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A jam submission

Mana DroughtView game page

Small bullet-hell game about an apprentice witch protecting magic
Submitted by Kinami Imai 今井きなみ (@imai_kinami) — 2 minutes, 31 seconds before the deadline
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Mana Drought's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme#133.8823.882
Visual#743.4713.471
Audio#783.0593.059
Overall#813.2353.235
Fun#962.9412.941

Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Did you use any third-party assets or skeleton code?
Music and Fonts

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Magic is restored to the world!

I like the look of the game, and it's very fun. The controls and speeds of character and bullets feel good, a boss fight with multiple phases is always fun to deal with and the bullet patterns are beautiful, the difficulty is one point and grazing for mana is a good implementation of the theme.

The game would probably benefit from some sound feedback when you get hit, and maybe when the boss gets hit too (and I guess the bullet triggering an impact instead of going through might be good too), but that's really no big deal.

Well done, thanks for sharing.

Developer

Thank you for your comment! 😊

I wanted to add some visual and audio feedback for getting mana and being damaged, but I ran out of time for the jam. I think it would have made it easier to tell when you are getting hit or getting mana.

Submitted(+1)

Very cute characters, great bullet patterns, and an interesting central bullet-grazing for ammo mechanic! I would love to see a little more player feedback for when you are picking up mana and when you are doing damage to the boss. Maybe a particle effect when you pick up mana, and flashing the bosses sprite to show damage is being done? Overall, nice work!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for your feedback! 😊

I wanted to add some visual and audio feedback for getting mana and being damaged, but I was not able due to the time constraints of the jam. It’s definitely on my list though 😄

Submitted(+1)

That's a good one. I love the character designs specially, the witch is adorable, and the wizard dude just looks awesome despite being more simple, specially on the cutscenes. Speaking of that, I'm  also always a sucker for little stories on jam games so that have my thumbs up too x)

Gameplay itself is pretty simple tho, but it does it's job fairly well.
My complaints are once again on hitboxes tho, they did feel a little too big for a game that wants me to be constantly grazing bullets, I'm not sure wheter it's the player's or the bullets's, but I did feel like I was taking damage when I shouldn't. This might also be because of the lack of feedback on damage thought, I actually took a while to realize how big the hitboxes were because of that. I was just squeezing myself wherever I saw openings and tought I was doing fine, but then when I blink again I'm suddenly on the grave. I only really realized the hitboxes weren't as small as I was expecting once I started to pay attention to the health bar on the corner.
And the syphon range kinda has the opposite problem, it feels a little too small :P
Like, I need to be kissing the bullets for it to work, and even then sometimes it just doesn't budge for some reason.

I love some of the bullet patterns tho, specially the spiral-loopie-snakie one on the last phase, not only because it looks cool but also because I managed to squeeze myself into one of the loops and machinegun down the boss from there and that was satisfying

Developer(+1)

Thank you for your comment! 🙂

I am glad you enjoyed the little story bit at the beginning!

Regarding the hitboxes, I was planning to add some more visual and audio feedback for mana recovery and damage, to make it easier to tell where the hitboxes are, because when the player is paying attention to dodging bullets, they will not be looking at the health/mana bar. Unfortunately I did not have time for this in the jam, but this is definitely something I would like to improve.

I am also glad you liked the snake pattern, that one was a bit of a surprise for me as well: All of the patterns you see in the game are driven by mathematical formulas, I was quite surprised when a pretty simple formula got me such a cool looking and pattern that was so satisfying to dodge and siphon mana from. I wanted to put it on the last phase just because of how cool it was 😉

Submitted(+1)

I liked the energy of the intro a lot, this witch has spunk to spare!

The game was very fun to play, thanks to the very clearly visible hitbox and the big character sprite, the "bullet grazing" was simple enough for even someone who doesn't play many bullet hell games, and it was satisfying to get a lot of mana at once to shoot a big volley at the Arcane Master!

I also like the art, that was very cute! Well done!

Developer(+1)

Thank you very much for your comment! 😃

I’m glad you were able to get the hang of it even without much bullet hell experience. I have not played that many bullet hell games either, so it is always a bit hard to judge the difficulty. This is why I added the option for more lives in the settings.

