it was fun to play but very challenging, it was a bit frustating sometime but i managed to get "bad ending". I like the last level, it remind me scrap brain from sonic 1.
Play game
Camilla Pierce Vs the Golden Eyed Girls's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #1 | 4.233 | 4.233 |
| Polish | #1 | 4.316 | 4.316 |
| Graphics | #1 | 4.421 | 4.421 |
| Magical Girl Concept | #2 | 4.263 | 4.263 |
| Audio | #2 | 4.158 | 4.158 |
| Engagement/Fun | #2 | 4.368 | 4.368 |
| Originality/Creativity | #3 | 4.158 | 4.158 |
| Theme Interpretation | #3 | 3.947 | 3.947 |
Ranked from 19 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 player is a corrupted MG, fighting MGs, for the sake of other MGs.
Which theme(s) did you pick?
5. Golden 4. Unbreakable
How does your game fit the theme(s)?
The main antagonists of the game are the Golden Eyed Girls, and Camilla is under an Unbreakable curse that keeps her from dying or sleeping.
Were the graphics/audio assets for your game made during the jam?
Nearly all graphics were made during the jam. (A few images were used on reports, referring to previous games). Most of the audio was reused from my previous MGGJs games due to time contraints.
Comments
Incredible work as always, Shibey. Writing and art are beautiful as always. Precision platformers aren't particularly my thing, and I got pretty frustrated at times, but I made it through Normal mode and had a pretty good time. My list of nitpicks is as follows:
- I wish there was a neutral duck option. It's annoying to press down hoping to dodge a laser and for nothing to happen, especially when you have to get up to speed in order to slide.
-I wish the wall grab didn't have Camilla slide down. It placed so much extra pressure on me when I was just yearning for a second to pause and think of my next move.
-Also on the topic of the wall grab, it was generally fiddly to use. Getting used to letting go of X to get a proper wall jump off was difficult to get used to. It especially bothered me because there was not much times when I felt I got value from the long walljump.
-The wall jump was also a cause of frustration sometimes; when I wanted to double jump over a corner onto a small platform, most of the time I would accidentally wall jump and screw myself over. Hard one to fix, not really sure. Maybe one block tall platforms shouldn't be wall jumpable?
-The way speed ramps up slowly was causing quite some frustration for me when trying to make adjustments while falling. Add that to the precision I was expected to land on springs, on one block platforms, and through spikes and it made for some frustrating moments. I wish the midair control was at a consistent speed, I think that would have made it feel much better.
-Some sequences really felt like I was making constant leaps of faith just to die and correct my mistake next respawn. Wish there was somehow more warning of what's coming up ahead.
Yeah, sometimes things were frustrating, but it was satisfying to eventually figure out a way through. And during the few fleeting moments when everything worked out and flowed together, I was flying through the level and it felt incredible. This one only needs some extra polish to be a really amazing speed game. Great work!
Thanks so much for playing, and all your feedback! The neutral duck is a great idea, and honestly should be pretty easy to implement. I'll probably add that! Your feedback on the wall grab is helpful too. I think you're right about the sliding while grabbing... I may update that too. Honestly, the grab and long jump were features that initially were intended to be used a lot, but I backed off on because it's a jam game and is clearly already hard enough. As it stands, the long jump currently is only useful for shaving a few seconds off of a run here and there.
I have a post jam update coming that will address some of these issues, plus there's the new "assist mode" feature that will include several toggle-able options such as slow motion, infinite double jump, and immunity to projectiles for players who aren't digging the difficulty.
I also have a bigger update planned, that will add stages 7 & 8... so if you are interested, please check back later! (Though it may be awhile before stages 7&8 are ready)
Thanks again for playing! :)
I always look forward to a Basin Lake (I keep trying to call it Basin Falls for some reason) magical girl game, and this one was no exception. Unfortunately, I think this is my least favourite in the series so far, maybe even including the one that gave me eyestrain.
I can point precisely to why that is: It's an incredibly frustrating experience.
It's ridiculously hard, and usually falls on the side of more frustrating than fun. The maps often feel like they're made to be as unforgiving and sometimes unfair as possible. There are plenty of jumps you can't quite hit the normal way, jumps that have to be perfectly timed, jumps that have to be perfectly aligned to reach, etc. Checkpoint placement is inconsistent, too. Sometimes they're very generous, and sometimes you have to make 5 perfectly timed jumps, dodge a turret, and slide under a spike trap to get to the next one.
