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Magical Girl Star Sparkle's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Magical Girl Use | #7 | 4.182 | 4.182 |
| Art | #9 | 3.636 | 3.636 |
| Overall | #13 | 3.386 | 3.386 |
| Creativity | #16 | 3.273 | 3.273 |
| Gameplay | #18 | 2.455 | 2.455 |
Ranked from 11 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Theme(s)
I'm Not Afraid of Anything Anymore
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Comments
Hey!
Thank you so much for the feedback! I took a bit of a break from Itch.io so I was only able to respond now. Sorry about that! I hope you're still interested after all this time!
I have a lot of regrets on how I implemented stuff in the game. Being stunlocked happened to me a lot during testing, but I put it off because I didn't think I would have enough time to get a good solution. You do have some control once you respawn, but my original idea was to do what all beat-em-up games do - throw all enemies to the ground to prevent them from immediately gang up on you.
The shift keys problem is tricky. I remember having that problem a lot, but in newer Windows versions I guess it doesn't happen? At least I don't remember having the problem. I'd love to add customizable controls to this game to prevent this from being an issue (or make it so you can hold the keys to attack repeatedly, but I don't like this idea as much). The shot is kind of weak, I definitely balanced the game towards using mostly melee.
I am very tempted to, one day, improve this game and make a post-jam version (in fact... I'd like to do that to all my games haha). A lot of problems have easy solutions if I just think about them for a while. But of course, it's hard to gauge interest in months-old (or year-old) jam games that few people played in the first place!
I love hearing that you liked the animations! I tried a few new techniques in animating the character and I have already heard some comments saying they had issues. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I am very happy to hear that you enjoyed it. I wasn't too proud of my game (we never are!), so hearing all this positive feedback made my day. Thank you very much!
I have uploaded the source code to the main game page. Truth be told, I haven't changed it at all... But I figured it would never be more ready for the general public than it is now haha. Good luck! Talk to me if you need anything. I'll try to take less than 90 days to reply next time! Also, I just assumed itch.io had a DM feature, I never even bothered to check. Guess I was wrong!
Oh wow, that game looks amazing! I'm super excited that you liked my character enough to have her included - to be honest, I think she doesn't hold a candle to all the other included characters in terms of design, but I'm happy to hear that you like her! I think this is how game creators feel when their characters end up in Super Smash Bros!
Your artist did an incredible job in replicating her - the actual design in game is a mess of sprites in front of one another, each moving semi-independently to create animations, so I hope she didn't have too much work.
I'll be checking out your game soon. I'm super happy that you liked mine!
I played your game very quickly right now. I played through King Candy's level as my character and then halfway through Cure Lovely's level as Cure Grace (Nodoka). I will need to play through it with more time this weekend. So far I like what I see! First, I really liked how my character was translated to the game - to be honest I like it more here than in my own game, so props to the animator haha. Also: for a game with so many characters, this Mega Man style progression is a good idea, you can have a small level for each character and still have a lot of content. Are the 9 levels you face randomly selected? They seemed to be the same in my 2 playthroughs, but I may have misremembered. Is there going to be a level and boss for each character or are the "enemy" characters well defined?
I think there's no problem with clones, as long as it's not required to beat the game with all characters to unlock stuff - in that case it can become tedious having to play over and over again with the same moveset. But so far it seems that it's not the case!
Reading about your game having over 200 characters is one thing, scrolling through 11 (?) pages of playable characters is another haha. I am looking forward to checking out the rest of the game, there seems to be a lot of content! I'm not used to fangames having this much content!
Itch.io can be kind of aggressive towards fangames, these are people trying to launch their own IPs and may dislike the competition from work based on preexisting content. I used to frequent smaller forums (that may have already closed down) which received these types of games more positively. Don't worry about it!
I really liked the art style, I don't get to play a lot of 2.5D games so it was really cool! And loved the transformation sequence!! First time i played it i tried to dash ahead and then got stuck without any powers so figured I should've retreated like a normal person :') I must've found the difficulty just right, i lost a good few lives so by the boss fight I was on my last one. Although i liked how the melee attack gave some knockback so provided a different strategy for attacks. Overall great submission!
I'm glad to hear your thoughts! Really great to know that someone didn't find it too easy or too hard haha. Yeah, I wanted it to be obvious that you shouldn't just rush ahead... but I should have just added a "Run!" icon or something. Or at least an invisible wall (or a more elegant solution!).
Thank you for the feedback!
Oh my, a fellow Godot user! And it supports gamepad play too, which is definitely a huge plus for me.
Graphics wise it's cute and childish -- in a good way. Not exactly polished, but I love it.
The biggest weakness is perhaps the gameplay... When it's easy, it's too easy as in I just need to spam attack. When it's hard, the gameplay mostly consists of me running around and attacking the enemy -- which sometimes don't work when the space is cramped and I have to resort to tanking. Furthermore, the boss can be stunlocked. Some refinement of the gameplay is definitely needed.
Very good submission. Definitely will be put in my let's play video of some submissions to this jam ^^
Thank you for your feedback!
Yes, I've been using Godot for a few months now. I loved working with Love2D before as Lua is a really great language, but Godot just lets me work so fast that it's now my choice for game jams (and games in general)!
Yeah, gamepad was a priority for me. But I ended up not implementing proper analog control because I was getting a bit stressed out about the time limit.
Yeah, I've been noticing most people tend to find it too easy for the wrong reasons. Every enemy can be stunlocked, something needs to be done. To be honest I've never wanted to put out a more complete or at least "fixed" version of a jam game as much as I want to on this one, I think I have a good thing going if I just fix the enemy stunlocking issue and, huh, rehaul the entire character controls to not feel as restrictive, I guess haha.
