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Thank you! This kind of comment is the exact kind that warms my heart. I don't think there'll be "more game", I think we're all pretty content and proud of it being a complete round package (thus why it's a 100-man tournament-- If it was much longer we'd probably run out of combatants at some point); but definitely do expect elements from this game to come up in future action games under my design at least, because the things that inspire it are things that continue to inspire me and ideas I want to iterate on. So there may not be a MOTOR HEARTS 2 or a MOTOR HEARTS DX, but you might feel it in a future project.

As for the feedback, I'd like to think that what trips most people up is probably the hitstun you take from enemies, whether being hit or bumping into them; because of that lack of visual feedback. I did originally want there to be a more distinct visual with its own sprite, but we just didn't have time for it and I kind of neglected to have any sort of visual effect. For the next and final update I plan to add something like a "stun meter", some quick visual that would appear under your healthbar that's just a big blinking "CAN'T ACT RN" that also doubles as a timer letting you know when exactly you can. On top of that, I'll probably add a few more types of cancels (like cancelling an attack directly into a turnaround) but besides that and the stuff outlined in the V1.1 Patch Notes, that's basically going to be it. If you still can't beat the final boss by then, I'm sure those things will be a huge help!

Again, thanks so much for this comment, and thank you for sharing your enjoyment of the game! It means the world to us, mine at least.

(Also means a lot you found the amount of minigames impressive since I originally wanted to do far more and was kind of disappointed by my output; was my first time being the sole programmer on a project and vastly overestimated my implementation speed.)

Thank you!! You can enter fullscreen with Alt + Enter; which is sadly the only other resolution option, but it should at least mitigate the eye squinting issue. I really wanted to include a proper Controls menu in the game but the entire menu was a last second thing lol.

Thank you for the comment! Yeah, the pause screen visuals and everything to do with UI was something I really neglected until last minute which is why the menus are so simple; As for the screensize thing, it was just a matter of time-- Fullscreen is built into Game Maker but I would've had to individually code in different resolutions and scale the UI appropriately (which I coded in too much of a last second rush to do efficiently lol); I'm hoping to make a strong "menu" core I can reuse/build upon for later jams and that's one of the first things I'd like to focus on as a growing opportunity (besides learning how to get a web build working lol).

I can tell this game has a lot of love put into it. There's a lot of little details that really come together to make it a really fun package... Minus a few gamefeel issues that I felt brought things down a tad; but it's still probably one of the best games I've played this Jam. Primarily, I just thought your shots were way too slow, even after multiple firerate upgrades, which doesn't help when later enemies just have so much HP; and combined with this, I thought that waves were way too long and the fact that they were a static timer instead of being affected by how many enemies the player kills takes away some of the agency from the player; plus I think in general waves being shorter would make it feel more appropriately "unstable",  since you'd have the "random effects" happening a lot more frequently! But I mention these issues because they are to me noticeable spots on an otherwise very impressive solid package. Great work here!

This game is EXTREMELY inventive and despite its simplicity it already has some excellent gamefeel. I love seeing my little wire go all over the place and the way enemy ships explode. Definitely agree that this has a lot of potential with more time-- In particular I think it would be cool if you could use enemy ships as "shields" from bullet barrages and if instead of just waiting for them to die you could "Yank" on the cable to tear them apart (this is what I thought I was doing at first before realizing it was just placebo, but I kept doing it anyway cuz' it looks sick). You have the core of something super sick here!!

This game's aesthetic is really charming and there's really good details like the hitstop when you deal damage to the boss. Overall, I like the ideas here-- Its big issues are just a lack of polish overall. The barrier feels very wonky and not in a good way-- Instead of being a proper meter, the moment you use it even a little, you have to wait for it to fully recharge before you can use it again (even if you only hold it for half of the bar or all of it), which makes it feel very janky if you only use it for a small second and then can't use it again. Also for some reason it's way better to hit the shots than to use your shield, since hitting them with your sword makes them drop health but not the barrier, which makes the barrier your worse defensive option... Which feels counter-intuitive. People have already mentioned the character's double jump feeling strange, so I won't comment on that. A lot of this really is just ironing out and polish, which are difficult to do within a jam time limit; so the fact you still have something with this amount of production value (like the cutscene) is super impressive! 

LOL Sorry if I've come off as intimidating in comments 😭 I just try to bring attention to the "little details" and how they can make a huge difference, even something as simple as lowering or increasing a number by a little. And yeah, don't worry, I can relate to being super tight on time by the end. You managed to make something impressive in spite of all that!

