itch.io

Thanks!

Thanks! Level 4 is actually further than I'd expect from the average player, well played :)

I'll improve the wall jumping in the post-jam version.

If it's too floaty, you can press down to do a quick drop (I thought this was covered by the WASD in the tutorial, but I think most players ignore S/down in platformers so I'll probably change that too)

Thank you!

Yes

Thank you!

Thanks for the detailed criticism! I will definitely keep this in mind for a post-jam update once I'm feeling less burnt out :)

And yes, the eyes copy exactly what you do, so if it seems really fast and relentless, that's because you are being fast and relentless, but maybe that isn't communicated to the player well enough. The strategy is to remember what path you took so you can backtrack without crossing that path.

I also noticed the wall jumping being very tight, but never got to fixing it because the sheer amount of other tasks that seemed like a higher priority to me at the time. If it helps, there is a buffer that lets you press jump before touching the wall, but not after.

The thing I struggle with when it comes to difficulty balance is making things easier without making it easy to the point where it's automatic. Finding a balance is hard, and I didn't have any time to get playtesting from other players. I think I'll do a playtest phase when I update the game.

Also btw, you don't have to hold spacebar, you only need to tap it once to enter max speed and from there you can just hold the direction. The reason I wasn't super descriptive with this stuff is I wanted a textless tutorial that gets straight to the point, but maybe I'll reconsider that decision.

Really fun game! I think this is the first entry I've tried where I have no criticism, well done! I think a hard mode would be really fun if you ever update the game :)

That should be a huge help, I'll try again sometime!

This is amazing! It feels like a complete game. Very polished sprites, and awesome music and sfx!

This is just a personal gripe, but I don't like using arrow keys.
The first boss was very epic, but I think it was a lot easier than the rest of the level, especially for how long the fight was.

Unfortunately, I had to stop playing on the second level because I was getting tired of holding X for so long. I can handle pressing lots of keys rapidly, but when there's very little reason to let go of a key/button, it gets bothersome imo. I know the charge attack is a thing, but that's just an extra and you still will be holding X the vast majority of the time regardless. An accessibility setting that reverts your firing state to "hold to stop shooting" or maybe just toggle shooting, would be hugely appreciated if you make a post-jam version.

This is a pretty good base for a tower defense that could be expanded upon! I like the setting, the enemies and portals look very cool as well. Movement could be improved, particularly with walls but it's understandable for a game jam project.

The problem with the gameplay loop is that you get a lot of mana, and you can just spam the basic nailgun without much of a strategy and permanently stop all the enemies. If you do make a post-jam update, maybe add some more dynamic unit and enemy interactions to keep the player engaged, and also up the difficulty enough that the player needs to make a creatively synergistic setup rather than spamming one strong option.

That being said, I'm not very knowledgeable about tower defense games, and I myself would probably have a hard time striking the right balance.

Found a bug where you mash spacebar during the tutorial and the game will go ultra slow mo.

I love the art style and colors you used for the page and game, pretty fun gameplay loop too!

I would like to be able to move horizontally mid-air, or for the platforms to stop moving while you're stomping. Currently, you have only a fraction of a second to react to spikes and it feels pretty out of nowhere at times.

Adding to the last point (pun intended), it feels strange when upwards facing spikes kill you even when you're rising.
I also think spikes should appear earlier, as they only appear when things are moving quickly, so you don't get much time to get accustomed to such an important gameplay element, not to mention the huge difficulty spike (pun also intended) as it's very easy without the spikes.

I think if these were changed, I would enjoy it a lot more, but it is your game so feel free to disagree with anything I just said. Please don't take this as "I don't like your game", I think it's a lot of fun! I just like to point out (ok fine I'll stop with the spike puns) every issue I have with the games I play, so you can make the game more polished in any potential updates :)

Aw man, I never even thought about that happening. Maybe I'll have to put custom controls higher on my priority list next time. I may make a post-jam update at some point, but I'm still working on a pretty big update for last year's submission so it may take a while. Apologies.

What's the issue, controls or something else?
You use WASD to move and aim, I to jump, spacebar to dash or throw held item (downward throws only require you to press down in the air)

Thank you!

Alright, I've just released a patch that lets you resize the window!

Ah, sorry about that. I hadn't considered motion sickness, but it makes sense that's happening.

Hey, are you still looking for a team? I can show my game (preferably on Discord) if you're interested. So far I'm working solo, so if you prefer a bigger team I understand.

This looks really really nice, though my main issue is that the environment (floors, walls, etc.) are about as bright as important gameplay elements like enemies and projectiles, hurting readability and making hazards not stand out enough. This can be fixed, though.

This was super difficult, but fun! The effects look really juicy, audio is nice, and the difficulty is high but makes it a lot more engaging and replayable. Well done!

Only complaint I have is there doesn't seem to be any reason to stop shooting, so I think the shoot button is unnecessary.

I got this far on my 3rd attempt (the difficulty gets absolutely bonkers, lol).

I think this is my favorite entry so far! The lasso mechanic and secret enemies really helped keeping the gameplay fresh, and the aesthetic is unique and cool. Love the music!

I also liked the map design and overall retro feel to the game. It does a really good job at playing like a retro game.

Some of the rooms (especially with the rocket enemy) felt  a little cheap and you just get hit immediately after entering the door. I'm not sure if it's intentional, but I guess it does make it feel more true to its retro style.

It's difficult to shoot diagonally while standing still since the movement affects your aim and there's no way to strafe while shooting or anything like that.

Also, I'm not sure if the triple shots have much of an impact on the gameplay. The player is slow enough that I found it very unlikely for me to get hit by any of the outer bullets, and when I get to use the triple shot myself, there's only 1 enemy per room so I'm really just using the middle bullet. All the other projectile types were really fun, though!

