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Mika's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #11 | 4.345 | 4.345 |
| Innovation | #45 | 3.517 | 3.517 |
| Audio | #61 | 3.517 | 3.517 |
| Overall | #65 | 3.483 | 3.483 |
| Theme interpretation | #91 | 3.379 | 3.379 |
| Gameplay | #171 | 2.793 | 2.793 |
Ranked from 29 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
GitHub repository URL
https://github.com/stray-codes/mika
Theme interpretation
Conjure bullets made out of moonlight to defend yourself.
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Comments
Beautiful artwork and atmosphere. The gameplay is really interesting and innovative.
You got the graphics, the sound, the atmosphere... Very good! The gameplay was somewhat innovative, the shooting mechanics turned combat more into a puzzle (or a platforming challenge, actually) than real combat, given the slowness of it. Having to plan and calculate was very good. However, the fire rate of the enemies and the high precision of the platforming segments made the challenge to be a bit too frustrating, I think. The platforms were too small and the character was a bit too slippery to land on them, coupled with the barrage coming from above, you had little room to think about your next move. But you had a good demo for a game jam, definitely! Good job!
Any chance you could get this to run in browser?
I probably could, but I assume the performance will drop significantly. I planned to rewrite the code anyway and maybe I can optimize it well enough for it to work. Yet I will not have time to do it in the next 3 weeks, because I am busy with my bachelor thesis.
The art is really great. Nice work!
Great work! The game gives off a great vibe with beautiful environment and character design, and a very fitting music track.
The gameplay is quite interesting and has a lot of potential IMO. In the jam version of the game there are a few shortcomings but if you're interested in keeping working on the game, I could see it polished into something quite nice. Some issues I had (playing with controller):
- In the first quest, it's not immediately obvious what parts of the environment are actually solid platforms that you can jump/dash on. At first I used up all my moonstone trying to do some upward dash because I didn't understand that the small bits of environment on the left were actually platforms.
- The shooting system is quite interesting, but I found it also quite hard to control with a controller, leading to too many frustrating deaths.
- I don't know how far I went into the game (stopped after dying a few times at the 3rd enemy - and mostly dying many times on the way with the 2nd one), but having to restart from the bottom each time got quickly frustrating, I'd have preferred to respawn at the last moonshine location where I could replenish my energy and health.
Overall it's a very impressive entry and I'm looking forward to seeing more of it if you keep working on it!
I agree with a lot of what's been said, visuals are amazing! Especially fond of the HD art and animation. Gameplay is good too. I really like the mechanics here! I think the moon "shot" is a neat idea, and I just overall like this game. You also obviously know your way around to get this working on all these platforms with controller to boot.
So there's a question of difficulty. It seems like people get different impressions based on their gaming style (as you mentioned, aggressiveness), meaning their personality, ultimately. It seems like you're going for a platformer that makes the player stop and think, but when we see fun shooty things we want to go full Contra hahaha :).
I think this is actually good, but a trickier balance than it seems. You center around conserving energy, but if you run out then you can be stuck if you need the dash, requiring at least backtracking, which doesn't seem to me to be a gain. I think the challenge is great, but I'd want to avoid the possibility of being forced into legwork.
My advice would be to take a page out of Mega Man's book. I feel like that game has the balance of mechanics that are similar to yours (albeit you have a nice twist)... It's tense, you have to strategize, you also have "pew pew pew!"..you have energy that can drain, BUT, you always have that regular blaster to fall back on if you screw up! You pay the price, but you can grit onward.
All in all, great game and your dev AND art skills really leak through it. Great work!
Very cool concept although I agree with the other commenters that the controls were a bit difficult at first. The art is beautiful!
Beautiful art combined with a unique shooting mechanic blend into a great platformer that I wished there was more to the demo. The controls did take some time to getting used to, and I found that playing mouse and keyboard was easier for me than controller, at least when it came to aiming my shots. The puzzles were frustrating, but mostly due to me not understanding how to complete them or my unfamiliarity with the controls.
Fantastic work!
art, audio and vibe are all great. i was especially impressed with the characters and their animations, those are excellent.
So, so beautiful. I also played without a controller and still loved it, even if I am terrible at platformers. This was really interesting and managed to still addict me despite that. Bonus points for Godot! I should mention also the subtle music really brought out the heart of the game and that was fantastic.
