This was great! I love the look of the game and the gameplay was super fun. The music was great too, and the whole game meshed together really nicely.
My first thought on playing this was that it felt really similar to BPM: Bullets per Minute, but synthwave, scaled down to jam-size and a lot more contained in its gameplay. This similarity isn't a negative on this game at all, though, I'm honestly really happy that the FPS rhythm game concept is getting used and it's executed really well here! The gameplay was simple but satisfying, and felt really good to work with.
I do really love the visuals in the game, I'm so happy to see the PSX style in something that isn't horror- and the synthwave theme fits it really nicely! Loving the gun model in particular, it'd be great to have one of those in real life :) The bouncing bars on the edge of the map looked really cool too, and set the scene for the arena really well.
My main thought is that it was quite difficult to read where enemies are and where they're coming from. There's not really any consistent indication that the spawn walls are about to change, and if I'm not constantly scanning all around there's a reasonable chance enemies will sneak up on me. Some kind of audio or visual indicator to show that a wall is about to change could be really helpful, just some way to track what's going on a little easier. I'm hesitant to say minimap, but it could possibly work? Unsure about that idea as it'd likely break the diegetic-ness which I'm a big fan of
I found the fast guys in level 3 to be REALLY fast, I didn't feel like I had much of a chance against them- but I'm fairly confident that's just a skill issue on my part, so I'm not considering that a valid criticism yet :) It may just be player bias, but it felt like there was more leeway for perfect shots after the beat rather than before? Not massive, but enough for me to notice. Also, going back to the main menu partway through the game seems to clear my full progress- I figured it would take me back to the start of the song, just not the whole game 😔.
I had a great time playing this one!! Awesome gameplay, awesome visuals, awesome music- really putting the jam in game jam :))