Honnestly, I didn't really understood how to play (never player this kind of game before), and yet I enjoyed my time. Even if I was mostly spamming I felt like I somehow was still doing the right thing most of the time. Some DOOM vibes here and there, I also see the Evangelion references...
Overall, it's not a game I would play, but it is a nice and enjoyable experience even so! Nice job!
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Tau: The Last Star's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #45 | 4.208 | 4.208 |
| Soundtrack/SFX | #85 | 3.625 | 3.625 |
| Gameplay | #92 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Overall | #113 | 3.608 | 3.608 |
| Interpretation of the Secondary Theme | #192 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Gameboy Soul | #222 | 3.208 | 3.208 |
Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game match the theme?
Space shooter in the vein of Space Harrier, with dark and gritty aesthetic inspired by EVA, ZeroRanger, and Nihei.
Comments
This is really amazing! I enjoy the art, sound effects, music and mostly the atmosphere. The gameplay is pretty cool. The only thing I would try to improve is feedback on when the player is landing he's hits. Good job!
Submitted
Space SiegeInteresting...
Normal enemy bullets were a bit confusing at first, since they zoom in like using orthographic projection. But I guess if it used perspective like the player bullets, readability would be even more clustered.
It's a very ambitious game, and you already achieved a nicely presented arcade experience. Congrats!
Submitted
Siren Cat in SpaceVery interesting gameplay and graphics! I couldn't tell when I was damaging enemies though or if I was taking damage. Great job!
Submitted
Vector Vendetta [GBJAM 11]Yeah the hit feedback was pretty bad, we didn't get enough time to have that playtested and fix that.
I've been working the last few days on a polish update to correct that major issue, as well as many others, and we'll be pushing it out in about a day or two
Gameplay should be improved more too. Thanks mate, glad you enjoyed it.
That was really damn cool! The art and atmosphere is very eerie. Enemy encounters and and bosses were quite balanced and fair.
A note about the audio: Whenever there's a very large number of sphere explosions, a bit too many sounds stack on top of each other, to the point where it peaks at +0.5 dB. Maybe at a certain concentration of explosions, it could be replaced with a singular, boomier sound?
Great work!
Submitted
MoonstruckAmazing presentation here. Love the lore in the beginning as well.
Although I think the game's biggest problem is readability. It's a little hard to tell if I'm causing damage or taking it.
Same for the boss though. I wasn't sure if it died or I kept dying. I played through and killed the boss 3 times but I wasn't sure if
None the less, what's here has a great amount of polish. Great entry overall
Submitted
Aliens won't let me parkYeah I've been spending the last couple of days polishing the game after the jam, to fix the issues with readability and damage feedback.(It's why I haven't responded to comments till just today, been working real hard on this) (Also the sounds for hits on enemies wasn't active at the time, literally forgot to () the function lmao)
If you reached the second boss, when you die you return to her automatically. Not made clear since it was in the last hour or so when I did that during the jam. If you see the death anim she has, you bet her. But you're also locked into a dialogue so it's at least clear the boss is over.
So it might be that you got instantly rompastomped by one of her attacks.
Some of her attacks are very brutal and can pretty much instantly melt you. Though if you didn't see this boss, it might be the snakeskull boss. I gave it way too much health and it caused alot of people to die there instead.
Anyway, thank you man. Honestly me and Malvo want to expand on the concept much more, so once we get this "Polish" update out, we're going to be doing a massive overhaul to make it into a proper arcade styled game.
The polish update should be out in a few days. Just implementing and testing the last of it.
Oh man as soon as I saw your development processes in the discord server, this was one of the games I was really waiting for. It took a while to get used to but I got the hang of the controls.
The graphics, gameplay and art are amazing! You guys did so well!
One criticism tho is that maybe there should be health bars for bosses? I made it to the caterpillar worm boss thing, but I'm not sure if I keep dying or advancing cus I keep encountering that. If I remember correctly, there was one boss that you guys showed in discord that had the spear of longinus-like thing? But yeah I was confused of when that boss was going to die.
But overall, I loved the fast paced experience!
Submitted
Empty RevengeThe health bar was something we were conflicted about at the time. But the last few days, I've been in the mines improving the game properly.
Also, when you die at a boss, you restart at that boss. That was a last second compromise we did to ensure the game was at least beatable. That other boss is the same thing too (Daimon)
This polish update should be out in a day or two, and one thing that we definitely have is a boss Health bar, as well as other stuff. I'll actually show what I've been up to in the dev server. Thanks mate
Hahaha, you can thank Malvo for that regarding Eva.
But I encouraged him to take inspiration from Zero Ranger, so it's rather fitting I suppose.
Anyway, over the last few days, I've been polishing the game in secret. Fixing hit vfx, sounds, the perspective, boss health bars and more. Heaps of stuff.
This update will be out in a day or two. I'll show a sneak peak on the discord.
But from there, me and Malvo are planning to tackle this game more, and do a massive overhaul of it to make it more akin to a proper arcade shooter (with the same fun perspective stuff). We really like this concept and want to make it into a proper game.
So, I hope you'll keep an eye on it when we do so. Thanks.
Really fun experience! I went up to the boss and I think I killed it? :) At first its a bit confusing (missing a bit of feedback from when you hit or get hit). But really unique and enjoyable.
