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Magical Girl Game Jam

Hosted by Ran d'Reille · #MagicalGirlGameJam

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A jam submission

One Girl Army - PrologueView game page

Made for My Own Game Jam: The Magical Girl Game Jam

Submitted by Ran d'Reille (@d_reille) — 23 hours, 29 minutes before the deadline

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One Girl Army - Prologue's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Gameplay	#7	3.615	3.615
Overall	#14	3.327	3.327
Art	#14	3.154	3.154
Magical Girl Use	#16	3.385	3.385
Creativity	#19	3.154	3.154

Ranked from 13 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Theme(s)
I Won't Rely on Anyone Anymore
My Very Best Friend

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Comments

JMSSubmitted3 years ago

It's good! I actually didn't feel that the game was as hard as others have been mentioning, but I do agree that there are some parts where it feels less than fair. A platform in the boss room would make dodging its machine gun feel much more fair.

I never found a reason to use the third mode! The first two have clear applications, but the third is missing an enemy to go with it. A flying enemy or one that hangs from the ceiling would make it be more useful! Actually, more varied enemies would be great, as the enemy variations don't seem to be very different from eachother.

Overall it's a nice start and could be expanded further. In a future version the weapons could be upgrades to give it a sense of progression, for example!

Submitted

Magical Girl Star Sparkle

Ran d'ReilleDeveloper3 years ago(+1)

Thank you for the feedback.

As for the third/shotgun mode... Try using it against the boss. It works. I guess it's not quite obvious, but the boss's attacks are much easier to dodge when the boss is pushed to the right (which can be done by getting close to the boss, by which point the shotgun is the optimal weapon).

I will definitely fix the machine gun issue by this weekend... along with the enemy AIs

Trevor H (Facemelting Solos)3 years ago(+1)

Gamepad support? Instant high marks from me, haha!

As others have said, the difficulty is a little here and there, though with the gamepad it makes way more sense. Still, that final boss' machine gun is a little hard to doge. Really, I think a lot of it is more finessing than major changes.

Using Godot engine? More high marks! I love its audio implementation. I can't wait until we get better 3d audio implementation, though. Still, it's getting better all the time!

I like the idea, magical girl plus gritty realism. That soundtrack would be all over the place. Ina good way, haha! Lots of fun. Wish there was more.

Ran d'ReilleDeveloper3 years ago

Thanks!

Will definitely fix at least the machine gun ASAP at least for now; more fixes are also planned for later but the machine gun fix is the easiest

I'll be honest here regarding the gamepad... at first it was just so I could make a reference to a game series I recently (*cough* by which I meant "last two months") started playing:

Steam Community :: Screenshot :: Real Yakuza use a Gamepad

Y...yep. Now probably you can see where most of my idea came from XD

Also getting praised regarding my soundtracks by a musician? You're too kind. My musics are nothing compared to what you made for Shibey's game -- as a musician you should easily notice how much I struggle with making the harmonics/chords. (^.^;

Trevor H (Facemelting Solos)3 years ago

Haha, nice!

Music can be hard. The struggle is real, my friend! Real but fun!

GuessySubmitted3 years ago(+1)

It's a functional platformer, though the difficulty on the shooting is all over the place. You wind up in situations where the guy with the machine gun is more dangerous than the tank, because the machine-gun guy has massive area denial and can stunlock you whilst the tank can't.

The main issue is simply too many bullets in one big line: there's no way to dodge because jumping just drops you back into the bullet conga trail. If they - machine gun guys and the boss - fired in shorter bursts it would feel a lot fairer.

The exploding bullets were also pretty eh; they mostly fired in a rough cardinal direction, but only mostly, so they weren't predictable and between them and the boss they give both little room and time to avoid. So, like the machine gun attack, you're forced to facetank. Something like a lobbed mortar that landed with AoE would have worked much better.

Enemies are also completely silent on death, which feels a bit off.

Whilst the weapon choices are nice... functionally, you're just going to use the machinegun and hold it down, because there's no reason not to. Shotgun range feels awful; you have to be close enough to the enemy for the enemy to shoot back (or drive into you, with the boss), which... well, see the stunlock comment above. I'm not sure when you'd ever use the pistol or the melee attack.

...gave creativity points for yakuza with abrams can you hear homura screeching in the distance

Submitted

Mahou Shoujo Tactics

Ran d'ReilleDeveloper3 years ago

I see. Really great feedbacks here. Reading it I realized how this game needs a lot more improvements.

I must admit I somewhat noticed the problem with the AK-47 guys. When I tested it I do feel their attacks are indeed too hard to dodge. But are their attacks really do some stunlocking? I tried to make sure to give a little bit invincibility to try to prevent that, and when I tried it for myself I did not get stunlocked... hmm... but I will take note of it.

