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A jam submission

Pew Pew MagixView game page

Top Down Magical Girl Shooter
Submitted by KingdomPots, kamaleon70, James Foss — 12 hours, 11 minutes before the deadline
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Pew Pew Magix's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Graphics, Audio, and Polish#133.8823.882
Engagement/Fun#213.4713.471
Magical Girl Concept#243.5293.529
Overall#253.4593.459
Theme Interpretation#253.2943.294
Originality/Creativity#343.1183.118

Ranked from 17 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?
The main character is a magical girl

Which theme(s) do you pick?
Schrödinger's Cat, Uncertainty Principle, Conservation of Energy

How does your game fit the theme(s)?
There are cat like creatures. There is randomness in how the player gets hit, sometimes it is difficult to tell. Energy is absorbed and used for player transformation.

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

No

some of them were purchased; but most are stuffs made during the jam

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

No

some of them we made them before the jam

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Comments

Host

I... think... with more polish this game can be much better but... for now... this is very rough.

One big possible improvement is to not allow the player to go outside the arena boundary. Another possible big improvement is to expand the arena a bit. Also imho you might not want to include the shopkeeper saying "Just grab it and go" ;-;

Developer

Thanks for your feedback!

Satisfying animations on both the attacks and enemies, though the hitboxes seemed to often be unclear. It was also not very clear what benefit the transformation had either. Good work!

Developer

thanks for the feedback!

Pots. Please add The Librarian#6197 on discord. Thank you.

Developer

I can't find that ID

Submitted

Cute game, took me a while to understand what are you suppose to do. I wish the battlefield was a little bigger so I have more space to run around since the player can run pretty fast.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

This was a fun arcade-style highscore game! (I got to 390 pts)

I really liked the artwork! The title screen was great, and the characters and enemies in game were cute. The "arena" could maybe use a little more detail/interest, but I suppose it keeps the action nice and clear.

Mechanics-wise, I liked the upgrades! I'm always a sucker for collecting coins and powering something up. I found the starting fireball to be my favorite weapons, but perhaps the others could be useful with practice.

I'm not quite as big a fan of the uncertainty principle part of the game. I didn't understand what was going on until I went back and read this page. Getting hit randomly doesn't feel great in an action/arcade game that plays around skill. It's an interesting idea, but without a clear way to counter it, it feels unfair.

Overall, I enjoyed this one quite a bit! Nice work!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing our game!

Submitted

This is a cute and quirky twist on a bullet hell game. I like the 3D art and voice acting and how there's a shop in the middle of the stage that's accessible at all times. I don't like that the health indicator is so hard to see, the "E" meter appears to be meaningless, and that I take hits even when the shots are nowhere near the character. 

I also like how the waves are more organic and the enemies take more hits as the game goes on, encouraging me to flesh out my arsenal and upgrade it.

Being able to go outside the bounds of the screen is kind of weird. It's OK since it means that I can avoid damage or getting trapped (especially since the battlefield is pretty small), but it feels like I'm cheating. Also, the character moves very fast - it helps me avoid enemies & damage, but it also feels like I'm going way too fast. I would also like to see the enemies change form as they get more challenging so I understand that they are getting harder to kill, rather than being a bigger bullet sponge in the same costume.

It's a fun game, but it lacks polish. A fine start to continue developing on should you choose to, but it's otherwise just OK.

Developer

Thanks for playing our game!

Submitted

A short playable top down 3D shmup with cute 3D character designs and really well animated characters. This is one of those rough gems that has a good foundation that can be worked on further and deserves a good long polish.


Magical Girl Concept: The game definitely has the Magical Girl concept in the bag especially with the character design, magic spells/abilities, and transformation happening in the game. The choice of color palette matches well with the low poly 3D characters and its magical girl design. I think the Magical Girl design could have been made a lot more detailed with frilly uniforms and accessories.

Mechanics: The game employs some basics character movements which feels fluid with the animations. Although the fixed camera view made the movements feel limiting since the character movement speed is really fast, so a good solution is to either have the camera track the character in place (camera rotation) or have it pan with the character position. The attack seem to have some sort of auto aim assist going on which is a nice feature to have but it could have been optimized a little so that it resets back to the forward aim direction of the player character. I suspect the aim direction did not reset after the previous enemy gets killed so the next few shots I was firing wasn't going in the correct direction. The ability to switch between spells is really nice and it could use a cooldown indicator which isn't noticeable after the spells are used. The controls and layout out of it are comfortable during gameplay which only requires the keyboard controls. I notice there is a little bug in the shop screen where the player character is able to turn with the arrow keys and even cast fireball. The shop and ability upgrade mechanic is commendable but can be improved on by a lot with balancing the cost and its damage effectiveness. There is also a very strange mechanic where enemies can hit the player character even when a fireball did not land on the player. It is mention that it is a part of the theme but it feels frustrating when an incoming bullet cannot be dodged way before it could arrive at the player character position. The drop mechanics is a nice added feature and not giving it a time out means players can stock certain drops on screen for later use.

Visual: The game is visually pleasing with cute character designs and fluid animations. The transformation sequence is simple and it was done well when the character changes to her Magical Girl counterpart. I can see there is a difference in the visual effects in the attack before and after transformed. The use of the UnityChan shader is done right as it made the color and cell shaded look a lot more authentic with the artstyle the developer is aiming for. There is good effort put into the animation for all characters present in the game including the enemies which I believe is attributed to the use of the EZSoftBone tool. I also like the run animations on the player character and the dust kick up effect applied when running. The animated title screen and its design gives it a nice vibe of what the game is about.

