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Magical Girl Game Jam #2

Hosted by Ran d'Reille · #MagicalGirlGameJam

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A jam submission

In The Middle Of The NightView game page

Salvaged magical girl VN/FPS

Submitted by XCVG (@xcvgvcx) — 13 days, 15 hours before the deadline

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In The Middle Of The Night's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Originality/Creativity	#4	4.200	4.200
Overall	#8	3.600	3.600
Engagement/Fun	#9	3.500	3.500
Overall	#11	3.380	3.380
Magical Girl Design	#12	2.900	2.900
Graphics, Audio, and Polish	#13	2.700	2.700

Ranked from 10 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?
Two girls with magical powers, and one with (hopefully) a proper mahou shoujo design this time! The story beats are hopefully more in line with the genre as well.

Which theme(s) do you pick?
7. Perfect [Cherry Blossom]

8. Imperishable [Night]

How does your game fit the themes above?
7. Perfect [Cherry Blossom] - Sakura's name and design

8. Imperishable [Night] - The game takes place over a single night. There were going to be more allusions to night as a metaphor but those mostly didn't make it in. This is the main theme I was aiming for.

Tangentially hits on 10. Mountain of [Faith], 12. Unidentified [Fantastic] Object/UFO, 13. Ten [Desires], 15. Legacy of [Lunatic Kingdom], and 16. [Hidden] Star in Four Seasons but I wouldn't count those as implemented.

It's also a really good fit for the first theme from the first MGGJ, not that that counts for anything

Are all your graphics assets made by yourself during the duration of the jam?

No

they were created from before the jam or purchased

Are all your audio assets made by yourself during the duration of the jam?

No

they were created from before the jam or purchased

Comments/Suggestions about the jam
Having a Discord this time really worked out well!

Needs a "my game has no graphics" option on the off chance someone does a text adventure.

I'd also like to make the distinction between "everything was created before the jam" and "some things were created before the jam".

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Comments

ShibeyFaceGamesSubmitted3 years ago

Whew, I've been crazy busy, but finally got time to play this! I had a good time. I especially liked the intro sequences leading up to the main game. The story was fun, and I enjoyed all the dialogue options!

I have to admit, the combat mechanic flew over my head. Looking at Ran's thread below I see what I was missing. I mainly used bullets until they were gone, and the just used magic. Whoops! It definitely made the enemies seem super hard. (I'm another never played Halo person)

Still, I enjoyed the game, and the post credits sequence was great! Nice work, looking forward to what's next!

Submitted

June Mejos and the Moonlit Curse

XCVGDeveloper3 years ago(+1)

Thanks for playing!

I basically threw the story together in a day, it's nothing special but I think it worked out okay. I tried to give the protagonist a more distinctive personality this time.

Yeah, it definitely wasn't clear how you were supposed to take down enemies which is in hindsight a major fault. The original concept would have had it explained as part of the story, but obviously this one is cut down a lot. I toyed briefly with the idea of having Sakura explain it but I figured it wouldn't make sense because Sakura only uses magic and I thought players would figure it out fairly easily. Of course I'm very familiar with my own game and that weapon balance is very familiar to me which is of course not everyone's experience...

The post credits sequence I was very worried about people not understanding at the beginning but after I put it together I was a little more optimistic.

I might put out one more game this year but things are kind of up in the air right now so no promises.

Ran d'ReilleHost3 years ago

Sorry it took so long before I started playing. With how busy I am this month (unfortunately) I kind of prioritized playing the browser games -- and even then I have not finished playing all of them.

My first impression was that the intro could certainly be transformed into a horror game XD

I must say... this is very well done! A lot of effort was clearly put into it. Simply love the creativity of the concept; first person shooter magical girl game; and the magical girl is in the form of like sci-fi-ish futuristic soldier -- that's rad!!

The UI is pretty polished too, and I love it.

There are several feedbacks that I want to give here.

I know art is not your strong point so I'm not going to grill you there; but the dialogue box... it certainly needs a lot of improvement... it's painful to read the dialogues ;_;

Next time do make the texts larger and maybe decorate it more so that it's more appealing to read if I may give a suggestion. Simple black text on a gray background is kind of... very unappealing to read at least for me.

Then the enemies -- the shades. The tiny guys... I think starting mooks shouldn't be... that strong? It's kind of weird when even the tiniest enemies are that strong -- or are you aiming to give this sensation that the player is very weak compared to the enemies?

