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A jam submission

Ephimera and the forgotten memoriesView game page

A rogue-lite game inspired by Vampire Survivors and The Binding of Isaac
Submitted by stefarenina — 2 days, 23 hours before the deadline
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Ephimera and the forgotten memories's itch.io page

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Comments

Submitted

I recorded playing games with commentary, and your game is one of them.

Here's the link to the whole DD50 folder:

https://mega.nz/folder/GclCXISL#gwE9S1kRTbe6amYLH2RiYA

I am sorry I did not find it fun. I think it might get better later.

Submitted(+1)

While obviously still very early on, the use of visuals and audio sets the tone quite well for the game. Gameplay starts boring, once I snowball the upgrades it's kinda fun to decimate the enemies and literally run circles around them. I didn't try retreating from a dungeon mid run, but it seems like a weird choice, only worth it if you think the run is doomed. Could use a lot more variety, just walking between arenas felt a bit stale after awhile, it could use some treasure, miniboss,  and/or gimmick rooms to spice it up. I beat the boss and lit the candle, but then crashed the game after upgrading my HP. I also agree with everything Kurikaeshi said bellow me.

Looks good so far, looking forward to how the game develops.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing and providing your feedback! I'm glad to hear that the visuals and audio are setting the tone well for the game, and that you found it more enjoyable once you snowballed the upgrades. I'll definitely take your suggestion for more variety into account, and try to incorporate more treasure, minibosses, and gimmick rooms to keep things interesting.

I'm sorry to hear that you experienced a crash after upgrading your HP, and I'll look into fixing that issue as soon as possible. Thank you again for taking the time to play my game, and I appreciate your support as I continue to develop it.

Submitted(+1)

Love the art, music is cool, but honestly the gameplay is boooooring. I need excitement! Projectiles on screen! Varied enemies! Sometime to spice it up because just moving away from enemies as I shoot a few projectiles slowly was putting me to sleep.

Developer

Thank you for playing my game and for sharing your feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed the art and music. I understand your point about the gameplay being boring, and I'll take it into consideration for future updates.

Submitted

Cute little game, here are some of the issues I encountered:

  • Arrow keys for menu traversal makes no sense, let me use wasd and also just let me click with the mouse in the options menu like you can in the main menu. It's also weird how in the main menu you can hover over something but the option that was in the selected state from the arrow keys stays selected.
  • There is a lot of very strange wording in this game. I'm assuming english isn't your first language.
  • If a room starts out with a narrow hallway early on and one of the purple guys spawns you're basically screwed
  • Groups of enemies aren't really any more threatening than a single enemy, you just heard them together and shoot at them backwards as you move then do an extra at the end to collect all the souls.
  • Slimes just sit there and do there own thing so hunting them all down to unlock the door after I've already defeated all the real enemies just feels like a chore.
  • Buying upgrades in the hub crashes the game for me.
Developer

Thank you for your feedback.

The gameplay issues that you mentioned will be taken into account since I think that you describe pretty well the weak points of the gameplay system.

Regarding your crash, I would aprecciate if you can tell me which platform you were using (windows/linux) and the improvement that you tried to buy.

Thank you so much for your time and for playing my game.

Submitted (1 edit)

Yeah sure, I'm playing on windows and I went to buy an attack speed upgrade. I already had a few stacks of the attack speed upgrade from leveling up so maybe that has something to do with it.


Also I gave the game another try, I got up to the boss but he disappeared with a sliver of health so I couldn't get into the next room.


Developer (1 edit)

Holy crap. I am so sorry that you found so many bugs that made the experience bad. That of course should not have happened.
I am looking into it right now. I really dont know if you are interested in the "lore" but I will give you the reward for defeating the boss, it happens when you speak to that purple sphere.

"It looks like a nebula. In its constellations, there are words written.

'After so long, I have come to realize that ambition is a double-edged sword. 

I have gained power I had never before imagined. I have sacrificed everything I am for this goal.

I've done the right thing. But as I have gained power, I have begun to feel trapped in my own creation, a god imprisoned in his own realm.

I worry that my ambition will lead me to ruin'

The King"

After that, the candle in the main hub lights up and thats all. Demo over.

Thank you so much for give it another chance and for defeating the boss, It was a last minute inclusion so thats why its just a bigger slime. But I hope I can make it better for the next demo.

I will try to upload a version later today with some improvements and the fixes. 

Submitted(+1)

No reason to apologize, bug hunting is half the fun of DD!

Submitted

Comfy. I played for about half an hour, and I enjoyed the atmosphere a lot. Did you make the music? In any case, leaning in to the mood & art, this could be unique in its genre as a relaxing experience.


I see this being a very nice game when it's fleshed out with more enemies, rooms, features, etc. I think your artstyle would be incredible in this with a few frames of animation on everything. I love the character portrait, she's very cute.