I think the idea behind the core mechanic is unique and the aesthetic is INCREDIBLY charming and well produced, especially for the deadline-- However it does suffer a bit from clarity issues (I kinda struggled figuring out what I could eat and what I couldn't); the biggest issue with the game is just how much health enemies have... Even with a powered up shot things like flowers and beehives take forever to kill and even the "weakest" enemy (the dragonfly at the start) requires multiple shots; it leaves you feeling weak and helpless which dampens how satisfying the game feels. I also in general think some of the patterns would've benefited from the critters not doing damage (like their introduction where you have to kill the flowers or run straight into the wall of butterflies); but with some tweaks to the numbers this could really be something special. Also, this really could've used some score. Sick stuff either way though! Seriously well-produced.

This is super cute! The patterns are simple and yet take advantage of the turn-based system and the turn timer adds a good bit of spice. It's a bit short,  but there's a solid base for something really special here.

Ahh, thank you so much!! I wanted to play your game first thing in the jam cuz' the aesthetic immediately caught my eye but sadly my computer sucks and isn't running a bunch of Godot projects :<. It means a lot though!!

This game has a super charming aesthetic! And it has a lot of really well executed details such as the bullets vanishing when you get hit or beat a boss phase. The effect when you get hit is a little disorienting and a bit jarring, but I also kinda loved it. The two main issues polish-wise I found were the fact the (kinda confusing) menu disappears completely when you return from beating a boss, and the game lagging a lot on the web build when a bunch of bullets are cleared. I found the reflect mechanic pretty fun to use and I found the bullet patterns quite engaging with the first two bosses, but the last boss had a very bizarre difficulty curve where the first phase felt near impossible until I realized you could just ignore the bees and move up to the creature itself and hit it. I don't even know if you can kill the bees or if they're just decoys, so some more clarity there would also have been good. Overall, I think this is a solid starting point for a good shmup!

Thanks a billion! And yeah, haha the menus were rushed pretty last minute; reworking them from scratch is one of the first things I wanna work on; and I'll definitely mouse support when I do. Thanks again!!

The first thing I noticed-- Not sure how intentional it was, was how the shooting rate (even when unstable) seemed to be in sync with the music's BPM, almost creating a sort of rhythmic feel to the whole thing. It really elevated the feel of the production, alongside the lighting effects and the cute designs. However, even putting aside the bug, I just felt like the main mechanic kind of lacks player agency. When your gun becomes unstable, there is very little you can do, and if there are bullets around it's basically just praying you don't get bounced all around. To its credit it offering you health between rooms does mitigate this (though no idea why it always does it in the roguelike three-cards format when it always offered me some combination of two hearts, or all hearts [do the blue cards mean anything different?]), but it still means you can have a plenty good run just ended on the spot. While I think iframe dashes can be kind of a "generic" design idea in this kind of top down shooter, in this case something like that that you could do mid-instability to give yourself some defense in a pinch would've helped a lot, or just some kind of defensive maneuver altogether to give the player more control. Overall, though, pretty charming experience! You've got a lot of potential.

I reeaally wanted to enjoy this more than I did, the art was pretty and I loved the theming (moths are sick)... But something about dodging the bullets felt strangely difficult-- Like either the moth's hitbox was too big, or the bullet's hitboxes were too big (maybe a mix of both); patterns I felt like I would've squeezed through just fine in any other game kept hitting me nonstop. The mechanic of having shots make you more unstable and you "healing" gradually sounds lenient at first but the patterns are so intense and have no cooldowns, which leads to it feeling more like a death spiral, because as you start getting hit you lose visibility and find it harder to dodge until you get overwhelmed and obliterated. (I also thought getting hit/hitting the boss could have more visual/audio feedback than just the colors personally). The theming is super cute and it's a good vibe, but there was just SOMETHING off about the hitboxes that made the dodging feel unreasonable and dampened the experience.

This is super charming! I really love the playing dead mechanic. I think the main things it could've benefitted from is primarily slower enemy bullets, since they can sometimes come from offscreen so quickly you have no time to react (and making them slower would also allow for more variety in shot patterns), and faster respawns (jumping straight to getting the gun instead of the little cutscene before it); but it's super fun all the same.

This is pretty cute! The autoshoot adds an interesting layer and the effects on killing enemies is very punchy and satisfying, and it's good that there's a good mix of 1 hp enemies and stronger ones. As people have mentioned the gunfire sfx is a little loud and annoying, and the feedback on being hit as a player is so minuscule it's a bit underwhelming; but it's quite neat. Ditto on it making a good mobile game lol.

This game has a neat idea, but it suffers from needing some tune-ups desperately: Enemies shoot so fast and your shield depletes so quickly the game is just about awkwardly spamming spacebar in circles around enemies then moving in and doing a few points of damage before you return to the cat and mouse chase; making each wave feel like it takes forever. Having slower bullets but ones that can go in more elaborate patterns, and less enemy HP would do a lot to improve the feel of the game and also allow for a better escalation in difficulty as the waves go on. Cool concept, though!

