Definitely one of the most unique visual styles I've seen for a bullet hell type game, the intro had me interested, but once I entered the first actual area, I was stunned at how cool it looked. And that boss is awesome, classing retro bullet hell design, with a big wall of death spraying millions of projectiles all over the screen. Movement could use some reworking though, it doesn't really lend itself to the bullet hell gameplay. I think it could be a unique take on the genre if the projectiles also had to stick to the same grid as you, maybe something to consider if you ever returned to this project, which I hope you do!
Viewing post in Kernel Panic! jam comments
Yeah, I think I'll change the movement so the player can move freely (after all, it's a main character and rules don't apply to them xd). The only reason I made it like it is because I wanted the characters to move like a text cursor, tapping moves it instantly, and holding moves it faster after a short delay. And enemies will keep moving the way they do now.
About projectiles snapping to the grid. I already tried it and it looked terrible. Projectiles are much faster than the player and there are tons of them, so it made the whole game look super jittery. It might look better if they moved slower, and only vertically and horizontally, but I don't want to do that, I think it would be way harder to create interesting attacks this way.
I also don't think I will stick strictly to text for the visuals like in the prototype. I really like how the environment and the final boss look because there’s enough room for text. The player looks fine too, since it’s just a '0' and doesn't need many symbols. But visualizing small enemies, items, or icons is going to be a real pain. I want enemies to look like part of a real system, and making for example an antivirus or a daemon look good with just few symbols will be frickin hard.
Free movement is definitely a good solution, and it's cool to hear that you attempted the grid based projectiles, even if it didn't work out. I did appreciate that the movement felt like a text cursor, it's just the enemies didn't like me moving so slowly haha. It sounds like you're intending to work on this more then? I'm excited to see what you have in store!