The exploding bullets... now that you mention it... At first I made it only one bullet, but it wasn't "flashy" enough so I thought I would make it shoot three; then it got too hard so I halved the number of bullets they spawn while also constricting their directions a bit although not completely... I hoped that it would be somewhat more fair but I suppose it indeed isn't fair enough yet. The splash mortar idea sounds like a great idea! Wish I had come up with that sooner... (^.^;

Regarding weapon choice... oh wow I didn't know other players actually felt that way; because when I tested it I actually felt the need to continuously change weapon types. When there are mostly enemies that die with one shot anyway I always use the dual gun mode because I can move quickly. With the dual gun mode I can actually jump over the burst of 8 bullets the AK-47 guys shoot. And the shotgun... I always use the shotgun to fight the boss because it's actually far easier to fight the boss with the shotgun than with the assault rifle due to the limited maneuverability of the assault mode. I think the problem here is with enemy diversity -- I did not make enough enemies, and there should be enemies that encourages speedy maneuver (thus discouraging the overuse of assault rifle mode) and enemies that are far easier to be attacked with close quarter combat (like the boss). I think most of the problem here lies on the enemies mostly attacking with "horizontal projectiles" that require jumping to dodge -- should've added stuffs that for example come from above like for example your suggestion of mortars

Many thanks for the feedback. I will take note of it and may make an improved version of it in a week ;)

GuessySubmitted3 years ago (1 edit)

It feels stunlock-y; getting hit knocks you around and stops you firing, making you unable to stop the enemy from firing, if that makes sense? Even if you're not taking damage with every hit you lose a lot of control of your character.

...Honestly I never actually noticed you move differently with different weapons. Maybe that could have been made clearer? Heck, if the pistol-mode could double-jump that would encourage its use a lot. Though given you shoot horizontal projectiles you still need to be level at some point with the enemy to shoot them, which jumping around a lot hampers. Currently, the best 'strategy' to use against enemies is to just stand outside their range and plink them. You'd need to either break up the long sightlines in the level geometry or make aiming free-directional to try and combat that.

EDIT: Oh, and despite the screen telling you to use a gamepad... you cannot navigate the menu with a gamepad. Or at least I couldn't with an xbox controller in Opera.

Ran d'ReilleDeveloper3 years ago (1 edit)

Wow I didn't realize that it wasn't clear how you move much slower (like 50% of dual gun mode) with the assault rifle; I thought the difference was obvious enough considering I used completely different walking animation for the assault rifle and assault rifle alone. Double jumping with the dual gun sounds like a good idea - I want players to feel like "swift ninjas" when using the dual gun mode.

Oh wait do you know that you can actually shoot downwards? I suppose I did not make a level that makes it necessary to use that move but... you can shoot downward... and shooting downwards somewhat gives the player a lift. My bad for also not making it obvious

I don't think I will implement free shooting... this, I must admit, is the main weakness with pixel arts... It is impossible for me to implement such a thing with pixel art. m(_ _)m

Regarding enemies... I think a solution would be slightly more complex AI. The enemy should not notice the player all the time and perhaps add a little element of stealth... I think this is the main problem. This solution tho... is easier said than done... T_T

I just noticed that I might be able to take a few notes from the Metal Slug series due to the somewhat similar gameplay... that game also has similar shooting mechanics and enemy attacks...

Regarding gamepad... you navigate with the left analog. The D-Pad is for changing modes in the game while left analog is for movement -- perhaps at least for the main menu I should've made it possible to use D-Pad huh... ;_;

GuessySubmitted3 years ago (3 edits) (+1)

I did not! And yeah, just some tutorial messages in the background would have helped out a lot to explain all this stuff. My first experience was 'mess about figuring out the controls, discover weapon-switching, find the pew-pew gun, stick with pew-pew gun because it Shoot Good better than the others.

Free-shooting + pixel art is hardly impossible: you can do it with 6 frames (up, up45, forward, down45, down), flip for the opposite direction and as long as the bullets are free-aiming people generally won't care if the character isn't (though you'll need a crosshair for obvious reasons). You'd probably need to split the sprite into upperbody/lowerbody if you want to run-and-gun and still stay sane as an animator, mind.

I wouldn't say you need complex AI, just to build your levels around the AI you've got. As it is, there's a lot of open space, so the player can just outrange the goons, and the tank is only threatening when you can't casually jump over its shots. If you want players to be dodging attacks at close distance... force them to close the distance. Even giving the mooks a range boost would help as long as they can't fire from offscreen.