Any time there are spikes is bad news, because Camilla's hitbox is absurdly large and spikes kill you from any angle. The part during the dreamscape boss fight with vertically moving spike walls deserves special mention for tedium and frustration, and it took me I think about 10 minutes to get past it, completely killing the momentum of the level in the process.
The platforming is not bad, but it's not perfect, and the flaws are just enough to take it from "this game is stupidly frustrating, but that's because I'm not very good at it and it's on me" to "this game is stupidly frustrating, because the game is cheating me." Wall jumping mostly works and is satisfying as heck when it does, but sometimes I found myself wall jumping when I didn't want to. Wall grabbing, on the other hand, I found really awkward. Worse, sometimes I'd get a long jump and sometimes I wouldn't, and I had no idea why that was. Double jumping seemed to be completely useless, except for one or two sections where it was required, where it sort of worked. The jumping platforms also only worked about half the time, and there's no indication which ones launch you high and which don't, which confused me.
I found grabbing the ziplines a bit awkward, but that's probably me, and the sense of momentum from them was great. I think if there's a standout mechanic, it's the ziplines, and it's a shame they weren't used as much as they could be.
While not technically a platforming issue, I found it really hard to get attack to actually connect, and I'd miss about ninety percent of the time. This added quite a bit to the frustration, especially during boss fights where I'd struggle to get up to where they are only to miss actually hitting them repeatedly.
In general there are just a lot of sections that require you to be both fast and precise, which is hard for anyone short of a platformer master to do to begin with, and the not-quite-right mechanics often hinder pulling off the necessary moves.
The lab level had a lot of neat stuff in it, but I was so burned out by that point I just wanted the game to be over. The dreamscape level was exhausting, and I think actually more difficult than the lab. Which is a shame, because it's an incredibly interesting level with great environment design. In general I think there was a lot of great level and environment design that I didn't notice because I was too busy trying to get through it.
Getting a bad ending after all that is a huge slap in the face. After going through all that, I'd expected to be rewarded, and I'm probably not going to try it again, and certainly not on a harder difficulty. I like the idea of having bonuses for collecting items and having an alternate ending for the higher difficulty, but requiring such things to get the good ending at all is unnecessarily cruel.
The story was okay, but by the end I wasn't paying that much close attention to it, and I was kind of confused going in. I think Camilla was introduced in the game that I had trouble playing? A bit of a synopsis of how we got here would have been nice. I did really like the dossier of magical girls in the very beginning, which I think is going to be a really interesting freeze-frame bonus.
Which segues nicely to the art. It's fantastic, with great looking environments and smooth, beautiful animations. I wouldn't expect any less from a ShibeyFaceGames product, and I do worry that you're setting yourself up for a lot of tough acts to follow here. So far, though, I don't think any of the games in this series have disappointed in the art department.
It seems to be another FacemeltingSolos collab, and the quality and selection of music is once again fantastic. I think I spotted a few reused tracks, but it doesn't take away from the game at all. I'd expect to see some repeated leitmotifs by this point in the series anyway.
The rest of the sound design is good, but not standout amazing the way the art and music are.
There's a lot of good here. The art is fantastic, and so is the music. There are a lot of mechanics, and while some work better than others, none of them are broken and all of them are interesting. The level design is interesting, and the environment design is great. Unfortunately, I found actually playing the game to be a frustrating experience rather than an enjoyable one.
Submitted
At The Break Of DawnNice to see another game by Shibey. This one is a rage platformer featuring Camilla as the protagonist. The story ties in to previous games (I haven't played them all yet) and I think the universe is starting to become really interesting and full of life. The story is short but has multiple endings. I collected one memento during my playthrough.
The gameplay
The abilities you get are really fun. The levels are built around using wall jumps, slides, and double jumps to get around. The levels are well designed with lots of different challenges to test your skills. There are plenty of deadly traps such as spikes, bottomless pits, huge sawblades, telekinetic staffs and plasma turrets. Respawning is instant, so death isn't a big setback, with checkpoints being abundant. Trying the same section over and over is effortless, but after a while death starts to feel a little cheap (some punchy SFX might partially remedy this). If I didn't like the timing I was getting, I would just run into some spikes to try again faster. The turrets don't respawn, which makes sense from a story perspective but that means that even if you don't make it past a turret, as long as you destroy it the next run to the checkpoint will be easier. It messes with the sense of progression a little.