What's your Youtube channel? I'll definitely check it out once it's out!
I have a YouTube channel of the same name (Ran d'Reille). I do not know if you can find it by simply searching it on YouTube search bar, but if you can't, you can just open the trailer for this jam (the link is in the jam main page) which was uploaded with said channel too ^^
I will probably upload the let's play video next weekend (or maybe even on Friday if you live in Europe or the American continent)
It's a novel concept, and you're the only jam entry I've played so far that actually includes a transformation sequence which definitely earned points. The story may be minor but it gives enough context and involves player interaction (ie it's not just a cutscene), so I enjoyed it!
Combat though is... clunky. It's not clear when enemies attack you, so you have to keep them at their distance, which is trivially easy by spamming the ranged attack. Though the melee seems to have a three-hit combo with a pause in which the enemy can slip an attack in, the ranged attack does not, and can be fired fast enough to keep an enemy in permanent stunlock. This is how I killed the final boss. Notably, if an enemy is in the hit stun animation, it also blocks them from their death animation, so I kind of wound up standing there spamming Y for quite a while...
(the ranged attack projectile also moves at the exact same speed the character does, which feels a bit... odd if you fire it and then start moving forwards)
I initially thought there was no 'dodge' mechanic until I realised you can actually jump on enemies with the lack of collision damage. It's a fun touch, I quite like that, honestly. It was an 'aha!' moment when I realised I could jump onto and over the slime-face things.
Thank you for your feedback!
The ranged attack was a late addition, and I guess it can be seen in how badly it interacts with the other mechanics. Honestly there's even a pretty massive bug where if you hit the enemy with your staff as part of the ranged attack animation, the enemy will be hit... suffering the same damage and knockback as the last used attack. So you could use the 3-attack combo, end with the most powerful attack, and then just keep pressing the ranged attack button up close to thwack enemies with an attack that's faster than any other attack of your character, but as powerful as your strongest attack - plus with a projectile that will most likely hit the enemy again. I noticed this only when playing on the last build, and I decided to keep it because the probability of including more destructive bugs when trying to fix that was pretty high.
I knew about the speed of the projectile, but never found it odd. I guess this is why feedback is important!
Overall thank you for your feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed the parts that you enjoyed. I'm overall pretty satisfied with the transformation sequence - I planned it to be simplistic so it wouldn't take too long to implement, but it ended up taking a lot longer than anticipated.
I think it would be one of my favourites in the jam, gameplay-wise, if it was a little less clunky. The controls feel sticky for the lack of a better word, it's trivially easy to stun-lock the basic enemy and the hitbox on the boss is entirely broken. It also started to feel repetitive, though just as I was getting that feeling a few new enemies and a trick with the geometry freshened things up a lot. I liked those tricks and I wished they came just a little bit earlier. I really do like the 2.5D aspect, it adds more to the gameplay than I initially thought it would.
I like the art style a lot. The mix of simple 2D and simple 3D actually looks really nice. The effects are primitive, too, but they work. However I did notice some glitching on the edges of the player character, and occasionally the camera would end up in a tree. I liked the music, too, but the sound effects started to become grating.
I actually really like the storyline, too, and I wish it was in the game itself. Was this never planned or did you just run out of time?
Overall I had a lot of fun with this and I'd like to see more adventures of Magical Girl Star Sparkle.
Thank you for the feedback!
I really feel that I have failed in the regards to dificulty. With a bit more time I would like to implement some way for the enemies not to be stun-locked so easily. I made the hitboxes too generous because personally I hate it when I feel that a jam game is too difficult, so I erred on the easy side.
The storyline was left low on the list of priorities. The first part of the game loosely follows the plot I wrote in the description. To be honest, I prefer there to be little to no text, so I never intended there to be cutscenes or anything, but I would like to have a few short dialogue bubbles. Eventually I thought it would take too much time and would ultimately not be that important, so I left them out.
I wanted there to be another girl! My original plan also followed the "My very best friend" theme, and you'd have a friend with you in the beginning, which would appear to be kidnapped. The goal was for the end boss to be her as a magical girl, being responsible for the invasion. But I just repurposed an enemy I wanted to work as a mid-level threat as a boss.
I agree with you on preferring a jam game to be too easy than too hard. I have this compunction to play everyone's game and play it through from start to finish, so getting stuck in one spot on one game is really frustrating.
Leaving the storyline for last is fair. I like the idea with the second magical girl, it's too bad that didn't make it in. It's interesting to hear about what you wanted to put in the game and weren't able to in general.
I like the idea of a 2.5d brawler. You're using Godot? Have you participated in the Wild Jam that happens once a month? That Discord server is really awesome if you ever want to join.
The game was pretty chill until that section with six of those scissor mouth blobs. They wrecked me!
Yes, I'm using Godot. I've never participated in that jam!
I have considered joining the jam in like six different occasions! But for some reason I thought it was a 30-day jam? Anyway, now I've seen it's just a week, and maybe I'll join one day. But I need a bit of a break for now. Thanks for the invitation!
Cool entry! I loved the Paper-mario like graphic look. The main character was super cute.
I made the mistake of going forward the first time without the amulet... game over! After getting the amulet, I made it much further. It was sometimes hard to tell if I was going to hit an enemy or whiff and get hit myself. It was a pretty hard game!
Overall, nice work!
Loved the mix of 2D and 3D assets! Everything was cute, even the monsters! A lot of them had an unsually high amount of HP for some reason. DX