Thanks! Yeah, I wish I would have spent a bit more time making things more readable.

Thanks for the crash report! I must have missed that since I didn't test the tutorial very much after adding a lot of stuff to the game on the last day.

Turns out, it's because the tutorial is setting your aim direction to "right" whenever it resets your position because of outdated code. When I added more aiming directions, I decided it would be more clean and flexible to use a value for the direction instead of using 4 different words, so it's trying to set your aim direction in the old way of using a word, but it crashes because it's reading a word as if it's a number.

I fixed it now. I'm not sure if I'll ever make a post-jam version, but if I do, it will come with the fix :)

I haven't played this genre of games before, but it was fun! On my winning run, I was already at 1 HP around 5 minutes in, and had to get all the water shield upgrades to heal back, lol.

The runs are pretty long, and I felt like the game was getting easier as I leveled up. Maybe the game could be shorter, or there could be bosses to shake things up (I know the jam deadline is the reason for the lower enemy variety, but I feel like the game could be a bit shorter in that case).

Also, the hitboxes are kind of off and there should be more visual/audio feedback for taking damage and losing shields.

I like all the upgrades and they were easy to understand, which is super important for a game jam entry imo.

It's hard to choose a rating since it's so different than all the other entries and it's more like a sandbox than a game, but it's neat! It's definitely good inspiration for survival/sandbox games and could easily be a great foundation for a full game :)

This game would probably be a lot more fun if I played with a second player, but it was still pretty fun fighting the CPUs. I was able to click fast enough to just mash left click and parry most shots though, lol. Also Double Pepperoni is S tier.
Cool game!

I saw some clips of this game on Discord, and it was the first one I wanted to try. The pixel art is nice and the animations for spawning, shooting, etc. are very fluid.

Although, the main issue for me is the layers of rng. You need to hope you don't go several screens without finding ammo, find lots of barrels, don't get softlocked by level gen, hope barrels and aliens drop anything at all, and even if they do, hope they drop what you want.

Sometimes deaths are unavoidable, and I think this could be fixed if there was some sort of system in place to guarantee the player finds both item types after a certain amount of enemy kills/barrel destructions. Overall though, really fun game!

A bit short, but the gameplay itself is great! I like the music too, fits really well.
I'm not sure if it's from my experience with the Streets of Rage games, but I found the floors to all be pretty easy to clear whilst taking little to no damage, although that's fine given it's a game jam and lots of people here are probably inexperienced with beat-em-ups.

The only issues I had was getting permanently frozen on my second run, and the punching ninja enemy hit me despite his entire arm being in front of me.

Cool game! Very difficult, but that's not a bad thing.
I like the way different people react to you differently, so you have to be strategic with who you chase after so you don't starve. The music and sfx fit perfectly too!

I think the only problem I had was how quickly people can swim away. It feels like you can't really do anything about it if a person happens to have a fast move speed and swims away.

Really good game overall, I enjoyed the gameplay and the art/music is amazing too.

As for the issues:
-Confusing telegraphing. There's lots of bright flashing lights and dinging sounds for basic actions. This, on top of every move being so fast and the dodge being so short, makes the dodge ability feel like it's just "there", and I get by much easier by mashing my strongest attacks.
-Explosive teleport ability is a win button and you can mash it to infinitely juggle everyone, even The Goat.
-Too much reading. There are a lot of options to choose from, they all have long descriptions, and they branch off of each other which further complicates things. The font was also hard to read when you get the boss reward.
-I know I already mentioned the attacks being too fast, but I think it's really important. If the attacks were slower, you could have a lot more room for diversity (with some quicker attacks here and there), and it would be  at least a little more reasonable to react and dodge.
-I kept randomly teleporting to the edges of the arena with no animations or effects indicating why that was happening. Not sure why.
-It's hard to tell why enemies are or aren't being stunned. If the enemies have armor, I think it's important to have obvious visual ques to indicate it. If certain attacks do or don't stun, I think it should be explained to the player in some way or another.
-There didn't seem to be any way to escape combos, and when I respawned I didn't get teleported or give invincibility or anything like that, so sometimes I would lose 2 lives from 1 combo, lol.

If you do decide to make a post-jam version of the game, I'd definitely be interested! :)

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the game!
I hope you weren't disappointed when you found out the legendary upgrades replace each other though, lol. (I wanted the game to get progressively harder so you can't cheese it by stacking legendaries, but frag bullets are still game-breakingly OP anyway due to my lack of testing them...)

Shelldon by Psychic Chicken (itch.io)
I didn't have time to balance everything, but it's a game focused on building your own gun.
I'll get to trying other people's games soon as well, I just need a break since it was so exhausting making my own game.

Thanks!

Thanks! I think the game could be a lot more polished and balanced if I spent more time on it, but I didn't want to burn myself out in the limited amount of time. And the art style was somewhat inspired by Bonanza Bros, which is my favorite Sega game, so I can see why it reminds you of Sega.

The visuals are super satisfying and polished, music is great and fits the gameplay well, gameplay is simple but fun, and the concept is creative too! Well done!

Main things I think should be changed though, is the button's distance from the mouse shouldn't be randomized, at least to this degree, since you can just click randomly and get lucky. And I also think the outlines should be a part of the clicking hitbox, but that's a small issue and might even be intentional.

I like it a lot! It's funny and enjoyable. My critique is that being able to smack your head into the top part of the pillar can feel pretty sudden, and the camera sometimes snaps into a random position, which is probably unintended.

Thanks!

Thanks!

Thanks! The jumps can be pretty tight due to the randomization as you said, but it's always possible. I agree it's too difficult. I tried to tweak it, but the game still sometimes pulls some nasty jumps.

I also added bats last second, so those might be a little unbalanced since I didn't spend as much time on them compared to everything else.