Magical Girl Game Jam #10

Hosted by Ran d'Reille

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A jam submission

FairystepView game page

Magical girl shmup (shoot 'em up)

Submitted by skalt711 — 26 minutes, 53 seconds before the deadline

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Fairystep's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Audio	#13	3.786	3.786
Engagement/Fun	#13	3.714	3.714
Gameplay Polish	#21	3.214	3.214
Aesthetics	#25	3.857	3.857
Overall	#28	3.286	3.286
Magical Girl Concept	#39	3.000	3.000
Theme Interpretation	#43	2.643	2.643
Originality/Creativity	#46	2.786	2.786

Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game fit the Magical Girl genre?
Anna is a girl with the power to cast offensive spells and can only be hit on her medalion.

Which theme(s) do you pick?
Freedom Dive

How does your game fit those theme(s)?
Anna descends from space into mountains.

Were the assets for your game made during the jam? Elaborate as you see fit.
Small enemy bullet recolored from my another game's prototype. Explosion sprites taken from opengamearts. ToshibaSat 8x8 font taken from int10h.org. Other assets have been made during the jam.

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Comments

Ran d'ReilleHost53 days ago

Well this is clearly only a prototype, so I will evaluate it based on the parts that are already done:

First of all the music and the aesthetics are rad. It feels like SHMUP of old.

The gameplay is mostly fun (well it's a standard SHMUP); it has juice and it is fluid enough... but probably as others have mentioned there is a spawnkill problem that needs to be addressed.

Overall it was not bad. I swear though every time I start MGGJ about half of the submissions are SHMUPs...

Thanks for participating!

skalt711Developer53 days ago

Yeah, I was conflicted on whether to fix spawnkill post-deadline or not while the rating system is still running.

I ended up not fixing it so that rating would strictly match the deadline version :mggj_angelica_sweat:

Reim HarbertSubmitted74 days ago(+1)

This game seems to be unfinished yet have a considerable amount of polish. I love how dynamic the enemies fall down after getting hit. The explosion caused by the Anna's bullet is beautifully done. I also love the boss' BGM, it sound funny yet chaotic at the same time.

For me, Anna's hitbox is quite obvious. Anna's necklace is suspiciously bright and contrast to the rest of her clothing. That screams hitbox, imo.

The balance could be better though. It's kinda unfair for the enemies to do high speed vertical shot when above or under the player, not to mention how small the play area is. The boss also keep spawnkilling me if I got careless at the end of the stages.

Overall, this is a fun game, just a little bit rushed. I also like the direction of this game. Good job!

Submitted

Moonlight Rabbit Luna

skalt711Developer73 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

So, yeah, coding took me way more time than I wanted to lol, but I still worked on subtler details because I hoped that I'll wing level design later on. Didn't manage to rush it in because of lack of coding skill, so I left it in uncompleted state. waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa T_T

I'm surprised that I coded so much as a newbie. I don't know if I could patch up level design if I were a better coder 🥹

I ignored poor balance because I really wanted to showcase time-based dynamic difficulty to the point of gambling on it, and worked on boss instead of Anna i-frames. Predictably backfired on me LOL

Edit: thank yu :3

Studio HaikuSubmitted78 days ago(+1)

I had a great time playing! I especially loved watching crazy patterns unfold as enemies and projectiles flooded the screen, even though I collided with most of them. Oh and the boss was super brutal, but I eventually defeated it once I located Anna's hitbox and could more intentionally avoid its attacks. Felt pretty good :)

Anyway, great work getting this out there!

Submitted

skalt711Developer77 days ago

Yeah, I got picked at for unusual hitbox (^_^);; and lack of i-frames due to rushed, but hitbox is intentional

I think that I could finish the game in time if I didn't burn out at the second week 'cause I needed time to figure out how to generate enemy patterns

As for overall enemy behaviour, it's inspired from some Gradius games, which tend to have really good gameplay! Don't ask me what I could as "good" though :CB_shrug:

SunnyChowTheGuySubmitted81 days ago(+1)

I like the pixel art and the chiptune music.

However I get stuck at the boss fight, after several waves of small enemies. Also I think some invincible time after getting hit would be quite helpful.

Submitted

Song Of Morus - Limbo Express - Braid Girl Episode

skalt711Developer81 days ago

Yeaaaaaah, I regret elaborating boss fight instead of adding i-frames to Anna, ahahahahaahahahaha... :mggj_angelica_sweat:

matteSubmitted82 days ago(+1)

Great art and sounds! It's awesome how you made all the assets fit together.

Here are some random thoughts of mine (you don't have to address any of them, I just wanted to share these):

hitbox is not obvious, but small enough to make it fairly easy to stay safe
the speed in focus movement felt too fast, with very little difference from normal movement
what is that in the bottom left corner? this random number does not seem to affect the game, or being affected by my actions
what is rank? and why does in go up as I die?

Submitted

skalt711Developer82 days ago

1) What was the first thought when you guessed where could the hitbox be? Did you have a place in mind or you really couldn't guess it?

