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A jam submission

Slay the DevilView game page

Dark Souls Inspired Metroidvania
Submitted by QuinnCG — 6 hours, 20 minutes before the deadline
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Slay the Devil's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Sensory#34.1544.154
Enjoyment#63.6923.692
Overall#83.8623.862
Metroidvania#93.9233.923
Execution#113.5383.538
Relevance to the theme picked#134.0004.000

Ranked from 13 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Theme Chosen
Hell

Engine
Unity

Team/Developer
QuinnCG

Prizes eligibility
PlusMusic's best soundtrack category

Reference info
Discord: quinncg

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Comments

Submitted

Wonderful work, I really enjoyed my time with your game!

-The art direction is top tier. Music and art are very cohesive and extremely well done. Everything is so readable

-What a variety of abilities! They're each fun to use and have obvious utility to them

-enemy variety is also impressive. Strong silhouettes for each of them and their attacks are telegraphed well

-souls-like inspo is fantastic and adapted well. I love how much you leaned into it with your checkpoints

-my only nitpick is the screenshake is a bit too intense for my personal preference


Congrats on submitting! This was a joy to slay play

Submitted (1 edit)

That's a really nice one, and fairly well polished too. Short and sweet, as the wise would say. Feels awesome to just waddle my sword while running into stuff until they die, specially after I just bought 5 strength upgrades and mowed everyone on 2 hits. The mere action of slashing just feels so right here really, to the animation to the sound effect and to the impact and weight of every hit, really makes me feel like the master of blade waddling. When it comes to gamefeel in general you really knocked it out of the park tbh, congrats on that!
Visuals are also really sweet, the animations specially are really top notch. Music is also pretty viby and fits well, altought I have to admit, I closed the game 2 mins ago and already forgot how it sounded like, but that's more because atmospheric music is just not my cup of tea anyway.

The bosses are also pretty nice, they really capture that Hollow Knight/Dark Souls boss feeling. Altought I need to be honest, they both kinda feel like they have essentialy the same moves, the Demon General really feels like just a "Big Dude Tier 2", so if he had some more different moves it would have been nice. (But that can be bias too, I'm way more of an apeshit platformer guy than a souls-like guy, so my ideals for good boss design are also kinda affected by that I guess)

Now to be more nitpicky tho, I really hate when games doesn't use the "UP" input (in this case W) for anything at all, but simply decide to put jump into the spacebar for no reason. This is really just personal preference, I can get over it, but it bothers me still (Not the end of the world tho, heck, the very entry I worked on also commits this sin xD). The level design of the hellish area could be better too, for now it's really just a lot of blind jumps with the risk of falling on lava.

I also had absolutely no clue what the blessings deal were, there's nothing on the game explaining it, and the page said they're "equippable" but there's no input listed as to how to equip them at all, so I didn't use any.

I also assume the Demon General is the final thing you face, because after that I tried to re-explore everything and didn't find anywhere to go with the double jump.
Oh yeah, almost forgot, but I also really appreciate the amount of secrets you added. That's kind of a very important thing to metroidvanias but very few entries to this jam actually do it, so that was a nice surprise :)

And I guess that's all, I recorded my playthrought too so if you wanna see it just ask, but I think there's nothing super interesting on it tbh.

Submitted

Had a really good time playing it. I like the athmosphere in the two levels.

I had a hard time killing the shield ennemy and on the second boss i basically smashed and then took a potion and repeat. Didn't find a strategy to hit him consistently without being hitten.

The visibility in the hell level when falling is a bit frustrating because lava is killing you instantly. Maybe having a map like metroid in the corner would help.

That was really fun ! Congrats !

Submitted

This game has some great art and music. Feels well polished with animations, mechanics, and level design. 

Like other people have said, the controls could be improved. It always seemed to me that whenever I attack something I'd always be hit by the enemy first. Maybe it's that the enemy moves too quickly or my sword is too short? 2D platformers aren't my strength, so I'm sure some people would find it a lot easier. 

Great job!

Submitted

Very polished game. Combat feel satisfying with all the vfx, and the game has good amount of hidden upgrade that encourage exploration. This game giving me a strong Hollow Knight vibe.

One thing I don't like though, is the way your character dash forward if they attack. It make a bit hard to maintain position from enemy.

Submitted (1 edit)

Decent base but there's a lot of jank here. For one thing, jumps dont reset when leaving a platform, so you can jump in midair without double jump as long as you didnt jump when you were still on the ground.  The controls are also really weird and don't feel like they were designed with a 2d game in mind - mouse to attack in a game with no aiming is particularly strange. Dodging felt pretty inconsistent which might also have to do with the controls - shift is always a bit of an awkward key to reach and press quickly.