And then... the attacks. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but for some reasons the regular machine gun/pistol attacks have got bullets but the magic attacks are infinite? I think it should be the other way around. I found myself just abusing the spells, especially the second spell XD

Last but not least: This game seems like it has got a lot of contents. It's not bad, but for game jam purposes, my suggestion is to aim for quality over quantity. Rather than making a very long game, you should aim for making a short but very polished game.

That's all. Very good work! Thank you for participating!!

XCVGDeveloper3 years ago

Thanks for playing! I know the feeling of getting super busy unexpectedly, it can be pretty stressful.

I'm assuming you didn't read the postmortem- which is fine, it's long as hell and I know you've been busy- so I'll give you the short version here. I started off with a very different project, one much bigger in scope, and realized it wasn't really doable a few weeks into the jam. I hurriedly retooled what I had into something very, very different and of course much smaller. That's where a lot of the weirdness and, yes, flaws come from I think.

In particular the style of combat and the way it's balanced ended up weird.

Magic was always planned to be infinite and recharging, but in the original concept there was a progression to it. You would start off with pretty weak magic and gain stronger attacks over the course of the game. I ended up basically with the attacks I implemented for testing, slightly tweaked, and granted pretty much immediately.

Having limited bullets probably seems odd and kind of pointless as well but again, in the original concept, there was more to it than that. There would have been ammo pickups (these are actually implemented but unused) and I even wanted to have it so you could pick up new weapons.

I am kind of surprised that you found the enemies to be too strong. In testing I found I blew through them easily, and so did most of my friends. That being said most of my friends play a lot of shooters.

I think there is a trick to it which you're missing- which is entirely fair since it's never actually explained in the game itself- and that's how guns and magic are balanced. Enemies have shields and health. Magic is more effective against shields, bullets more effective against health. Take down their shields with the magic, then shoot them.

Is the dialogue box simply boring and uninspiring or does it have legibility issues? The former is something I'll try to improve next time, the latter is something I'll patch ASAP.

I've gone back and forth on the size of the text and the dialogue box itself a lot since Garlic Gang. The problem I've run into is that what works for a 27" monitor doesn't work for a 13" laptop screen and vice versa. Someday I might make it a user-configurable option, or try to do something fancy and adaptive.

As for quality over quantity, well... this is as good as it gets. I did try to polish things up more this time though at the end I was too burned out to get the last few bits in. I know there are some super polished games in this jam and I do find them very impressive. I used to strive for that but it was always a struggle, and over the past few years I've found that I enjoy making weird broken janky shit a lot more. I know this one won't win any awards, but that's not really what I was ever going for.

Ran d'ReilleHost3 years ago (3 edits)

I see. Yeah I unfortunately didn't read the post mortem XP

For the enemies... now that I know this experience was not intended... well with that explanation now I know what was going on...

...so basically in between my bullet attacks the enemies must have regenerated the shields and that's why they seemed to have really thick HP while I was playing it. And yea I suck at FPS games -- my specialty is bullet hell SHMUPs XP

The players were probably expected to figure that out because that system is basically the same as the player's; but imo it's not intuitive at all. This is an area that could've been polished: give some effects indicating the enemy has got a shield that depletes; for example when shot give a barrier that changes color that breaks when the shield gets broken (I actually don't know whether you implemented this or not tho but if you did I didn't notice).

Now as with the enemy strength itself... unless your aim is for a grim atmosphere where the players are made to feel weak and powerless, either weaken those standard enemies (in particular, try removing the shields for the standard enemies) or add some enemies that the player can easily butcher.

There are certainly a ton of things you can improve and polish. Aside from the above, the most glaring problem is in the dialogues. It's not the contents that's bad, although some stuffs in the dialogue indeed should be trimmed imo. It's the appeal of the dialogue box and text. No offense here, but if I may be frank, it's just so, so painful to read. Make the texts bigger and decorate it more man -- my suggestion would be to make the dialogue box style in similar style with the super polished UI :P

> I enjoy making weird broken janky shit a lot more

Wellp. No complainin here. I feel the same way. I guess Game Jams ARE good for experimental games. But game jams can also be good to train the polishing skill when your game is shorter, and players enjoy polished games more.

XCVGDeveloper3 years ago

Killing the Shades off is quick if and only if you use the magic+bullets combo... and I think this is where my limited testing strategy (force my friends to play it, basically) really fell down. That combo is very similar to something in Halo called the "noob combo" and my friends all play Halo. For us it was almost instinctive, but for a player coming in from the cold yeah, why would you even try that?