UI: The title screen layout is simple and bare bones but decently laid out making it easy to access the main game. The shop menu could be improved a lot since it is laid out in a manner that overlaps with the UI below it. The main game UI is bare bones but does hint on the keys for switching and firing off a spell. It could use a much nicer UI interface if health, score, and coins are going to be displayed. The red tint on the character portrait helps a little but it seems a little buggy because even with 20/20 health points, the portrait is still tinted red after picking up a health potion.

Audio: The sound effects in the game is nice to hear and is paired in line with the actions. The music track feels sparse, with only two noticeable tracks, while I find that the title screen and music track feels a little out of place as it did not match the fun cutesy artstyle of the title screen. The continuous pad build up works well with the end splash screen but made the title screen sad rather than fun. Besides that the voiced characters add a nice addition to the game but it could do more.

Theme: This game obviously have strong vibes with the Magical Girl theme and everything about it is a Magical Girl game. The theme they picked are Schrodinger's Cat, Uncertainty Principle, and Conservation of Energy. I find that only one of three hits the mark and that is the uncertainty of where the enemies would spawn and appear off camera view. Also the uncertainty is further boosted when the player character wanders off camera view, making it hard to know if players would run into an enemy character.

Challenge / Engagement: The game is quite challenging with the build up of enemy number over every kill with their health and damage steadily increasing on each spawn. The player character attack is enhanced in the Magical Girl form but isn't something that can be done often as the transformation power wears off and needs to be collected. The game gets a lot difficult with the random hit distance of the enemy fireball and the diminishing movement space with enemy number on screen. Even with the spell upgrades and health drops, the damage output from the enemy feels unfair when their one hit can potentially shave off a quarter of the character's health. In terms of difficulty, the game could use a lot of balancing since it gets really steep after 4 enemies appear on screen. The game is really engaging with the difficulty level at first but gets really frustrating over time when there is no breathing space or breaks between enemy spawns since the game is designed to spawn enemies continuously on each kill without end.

Originality / Creativity: The game is certainly original as the Magical Girl is pitted against a continuous hoard of enemies in a space limited arena while being able to micromanage resources that is required in upgrading the spells. The creativity is found in the visual design and mechanics employed which makes the game interesting in its own way.

Story: There doesn't seem to be any story besides fighting against a hoard of cat like monsters. Which is a story by itself but not clearly defined.

Overall: The game is really rough on the surface and around the edges. However, the basis, mechanics, concept and idea of it is something that is worth working on since a lot has been done to make the game playable so a good long  polish would do some justice for this really rough gem. Balancing the game difficulty and possibly adding stages or enemy waves would make this game more enjoyable to play.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing our game and for your in-depth review/feedback!

Submitted

Simple but really cute, aiming is a bit tricky but this feels like the controls are geared towards mobile or gamepad so that's not really an issue. The only thing I really didn't like was that the camera was fixed, I ended up running out of frame a lot. Overall it feels possible you can turn this into something, considering the art and style are already there.

Developer

Thanks for playing our game and for the feedback!

Submitted

cool little game, nice and arcade like. the only issue I had was the background was pretty bare.

Developer

Amen.
Thanks for playing our game!

Submitted

I find it harder to leave feedback on games I don't like than ones I do. Usually when I run across a game I don't like, it's good with a few things that just aren't quite there, or it's simply in a genre I'm not into. I try not to be mean, because I don't like being mean and I recognize how brutal it can be on the other end of that. But I'm super awkward and don't always succeed.

There are just a lot of design decisions here I can't agree with. The style of movement control is awkward, even more so since it's also your aim control and the map doesn't seem to end at the screen boundaries. Introducing randomness to the player getting hit just makes it feel like hit detection is broken. The balance is bad, and it needs breaks in the spawning. The postprocessing just makes the game look worse. I kept running into the upgrade shop because it physically exists and is in the way.

I also found the autoaim to be pretty janky, though I'm not sure if this is deliberate or a bug.

With all that being said, the gameplay did grow on me a bit. I still think it could be a lot better, but I did start having fun with it after a few tries despite what I think are serious flaws.

I like the idea of an upgrade shop, and I think it's more the implementation that was the issue than the concept. The collect things to transform mechanic isn't hugely innovative, but I did like that one. The game looks really polished and the sound design is solid.

I was kind of surprised to see you made most of the assets during the jam, because it has that kind of stock-art asset flip feel to it. I'm not saying it is, but maybe more that the choice of style is a little bit baffling. 

So yeah, this one just didn't do it for me. I'm still sitting on the fence of whether this could be a good game with some tweaks or if it's fundamentally broken. The graphics and polish is there; I think with better concept and mechanics you could put together a really awesome game.

Developer

3 weeks is a lot of time for a game jam, our game doesn't even have that much 3D assets. Regarding the models having stock-asset feel, I guess I can take that as a compliment, though I think my assets are really rough, don't think they are even worthy of being stock-assets.

Thanks for playing our game and leaving feedback.

Submitted

If they're rough, I didn't notice it. The assets looked pretty quality to me, they just felt a bit cookie-cutter. I'm not an artist, just a programmer who tries to wear all the hats, so I can't really put my finger on why that is.