Posted January 31, 2025 by karelessocelot
so I knew I'd be pretty busy during January and so that maybe joining a game jam was not a good idea...
so I joined a game jam and it was a horrible idea, because I got hit with even more work than I expected, but well... game done yippee!!!
and also that extra work might be related to this, but we'll see.
Usually this wouldn't be as much of an issue because I find some time to shove things in and fix whatever somehow, but I really didn't have time on this occasion (to the point where I started drinking 2 cups of coffee per day and now I get no cups of coffee because I'm out ;-;), so let's go over things that you may think to yourself, "Wow, can't believe that was left in" so that I don't get too many complaints. And I can basically confirm that there'll be a post-jam build just so I can shove in the handful of missing features I wanted. If the reception is good enough, I'll try to work on it immediately, otherwise I'm taking a break lol
Missing features:
The quit button from the pause menu just quits the game. This button was meant to quit to the title screen, but that caused some issues, so unfortunately... I need to restructure the code to fix this and it'll take a little longer than would be reasonable.
Easy mode wasn't supposed to be a thing, because a missing feature is a screen for betting your max health to continue on the same boss. And there was going to be a secret tied to this (which is basically what the post-jam comment in that one ending refers to). The space on the main menu for easy mode will likely be replaced by a playable tutorial in the post-jam build, as a solution to the inevitable "I dunno how to play your game" comments... they make me very sad. But I figured that people would inevitably go "your game is too hard" or "why did you make me restart from the beginning"" or something along those lines so I bequeath upon you my attempt at a solution to said complaints. Also maybe consider that because this is not a pre-established genre of games, it's kinda hard to balance compared to things like platformers or shooters or bullet hells, etc.
The music kinda sucks. I'll be the first one to admit it. I composed all of this in little over 24 hours. I was hoping for a week. I got about a day. Anything not up to par will be fixed in the post-jam update.
Something else you may have noticed is that the anime girls are in a super-deformed style. This is because I needed to save time, and honestly I'll probably just keep it that way.
also they do in fact have noses i was just too lazy to draw them and then i couldn't be bothered lol
Fun fact: No boss directly deals damage to you, and this was a purposeful choice because I thought it'd be funny if someone attempted a no-hit run. But I think you'd need a ridiculous amount of patience for that, so don't do it. There's probably also some hidden speedrun tactic out there, but I wouldn't know. By the way, some skills do target the last slice you landed on, because I figured I needed some way of preventing people from just hitting to some rhythm, although I feel like the weird drum lines on the songs might also prevent that (sorry!). Also, if you landed on the old maid card, I did give you ample warning... It's funny (to me).
Another fun fact: I think I started working on this game about a week in because originally I was going to do a side-scrolling shoot 'em up (think Touhou, but landscape mode) with a spinning mechanic you had to charge for bullets because I've wanted to do a side-scrolling shoot 'em up for a while now, and I did some sprites for that, but then I had the sudden idea "hey what if i scrap all of this for wheel-spinning action it'll be a novel idea" one day and now we have this abomination of a game. wow. and then i found out it was in fact not a novel idea. oops. but if you want spinning with your bullet hell you should check out my friend's game!!!!! https://atomicant.itch.io/tornado-hunter (they worked really hard on it!) (totally not a paid promotion) (i don't get paid for this)
...and also I like anime girls in suits (I'm not into women)
Anyway, as thanks for reading here is art in more of the usual style (hurray!)
I wonder what would've happened if I had drawn them not super-deformed throughout the game...