Super cool hack and slash. It is exactly the kind of game I love. The writing, art, and game feel are very good. I couldn't finish this version, the boss was too hard. If I had some nitpicky preferences I felt like the melee attacks were too "sticky" and wish I could cancel attacks into dodges or especially aim mode (you know, to quickly take the last bit off of a shield). I also wish I could swap gun so I could save special ammo for when I felt I needed it. Lastly, I wished the green enemy's attacks were better telegraphed, like the indicator could gradually fill up to make it easier to time a dodge. Excellent work and hope to see an expanded version or more from you in general!

Well, I'm off to finally beat the boss on the updated version! Great work!

Wow, that was a great game! It was difficult, but I made it through to the end. It's been a while since I last played a hack and slash... The controls and movement were very well done and made me feel very cool playing the game. I did get a bit frustrated towards the end boss, but luckily I managed to focus and win (Finished with 26 redraws). I liked the little references you threw in as well, such as castlevania and metroid.

If I had to give some feedback: I'd often get hit in slow mo time because enemies would spawn bullets just after I'd dodged and I'd end up running straight into it. Also, my right hand was so dead after playing that I had to use the keyboard to advance the final dialogue scene XD

Because of the respawn feature, i finally can finish the game (yah i am not that good at gaming), and i think it's time to write a review.

I like the energetic feeling of the whole game. From the small detail of sprite animation, to the slow time mechanic, to the quick-switch gun/sword fighting style. It all gives me the vibe of power. The protagonist design also seems lively and agile.Meanwhile the colortune is trying to keep it with girly feeling, and it turn outs to be an fascinating cominbation.

For the gameplay, i like the shooting mechanic so much. The coolness of sliding around in slow-mo shooting enemy is absolute gorgeous. For the melee, i feel it's okay. I personaily am not a fan of action game focusing on melee. Usually in any game like this, when a character do an attack move, he/she is kinds stuck before the attack animation ends, and i feel this mechanic makes the game sticky. At some point, this behaviour makes the game more fair, so player won't simply finish the game by mindlessly spamming attacks. It's just that I don't like it. (probably that's why i made a shooter game) Also, i am slightly challenged when controlling the direction when doing melee attack. And there is some time i forgot the some background objects are solid obstacle.

Overall, it's a very high quality game for a game jam.

I was really nervous going into this one. I've been hearing it's difficult, hard games don't play well with me, and I'm not very good at this type of game. I was both wrong and right to be worried.

I should note also that I have basically no familiarity with the inspirations of this game.

The tutorial is a little long, but it serves its purpose well, and I was surprised by how witty the dialogue was. I was never able to get the dodge-and-run to work and had to skip the tutorial there. I'm not sure if I just couldn't pull it off or if it's a bug.

I do wish there was some sort of tutorial for enemy types, though. I was confused when some of them blew up and damaged me, and I still have no idea what the hell the green thing does.

Nevertheless, I got into the groove fairly quickly, and really enjoyed it once I did. The game just plays well. Movement is fast, fluid, and tight. Attacks are just as good. Slowing time and unleashing a bunch of shots, then watching them connect in normal time is probably the most satisfying thing in any game in this jam. I found the dodge mechanics a little complicated, but spamming spacebar worked pretty well and zipping around was a joy. Everything feels well thought out, well executed, and well balanced.

Then, a few rooms in, I died. I'm still not sure what killed me. I thought I was successfully dodging attacks, but it's clear in retrospect that I wasn't, and in fact was taking a ton of damage. I think if there's one flaw with the gameplay, it's that it's sometimes not clear where damage is coming from or that you're even taking damage. I did figure out that the little heart effect meant you lost health, but it's easy to miss those in the action.

I know checkpoints are coming, so I won't harp on this too much, but they weren't implemented before the end of the jam and they're not in the game at the time of writing. Having to restart from the beginning just plain sucks, and basically killed all the enthusiasm I had built up in one fell swoop.

I've touched on this already but the graphics are fantastic, they're all quality and the animations deserve special mention. I don't think any of it is particularly sophisticated, but it works fantastically well with the gameplay. The sound design, too, is consistent, and works great for establishing a pulse-pounding, high-energy atmosphere.

The one other thing I have to complain about a little is that the theme implementation is pretty lame.

I think I'd love this game more if it was more forgiving. Even with no checkpoints and difficulty a notch or two too high for me, though, it was still a ton of fun while it lasted. It's certainly going to be a real treat for folks with different preferences than I, and worth checking out for everyone.

I had heard that this was a tough game well before trying it, and those rumors were indeed true!

But I feel like that's been mentioned to death, so I'll just skip over that part for now.

Graphically, the game looks really nice. The character portraits are great, and the character and enemy sprite are all good. The environments don't stand out, but look good and stay out of the way of the action.

The audio may be from an asset pack, but it's used very well. The music is hype and helps make the battles exciting!

The gameplay is really fun, I enjoyed the melee, ranged, dodging and time-slowing powers. It could get a little confusing and frenetic at times, but always felt good. (Edit: If I had one time critique about the combat feel, the hits didn't always feel like they had a ton of "impact". Maybe stronger SFX, more graphical feedback, or some screen shake could notch it up! This is mostly a nitpick though, forgot to mention it when I first typed this.)

