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A jam submission

PentaPulseView game page

A rythmic bullet-hell bossrush game, fighting pentagons as a circle
Submitted by Stealthix (@stealthix_dev), Tony Irayhany — 22 hours, 47 minutes before the deadline
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PentaPulse's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Gameplay / Fun / Engagement#24.2004.200
Art Style / Visuals#24.2334.233
Overall#24.1834.183
Audio / Sound Design#34.0004.000
Theme#84.3004.300

Ranked from 30 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Game Engine / Tools
Godot Engine 4.4.1

How does your game fit the theme?
The player is being trapped and thus in a "Limited Space"

Anything else you'd like to share about your game or development process?
There is a very rare and inconsistent bug where the music would stop playing and the application freezes. Reloading the page should fix the issue.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

I love it! It's addictive. I really wanted to get to the end! I do dare to challenge a god! But I broke it... 😢🙁 The white pentagon isn't shooting things at me anymore and the little pentagons around it do still rotate. I might've pressed 'retry' one too many times or the animation to turn the screen white and black got stuck and never happened. I really like it, it's brilliant! Spicy! Hard! Entertaining! All the love!

Developer (1 edit)

Thank you! And sorry it happened to you. It is a rare bug we encounter and can't pinpoint (I made the music and I am not the developer, though). Unfortunately, you have to replay the game from the start and redo all the first bosses, hoping that the bug happen again (if I am not wrong).

Developer(+2)

Unfortunately as Tony already mentioned it's a bug that hardlocks you :/ Nothing much you can do but reload the page. Really sorry that you're experiencing this issue (But pss if you don't want to redo all the fights, the button on the right of L on your keyboard (ö on a german keyboard) can be used to skip bosses, don't tell anyone).

But I'm glad that you're loving it <3 we really poured in all our effords in this project!

Submitted(+1)

Art and Sound/Music are 5/5 stars for me, really impressive level of polish and juice that makes for a very complete experience. The trailing particle effects are great, the glowing/pulsating effect is super sick, the death and attack animations are all stellar. It's a very enjoyable visual experience that pairs perfectly with the thumping background track. The music is great and adds a ton overall to the feel, and the sfx are nice and crunchy and cohesive with everything else going on.

The idea of having to dash through enemy attacks and bait the enemy into hurting themselves was a really interesting twist on the core gameplay. I found it a little bit confusing/unintuitive for some bosses/attacks but once it started to click it felt pretty good.

Overall, I really enjoyed my playthrough. The art and music are awesome and the plethora of polish/juice carries a relatively simple gameplay concept very far. Great entry!!

Submitted(+1)

Beautifully made, polished game, doesnt feel like it was made in just 10 days :) loved the visual style and the hectic gameplay.. took me a while to get into it since i havent played many similar games, but sure is fun, once you get in the rhythm! The music takes the cake though!! What a superb track, just wanted to get to the next enemy to see what the music will be hahah

great job, congrats on this!

Developer(+1)

Thank you! Tony really nailed the music! And I put a lot of efford into polishing and making it feel as smooth as I could, I'm glad that it shows

Submitted(+1)

One of my favorite games of the jam so far! Great style, music and gameplay. I saw a post of yours in the Discord and it inspired some of the design choices I made in my game.  Nice job!

Developer

I appreciate the feedback and I'm glad that I could inspire you for your game in some way! 

Submitted(+1)

These Dummies are quite Mad! I had so much trouble with the cyan boss cause I completely forgot i had a dash lmao. Great game overall and its nice to see another UTDR Inspired game in the Jam!

Developer

Thanks! And yeah the cyan one is actually one of the toughest overall :D Many struggle harder against it than with the final boss

Submitted
Deleted 54 days ago
Developer

Thank you for the feedback :)

Submitted(+1)

This game was seriously fun! i have many good things to say. it reminded me of flat heroes on switch, which i was totally addicted to too. visuals are stunning, movement feels so smooth and music is amazing, especially when it speeds up. the narrative was little but made it so much more exciting. i really liked the dash affect, this helped me keep my sanity lol. the combat was great, the enemy reflecting your own position was a really cool idea. its hard to critique this, but maybe a tiny invincibility window? 

i also wanted to mention how the smile wiped off my face when the white pentagon started his round 2 TT, but that only extended the fun. the hardest boss for me was blue, i think the game gave me an extra life lol, on that note i really appreciate not being sent all the way back to the first boss. the game was really intuitive, and i felt it didnt need any gameplay guidence. 11/10, gg!

