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A jam submission

ReverbView game page

Neon-dipped arcade shooter with echoing notes
Submitted by Bijoy K, Darth Mauli — 4 hours, 44 minutes before the deadline
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Reverb's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Gameplay/Design#24.2734.273
Enjoyment#34.1364.136
Overall#83.6823.682
Originality#193.6363.636
Theme#312.6822.682

Ranked from 22 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your entry fit the theme?
Reverb picks the core essence of Echoes... the bounce, the sound and the fleeting yet endless nature of them. The enemies are visual representations of sound, multiplying on bouncing like repetitive echoes, but also losing a little bit of themselves along the way. The music we created reverberates, giving the game its name.

What would you like feedback on?
What additional aspects could we add to the game to make it releasable.

What assets did you use (if any)?
None.
All music, sound effects and visuals were made during the jam by us. Fonts used: Orbitron and Space Mono from Google Fonts.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

This game is SUCH A VIBE.  The sounds, music, and visuals are sick. It feels great, sounds great, and looks great! The only thing I don't really get is how it relates to the theme, which could probably be fixed with a little opacity change or something. For me, the echoes seems more like health. Either way, it's a SICK game.


I would probably add some more mechanics. Right now, the game is really just tactical button mashing (for me at least) and I would love maybe a few levels/power-ups that add a little bit of advantage (or lack thereof) to shake things up a bit.


love how the music speeds up in the background. Again, "Reverb" has such great aesthetics.


Great job!

Submitted(+1)

This probably the most polished game of this jam, the little camera shakes, the trails and glowy effects feel awesome, you can make more weapon types and add lives as one shot game over feel a bit too harsh. Over all great game!

Submitted (2 edits) (+2)

This is SUPER polished!! I really appreciate the amount of effort that went into making it FEEL good to play, such as the pitch-scaled sounds when destroying the various shape types, the camera shake when firing, the particle effects when the shapes blow up, etc.

While I did find the gameplay fun and engaging, I personally think there were two flaws that tarnished the experience for me:

1. Having an infinitely scaling score multiplier felt bad to me. It makes it so that what matters most is building it as high as possible in the early game so that you can have a 100x multiplier in the late game where the most enemies were. The moment I lost my multiplier in the late game, it felt as though the run was pretty much over already, since building it back up would take too long. I think having a multiplier cap of like 5x or something would have made it feel a lot better to me; you'd be rewarded for going on streaks, but not immensely punished for losing it. I also think needing to build to each new X multiplier would have been nice (e.g. 5 kills for 2x, 10 kills for 3x, and so on)

2. The recoil gimmick was more frustrating than it was entertaining. The vast majority of the three games I played I spent blasting myself into a corner, and pretty much staying in that corner for the rest of the game, because I believe there's logic that prevents shapes from spawning too close to you. It's good that nothing spawnkilled me in the corner, but not good because I don't think I was engaging with the game the way you wanted. I found myself wishing I could just move around with WASD, which part of me thinks would have been fine, since I don't think the recoil was important for the game's theme.

With all that said, this is still definitely in my top 3 entries for this jam!! My high score was 2,489,500, with a 182x bonus streak :)

(+2)

It's fun and feels quite polished for a game jam game!

The game is quite hard and unfair at times.

the music is great.

I don't totally get how the theme fits.

Submitted(+1)

Great work guys! I could tell you have a great sense of feedbacks and the controls feel like smooth butter. The game is dope to play and actually quite addictive. Perfect scope for a jam too. I bet this would be pretty popular on mobile.

The only missing feature I would add is an indicator of where enemies are coming from. This way the player can prepare if they are playing near a border and not lose due to an enemy spawning nearby. 

Submitted

Good job with the game, is fun, polishend and feels nice to play.

I got 57.420 points, i guess you could add some sort of shop with different skins for the player and custom lasers colors, maybe some challenge levels would be nice.

Submitted(+1)

Really cool game, I love the effects, and chasing that multiplier is so damn fun! I managed to get a 400+ with over 4 millions points, felt really good! The movements feel a bit restrictive for now, as you have to stay in a corner to expect to survive.. It already feels pretty complete for an arcade game, however if you want to take it further and make some various levels where you have to navigate for example, I’m not sure the controls will remain adapter. Or at least the recoil in that case would be too strong for example.. Maybe some hitboxes could be bigger, especially for the big shapes, it feels bad to lose your multiplier when the shot seem to go clearly through the border of the shape. Other than that very polished, really nice entry!

(+1)

I really enjoy the arcade aspect of this game, addictive and kind of relaxing. I like the fact that you can go for getting the highest score or just shoot and relax.  

