Hey! I absolutely loved this game! It got me hooked! I would say however that although the mechanics were solid, it felt a little unfair, as some of the wizard's attacks felt like no matter what you're going to get hit due to the movement speed of the player and the length of the dash. I also felt that the player would have benefited from some type of secondary attack, like a charge attack, or something that was slower but did more damage (so high risk, high reward). The graphics were charming and the music was absolutely on point! Absolutely great job! If you turned this into a mobile game that had different rooms with different wizards of varying difficulty I think you'd have a real hit on your hands!
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Pseudo Summon's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Aesthetic Flair (Graphics & Sound Presentation) | #1 | 4.765 | 4.765 |
| Technical Excellence (Design & Engineering) | #4 | 4.176 | 4.176 |
| Overall | #6 | 4.147 | 4.147 |
| Immersion (Gameplay & Storytelling Engagement) | #15 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Relevance (Creative Expression of Theme) | #55 | 3.647 | 3.647 |
Ranked from 34 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- Whoa! This was insanely polished. Every aspect that was implemented was seriously punchy and well considered. I would have loved to see those character models from another angle, maybe in the title screen or in a game over. It felt like a shame to only see them from the top-down perspective. Some additional storytelling elements framing the gameplay would have gone a long way, too. I loved the gameplay, the only notes I have would be to have maybe a secondary attack button mapped to right click that does more damage but is slower (maybe on a cooldown or something you build up), some way to break up the grind. Beyond that, I think the dodge could have been a bit sharper (fast on startup, into a steep deceleration) just to make dodging feel more "decisive". Graphics, animation, sound were all top-notch. Above and beyond for a game jam.
Made by One or Two People
yes this was made by just me / us
All Original Content
yes everything was made during the jam
Comments
2 years ago (+1)
Thanks for the feedback!
The player's movement speed, dash and attack are points that we would have liked to been able to refine further, but due to the time limitations we weren't able to get to it. All the points you mentioned are things we have gotten a fair amount of helpful feedback about and have tried to address them with an update that will be coming out after the jam closes.
Also, I'm really pleased to hear you liked the music as I'm pretty proud of how it turned out given the limited amount of time I had. (I'm adding another track when we update the game!)
Thanks for playing and thanks again for the feedback!
I totally understand how time limitations can effect those elements. The same thing happened with my game, I had to sacrifice finesse for functionality. You should be really proud though your game was so much fun and it had a lot of polish for a jam game. I'm excited to hear you're going to continue development on it! Also what program did you make the music in? Or were you actually playing the instruments for it?
2 years ago(+1)
Thanks again for the kind words. We really appreciate all the feedback and positive comments we've been getting!
As for the music, I created it using FL Studio. I used a Midi keyboard to sort of "rough out" the ideas for the music, but after that I would edit or replace these ideas from within the pattern editor / piano roll in FL Studio. I did this so I could quickly draft some rough musical ideas and then iterate on them in a limited time frame. So although some elements of the music started from small recordings, I wouldn't consider the music to be played / recorded.
Hello, thanks for leaving your feedback!
We definitely focused on a simple concept in order to try and control our scope, so all (or most) of our mechanics could be relatively polished by the first day. While I would personally separate design & relevance in that respect, I totally respect your judgment. Our ultimate goal was to make a game we enjoyed playing, and as we're both fans of shmups, it was an easy choice.
Regardless, we're happy to hear people are still enjoying it! Thanks again!
Hello!
We've finished up development on the post-jam update as of yesterday, to be uploaded following the Jams conclusion! The player is overall snappier to control, the speed and I-frame window on dodges has been extended, and both the bounds of the arena and the boss's attacks are more telegraphed. We tried to incorporate as many points of feedback as we could, so hopefully, it makes a difference!
Thanks for leaving your feedback!
Hello, thanks so much for your feedback!
I'd like to clarify because there are two move speeds: One while your firing is very slow, and one while idle is much faster. When you're talking about increasing the movement speed, are you referring to the movement speed while firing or while idle? This would help us get a better idea of how to balance offense vs. evasion in the future.
Thanks so much!
yeah, I think both in general could be increased. I like how you have to slow down when you shoot but I think that the speed of the player isn’t quite fast enough to dodge some things.
Though after some testing, you might find that you just need snappier controls now that I’m thinking about it a bit more. I really like bullet hell games where you feel in complete control of your movement because it allows you to have more close calls which feels great but when you do get hit it makes you feel like you could have lived if you had just been more precise.
if that makes it to easy you could always give the player less health to amp up the tension
2 years ago(+1)
Awesome!
I appreciate the response. We're playing with some polishing right now, so I'll start playing with different movement speed values and see what feels good. While I can't promise drastic changes to control, as we're looking to move onto some new projects, this is still a great insight into how we can improve in the future across any game we work on.
Thanks again!
That's an excellent suggestion, and something we should have communicated more clearly! Of course, it came down to time. We've addressed it in a post-jam update, adding a short prompt tutorializing the bounds of the arena before the fight. Hopefully, it's enough to at least introduce the concept before it results in unnecessary damage.
In terms of the attacks, we're going to play with some more clearly discernable windup audio & visual effects for each spell. While they'll still behave the same, players will at least be able to judge what's going to be coming next sooner, making decision-making a bit easier.
Thank you for playing and leaving valuable feedback!
2 years ago(+1)
Originally, we imagined there would be "Tomes" that would be knocked loose from the edges of the screen, and they would be pick-up-able powerups that gave you temporary alterations in your attacks. Use Malakor's knowledge against him, sort of thing. Of course, always a tradeoff for time :D!
Glad you enjoyed it!
2 years ago(+1)
Great feedback!
The dodge definitely needs a bit of tuning in recovery, and while the interruption in the firing was intentional to balance offense and evasion, it would likely be reconsidered as a quality of life change after the Jam.
In terms of the bounds, that's a completely valid issue. In the future, we could either communicate the bounds through a unique effect or some tutorialization, but time forbade that inclusion.
Regardless, glad you enjoyed it!
2 years ago(+1)
Hey, thanks for the feedback! As Gib said there are definitely things that could use some tuning that we didn't get to due to the time constraints of the game jam.
Also, I'm glad to hear you liked the music and SFX! Creating the SFX and music was a lot of fun, and I'm happy with the way it turned out given the limited amount of time.
2 years ago(+1)
This is the first time any project I've worked on could even be considered as "Graphically Intensive", so to hear that performance is an issue is a piece of necessary feedback. Due to the time constraints, I used decimated sculpted meshes when I really should be baking normal maps, and this is a mistake I will never make again. In addition, I'll be looking into graphic options for tuning post-processing, among other improvements.
Believe it or not, the environment is shaded using the Standard Unity shader, with some high specularity!
Discernability of actions is something that could definitely be improved through some extra particle systems, so that's another way to improve. It's worth noting that you can hold the mouse button to auto-fire, but that should be better communicated, so that's on us!
Thank you so much for giving it a look!
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