Very charming little game! Maybe more feedback on the player being hit like some hitstop would be good, but in general it's a very unique idea executed very well.

This has a pretty fun loop! I had some weird issues with, I think hitstop? Where randomly after (I think) getting hit, my seal would suddenly stop and be unable to move for a bit; but the premise of trying to grab star cookies but not too much and dodging bullets was fun. I think it got a little tiring after a point, maybe if the boss had less HP but changed more drastically as their health went down? Or if the penguin changed up their patterns instead of staying on the left. But either way, this was pretty cute and I loved the designs.

This is a super creative little idea! The setting has a lot of personality; besides the missing sound, I'd say my two big issues are the fact that even though the camera is isometric, the controls aren't, which I found disorienting-- And while the oilies making you more slippery is a great idea, I thought that the escalation felt too... "sudden"? I barely noticed what was going on since getting darker was so subtle and the additions to my slipperiness felt minute until suddenly I was SUPER dark and slippery and it was impossible to survive. I think it would be a little more exciting if you started a little slippery by default and had each hit have a more noticeable, gradual change to your movement (and in exchange there could be items that spawn randomly that can clean you up a little or something). Looking forward to seeing more of this!

This game is immensely charming. The detail on the art, things like the mission start screen, all super cool; I love the feel of the homing missiles while Focusing, and the bullet patterns themselves feel difficult while being fair-- And stuff like the tornados coming in from the sides of the screen to limit your movement are simple but very unique. With some more polish (and more levels of course) I could see this turning into a real full fledged shmup if you can keep having interesting "weather conditions" like this every level. I like how cute the character designs are too! Keep up the great work.

The isometric perspective and the addition of things like the windows where you can shoot but not walk past were little small but clever things that give this an edge. I love the movement of the tomato and the dash was a neat addition, but man... The shooting just felt so weak and unsatisfying. Even past the sound effects, you do such little damage to enemies per bullet with your default gun (or rather, enemies have far too much health), and the reloading is so slow, it really gives the whole game kind of an "awkward" hit and run vibe and makes replaying enemy arenas when you die really tedious. Even when you know how to avoid the bullets it just becomes frustrating. This is the kind of game whose biggest issue is just small numbers. With some tweaks to the math this could become a really charming, exciting experience.

This game has a lot of potential but it suffers from a few "little things" that kinda bring the experience down from being the addictive flash game experience it's meant to be. The telegraphs for the lasers are nearly nonexistent and the laser speeds are unpredictable to the point you can get ganked without even realizing what got you-- This also prevents it from having a gradual smooth escalation (getting harder as it goes on). The movement having acceleration makes you feel slippery and makes this problem far worse... But I'd say the real biggest issue is just how long it takes to respawn. You have the long death animation and then a little bit before the restart option appears in the menu. This game really needed a quick respawn option so you could continually get back into the flame! That said, the little details of polish and the menus are charming. With a few tweaks I could totally get hooked by this game.

Thank you! I'll give it another try later today with the Q and E switching. I definitely think letting the player still survive using "wrong elements" was a good idea. 

This game is super addictive, lol, though it has a few key flaws that prevent it from reaching that perfect flow state of a flash game of this kind. First of all, if it actually showed you an indicator of exactly how high you got so you had a record to beat every time you died, it would've done a lot. Second of all, I found the shooting kind of annoying-- Why can't you just hold to shoot like a normal shmup? It's not like bullets have a cooldown anyway so it's just all about how fast you can mash; it makes killing enemies kind of exhausting at no real benefit. 

That said, the game is still immensely charming. I love the feeling of falling allll the way down before hitting the floor. With a bit more polish this game could become a real obsession for me lol.

I sadly couldn't get the most out of this game because my mouse wheel is broken so I couldn't really engage with the element switching mechanic-- That said... Even with just the default element I found myself not even really needing to engage with it? I don't know if that's a plus or a bonus but even though it took me longer to kill enemies I was still able to dodge the patterns just fine (I couldn't tell if it rewarded points for beating waves faster, but if it did then that would've been an appropriate "punishment" for this kind of playstyle). I thought the gamefeel was quite nice, I liked the feel of dodging bullets with the mouse and the aesthetic and the way the hitbox on the player was indicated were clever (though the hitboxes on the bullets felt maybe a tad big?) Overall a pretty comfy experience even if I couldn't engage with it 100%. due to my mouse issues, hahah. 

This is a cool concept! I think it's main issue is just a lack of escalation: It already starts with so many bullets onscreen it feels like you have to lock in from Second One, and it means that the more noise you add just kind of accumulates to a point you can barely notice the difference between the different types of shots you bring onscreen. Having a more gradual escalation and maybe a form of regaining health that can give the player more agency (like having health drops randomly spawn around the map to tempt you into moving towards them?) would really improve this game; but it's a very creative little idea!