Things that I think you can do to make it ''releasable'' are: using the right click to use a different weapon or move in a different way like a teleport, adding power-ups, adding a challenge mode like killing a set amount of enemies in a minute or only killing a specific type of enemy while avoiding others, online leaderboards, a mode with bosses. Hope some of those ideas  are useful.

(+2)

I really enjoy the arcade aspect of this game, addictive and kind of relaxing. I like the fact that you can go for getting the highest score or just shoot and relax.  

Things that I think you can do to make it ''releasable'' are: using the right click to use a different weapon or move in a different way like a teleport, adding power-ups, adding a challenge mode like killing a set amount of enemies in a minute or only killing a specific type of enemy while avoiding others, online leaderboards, a mode with bosses. Hope some of those ideas  are useful.

Submitted(+1)

Yes, this is a really polished games! I think the music fits the theme of the game nicely. Also, i really like how the sound of destroying the polygons makes for a harmonic descend. I could be interesting to change these harmonics according to current chord/bass node in the music. 

The size of the polygons are perfect for fast aiming, but still with a little challenge. I have tried it on the phone as well, where it is just as enjoyable. (even though there was some scalling issues with the UI).

I really find the combo and point system engaging. 

Maybe you can make the player get away from the corners by making the combo be a object to pickup with a timelimit. By making the combo be removed by 1 miss, you force the play to only shoot at the polygons, thereby not using the good movement mechanic. 

You could also make left click just move you like the laser, but without shooting and without loosing the combo.  

Submitted(+2)

This is incredibly polished! Great effects, really satisfying and I love the recoil mechanic, that's really clever. 

I think something that encourages players to move around would be good, such as collectable power-ups or treasure, at the moment I found myself camping in one corner. Show off the great movement mechanics!

Developer

Hehe, fair point and will do! Thank you for playing our game and for the very actionable feedback

Submitted(+1)

This was a fun little gem! The artstyle is good and the design and basic gameplay is fun! I love the way you control by shooting! The game may become a bit monotonous after a while, and a smaller bounding box for the player would be nice, so that you can see the enemies before you get hit. 

Developer

Thank you for playing our game and for sharing your feedback!

Submitted(+2)

That was really good ! Very simple but extremely efficient, with a great polish on top of that. Well done !

Developer

Many thanks for playing our game!

Submitted(+2)

I love all the feedback you get when you click, i also like the choice of shapes, it makes it very easy to quickly see how many times you need to shoot them. For future improvements, consider giving the player upgrades, this can be done by placing upgrades at random positions or maybe a leveling/exp system where you can choose between 3 random upgrades every level like Vampire Survivors

Developer(+1)

Thanks a lot for playing our game! 

That's a very cool idea, might be just the boost our game needs :D

Submitted(+1)

I absolutely adore this game! It's a simple yet incredibly fun arcade experience. It successfully captures the essence of retro gaming while also being highly addictive.

My personal favorite aspect is the mechanic of using the laser to both dodge and move around. It adds a unique twist to the gameplay, and I can't help but gush over how well you incorporated the theme in such a creative way. And that art style is just- perfection! simple, modern, neon and everything in between haha!

If I were to offer some constructive feedback, I would suggest giving players more reasons to avoid sticking in the corner and cheesing the game. For example, you could implement a warning system that triggers when a player spends too long in a corner, signaling the imminent spawning of an object. Alternatively, you could opt for a surprise element with no warning at all! You could also make the walls kill you though that could be too tricky for players. Additionally, for future releases, consider adding power-ups to enhance the gameplay experience. Plus it would be fantastic to see the background visuals morph and behave like the old Windows Media Player visualizer—a visually mesmerizing touch! 

 Furthermore, expanding the game with additional modes, such as a laser tag-inspired versus mode or even a rhythm-based mode, would add even more excitement. Take these with a grain of salt since this is just top of my head silly ideas haha!

Overall, this game is nothing short of amazing. It ranks among the top submissions in my opinion. If you plan on a full release, rest assured that I'll be one of the first to purchase a copy—I'm that enthusiastic about your duos work! Keep up the incredible job!

Developer(+1)

Hey @Christoff! Firstly, thanks a lot for the detailed review. It's really helpful for us in getting our game to the next level! 

As to your feedback about incentivising moving away from corners, that's a very good call out, and some interesting ideas to do it too - I'm sure it would be vital in making the game that much more fun and action packed! We are planning to polish things up, and maybe include some of your amazing suggestions. Feel free to add any other random ideas that come to mind, they're great!

Thanks again! Heading to your game to have a play...

Submitted(+2)

The visuals in this are great

Developer(+1)

Thanks a lot, we had a lot of fun making them!