I should also mention that the hazards have really big hitboxes. As soon as you overlap a millimeter with the bounding box of a spike, you're dead as doornails, and abruptly reanimated at the nearest rift. As a result, you have to stay far away from anything dangerous, which doesn't exactly make you feel unbreakable. I also found myself hitting my head often on various low ceilings and platforms, interrupting the flow of movement. One of the encounters with the second boss was particularly problematic, as I had to awkwardly jump, double jump, and walljump to get up a series of blocks. Compared to other similar games, the player character is very big compared to the level geometry (and the jumps are comparatively low). This means the tolerances for every action feel incredibly tight. That said I think the art looks great like this, and I would rather have small changes to the levels than change the size of the characters.
On the other hand it feels like the hitbox on your attack is too small. Especially since you have to hit stuff while flying through the air. The attack hitbox only covers a small area in front of you, and not the character sprite itself. It also doesn't feel tall enough.
Narrative
I really like the story, although it's short. The character portraits (and character designs) are great as usual, and the dialogue is actually interesting, as it tells you tons of details and backstory, without spelling everything out for you. There is a lot of effort put into worldbuilding. The level environments fit the story too.
Bugs
Unfortunately I experienced some really unpleasant bugs. The fullscreen is really buggy. If you Alt-Tab even once, or exit fullscreen by pressing U, you will hear the audio glitch out, be unable to enter fullscreen again, and the game might become unresponsive. I had to restart twice because of this. The music also seemed out of place in some places, and there were constantly sound effects that didn't seem to match what was happening on screen. This seems like it could be an engine issue, so I'm sorry if that's the case. I don't know if a desktop version would fix these problems, but I would welcome the option.
Summary
There are some issues at the moment that take away from it, but this is still a fun experience to play through. I especially enjoyed the gauntlet of the second level. I would love to come back (and maybe speedrun it) after some fixes and gameplay balancing.
Thanks so much for playing, and all your feedback! Your notes about the hitboxes (both obstacles and attacking) will definitely be getting addressed in a update patch post-jam. They've been the most common request/critique by far.
I'm sorry to hear about the bugs you experienced! It's the first I've heard of this so far... I attempted to reproduce this problem on my system in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, but didn't run into that issue. Could you tell me what operating system and browser you were using to play? It's probably an engine issue unfortunately, but would still be helpful to know.
If you have a moment, I've made desktop versions for Windows... if you are using Windows, can you check and see if that bug still occurs for you?
I do plan to update the full game with improvements based on all the feedback I've gotten so far! There'll also be a stage 7&8 update coming too, I hope you'll check it out!
This game... is for masochists XP
Well done overall as usual. you are definitely trying new things for this game; bigger sprite being the most obvious I notice. I think almost each category has some room for improvement although as I said, this is already a very well made completed game: e.g. for polish you can definitely very quickly add a sliding sound
Tho reading the answer to my questionnaires I must say... the theme interpretation feels kinda forced lol. Without changing anything about the game itself I think it can be interpreted better that Unbreakable is embedded into the game mechanics, that the player is Unbreakable -- idk if you intended to interpret this as the mechanics from the start but was simply unable to convey the proper wordings or if you genuinely did not see the connection XP
Thanks for playing! I hope the many checkpoints eased the pain a little haha.
As for the themes, your wording is better than mine, but I did intend Unbreakable to be directed at that game mechanic: "Camilla is under an Unbreakable curse that keeps her from dying or sleeping." Maybe adding the sleeping part threw it off a bit, but the dying part was specifically referencing the game mechanic. Describing her as Unbreakable probably would have been better though. Oh well, hehe...
Got the bad end - I didn't even know there were momentos to collect.
It's difficult for me to untangle criticism of the game specifically and me just not really liking the platforming genre as a whole, but I was glad of the tonne of spawn points, since it felt like I would Meat-boy esque die over and over. I think this style of platforming design to me is reminiscent of the "Nintendo Hard" genre where you have to learn puzzles by running headlong into problems over and over and only making progress by memorising stuff you couldn't see when you start moving, which is an issue. I can't count the number of times I said 'fuuuuuuuck' under my breath, and not really in a good way.
