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An interesting idea, but on account of the friendly-fire and ghosts not aggroing enemies (and so often not actually killing them as the enemy was positioned different during that ghost’s life) every attempt would tend to become harder than the last.

In general this feels bad, though given the theming of your game it seems to be the point, and I do think the idea’s worth exploring. But maybe there should be some incentive to the player for continuing on despite all the ghosts they’ve spawned, as opposed to just hard restarting. Maybe with each prior life, additional loot from that ill-fated adventurer was dropped in the dungeon that could help the player, or there could be a roguelite upgrades system like in Rogue Legacy. And if you don’t mind my proffering further ideas there could be a way (whether it be an upgrade or something else) to “exorcize” particularly troublesome ghosts so that you’re not always stuck just waiting for them to despawn.

I must say that the random enemy spawns I in particular didn’t like, as these are enemies that your ghosts definitely aren’t helping you with, and on later attempts you’ll have ghosts firing seemingly at random on account of these spawns. Also, these spawns could happen rather close to the player, which would feel troublesome.

I did like the character customization screen, even if it didn’t have too many options. (But hey, time constraints.) A randomize button for this screen would be nice, as otherwise players who just want to quickly start their next go are gonna end up always playing a nameless naked dude.

Sorry for a lot of criticisms. Despite them, it’s clear to me that good work went into this game. The art’s quite nice with a fitting style, and the top-down shooter gameplay played pretty well, though was definitely too difficult. (Having more than one HP would help a lot.)

Good work overall!

(+1)

Thank! you! This is really great and honest feedback, I really appreciate that :)

My responses are kind of from bottom to top: I would have really loved for the enemy spawning to be the same in each round for the game jam version (it is already fixed in the github version) but there was a problem with the seeding in the jam version, so yes it’s really annoying. The randomize button for character customization is a great idea and on our todo list from now on. The few customization options were just because of the time constraints, yes. I think I will stick with the single HP, because I fear there could be players doing a whole running without ever seeing (or being) a single ghost. The ghosts though are something I thought about a lot after finishing this game jam. There is a ghostkill upgrade, but it only accounts for the current run and the ghosts are back in the next one. Making it absolute would come with other issues like killing a really important ghost accidentally or ghosts with the upgrade killing future important ghosts. I will have to think about it a bit more, but I really think some kind of exorcise functionality would be useful. Incentives to keep playing are also something we hadn’t quite worked out for the jam. This was another case of starting on a half fleshed out game idea and realizing a bunch of problems while implementing it. Ghosts not aggroing enemies is kind of annoying but I also find it quite interesting, because you as the player (knowing you will be a ghost) have to be aware of that and for example shoot at places where there had been an enemy but it walked away because it got aggroed, but in the next run when it wouldn’t get aggroed you (as a ghost now) would only be able to hit it where it spawned. It’s kind of mind-bending and also delays the gameplay somewhat which is not ideal, but as a game jam concept I found it really interesting. If you want to play a improved version of the game there will be updates on itch after the jam and also maybe a new release in between on github