The graphics are so beautiful!!!! I had a bit of trouble with the controls but I know you said it was recommended to play with a controller, which I wasn't :P So my bad. heh
The graphics of this game, audio and gameplay were fascinating. Theme interpretation is original and creative which made game more enjoyable and fun.
My favorite thing about this game is the shooting system. I've never seen a shooting system like that, I couldn't kill enemies without reasonable thinking, placing and releasing projectiles while using walls as a shield and trying to save as much energy as I could. This kind of game was the best for me so far. I am willing to play it again and finish somehow :D
Great job!
I really enjoyed the game and the graphics used (Gave off Hollow Knight vibes). It was slightly frustrating that I had to listen to the rat stand guy everytime I had to replenish my moon powers in the temple. But overall, great game and attack mechanism. Good job and looking forward to updates and/or new games in the future.
Really nice art and a nice game it has a lot of potential but I had really trouble to figure out the attack method! It is quite unforgiving, more practice areas would be great!
You can make this into a great commercial game I think! Just needs some gameplay polish! My video below (after I missed the download button in my other review video) Below the dedicated video!
Mika Gameplay Review
Really hard, with no way to replenish the moon power a lot of parts are impossible to get through. Enemies also instakill me before I can even see them. I would like to play a better version in the future because the art and atmosphere is amazing
I love the art, but I'm a little confused. I couldn't even jump on the first box to get up past it. I'm confused as to why the controls for the keyboard are not shift for dash, and space for jump? The enter key being coded in made it confusing to begin with, as my mind immediately went to space for jump, but then the introduction of the enter key meant I had to move my hand off the mouse. But... then jumping on that first box ? I'm so confused! I hope I'm just overseeing something, this game's environment with the art + sound is so gorgeous. Please let me know! (I'm using the gles2 version + godot)
You can also jump with "w". I had dash set to shift in the past, but some of my friends complained, because of some windows function, where a pop up appears if you press shift too often. In retrospect I would like to remap the keys, but its too late now (its mid competition and it feels like cheating to make such changes after the deadline).
I think remapping the jump button to "space", the dash button to "right click" and the heal button to "f" would be way better.
Also you can hold "w" longer to jump higher.
The enter key is just a quick fix for the steam controller. The default button for "a" is enter if you don't configure your steam controller.
Art and audio are really good. Everything comes together to build a specific tone and ambience that I think you managed to pull off. Like the world feels rich even though there's not much to see.
If I were to criticise something about the graphics it's that It's a bit hard to distinguish background from foreground and that the skeletal animations feel a bit stiff. But that's like something really minor.
The shooting and platforming parts of the gameplay could use some work. The character feels heavy and you can die from a few hits. Platforms are too small and you can slide right off them if you aren't careful. If (when) you die, you start right from the beginning of the tower and that felt awful after having trouble with the second enemy. You mitigate this with the healing, but once you ran out of moonlight and the charging spot is taken away, it's practically game over.
Overall I liked it, but found it a bit difficult. It was also cut short, so it left my thirst of vengeance and desire to kill the king unfulfilled. Hope you finish it!
PS: It worked perfectly on Linux (Ubuntu 18.04)
Thank you!!!
I did not really have any experience in animating before, so I have a long way to go. I might overdid it with the difficulty on the platforming section. The health system is intentional this way. At first I thought about combining health and energy into one, but I decided to separate it. There is no downside to healing (you can still move and jump and it happens instantly), except losing energy. The whole idea is to be resourcefull with your energy without wasting too much, like for example forcing people to decide if they want to heal and waste energy or risk dying from one hit.
I got a lot of complains about the second enemy, especially for cutting off the moonlight. This did surprise me, because the pattern is extremely predictable and there are huge areas where you cannot get hit at all and just stand there without any risks. I tried to figure out what went wrong and watched some of my friends playing it blindly. Mostly they charged in and played very aggressively. I think I should have made a larger tutorial section, that really teaches to be careful with the energy management and create a proper solution, what the player should do if the energy runs out.
You are right with the small platforms, they are too small. The end area was pretty rushed and I should fix it.
We will probably continue working on it, so I hope it will satisfy your thirst for vengeance.
Thank you for your comment!
Thank you very much :)
I wish it was longer too, but there was just not enough time.
Awesome artwork and lighting. Dash should have been unlimited... loved doing that.
Thank you very much :)
The mechanic has so much potential! I agree, it's a bit hardto pint the right direction with the bullet sometimes it ended up the oppposite way haha.
I like the atmosphere.
Nice little details also like the cracking mask when we get hurt.