Submitted
Cosmic Pulse - GBJam11Yeah Hit impression is a bit rough.
Game's wave based till a boss, but the waves were a bit slow. In future we're going to seriously polish this up, and do alot more with this concept. Like we got some real potential with this one.
We'll make some quick fixes in a day or two first off, to fix some of that.
Thanks for enjoying it
We will, this game's got heaps of potential.
I think we'll be needing some playtesters once we get this game massively altered. Now that we don't need to stick to the GB limits we got a bit more flexibility. And so we're gonna do a massive overhaul.
Also, it's a wave based game, we'll clearer too. As well as various fixes in a day or two before we begin expanding out the concept (So hit vfxes, proper Health hud that's always visible, boss health bar, various changes to damage and such etc.)
Thanks man, appreciate the cheer on. And glad you enjoyed it.
Thanks a lot! The dark mecha finale vibe is exactly what we were going for (I love Tsutomu Nihei), and it means a lot to me that people appreciate the writing and atmosphere so much, as that is something I hadn't been able to work on in a while despite loving it.
We hear you guys about the lack of hit feedback. Sad but true, we totally overlooked it due to the grind of it all. Thanks for the feedback.
We'll be fixing that issue with feedback in a day or so, we just need to rest.
Honestly, I'm thinking we could expand the game a bit, and give it a real polish. I'm enjoying the concept so much that I wanna do that. And now that the GB Jam's over, we can break outta the limitations and really do some crazy stuff.
Glad you enjoyed it, I put heaps of effort into it, and I wanna make it even better real soon.
Lol, in a way it was! According to the... yes, lore bible we wrote for it you've just defeated the AI that had been designed to monitor and later control the use of a system that was later abused, NextNet. Think the internet but all it needs is energy, and it can transport matter instantaneously as well. The creators had good intentions, but they fell victim to a "hostile acquisition" (were shot and taken over) by the governments of Earth and Venus, who didn't like that Earth and Venus intended for the technology to be restricted to the elites and be used to enslave humanity, commit crimes, etc. They were from Trans-Neptunian starbases, a poorer region of the Solar system and had high ideals when developing it.
So ECCLESIA, as she was originally called, was prevented from performing her duties by a rival system, KOSMON. Since she was rather immaterial due to NextNet's nature and they couldn't simply turn her off, ECCLESIA spent many years in cyberspace, trying to execute her original directives of curbing vice in NextNet, but at every turn was prevented from doing so by the KOSMON system. Eventually, she turned inwards and towards philosophy and religion, and managed to elude KOSMON's grasp. She then fused with it, and became DAIMON. She had been made insane by the ordeal, however, and enslaved and mutated 90% of mankind almost instantly through an engineered computer virus and later physical plague that manifested as the Red Fog, thinking that mankind deserved to perish for their sins. Only those not linked to the NextNet system for financial or ethical reasons were spared, and escaped in a spaceship. She could not follow them, and thus started building Dyson spheres in order to broaden her reach.
Meanwhile, in the planet of Gaia in the Tau system, mankind had managed to make somewhat of a recovery over a few millennia of introspection. In addition to bettering human society they created NOUS, a caretaker AI designed to avoid the mistakes of NextNet and ECCLESIA. As DAIMON approaches, you take NOUS to its core, so that NOUS could show DAIMON/ECCLESIA that humanity was not beyond salvation.
It looks and sounds great but I have absolutely no idea what's happening in this game. Spamming attack(I guess?) + arrows with no clue whether I'm doing fine or not... Just some sort of indicator whether I got hit/if I'm hitting enemies would help a lot. I stopped moving for a while and really the game didn't respond in any other way than when I tried to do something.
Yeah we didn't get enough time to add hitvfx, so only hitflickers really are what indicate a hit. And sounds mainly from the player being hit. It was a bit of a struggle with limited sound collection and time.
Though the game's much more generous about hits, due to the perspective we gave the normal orb larger hitboxes.
In a day or two we can update it and add some of that much needed polish there.
Also, not sure what you mean about "Stop moving for a while the game didn't respond"
That shouldn't be happening. If you have a clip, show me on discord and I'll investigate it.
Thank you for your thoughts, Appreciate it.
Sorry, I didn't mean that there was a bug. I just didn't notice any real feedback that I'm being hit/losing. Health bar was kinda slowly going down but no real indication that well... I stopped playing! To me in a game like this you should almost immediately get to a "game over" screen :) Just measured it now, roughly 90 seconds of not doing anything before I lost, or does it get harder after some time?
I'm sure it would be a very addictive game with some tweaking and playtesting.
Oh yeah that's a common complaint. I agree to be quite frank, that the game's hit feedback is quite poor. We didn't get enough time to properly polish that aspect at the time.
And the player too, barely anything when hit. We even had a bug with hit sounds.
Honestly, with how the receptions gone, I really wanna go back and actually not just tweak the game, but give it a real dose of paint, and update it massively. I can do proper on hit effects and the usual stuff I do outside of a Gamejam, and that would sell the impact much better.
Also the game definitely gets harder, we just made waves too long. Most people die to the first boss, and the second boss is ALOT more difficult.
I'll take a break for a day, and then after I'll talk with the other person who worked on this and see what we can do to make it a real gem.
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