Otherwise it takes almost a full magazine, which is probably a little excessive in retrospect. By FPS standards it's not unreasonable but more into bullet-sponge mid-level enemy territory. From my limited experience SHMUPs have fairly short TTK on non-boss enemies in general, don't they? I can see why you'd find the Shades so overpowered.

I do see the value in having an absolute cannon fodder basic enemy. I didn't really think of it at the time and I'm not sure if I'd put such an enemy in were I to do this again given how small and short the game was, but if I was going a bit bigger in scope I'd slot something in under the existing Shades. Some kind of Lesser Shade, maybe. I think it would add something to the combat in addition to serving as a gentler introduction.

There is a visual indicator for the enemy's shields- it's the glow they give off which fades as they take damage and there is a bit of a flash and pop when they drop. Unfortunately- and you're not the first to bring this up- it didn't work out as well in practice as it did in theory. Part of it is the effect just not being noticeable enough- in particular the audio cues are basically inaudible in the heat of combat. I think it also would have helped a lot the point it out at least once, which is again something that would have been in the original much bigger concept but was left by the wayside.

I think there might also be a bug with the lighting effect that causes it to become almost invisible when enemies drop below about half shields but I've never confirmed that.

I find your disdain for the dialogue box kind of amusing to be honest. I will try to make it nicer next time. But no promises.

Out of curiosity, what kind of setup are you playing this on? You've mentioned twice that you found the text too small but to me it actually seems too big.

Ran d'ReilleHost3 years ago (3 edits)

Well in regular SHMUPs indeed there are usually a ton of enemies whose sole purpose is simply to be mowed down (low ttk) so the player can feel powerful; and only the bigger enemies take a bit to kill XP

Yup I don't play HALO. Such concept is so alien to me. I can't deduce by myself that the shield is weaker to magic, or that I shoukd expect the enemies to have shield -- I thought only the player had that kind of mechanic because you know... the player is an armored magical girl XD

As for my setup... I'm not really sure tbh. I play on Windows 10 w/ 1920×1080 resolution screen size - full screen. I don't know what other informations might be relevant, but the reading the dialogue texts felt like reading Wikipedia pages -- it's that small in my screen (well I think I'm exaggerating a bit but still)

I think another issue is how big of a chunk of the screen the dialogue box takes. In other visual novels (e.g. DDLC, Steins;Gate) the dialogue box is only like 1/4 of the screen vertically at most. The gigantic dialogue box felt intimidating to read I think. You should only present a small amount of text at the time to the player for Visual Novels I think XP

XCVGDeveloper3 years ago

Some shooters do that, some don't. Closest to what you describe I can think of off the top of my head is the Flood Infection Forms from Halo, but I hate fighting them.

The shields thing is probably something that would have been more obvious in the original concept. Your own shield mechanic would have been introduced and would have had plot significance, and the characters would have had a discussion at some point about the best way to fight the mysterious monsters.

I think you've hit the nail on the head with the height of the dialogue box! I've called my games visual novels, but in all honesty the dialogue system draws more from western RPGs than anything. Looking at both Fallout New Vegas and The Outer Worlds, both of them use at most as much vertical space as I do, and- this is something that's never occurred to me before- it's dynamic. The height of the dialogue box is generally a lot smaller than mine because it's sized to its contents.

I don't know when I'll get a chance to prototype it but that is absolutely what I'm going to try next. I'll probably have to rethink how I do character portraits at the same time. Then again they've looked a little weird since I switched to a semitransparent dialogue box anyway.

KV_KingdomSubmitted3 years ago (1 edit)

Overall, this game was alright. Nothing that blew my mind, but nothing broken or bad. If there was one thing I would improve about this game, it's the dialog. I like that there are choices, but I think there was too much dialog in general - I lost interest and started looking for ways to skip the dialog shortly after Sakura's introduction. I also don't like text that automatically advances; I'd rather be allowed to take my time and advance it when I'm ready. Otherwise, this is a solid game jam game. Good job!

P.S. The Mac version doesn't work 😥

Submitted

Magical Girl Priscilla

XCVGDeveloper3 years ago

Thanks for playing! I'm glad you, um, didn't hate it?