Developer

Thank you Zay for the feedback! It's incredibly valued.

There is an invincibility window but it seems that I put it too low (0.2 seconds) in order to be properly noticed. You're absolutely right on that because it can feel unfair to receive a lot of damage in a short amount of time.

I'm also glad that the progression and adaptive difficulty felt good for you! The difficulty is actually one of the most controverse topics I had among the people that playtested it.

Submitted(+2)

Gentlemen, there is a moment in every jam (ok, almost every jam), where you play a random game, and you know, you've struck gold!

Let's start with the graphics- using pentagons, one circle, but also some smart particle effects, colors and animations you've created something really stylish. Hell, even the choice of color palette works here! And the negative colors at the end? Bravo!

The music and sfx? Everybody loves Megalovania, and I'm not gonna pretend I don't. Brillo!

Now lets talk about the gameplay. Five bosses? With different mechanics? With a secret boss fight at the end? Awesome! Oh- one more thing! Making the game easier after you fail a couple of times? Brilliant! After all- it's a jam game, not a soulslike!

Are there things that I didn't like? Well... no. I guess one time when the pentagon talked while positioned over the border pentagon the letters were "above" the screen and I didn't see them.

Brilliant work guys!

Developer

Thank you so much for your amazing feedback :) It's very heartwarming to read and it makes all the hard work of the past week pay off. We really tried our best to deliver an as polished experience as possible and tried to pull that through on every aspect.

Submitted(+1)

I enjoyed the take on the Undertale-like combat system, and the integration with the theme was pretty awesome. It took me a while to figure out how to get the enemy's to hit themselves but after I did it got pretty engaging and fun. Nice job!

Developer

Thank you! Glad to hear that you liked it! :)

Submitted(+1)

Your game delivers a perfectly balanced mix of challenge and rhythm, with creative mechanics, fair bosses, and a clever difficulty adjustment that keeps the experience rewarding. Its polished visuals, immersive on-beat music, and brilliant use of the “limited space” theme make it a truly unique and game, while still using pentagons and circles only. Awesome! I can imagine that this is a winner of the jam and I'd like to see more!

This is how I rated your game:

Game play / Fun / Engagement ●●●●●

I carefully played through your game and really enjoyed how the game play felt. It took me some time to beat the bosses, because of lack of skills, but that challenge made the experience even more rewarding. The core loop is well-designed, the tutorial is understandable, mechanics are both creative and balanced. Every encounter felt fair but demanded focus, which kept me engaged and wanting to keep playing. It is also a very nice feature that the difficulty “changes” when you lose, while generating more health! I like it a lot.

Art Style / Visuals ●●●●●

The visual style is striking and perfectly consistent with the overall concept. The clean, geometric designs and the way everything is built around the core shapes makes it unique and memorable. Effects and animations are smooth, polished, and add a lot of character to the game play without ever distracting from it.

Audio / Sound Design ●●●●●

The music is outstanding. Since everything is built around rhythm, the music syncing perfectly to the beat elevates the entire experience. Each pulse and action feels like it belongs in the soundtrack (like intended), making the game play not just responsive, but musical. It is immersive in a way that few action games manage to achieve. Sound effects fit perfectly as well.

Theme ●●●●● The theme fits flawlessly. What makes it stand out is how the limited space theme is not just visual but directly affects game play. The pentagon shaped arena already is your limit, and bosses further restrict movement with their attacks. This heightens the tension, but also the satisfaction when making it! You not only mastered sticking to the limited space theme but also were able to keep everything in pentagons and circles, very good work!