I considered hinting at it with grazing (Lunar Bunny Invasion does it!), not sure why I didn't proceed with it, like, the code isn't too complicated since I could reuse the same logic from rocket splash damage, but just check if there's just one nearby enemy's hitbox inside the range (or terrain), that *probably* won't help against super fast bullets, but still.

2) So that shooting with two shots at the once won't become a chore in movement. The idea really is to give a little penalty for maximum firepower to force you to switch to one shot at a time when switching from one enemy pattern to another. I didn't have a lot of fun with bigger speed penalty, it felt too jerky. Didn't have enough patterns to make focused movement idea shine at ig.

3) Ah. Welp. I forgot to add sound effect for thst one. I think I thought about what kind of it to give, then gave up and never returned. Whoops. Sigh... Anyways, it's supposed to give powerups from the right side when you destroy enemies of some kind, but I never got to implement more powerup shots like rocket and (non-existent) lighting, so you might have seen how weapon rank isn't reset after picking up wide shot after you die. I really forgot about it lol.

4) Time-based dynamic difficulty increasing as you go further into the game. I wanted to decrease it if you die, but... I forgot as always :CB_shrug: not really due to crunching, I just forgot

skalt711Developer82 days ago

If you're interested, I'll release the update after rating period (I'll try to keep gamejam ver available)

matteSubmitted82 days ago(+1)

1) As I was experimenting, I discovered the hibox placed in the necklace, which was a bit counter-intuitive (usually it is in the visual center of the sprite, to make it easier to control the position by using peripheral vision only)

2) Yeah, I was hoping to use that penalty for precise positioning and pixel dodging during the boss fight, but couldn't do that most of the time as it still was too fast (but that's my own problem)

skalt711Developer82 days ago (1 edit)

1) Yeah, I think I kept non-center hitbox because I wanted to visit the idea of bullets not aiming straight at your hitbox, but ultimately forgot about the idea because skaltmoment and because I put the sprite center at necklace's crystal for my own programming comfort and never revisited the idea again. Hopefully I won't forget this time :peko:

2) I'll do a toggle between faster and slower focused movement on title screen or (not implemented) service mode, I didn't do an intermediate value (aka non-integer straight movement) because I explicitly work in 320x240 resolution with some entities rounding up from floating point to integer, so I wanted integer for smoother movement. (Edit: are you okay eith non-integer *visual* movement even if it won't look smooth?)

ShibeyFaceGamesSubmitted86 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

Short but fun! I did terrible my first run, but played a second time and did much better.

I'm not great at shmup and bullet hell games, so I appreciated the infinite lives. One thing I might suggest is a brief invincibility period after respawning... during the boss I would often die, then insta-die again when I spawned in on a bullet.

I enjoyed playing this, and I'd love to see more! I hope you'll keep working on it post-jam :D

PS: I also enjoyed your regular updates throughout the jam, I wish I had been able to do that more. I'll try and make more of an effort during Continue it jam XD

Submitted

Dreams & Preludes: A Magical Girl Prologue

skalt711Developer86 days ago(+1)

I wanted to reply an expanded reply, but my browser nuked it while I was busy in a uni pair. I forgor to backup reply ;-;

So, for the invincibility period feedback, I want to implement, so that you can move out of flying up anytime between 6 ticks (100 ms) after the start up until animation stops when you automatically take control of yourself. Possibly at any point after you get control back (or just between 6 ticks and only to near to when the animation finishes?), give 3-5 sec invincibility period while you flash or flicker. That'd be post-jam ver 0.0.3 (0.1 would be for completely finished first level), I don't use version control btw. The 6 ticks thing is so called "protection from dummy" (защита от дурака in Russian) so that you don't accidentally ram into terrain (if invincibility period not given) or you don't stop too low. Had more to say in expanded reply.

Also, it's rushed because I implemented lives at the last day of gamejam, so I panicked, stressed and (internally) cried, and had to ease myself by not bothering to implement limited lives and said invincibility period since I'm bad with timings due to skill issue at GMS2's event order.

Oh, yeah, about doing great on second run, currently enemies are cheesable by hugging to the right side aka pointblank. I'd like to make it more challenging without making enemy firerate too ridiculous, revenge bullets or just making it unfair/unfun I forgot what was this exact thing's name, it's a bit complicated.

So, one of the days after gamejam I worked on artificial slowdown on boss. Then I promised not to overscope and left the work as is, so I will work on boss animation since the boss moves too choppy rn.

I like giving frequent updates, though asking people for feedback takes time away from them, so I'd need to be careful.

Have to stop expanding due to math logic subject starting now, don't want browser to nuke reply draft, too lazy to back it up

Will89 days ago(+1)

Fun quick shmup! loved it

skalt711Developer88 days ago(+1)

I'd make the shmup longer, but I overscoped. At least I added the particle of enemy bullets colliding with terrain, so... WAIT DID I EVER FIX TERRAIN DYING DUE TO COLLIDING WITH THE PLAYER??? I think I did lol