I certainly understand why you found the dialogue excessive. I think I needed to have that much to tell the story I wanted to tell, but for the length of the game it's very dialogue-heavy. I knew I was making a short game but I was kind of shocked at how short the main gameplay segment turned out when I playtested the whole thing for the first time. By that point I was pretty tired and didn't have any good ideas on how to extend it so I just left it, even though I might have had time. So in the end it ended up with a much higher proportion of dialogue to gameplay than I had expected or planned.

In retrospect I should have left room in the plan to extend things if I had time, which is one of the bigger lessons I've taken away from this project.

I'm a bit confused about what you mean about text automatically advancing. Are you talking about the subtitle text or full dialogues? The former are usually on a skippable timer. The reason I did this rather than leaving it entirely manual is because in that past I've found some people didn't realize that text could be skipped and got stuck. Still, it did end up awkward in places. In the full dialogues, they don't really have a concept of text advance, only pagination. I call this a visual novel but the dialogue system is really much more Western RPG than Visual Novel- very much like The Outer Worlds or Fallout games prior to 4.

How did the Mac version break? Did it launch and crash or fail to launch entirely? I don't have a Mac (well, not an Intel Mac) so I can't really test the Mac platform builds.

KV_KingdomSubmitted3 years ago

This is the contents of the Mac folder and the nested "Suckerpunch" folder.

I get this error when I double-click the "Suckerpunch" app.

So the Mac version doesn't work at all. 😥

The auto-advancing text can be found in the intro dialog and when you're looking at the posters. I was able to read everything in most cases, but there was one poster that advanced too quickly for me to read the whole thing (the one with the lady in the black dress, I don't remember the name because I'm a poor excuse for a metalhead). RPG's usually show a moving triangle somewhere on the dialog box to indicate interactivity. Maybe you could try implementing something like that in your dialog boxes? Another cleaver idea I saw another dev in this jam use (the June Mejos game) is adding a "press <button>" cue to the dialog box.

I've been playing Mass Effect, and after reading your postmortem I saw the connection. I would have loved to play your version of the guns 'n' magic RPG in space. Maybe you could do that in a future jam, or maybe as a full game?

XCVGDeveloper3 years ago

You can try some of the solutions here if you still need them. It looks like the first issue, which I thought I had fixed but apparently not. Apple has made some changes in recent years which have broken things and it's difficult to keep up sometimes. I'm in a really awkward position in regards to Mac support; I know some of potential audience is on Mac but it's really hard to support a platform without being able to test on it.

The posters are one of the awkward parts I alluded to. Those are super hacked together using a system designed for subtitles and just waiting for the usual interact key. In retrospect it was probably too much to just throw up on screen like that without some sort of better system. The reason I didn't use full dialogs for those is because I felt it would break flow too much, but it would have been much easier to read. Early on I had ambitions of having voice acting, which would have helped a lot, but that was never all that realistic a proposition.

Unfortunately I don't think The Last Magical Girl is ever going to happen. It's definitely not going to be a jam game; the scope is just way too big for that and that's why I abandoned it this time. If I have a brilliant idea on how to do something simpler along the same lines it might happen. But as it stands the huge scope of it is honestly really daunting and I'd much rather do something smaller.

TheWanderingShadow3 years ago

I like the writing quite a lot-- clean, consistent, efficient, and entertaining. The artstyle is not to my preference, but it gets the job done. The music choice is good but it was noticeably a bit awkward when the peppy fight theme immediately cut to the docile street theme. The gameplay was functional; I would have liked some feedback for hitting enemies, and I also found it odd that there was a delay between me pressing my fire button and the gun actually firing. In addition, the magic didn't seem quite balanced; the sun explosion was much more helpful than the wand shot at a negligible recharge time. If you expanded this I'd prefer the magic to have more interesting utility or at least different arcs from just another straightforward projectile. Great work!

XCVGDeveloper3 years ago

Thanks for playing! I'm glad you had some fun with it.

I understand what you mean about the artstyle not being your thing. I'm a bit weird in my own preferences here; I'm really not a fan of the modern "lowpoly" style and I'm pretty meh on pixel art.

I'll admit that I was just too lazy to fade the music in some places. I really ought to write some convenience methods for fading from one track to another.

There's some feedback for hitting enemies but probably not enough. The audio effects especially tended to get drowned out in the testing I did. The Shades do have pain states but it's not really as obvious when they're in the pain state as it would be for a more recognizable humanoid.