I think I struggled with the KB+M controls a lot, especially kicking off a wall. There was a lot of times I just felt like Camilla wasn't doing what I wanted to do, whether that was because the physics was strange (I had a lot of trouble with the golden wind segment; sometimes she would resist the wind a little, sometimes she would just get blasted straight back to the left) or she would wallkick when I didn't mean to. I think hitting the direction key into the wall felt very strange, except maybe for the narrow walljump bits; if I want to jump away from the wall, my mind defaults to wanting to use the dir key away from the wall, not into it. This could be like coyote time or other platforming things where some frame buffering trickery is needed to make the platforming feel good; I'm certainly no expert in that regard.
As others have mentioned, I think the hitboxes might have been a big large on obstacles (they likely fit the sprite exactly) - what you end up with is a lot of dying before the sprite is seen to hit the obstacle (probably due to speed of sprite movement), so it doesn't feel good. I think a lot of games use hitboxes smaller than the visual object for this reason. The circular saws in particular I think suffered from this issue.
The only other real criticism I have is that Keygirl's weapon thing was often a very similar colour to the background, so every once in a while I'd get offed by a spinning blur I couldn't see. It was also possible to die while respawning, which was funny but not really much of an issue.
All of that aside, I still think it was a pretty good package all around. The sheer amount of content, art, level design etc generated in a month is so impressive to me. I think more could be done with the animation to make it feel more lively (the attack animation in particular feels a bit stiff) but considering the time constraints (and how annoying animation is to get to look natural when put all together) it's still quite cool. And so many magical girls!
Submitted
Heart Blaster JetslideThanks for playing, and all the great feedback! I'll admit, getting the wall kick to a point where I was happy with it was tough. I initially tried the setup you suggested, using the directional key in the direction that you want to wall jump, but it felt worse that the default setup. I checked some other games while struggling with this (Celeste and Celeste classic in particular, as they were my main inspirations) and settled with no directional keys... you auto wall jump if you press jump while close enough.(Pressing toward a wall certainly helps with this though) If I were to make a "full" game out of this, it's definitely something I'd explore tweaking, as I agree it's not perfect.
Hitboxes will definitely be getting a second look when I have time for an update. I'm glad the tons of respawn points were helpful. I certainly expected/intended for first run players to use them a lot.
I'm also glad you enjoyed volume of content, because I don't recommend it for a jam haha.... it was pretty stressful, especially toward the end when I felt seriously committed to completing the full game. (And then immediately started planning a "Secret" stage 7&8 I'll be adding post jam, lol)
Thanks again for your detailed feedback, and sticking it through to the end! I'll keep all of this in mind when I work on the post-jam updates!
The game mechanic is easier to learn while hard to master, so it's pretty good and has potential. The difficulty is high. Glad you placed lots of spawn points so a poor gamer lke me can still make progress and finish the game. I remember i feel some challenged when i tried to do sliding after jumping
The animated golden background is very charming for me and i don't know why.
Very cool game. I'm a big fan of wall jump and platformer combat, and the boss fights are really good take on it. It's very well done. The art is also very cool, and the music was nice.
The only real complaint I have is that I feel the control are slightly slippery.
definitively gonna play it again.
Submitted
Maiden MonstrousVery fun and engaging as usual. My only complaints are that the hitboxes on stage obstacles or the player need some adjustment so you don't hit the spikes as easily when falling past them. Also, I felt like sometimes my weapon animation was overlapping the boss but the hit didn't register. I think this will be a game that gets better and better with each playthrough, especially due to the speedrun friendly nature of the game.
Damn, that game was very well done. Really great job. Had tons of fun playing it. If you win, I won't be mad. LOL
Submitted
Stardust CrusadersAwesome really hard game. It did feel a bit frustrating at some points but always fair. Would be an awesome Speedrun game! My total time was 1685 on normal difficulty.
Submitted
Shroom Me Up GrannyAmazing, feels really fun to play and the death reset being so fast makes up for the difficulty. I think the game feels pretty flawless from how far I got, my only suggestion is that you could decrease the size of the hitboxes on a lot of the obstacles. A lot of games follow this design where they give the player an unfair advantage that actually makes the game feel more fair. I found myself frequently hitting spikes when I felt like I wasn't that close, but I know I really was.
Submitted
Soul BreakI probably got the worst ending! Its fun to die. Nexus corp needs to stop inviting everybody in, just sayin... =]
Submitted
Magical Sword Girl
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