The enemies also feel way too responsive and agile compared to the player and often felt more difficult than the bosses who had relatively more thought out attack patterns and longer telegraphs.  The shielded enemy in particular was impossible to defeat because it would turn around immediately if you ever got behind it.

The lack of a typical pause menu in a game that's fullscreen by default is also a bit of a problem, I had to use alt+f4 to quit. Aside from that, after beating the demon general the next room warp just didn't lead anywhere. It's understandable if the rest of the game is incomplete but it would be nice to have some indication of that instead of just a broken warp.

All that said I did have fun with this, and it's definitely really appealing visually. Soundtrack was good too, nice work on that.

Developer

Thanks for playing and for the detailed feedback. The AI in particular was something I had issues with as I went the lazy route early on in the base AI system. I hope to make much better AI next time.

Submitted

This was a really solid combat system. The solid thunk when hitting enemies was very satisfying, and the coin explosion on death felt great. Movement was really smooth and it was pretty easy to navigate through the areas. I liked the atmosphere, although I'd kind of like to know why I'm going to slay the devil. :D Also the character and enemy designs were great - a particular highlight for me was when I heard the first wolf man cry out, I laughed out loud.

Some feedback:

1. I never really felt that Dead Cells-esque ballet of "dodge and attack", I felt like every time I tried to dodge through an enemy I just ended up taking damage anyway. The hit boxes on some of the monsters or their attacks felt a bit overly punishing as well (the demon general's giant sword hitting you while standing behind him or the shield guys stood out to me as very unforgiving).

2. I know other people have said it, but lack of a map. The game was very large and while the trek from campfire to campfire was fairly quick, I reached a point where I didn't really know where I should go next and had nothing to reference. I feel like I knew where I was supposed to go (it was after the double jump), but just couldn't get there. It also didn't help that I seem to have encountered a bug where the camera wouldn't scroll as far left as there was stage, so I couldn't see where I was going (it's in Hell directly across from the first entrance, there's a wolf man there).

3. I agree with what people said about gravity on the jump. I really liked the ridiculousness of the upward force, it felt appropriately over the top for the character as presented, but I'd like to feel some weight behind his descent. 

Anyway, as I said I really enjoyed the combat in this game, and as I'm writing this I just remembered you had a stat and shop system too! Very impressive implementation for a game jam (although auto--equipping the blessings would have been nice, I never figured out how to equip them). I'd enjoy more of combat like this, just a ridiculously weighty, screen-shakey smash fest. :D Great entry!

Developer

Thank you for playing. I'm glad you enjoyed the game. You're feedback is excellent. Again, thanks.

Submitted

I slayed the devil. :v)

Very nice game with good atmosphere and fun combat! I had quite a lot of fun with it, and the abundance of upgrades available made the difficulty manageable. Here's to even more awesome games in the future!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for that and for playing.

Submitted

Wow, truly excellent work! The oppressive atmosphere, simple yet evocative pixel art and animations, and overall high quality of effects work make this feel very polished. A lot of elements reminded me of Hollow Knight.

I did have a couple of pieces of feedback, though. The jump feels way too floaty, I would recommend adding additional gravity on the downward arc. And the movement forward when attacking was difficult to get a hang of, I often found myself getting damaged by moving into the enemy as I attacked. But I feel that if you iterate on these game-feel pieces, you will have an beautiful, immersive work on your hands!

Developer

Thanks for playing and I like your feedback.

Submitted

This is a well polished entry. Art is fantastic. Just the right amount player to the player. Bosss felt fair enough and weren't too tanky. However, the thing that sticks out to me is that lack of the map. The bigger the metroidvania entry, the more important it is to have a map to reference to help remember spots you couldn't get to, but no can. Or just to get your bearings. 

Overall a great entry!

Developer

I agree a map is something I should have added. Thanks for playing though.

(1 edit)

I have to say, there were some aspects of the game that I really enjoyed. Firstly, the music was simply outstanding! It added so much to the overall experience and really enhanced the gameplay. The art in the game was also incredibly well done. The visuals were stunning and truly brought the game world to life.

However, there was one issue that I couldn't overlook. Moving forward while attacking didn't feel as smooth as I had hoped. It somewhat detracted from the overall enjoyment of the game.

Nonetheless, I want to emphasize that the music and art were exceptional. They created an immersive and captivating atmosphere that made the game truly memorable.

Overall, the game has a lot of potential, and with some improvements to the movement mechanics, it could be even more enjoyable. But hats off to the developer for creating such an incredible soundtrack and visually stunning artwork!

Developer

:o

Submitted

The controls were not the friendliest. Sadly at odds with the atmosphere, which was excellent!

Developer

Thanks for the feedback.