Technically the gun fires on the same frame the input is registered, but there are a few things going on here that could make it feel sluggish. The sound effect- especially on the pistol- has a small but noticeable delay to it, and the animation is probably too slow. Bullets are also projectiles, not hitscan, so there is a time to target. I do see what you mean here- I found the pistol felt a bit sluggish in testing but not enough to be a problem so I left it.

I actually found the magic bolts more useful than the big blast because they can be spammed so quickly. The magic blast definitely is a lot more powerful, though, and has a proximity detonation effect. The idea was that bolts would be more useful against individual enemies and the blast against groups. I think a greater speed difference or making the blast move in an arc like you suggested would have differentiated it more.

A lot of the weirdness in the mechanics comes from it being designed for a completely different concept that I abandoned early in the jam. I'd also intended at one point to have multiple magic elements and required players to swap between them as some enemies would be weaker to different elements but I ended up dropping that because I felt it would be too complicated in a fast-paced game.

If I ever do a sequel I'd like to do more with the magic system. I'll also replace the assault rifle sprite, because- let's be honest- even compared to the rest of the art in the game, it's hideous. On that note I do have an idea for a sequel but I fear other projects will take priority.

Milky RoseSubmitted3 years ago

that was fun, i really like Halo inspired gameplay, its fast and fun to play. good job

Submitted

Sky Blue Mari Project

XCVGDeveloper3 years ago

Thanks for playing!

I'm kind of two minds on the Halo inspired gameplay. I think it works relatively well- and people have told me they enjoy it- but it's also a very odd choice for a game like this. If I'd developed this game from scratch rather than building it on what I'd already done on my first concept I probably would have chosen something different.

Milky RoseSubmitted3 years ago

I don't think its odd at all, I think you can mix up Magical Girl with everything as long you follow the recipe.

invadererik3 years ago

I guess interestingly enough the game is shorter for a longer jam than previous.

I think the action is better on this one.

Maybe next time if the story is boring you, just skip it and focus on the action more ?

XCVGDeveloper3 years ago

So the original concept I was going to go with would have been stupidly long, and when I decided to abandon it I went with a very small scope. Something I kind of glossed over in my postmortem and elsewhere is how different my pace was compared to when I made Shattered- more of a slow saunter than a mad dash. Limiting myself to a single level and a handful of characters meant I didn't get too stressed about time pressure and I could afford to add a lot more detail than last time. Unfortunately I did end up with a very short game, even shorter than I'd expected. I was a little bit surprised by how fast it blew by when I did my first playtest!

I actually really like the story parts. I had a lot of fun with some of the conversations and the interactivity in the bedroom. I definitely did do things in the opposite order this time- Shattered was narrative first, then gameplay while this one was gameplay first, then story, but that's mostly because I switched concepts halfway through.

XCVGDeveloper3 years ago

The postmortem is up! I recommend reading this after playing the game as it may contain minor spoilers.

Eric BaumhoverSubmitted3 years ago

You gave me some feedback so I'll return the favor.

Honestly, doom style graphics and visual novels are two things I have zero experience with, so I'm not going to discuss those parts, BUT I do have stuff to say.

1. Music is integrated well and it seems like you put work into making it feed in and out. I was actually surprised by it an started enjoying myself when the first fight started.

2. Once I figured out how the enemies health was displayed(the glow) I appreciated it immensely. Minimalist UI while still giving the player information through other means is something I always like.

Other than that, all I have is this: I had fun and did not feel my time was wasted, which I cannot say for some games I've payed for in the past. Doesn't mean its good or anything, but fun is the most important thing for me with games and your game had some. I could definitely criticize a lot more stuff, but I don't feel like I have an actual grip on 3D gamedev, so I'll leave that for other commenters.

Also the MSPaint style is kinda hilarious in both a good and bad way. Even doing it for the UI is the best part.

Submitted

Moth's Magic Movement Mock-up

XCVGDeveloper3 years ago

That's fair, I won't fault you for not trying to critique something you're not familiar with.

1. The music worked out surprisingly well. I'll admit I kind of left it until the end and didn't put as much thought into it than I usually do. I picked several tracks- all or most of the town sequence- from the same artist which was a good decision.

2. I had a lot of dumb code problems with that script, but I agree that it was absolutely worth it. Once I had it dialed in it was very clear when enemies had lost their shields/aura (they actually have health after, though not much). I actually thought about doing this for the player and Sakura as well but it didn't look good and Sakura is unkillable anyway so I dropped it.

I make a lot of janky, weird games, but I try to make them enjoyable so I'm glad you had some fun with it.