Some small issues I found that I hope help:

  • The interaction button (which was my first choice to advance the intro) just skipped the entire thing. Having a confirmation to skip by a prompt + a second press/holding would be good.
  • All audio buses start very loud until you go to the options and touch their respective slider, at which point the volume is properly set. Just need to initialize those properly.
  • The menu selection buttons are honestly too cacophonous. The menu theme is really nice, but scrolling through the options really ruins the mood, lol.
  • Having the attack sound be piano keys somewhat clashes with the background music, which is piano. Maybe a different instrument for the attacks, like a harp?
  • It seems like the player's hurtbox is too big, or maybe capsule-shaped, which led to some unexpected damage.
Developer(+1)

Thank you for your feedback on the game! I appreciate your comments and suggestions. Here are my thougts: 

I agree that having a confirmation prompt before skipping the intro would be a good idea. I will implement this as soon as possible.

Thank you for pointing out the issue with the audio buses. I will investigate this and make sure that they are initialized properly. Also I understand your concern about the menu selection buttons being too loud I will look into ways to make them less annoying.

Regarding the attack sound, using a different instrument such as a harp is a great suggestion. I will investigate the options since I already received feedback saying it becomes annoying. Thanks for confirming it!

I will investigate your point about the player's hurtbox being too big or capsule-shaped. It is possible that this could be adjusted for a better gameplay experience.

Once again, thank you for your feedback and suggestions. I will take them into account as I continue to develop the game.

Submitted(+1)

Love the atmosphere, the music is nice and the art (the ones that i'm assuming are not placeholders) look great, its really good and I love it. Although the art on the main page looks really weird almost like its AI generated with touch ups but the cutoff on the left should be fixed, i'm sure it can look great but it just looks really low quality with a cut like that right now. Played it with mouse and keyboard, and the controls were not intuitive, assuming the main focus is on controller, but I eventually figured it out (Saw that you list them in your game page but didn't know until I started writing this). It would be neat if the piano notes played when shooting synced to the music or had some more depth to them. Playing the same 3 notes over and over got repetitive fast, and annoying to listen to especially when it would clash with the bgm. I like that the levels are (I assume to be) procedurally generated. But with how the levels & enemies are it devolved into kiting all the enemies and running around the map pretty quick. I did not enjoy this style of gameplay but that's just me (I think vampire survivors is kind of like that so if that's what you're going for you got it), especially since you can't see the whole map. Corners and walls were difficult to predict which made it more difficult to maneuver around with hordes of enemies chasing you. Enemy hp increased too fast and they become too tanky which would be fine if not for the above mentioned map issues. Upgrades you do have are cool, but I didn't really get far enough to play around with them all. With how great the art that you do have looks I think you're on track to a very pretty game, with some gameplay fixes I'm sure it will be a lot of fun. There's alot going for this game and I'm excited to see what you'll bring next DD.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for taking the time to play my game and sharing your thoughts with me. I'm grateful for your detailed feedback and appreciate your insights and suggestions.

I'm glad that you enjoyed the atmosphere, music, and art style of the game. I'm always looking for ways to improve my art, so I'll definitely take your comments about the artwork into consideration. I will try to fix the issues that you mentioned that make it look low qualit.

I'm sorry to hear that the controls weren't intuitive for you, but I'm glad that you were eventually able to figure them out. Some kind of tutorial is need. 

I completely agree that the audio needs to be reworked, I will focus on that for the next DD.

I understand that the gameplay style may not be for everyone, and I appreciate your feedback about the difficulty of maneuvering around corners and walls with hordes of enemies chasing you. I'll see what I can do to make the map more user-friendly and address the issue of enemy HP scaling too quickly.

I'm happy to hear that you found the upgrades interesting, and I hope that in future playthroughs you'll have more time to experiment with them. I'm committed to improving the game and will take your feedback into account as I continue to develop it.

Once again, thank you for your feedback and for supporting my work. I hope you'll continue to follow my progress and that I'll be able to deliver an even better gaming experience in the future.

(+1)

I’ve been enjoying this a lot. The art is very, very nice. Love the colors.

Developer

Thanks for your comment

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Not really fond of putting a long unskippable cutscene in front of your game, even if you've already seen it. I don't really care about the backstory, at least let me try the game a little first.

The right stick shooting feels very clunky. Bullets would come out when I wasn't touching the right stick, or they'd come out in an incorrect direction. I just kept missing all enemies. Also, the character is very slow, which makes the whole game feel slow as well.

I haven't played Vampire Survivors though, so maybe it's on purpose and improves later on.

Developer

Thanks for your comment.
Regarding the cinematic. That´s a bug that happens with the controller. I just fixed it. Now you should be able to skip the cinematic with button A (xbox).
Regarding the shooting. I wasnt sure about the sensitivity and with your comment I was able to adjust it a little bit. It should feel better now. Thanks!
Regarding the speed. Thats intentional. You can improve your speed if you talk with the black creature of the hub.