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for your positive, amazing and in-depth feedback Sherlocklini! I highly appreciate it

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Looking at the comments below, I also noticed that the music didn’t always sync properly. Web builds don’t behave like desktop builds. How did you sync yours? I had a global beat manager that would coordinate everything to the beat by looking at the audio time. It still had some quirks in the web build.

Developer

Hey there! Thank you for your feedback and the way I synched it is - there are 6 audio stream players that i'm synchronizing through a BGM Manager since every instrument is played separately in order to allow the music to play dynamically (the synchronized Audio Node for that didnt work in the web export so i had to code my own). Separately to that I had a BeatManager that had a BPM setting and synched it with the start of the music. It works flawless on Desktop but yeah the web build unfortunately has some issues :/

Submitted

Looks like the same setup I have but only one player. I’ll make sure to add a desktop build after the jam just in case.

Submitted(+2)

Hello, we have been chatting on Discord and I’m glad to be able to finally check your game.

I really liked your twist on making the enemies hurt themselves instead of the player shooting as in a regular bullet hell. Also, the little dialog, adds a very nice touch.

Also, having different levels with different little twists is great. Playing the purple one after the red and seeing how the bullets are now deflected was a surprised that made me thing about how to deal with that.

There are still some overlaps between our games like the minimalist aesthetics, enemies spawning outside and the area denial animation effect. But in the end are also so different.

Great job.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

I feel like I would benefit from a better explanation of what’s going on and what I I’m supposed to do, and how, but I enjoyed the game nevertheless. The effects are great, and the interactions felt quite satisfying. The lack of sound or music settings is sad, but not a showstopper. Great work.

Developer

Hey there! Thank you ~ It's a totally fair point, Audio settings would've been a nice addition

Submitted

great and unique game !! 

I feel like Iam playing undertale but better !!!!

very polished well made and the music is just addictave 

Submitted(+1)

Great game! Very polished. One thing I noticed was the enemies attacks weren't always synced with the beat of the music

Developer

Thank you for your feedback!

That's too bad to hear :( Rythm games are tougher to make than expected

Submitted

I think it might be a web issue. Great job on the game though! I could see playing this as a mobile game a lot, if you ever want to publish it ;)

Submitted(+1)

Extremely polished! The fact you have to position yourself to hit the boss with its own projectiles is really unique and made it quite hard to survive!

I especially enjoy the visuals, like the attacks from the purple pentagon.

Developer

Appreciated! Glad that you liked it :)

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Nice game was fun to play, I finaly understood how to beat the pentagons. At first I thought it was time based battle but apperently you need to hit them with their own munition. 

Sad that the lost boss battle was easy to defeat himself with those long attacks. Super polished game, theme was in there and all the shapes to. 

I also experienced a freezing in the gameplay, but that's probably because you haven't changed to a CPU particle emitter.

Developer(+1)

thanks for your feedback! Sorry that you encountered the bug :/ I actually tried changing to CPUParticles which led to some FPS dips and didn’t seem to fix the issue which is why i reverted it. Thanks for the idea though!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

It crashed here for me first time I did the purple pentagon, I was about halfway through, the music carried on playing so possibly a different bug to the one you mentioned 😭 Otherwise though, pretty much perfect entry. Nailed the theme, explored the concept well and didn't ever feel stale. Music was a bop, and dynamic too!!! Visually excellent, nailed the spirit of the "limited shapes" restriction. My only real complaint is that I want more (and it is too easy, probably a good spot difficulty-wise for a game jam but I did the entire thing without being hit lmao). Just excellent, well done.

Developer(+1)

thank you very much! The bug is very unfortunate and im really sorry for you to encounter it :(  im glad that you had fun with the game anyways!

Submitted(+1)

it didn't put me off, I jumped straight back in and beat it without dying 😁 that's a great sign, means your core loop is super engaging. Check your DM's on Discord - I've sent you a message there with my work hat on 😊

Submitted(+1)

Cool game. I was expecting another simple shooter inside a shape, but turn out to be more then that. Nice submission over all.