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Heartbeat's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| THEME | #57 | 3.789 | 3.789 |
| VISUALS | #85 | 3.816 | 3.816 |
| OVERALL | #89 | 3.526 | 3.526 |
| EASY TO GET INTO | #101 | 3.842 | 3.842 |
| FUN | #103 | 3.421 | 3.421 |
| AUDIO | #115 | 3.263 | 3.263 |
| CREATIVE | #167 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 38 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Do you have any bullet or projectile in your game?
Yes
You added some projectile or bullet in your game
How does your game implement the theme? (If your game doesn't use the theme ignore this field)
every 10 seconds, the enemy changes its attack pattern!
What was the size of your team?
1
Credit all team-members that worked on this project (you can link itch.io/twitter/youtube/twitch)
Game designed by goodwincek
https://goodwincek.itch.io/
with music provided by neon-crepth:
https://neon-crepth.newgrounds.com/
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Comments
Cool visuals and interesting patterns! It was fun to learn the way to avoid each of them. However, it got quite repetitive after a while, I ended up just killing myself at around 200 seconds. I think it would have been a great improvement if patterns got harder over time, or if new variations of patterns started coming up after you’ve been playing for some time. The music loop was also a bit too short and got repetitive after a while.
But in any case, overall it was an enjoyable experience, good job :)!
The best bullet patterns of all the games I've played today :)
Some nice patterns, though the unrestrained screenspace and the wild movements sometimes makes bullets overlap in a way that makes them nearly impossible to macrododge (which you're able to for quite a long time), not sure if that's my lack of planning, or it's intentional in order to make you micrododge. Would be more fun if there was more stuff to do other than just dodging, getting hit doesn't feel like a big enough penalty either.
Props for getting this to work (mostly) fine on browser, my game worked terribly on it which is why I took down that version as soon as I tested it. Wondering if you used any special optimization techniques with that taken in mind or you just coded it right from the beginning and it just worked.
Thank you for the detailed feedback! I did somewhat design the game to kill you with some patterns. There is one enemy mode that has some randomness which can become "kill mode" if you are unlucky with rng. The other 4 patterns are manually designed with a set pattern that can be 100% avoided with careful dodging.
Re: performance I played your game and saw you also used Godot. First is the longstanding issue of audio stuttering with HTML5 exports (which is being addressed with "Threads" mode in export) Another issue I've read about is Godot's performance with rendering many 2DNode sprites on screen. However I didn't encounter major performance issues in my game until I hit 3000+ bullets on screen at once. I did my own hit detection with simple distance formula checking. You might want to look into the 2D Bullet Shower Demo with godot and research Optimizing with servers for rendering sprites (I did not implement this in my game, but it is a topic I recently learned about that could definitely help with bullet hell games in the future!). What was your method of collision detection? Did your HTML5 version play at a low frame rate or did the audio just sound bad/glitchy? I find that when the audio is glitchy it tricks you into thinking the game itself is stuttering when it's actually running smoothly
But other than using the distance checking vs. 2D areas and built-in hit detection signals, I didn't do anything special for optimization
We also used simple distance checking to detect bullet collision, and we didn’t even have many bullets on screen at once, but still the Godot HTML5 export was a bit laggy and had audio stutter (it was more severe depending on the computer). We’ll take a look at the reddit thread you linked, it brings up some interesting things to try, thanks for sharing!
Thank you for the reply. The distance checking might be important, I've only used simple collisions (Area2D on bullets and CollisionArea2Ds on the KinematicBodies that are the player and the enemies). Though I do wonder whether distance checking is actually more optimal, considering Godot's own collisions are probably optimized in a similar way.
I can't recall right now how it worked on itch. Playing the project from the editor into HTML5 works mostly fine, though it definitely has some FPS drops that I don't see in the Windows export version. I do remember that when uploaded on itch, it worked so much more terribly worse than how I had tested it locally that it just wasn't worth leaving it up since it would leave a bad impression of the game.
I don't think I hit even 1000 bullets at any point in the game right now, though the bullet deletion is definitely a very quickly put together hack with VisibilityNotifiers on the bullets + a bunch of rectangular collision boxes outside the play area just in case, so maybe there are times when bullets aren't getting deleted as quickly as they should; I should change that to be done manually as soon as they exit the visible area of the game.
I'll check those links and keep that info in mind for next time, thank you.
Now that's what I call some nice bullet patterns! Well done, nice and juicy!
Nice graphics :) I enjoyed the bullet patterns while trying to dodge them xD
A pretty simple neon aesthetic keeps things clear and services some really pleasing bullet patterns for the player to navigate around, with skill and grace. Great stuff.
Beautiful bullet pattern!
Very aesthetic and good bullet patterns. Unfortunately on my browser (chrome on mac) I think something with the scaling got messed up where the play field took up about 1/4th of the game window, so I could move far away from the boss to dodge a lot easier than I should have.
I admire the creativity on the bullet hell patterns, which doesn't seem to lag on my browser, so that's a good pro for you! One thing I have to mention is specifically on difficulty. Sometimes when passing through bullets, I get hit and that's normal, but since there's almost no invulnerability, I end up being damage thrice or even more. And also it doesn't seem as I could do more than dodging, some player empowerment would be interesting. The game is pretty neat though, great job!
Great ideas for 2.0 :)
Thanks for the feedback, appreciate you checking out my game!
Simple but really cool game
Cool bullet patterns and visuals. The gameplay is a bit too simple as the player can't do anything besides dodging bullets (also because some patterns can be dodged without moving).
Good feedback! Yeah sometimes you can get lucky patterns that never hit you if you stay still lol.
maybe I could add a periodic large , slow, "homing missile" projectile or something that will force you to keep moving!
THanks for playing!
I loved the idea of spawning a ton of tiny bullets. The music and sound effects are so cool. The patterns are indredibly well done, I especially liked the one that seems to keep the bullets attached by a string. Awesome job!
That's my favorite as well :) Flower of death
Super difficult but fun! Had style and the tiny hit box and patterns were legit bullet hell -great work! :D
Really cool, a bit too hard, but once you get into it, it starts to be very rewarding. Apart from the difficulty the only thing that didn't sit with me was the menu aesthetic - I think it clashes with the gameplay, which is very smooth. Other than that, no problems ^^
Thank you for that feedback! I appreciate it and now looking back, 100% agreed! Thanks for playing
good job on this one, a true bullet-hell... I would add a visual indicator of the bounds of the play area. I got stuck there a couple of times and got hit because of it.
Thank you for that feedback! Definitely will be more conscious of what information needs to be conveyed to the player
I heard from a friend how unfair it was that bullets got to go further off the screen than he did ;)
Very mesmerizing :O alot beautiful colors and patterns!
🤩 Thanks for playing :)
I love the bullet patterns, they felt very intense. I think a sense of progression would have helped (easier to harder patterns). But, hey, it's a jam and you don't have a lot of time to get things working.
Yep, that's the name of the game [jam] isn't it?
Adding some specific pattern shapes was one of the last things I got to add. Before that I just had it completely random which felt unfair and a bit boring. Would definitely love to refine the patterns and give the game a true feeling of progression! Thanks for that feedback :)
Cool game I don't know if it was something on my end but playing with keyboard the controls were really jitter didn't always sense them it was a bit better with controller but still had some issues other than that the game was cool.
I agree, something I wish i could have refined was giving the movement a little inertia for keyboard controlling, or at least a button to slow the movement. I agree controller is better with my current setup because you can control the speed better.
Thanks for playing and for the feedback! :)
very nice game my high score is 130
Great Job :)