dialog moves forward. And yeah, I noticed that same problem with the enemy spawning. I think I should change the script that spawns the enemies to check for the player's position, which will be a challenge, but I agree that it would be much better. I appreciate you taking the time to play the game! Thanks again!

The visuals, sound, and atmosphere in this game are top notch! Especially considering the short time limit in this jam. If you do take a second pass at the game, some feedback to consider is that it is not intuitive to charge up enough power to kill enemies. Considering that the enemies are not meant to die unless they lose all their HP in one hit, why not lean into that and remove the HP bars all together? Maybe just show the power level required to kill them above their sprites? Also, I feel like making the buff button something that you hold, rather than press multiple times would make for more dynamic gameplay. I can imagine finding places to hold the buff button in between enemy attacks would be engaging, especially for boss fights. Lastly, the tip that shows that the attack button is "k" is off the edge of the screen, which I'm sure is an easy fix. Overall, I enjoyed the game and hope that you take the concept further.    

The concept is spot on for the jam's limitations and even just as a fun browser game. It reminds me of the kind of games that you would see in on Newgrounds back in the day. That being said, if you take a second pass at the game, I suggest controlling the rate at which the physics affects the cloth to reveal the best shot. There were many times where it would take 30 seconds or more for it to move enough for the shot, which with a browser game like this, is plenty long enough for players to bounce off of it. Other than that, the game runs great and has a fun, cheeky, concept. Lol  

The visuals and audio in this game are super fun! I especially love the AI voice acting, which somehow makes the dialog even funnier. That being said, the game has technical issues when running in the browser, such as the aspect ratio being too tall for the average 16x9 display. Also, once the gameplay starts, you die very quickly, which I understand is meant to be the "just one shot" in the Mini Jam's design limitation, but it would be helpful if there was more feedback as to why the player lost. And as much as the "You're Fired!" screen is funny, it would be nice if getting back into the game was faster. Maybe remove the screen that asks if you want to go back to the main menu and just restart the level? Either way, if you do take a second pass at this, I would love to play it!

The graphics and sound are nice and the use of the limitation is great! If you do take a second pass at it I recommend making it easier for the player to aim and maneuver their ship. Also, it was difficult to tell which rocks would deal damage to me or not. That being said, for something made over 2.5 days, it looks awesome!