Submitted(+1)

No problem, well done on the game!

Submitted(+1)

Very fun mechanics with the mana use ^^

It took me a bit to get the hang of it but once it clicks it’s really satisfying, for instance, i didn’t imediately see that you visualized the hitboxes for both mana charge and the hurtbox, but once i got it i had tons of fun trying to place myself just at the right spot to keep that bar up to shoot back.

Also really cool of you to have put a difficulty select so that everyone can have a shot at seeing the end, had to stick with normal and i barely made it so i can’t imagine how insane hardcore difficulty must be haha O_o

The character designs are cool as well, and i gotta applaude you did extra work to have a different left and right animation to fit the character’s hat, also had a good chuckle at the mage master’s “you can try” frowning expression XD

Overal had fun trying this out, well done :)

Developer(+1)

Thank you for your kind words, I am glad you enjoyed my game! 😊

I did want to add some audio and visual feedback when you gain mana and get hurt to make it a little easier to gauge where the hit/hurt boxes are, but did not have time to implement this unfortunately. I submitted less than 3 minutes before the deadline 🤐.

I tried making the characters a little silly, I am glad you got a laugh out of it 😃

Submitted(+1)

Good job! Your game had a sort of similar take on the theme to mine!

I liked the idea, although I did find it a bit hard to find the sweet spot for how close I could get to bullets to be able to absorb mana without taking damage. Although I'm not really sure what else you could have done to improve that. The art was pretty nice too!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for your comment! 😃

I was going to add some visual/audio feedback for when you are absorbing mana and taking damage. I think it would have made it a lot easier to understand gauge the difference between taking damage and gaining mana.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Thats a good one, after many tries I could win on hardcore.


Developer(+1)

Wow! Well done 🎉! That’s a higher score than I ever got!

Congratulations, you have officially outdone the developer 😃

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Interesting idea, you gotta find a bullet pattern which is not risky and predictable in order to charge your mana. Really had to switch my usual shmup tactics on that one.
Note aside I would've loved some silly voice acting on the intro. Hearing "you can try" with a fake sinister voice could've been funny. Cute plot haha.

Developer

Thank you for your kind words! 😃

I would have loved to do some voice acting, but unfortunately I did not have the time for it. But I definitely would have gone with some silly voices 😃

Submitted(+1)

I liked the limitation's implementation! Having to move near projectiles is a fun way to introduce risk/reward. I will say that the absorb radius felt a little small and some sort of visual diagetic feedback would make it feel a lot better. 


I had fun with this one, though I admittedly couldn't beat it. I got close!

Developer

Thank you for your feedback! 😃

I was hoping to add some more visual and audio feedback (especially for mana regen and damage), but could not do it due to limited time. I think it would really have improved the gameplay experience.

I’m glad you had fun though, it can be a bit difficult, because there is a fair bit of RNG with the attack patterns that appear.

Submitted(+1)

Really nice art! I like the mechanic of going near bullets to charge mana, makes me have to play more risky. I wish the character could move faster though, would feel less sluggish perhaps. But overall great game!

Developer

Thank you for your comment 😃

I had to balance player speed a little bit, as making the character move faster would make it difficult to dodge smaller bullet-patterns. Maybe I’ll experiment with adding a little bit of acceleration to the player character, so it is possible to move more quickly.

Submitted(+1)

I like the drawings a lot and the idea is pretty interesting. It’s quite difficult :)

Developer

Thank you for the comment! 🙂

I tried to gauge the difficulty by how well I could play it, considering I am not that good at bullet-hell games, but I guess the first and second stages may be a bit too difficult.

(+1)

The character art is pretty cute. Nice lore explanation for the grazing mechanics. Good job!

(+1)

The character art is pretty cute. Nice lore explanation for the grazing mechanics. Good job!

Developer

Thank you for your comment! I’m glad you liked my game 😊

Submitted(+1)

I like the idea of having to syphon off mana from the bullets but the constant drain was hard to keep up with. Also feedback on hiding the enemy would be good as my bullets would go right through and I wasn’t sure I was doing damage at first. Nice work though!

Developer

Thank you for your comment! I reduced the drain several times in development, maybe it could use some more adjustment down.