Very good implementation of the mashup! I like the concept of ramping up in power as the battle goes on. Surprisingly good story too, despite what little there is. Clever how it is doled out gradually from turn to turn. I wouldn't have minded the conversation taking place in its own screen if it gave me the power to advance the text myself, waiting for it to scroll was testing my patience even with the bars maxed out. I was only able to beat bosses by constantly powering my normal shots, which is unfortunate; perhaps the one-off attacks could do more burst damage to keep pace. I hope to see more!

Well, I was bad at playing this game... but it was still a lot of fun!

The graphics were all good, and the music/SFX worked all worked well enough.

The gameplay was fun, especially as I started better understanding the cards, and how to use them! 

I liked how different each boss felt, it kept the battles fresh each time, while still keeping the core mechanics the same for the player.

I'm not great at these types of games, and I wasn't able to beat any of the bosses... but I'll try and come back and beat them I have more time!

Really nice work!

For a proof of concept, this has pretty good visuals and a lot of content. I was expecting something a lot more barebones when I saw that label. The music feels placeholder-y, but that might just be because these are the tracks I use as placeholder music in my own projects.

The mechanics... I have mixed feelings, but I'm also terrible at bullet hells. The bullet hell/shmup part seems well implementd, though I'm not a fan of the bullet sponge bosses. It's more the blending I'm skeptical of. All the cards I was dealt didn't seem all that useful, and it wasn't clear what some of them actually did. I think it could work. I think if the cards were buffed a bit and had more dramatic effects, they would work better.

I wasn't able to beat any of the bosses, but I found the first one- Rhyn- was actually the hardest. The combination of moving background and "motion blur" made it very hard to aim or even look at.

I didn't really pay attention to the narrative, to be honest. It's delivered awkwardly, in a tiny dialogue box and when I'm busy selecting cards.

I did run into glitches where the game stopped responding to input but I was also playing the web version, which I know is not recommended.

I’ve encountered a lot of problems with the game. I’ll point out the bad experiences first before I get to the positives. I’m playing the Windows build and there is a bug where if you press Esc and open the menu during battle, after closing it, the WASD keys still affect the UI controls and would change the music volume, and it even kicked me to the main menu. In the tutorial, I appreciated the ability to replay the dialogue because I missed the first sentence (since the dialogue auto-proceeds) but when I tried to replay the dialogue, then press Go!, the dialogue sounds still play in the background. It seems like the UI was simply hidden, not disabled/destroyed which causes many problems, I was afraid to touch any of the UI from thereon. I feel that the character’s hitbox is too large in comparison to the screen/movement space and in some situations, it felt like I had to eat the damage or draw for Teleport, which takes away a bit of the joy of out-maneuvering the attacks. The character sprite can be as it is, but I feel that the hitbox needs to be smaller. The enemy HP is either too high, or the player’s attacks of a measly 1 damage is too low, it felt quite bullet spongy. I’d imagine being able to fire all my 10 lasers would be enough (and that is already on the high side because I have to draw for it) not 20. And I need 4 focus just to turn my damage into 2 plus I have to draw for it? That’s artificial difficulty and I didn’t feel good winning. Most of the abilities’ mechanics are okay, Teleport especially is done really well with allowing the player room to breathe, but the cross laser really needs a targeting system or at least have it cross on the currently targeted area. It’s hard to tell which ability is currently up because the icons are all the same color and I have to move and keep track of the enemy and bullets, I ended up having to play a memory game, so perhaps having an extra UI that is not moving at the bottom corner of the screen that tells what ability is next would be better.

On the up side, the graphics are impressive and the deckbuilding is an interesting feature to allow the player to express themselves freely. I like being able to draw cards after accumulating enough energy and plan my moves that way. Having some dialogue in-between card draws also served well to make things more interesting. Even with all the problems I encountered, I could feel that this is a well-made game and still gets a good amount of praise from me for its creative direction, graphics, and mashup mechanics. Project: Rho has a ton of potential and I acknowledge its quality. It just needs a lot of polish and tweaking on various gameplay aspects which I’m sure can be addressed with time. Good job!

I really like the art style and the backgrounds on each level are gorgeous. The menus and UI are all pretty polished which is great. The combat itself is good but is missing the polish of other elements. I think some hit flashes, more flashy bullets and impacts, and explosions on killing trash mobs would go a long way to making it feel a lot more exciting.

The boss battles themselves are pretty well constructed, but I think Rhyn is a bit too hard to be the starting foe. The difficulty curve felt backwards to me, it starts hard and gets easier. I'm glad you made all 3 accessible from the menu though.

My biggest complaint is the players hitbox is quite large, I dont think you have to go as far as 1 pixel hitbox but I think it's ok to be a little player friendly in these types of games, and give them a bit of leeway, some of the bullet patterns are really fast and tight and fitting a gigantic clunky hitbox through them was painful.

I really liked the card system, I wish it had a little more feedback (VFX/buff indicators etc) and was a bit more exciting to use in general. The cards are all functional and powerful but the lack of flair makes some of them a little disappointing. I'm also really upset the X beam doesn't aim!!!

Overall very good submission, feels very well made and is only lacking polish and a bit of tuning to be a really really solid finished game, great job!

man that was painful, not sure how many lives it took me to beat all 3, but it was so unsatisfying to do because it felt like I got nothing out of it... a little something, maybe x out the portrait in the main screen? hehe anything ? ...

Anyway. I guess the game is good for masochists at this point.

I felt the whole card system was somewhat pointless, I used it all, but I feel like I was mainly wasting time trying to maximize my chance of survival with it although I think it was all for naught and the only thing that made me survive is just basically learning the patterns and not smashing into stuff stupidly.
One thing that is really pointless  is having to activate in combat the cards that are upgrades.  Maybe I didn't learn how to use all of them correctly ?

Also I ended up ignoring the story, which I usually don't in most games, but for some reason I can't handle having to do stuff and reading at the same time. I guess some people like the choice, but I prefer the story to be skip able by choice, but blocking by default.

Anyway its a good game, just has some distractions and frustrations for me.

I didn't understand this game at first, even after the tutorial, but once I got into the game I got REALLY into it!

The deck system along with the one-on-one boss battles was an interesting twist on the standard bullet hell genre. I can see that concept scaling into a full game well, with booster packs opening up new skills each time you defeat a boss and progress the story. It even makes for self-imposed difficulty settings. Are you highly skilled at this game and want to beat the boss down fast? Pack as many big attacks as you can. Are you a noob? Pack in a bunch of heals and buffs and you'll be good to go!

The music is excellent pulse-pounding energy music, perfect for the mood of the game. Sound effects were good for the most part, though I would have liked to hear something when the aimed shot and homing missiles connect with their targets.

I liked the character designs and UI overall too. Characters are clear and fun to look at, and the UI is arranged in such a way that I never felt like important information was hidden (except for the between-turns dialogs) or buried in menus.

There are some things that could be improved:

The dialog between the characters between turns is too long and it's not clear when the exchange is over (I eventually learned to recognize the tiny arrow that appears under the boss' text area when the dialog was done). That said, the exchanges were kinda amusing and have potential for even more interesting exchanges as the plot develops. I also appreciated that the dialogs can be skipped if I'm not interested.

It's hard to recognize which attack is queued up when you're on the field because the icons are similar color and kind of small. Furthermore, it's not clear how to aim many of them. X Beam is nearly useless because I'm not sure where the beams will be relative to my character and the enemy. I eventually got the hang of most of them, but it was a turnoff initially and could use some quality of life improvement.

Overall this is a great start to a larger project and an outstanding entry.