Well, felt good until the difficultly finally did me in. I could make it to the diamond shield room, but the waves in there trashed me every time. I do want to give it another go later though, as it was very enjoyable overall! I know you're planning to added checkpoints, so I'll absolutely give it another spin then, if not sooner.

Amazing game! The controls are as good as you could possibly expect from a jam game (plays great with a gamepad!), the gameplay is fun, challenging, mostly balanced, the art is both functional and beautiful. The writing is great, it's rapid and doesn't bother with meaningless details (even though it might be trying too hard to get out of the player's way). It's also easy to skip. Even the music does the job, although it's from an asset pack. Having no checkpoints was frustrating, but it did mean I had fully mastered the game by the time I beat the final boss. There's the overview, now I feel like mentioning some details. Spoilers ahead.

Abilities

As I said, this game is hard (and I love hard games). Using all your abilities is essential for beating the game. You have basic movement like walking, dodging and running. You have a melee attack, which works in all directions, but could be more fun with a little automatic targeting help (not full assistance, more like a soft lockon). You also have a ranged attack, which lets you slow time to aim. You also can pick up heavier ammo, which gets used before your regular shots so if you want to stock up you can't use ranged at all. Which is a nice dynamic. Though it might not seem like it at first, the slow motion you get from dodging an attack the last second is by far the most important ability. It lets you quickly kill even armored enemies, and lets you dodge out of the most dangerous situations.

Enemies

There is a nice selection of enemies. Not a huge amount, but they are all unique, which is a good choice. For the most part you can tell them apart by color. The only exception is the ranged shooters and the bombers, which are both grey. My least favorite enemy is the green enemy. Its attacks are too fast, so you have to learn to predict them if you want to dodge them. You also have to chase them around the arena. That's not to say I hated them, they are just always my first priority to get rid of. The grey ranged enemies are good to save for last, since you can get the slow motion effect easily from them.

The Boss

The boss fight is incredibly well done. I could dodge every attack, which is a sign of good game design. At the same time, the fight is very fast paced and you can get killed very quickly if you slip up. Around 50% HP, the boss spawns some minions, which change the pace of battle. To me, this duel is everything a boss battle should be.

Game feedback

This is what I feel is the weakness of the gameplay. With high difficulty and no checkpoints, this game begs to be mastered. But with unclear feedback, learning the ins and outs of the game becomes unnecessarily difficult. For example, it's not always obvious that you've been hit by an enemy. There are so many other effects and things to pay attention to, that the wimpy flash is hard to notice. Things like you taking a hit or an enemy winding up an attack need to have higher visual and aural priority.

Overall

A well made game with crushing difficulty. If there were checkpoints, I would probably go around recommending this game to people. Right now seeing the end takes so much determination, so it would be nice if you made the game more accessible.

This is quite the arcade-like beat-em-up experience. I feel like there are a lot of good things going on here, but there are a few points that keep it from being "excellent."

I like the bust art and dialog. It's witty, it's clear who's talking, and the busts fit the overall art style. It even manages to fit in all the relevant information. It's a little info-dumpy with the controls at the beginning and seems a bit redundant once you get into the tutorial. Maybe don't focus on the controls as much as just recite what the abilities are so the player is like "ooh, how do you do that now?" and then the tutorial kicks in.

The tutorial, to it's credit, does a pretty good job of taking the player through the controls and really encouraging the player to understand each lesson.

The main gameplay also follows some good design philosophies, chiefly in how it presents new enemies: each new enemy is presented in isolation so the player can assess how the enemy works and how to best combat it. Once beaten, the player is presented with a mob of enemies (more of the same in the first wave and then a combination of all enemies seen so far in the second), which challenges the player to remember all of the relevant tactics and to really think on their feet.

Sliding is a cool mechanic and fun to use.

Now for the things that didn't quite work for me. Dashing was awkward. I did eventually figure it out, but my instinct was to hold the spacebar down to run rather than just tapping it and moving. It just never felt natural. My biggest issue was ammo: why limit it? Perhaps you were trying to discourage players from just kiting the enemies all day, but the melee swing is so generous that I don't really see the argument. Also, it's practically mandatory for getting past the diamond-shielded enemies (the stage I died on every run and prevented me from finishing the game), so either there needs to be generous ammo drops in that stage or just get rid of the limit altogether. A related issue was shooting in general: for one, I didn't understand why my shots would sometimes be large and sometimes small; for another, the shot spread, while realistic, doesn't really work in a game like this. I lined up what I thought were accurate shots, only to have them go all over the place. Combine this issue with the limited ammo and you have one frustrated player. Another aggravation was the fact that you go back to the beginning when you die. I understand that this is a short game, but it's also a jam game; you don't want to punish your players that badly because you run the risk of the player never finishing the game (which happened to me).

So overall, cool game, just needs a little refinement in some of the mechanics.

I loved it. 

The combat is extremely well made, with a perfect blend of complexity and reactivity. It's polished enough that I always felt I made the mistake when I died, and that it was never a design problem. 

I also really liked the art and the music, they fit very well with the game style and the characters.

If it get some update I'll definitively look it up.

Can't beat up vending machines for food/mana pickups, 0/10.

This is great, though. I love the character banter, the combat feels good, and the animations are slick. I don't have much negative to say about it, really.

Pretty awesome !  It gets though, does it actually end?