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I saw this game being streamed and thought that it had an art style reminiscent of the era of freeware discs - something you'd randomly find online - like Jazz Jack Rabbit - and I mean that in the best way possible lol. The game was fun, I didn't get to the end, but I think I got fairly far. The difficult was just right, imo - which I think a lot of entries have trouble with difficulty settings and end up making things too difficult and I end up quitting in the first few minutes of game play (my personal philosophy is to try to make my jam game a little more on the easy side so that the player can get the whole gist of it - easier said than done of course). 

I liked the twin stick shooter format, although found it a little jarring when the entire mech would be facing the way your point while moving in the opposite direction - I know it's a jam, so this aspect isn't that big of a deal, however, in my past projects that utilized a similar system, I would cut the sprite in half and flip the upper body when the player faces the opposite direction their moving. 

Another thing I want to point out is the that the bullets would feel like they're moving slower when you're moving to the right while shooting to the right (comparatively to shooting to the left).. In my past exp, that was because the player would be moving while the bullets' speed rate is still at it's initial values - it feels weird how at times I'm almost running side by side or just a bit behind the bullet - I had to solve this by adding the player's speed to the bullet speed (or just giving the bullet a much much faster speed so it didn't matter what direction you're facing) when they're move and shooting in that particular direction. 

One more thing, I think that you could have added health packs throughout the levels - or in Armored Core VI's fashion - adding a repair point. I would beat levels by the skin of my teeth lol - to which it would have been nice to have at least 1 health pack since the levels were kind of long

I really liked how many different weapons you were able to include and I'd say they all varied quite a bit and not just a slight rework of one or 2 weapons. They were fun to use. One bit of feedback though, is that I thought you too often grouped multiple weapons together - I figured to give the player more variety on what weapon they want to use, however, they were place kind of awkwardly. Once I got the weapon I wanted, I had to try to dodge the other weapon - which sometimes I failed at. A couple work arounds would be to place them in a way where they are more easily avoidable - or add a doom style arsenal where you can swap between weapons and pick up ammo for them to be able to use them again.

anyways, it was fun!

Thanks for your detailed feedback Denny’sGuy !

I tried my hand at the engine’s 2D lighting system to give a bit more juice to the weapons when firing, and since i made a past entry in a similar style but that felt very 16 bit i thought the overall more colorful sprites and light system would make it look like a more Pc or 32 bit cd based game, so i’m glad i seemed to achieve that from what you’re saying :D

Difficulty wise i tend to lean towards the easier side as well especially for jams cause i want to avoid player frustration, my personal philosophy on this is that i want to make retro inspired games with the visual and audio styles of the times, but to avoid all the game design and gameplay flaws they had back then as much as possible, though i’ll admit proper balance is still hard on such a short time.

Yeah i wanted to have independent aim and movement so players could dodge more easily, i gotta be honest though i didn’t even think of separating the upper/lower parts indeed this would make the movement separation a bit more obvious, gotta look into that if i get time post jam.

I think i made the player’s shots a bit too slow in general, so i’ll have to adjust that, i didn’t playtest enough to get things adjusted better.

The Hp powerups thing is puirely cause i managed my time poorly and didn’t have time to make some and place them in levels, though i gotta say i kinda like your suggestion with some Armored core style repair stations instead cause that would be something a bit different so i’ll see if i can try that if i get time post jam ^^

The weapons were initially placed grouped like that cause of the co-op element as i wanted players to always have something available for both but without proper playstesting of the multi i can get it feels a bit akwardly placed at times :/ I wanted something a bit more Contra-Like so i don’t think i’ll have a whole Doom Style arsenal but i’ll see if i can maybe add a Pickup prompt or something so you can just walk over weapons you don’t want to avoid jumping over them. Glad you liked the variety though, and it seems like a lot of people did which makes me very happy :D

i spent (way too much) quite a lot of time and had a lot of fun making these XD