ShibeyFaceGamesSubmitted3 years ago(+1)

I think this came out pretty well! The challenge level is pretty high, as others mentioned. The first time through I got wasted on the end boss. Second time I somehow failed on the first tank. Third time was a charm. I found avoiding the boss's machine gun was very difficult, and had to just soak it once I was confident that I was close to the win.

I do wish there was a little more story, but it's a good prologue. The shield partner you mentioned that got cut could be a cool mechanic. Though it might actually go against the name of the game, lol.

I understand where you're at though. My Devtober project got totally de-railed by a combo of (paid) work taking over, and then feeling burnt out and lazy when I had any free time. I feel like I got 3x as much done for this 2-week jam as I did in that entire month. Poor Melody. Maybe I'll finish that game someday.

Anyway, keep it! Looking forward to what you make next. :)

Submitted

A Change of Heart: A Magical Girl Adventure

Ran d'ReilleDeveloper3 years ago (2 edits) (+1)

Haha! Thanks for playing!

Sorry it was a little bit difficult -- the first time I made it the boss had half its current health, one could literally just tank it and just use the assault mode on the far left edge - when I fixed it though I went too far and really made it a little bit too difficult. I also realized that the machinegun attack is a little bit too difficult to dodge when the player is far away from the boss (it's actually impossible to dodge if the boss happens to fire it when you are cornered to the left edge -- really messed it up). I actually wanted to fix it by making the boss much less likely to use its machinegun attack when the player is cornered to the left edge of the room -- but ended up forgetting to do it because I always fight the boss at close quarter (with the shotgun mode) when testing it :P

For the story as mentioned I actually wanted it such that the game began with the rescue of the shield partner, but then the alarm sounded and then they both fight their way out of the Yakuza base together -- too bad I cut it XD

You really did put so much effort this time. It was really hard to believe that you made what you made in just two weeks. If the story were longer it could've become something that would sell. Very great job.

ShibeyFaceGamesSubmitted3 years ago(+1)

I wouldn't have wanted the boss to be too much easier, I like bosses that feel tough but fair. I'm starting to wonder if I went too easy in my game.

You ended your game with "To be continued..." I hope that wasn't an empty promise! I'd like continue my game in some way or another too, this game only scratched the surface of story ideas I already have ready. The tough part is making it into a game. ;-; I find it's much easier to motivate myself with a Jam. As soon as the community posting art, progress, encouragement, sharing ideas, etc is gone, it gets so much harder to keep working at it.

But anyway, thanks for running this Jam! It's my favorite one that I've participated in. Doesn't hurt that it directly lines up with my taste in settings, hehe. (Though I'm sure Jammie the Witch will make a return one of these days... haha)

Ran d'ReilleDeveloper3 years ago(+1)

I will probably expand this into sth bigger. I think after some discontinued prototypes this is the one I'm going to continue. If I do continue the game this will be the first game that I will make that is not for a jam -- probably going to use twitter and Devlog (and YouTube too) for motivation ^^

XCVGSubmitted3 years ago

The first time I played this I didn't know there were multiple weapons, but that was the only time I beat the boss. I feel like it's loaded with references I didn't get, and it reminds me of Iji of all things. But it is a nice little game overall.

Submitted

Shattered - Why Not Me

Ran d'ReilleDeveloper3 years ago

Congrats on beating the boss.

I really love putting references in my game - tho I think I went a little bit overboard this time XP

Some of the franchises that I love are quite niche (e.g. Trails in the Sky) so don't beat yourself up if you don't get any :)

XCVGSubmitted3 years ago

I have virtually no knowledge of magical girl fiction or anime, so if they're references to any of that they definitely flew over my head. There were some parts where I thought "this is definitely a reference to something but I have no idea what". More of a feeling than anything I guess.

TerrapinSubmitted3 years ago

Hey, great game! That boss was pretty tough. Do you think you can add longer after hit invincibility? It seems that it only lasts until you can start moving again. I keep getting stun-locked. XD

Submitted

Ran d'ReilleDeveloper3 years ago

Oh wow. I suppose I really made it way too hard this time. Before I adjusted the difficulty the boss was actually way too easy that one could just stand in the corner and fire the Assault Rifle.

Tip: Use the shotgun

TerrapinSubmitted3 years ago

Your boss' AI is actually super good, but I think that if you give players like 1-2 seconds of after-hit invincibility while moving around, they can maneuver themselves around without being stun locked.

P.S. I got pwned even hard when I used the shotgun. XDD

Tiago1610Submitted3 years ago

I totally lose against the boss, but it was fun nevertheless

Submitted

まほしょじょ　の　タウバテ

UsoSubmitted3 years ago

I totally lose against the boss, but it was fun nevertheless

Submitted

PewPew & Pepper