Very creative take on the theme. I'm a real sucker for y2k/old windows/frutiger aero aesthetics, so the game was very attractive to try in that regard.
The presentation and lead-up to the gameplay were lovely. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy the patterns and the boss fight at all. There were a few reasons for this:
- The gameplay feels very slow. Every pattern continues on for an extremely long time, and the boss itself is super tanky. It would be way more fun if the boss switched patterns more often, and had more variations of attacks.
- The previous point is made even more painful due to most patterns being cheeseable. The pattern on your page's gif as an example - you can just stand in the same spot and not move and you'll be safe. And then the pattern keeps going for like half a minute? I would accept it if the pattern only took a few seconds before switching to something else that requires player action, but as is, it just felt very boring. You could make the bullet spawner rotate ever so slightly, shifting the safespots and making the player move, and it would already be an improvement.
- The massive performance drops on higher bullet counts were not pleasant, but again, you can just stand at a safespot and not move until a different attack happens. I don't think this issue affected my opinion on gameplay as it doesn't happen all the time, but it definitely clouds judgement.
Overall - I think the idea is cool. I can't think of a single bullet hell or a shmup with this aesthetic. I think it needs way more time, adjustments and playtesting, as well as a more robust way of rendering bullets (though you seem to have already fixed the performance according to one of your earlier comments). You don't need to change anything about presentation, but I would look into adjusting text spacing, icons and ui element sizes to make them more faithful to the old windows style. Understandably, it is a challenge, considering how different our modern resolutions are to the 4:3 of back then.
Congratulations on finishing the jam!
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Thank you for the honest feedback, my current custom bullet system wasnt ideal for creating insane or really complex bullet patterns unfortunately, performance wise mostly and also just actually making them.
This is my first time ever making a bullet hell programming 99% solo too, so definitely a lot was learned about making them. I'm glad you really enjoyed the presentation though.