I could not play this because I couldn't find a way to alter the screensize and it was way too big for my monitor, I couldn't even see my health and sanity meters. That said the first boss did primarily show some gamefeel issues with the fact there was no feedback on shooting him which meant I wasn't sure if shooting the parrots was having an effect or not (it wasn't). I also thought shooting was just REALLY slow especially with how you had to manually keep clicking, it just didn't feel very good. I do love a good boss rush though, so I really want to enjoy this, but yeah, seems like its big issues are just polish. If you keep working on it after the jam it may turn into something sweet.

I don't know if this is an issue in the desktop build but in the web build I found the game lagging a lot during the larger bullet patterns which was a sight to behold lol, but the engine and gamefeel are all very impressive recreations of the Touhou feel and the art and designs are insanely funny and cute (love the Kermit in a floatie). The music also is spectacular. Very tight patterns, probably the most difficult in the jam out of the ones I've played thus far, but the leniency with continues was a smart choice. Lots of potential here, though I can't say I "felt" much of the unstable theming.

Incredibly charming little game, I could almost play this one for hours. This really does nail the feel of an arcade experience but I think the big issue is just that it stops escalating a little too quickly. After a point I had thousands of score and it felt like the balls weren't getting any faster or increasing in intensity enough, and I also felt frustrated by my low movement speed (but not in a way that made it harder for me to dodge lol). For some reason my brain kept thinking of Nokia Snake and how you're forced to always be moving in that game, maybe something like that here in exchange for faster movement and a bigger escalation would be crazy. Also, I kept accidentally skipping the story cuz' the "continue" button was the same as shoot and there was no cooldown so I'd just blaze through the text the moment it suddenly appeared lol. Fun game!

I love the scrolling style while walking forward, reminds me a lot of Gunsmoke (especially with the western aesthetic). As for the actual gameplay... The two big issues are a lack of progression (generally in this kind of game you want things to start out simple and then escalate in complexity the longer you're alive, but here it feels pretty random and like you're thrown into the deep end right from the getgo) and second of all, the instability mechanic is pretty unintuitive and unfun: Why is your gun randomly filling up a meter that hurts you if you don't spin it? When I read the description, I thought that your gun would keep scattering and aiming all over the place and you'd have to keep the meter low so you could aim straight, but instead it randomly deducts health which feels awkward, but also the only thing it does is it means instead of shooting normally you have to constantly mash right click and left click to keep it down, and once you do that it basically plays like a normal top down shooter but with your attention split by mashing on your mouse. On that front, it really didn't feel very satisfying how slow you shot (combined with the speed of the instability meter...) and how little damage you did to basically anything. The fact even cacti took multiple shots was pretty ludicrous. Overall this game just really needed some rethinking of the core mechanics, but I must say it's still pretty charming and the graphics are phenomenal.

For a self-made engine this is super impressive! It's lacking a lot of gamefeel, of course, which hurts the overall quality of the game, but the 3D backgrounds are beautiful and perfectly capture the vibe of ESCHATOS or the early windows Touhou backgrounds in a great way. If you worked on it more with more time this could be the base for an excellent game.

I love the music and art in combination-- And the bosses are really good! They all have just enough health and their patterns are very elaborate and detailed while still being fair-- And while it's on the harder side, you're given a lot of leniency with bombs, HP, lives AND continues. Very charming overall.

This game's big issue is just a lack of polish-- It has lots of little issues that really detracted from the experience-- I kept getting stuck every time I died and no matter what I pressed it would not let me retry until I closed the game again and reopened it. Many times I would shoot a mask and get stuck after picking a card and the menu would never leave; and also in general the mask menu never pauses the game which means it sucks ass to grab Masks in the middle of a fight cuz' you just get owned unable to see the bullet patterns -- Which are mostly fine (sometimes a little too easy when you can just camp midair while shooting) but sometimes confusing (I still don't know how to avoid the jack in the box attack from the first boss).

That said the game's aesthetic has a lot of charm, I really like the menus and the 2D art of the main character, and I love the little Orca followers. The format on its own is also quite simple but engaging with the Masks giving you random powerups. I just really think this maybe needed to be scaled down a bit in content in exchange for more polish.

Thanks a billion! Doesn't feel like empty flattery at all, hahah. Your kind words mean so much, you have no idea!!

Ah yikes yeah I can imagine that's rough, hahah. My game also has all of the level design be done through code, but since it's only two dimensions it's a lot easier to imagine and visualize and since it's purely "wave based" I can simply set a timer to spawn at any wave any time I want. But for this kind of game I think it'd be better if you were actually travelling through a real location with the enemies actually placed where they would be (besides spawners of course). I'm not too knowledgeable on 3D game development in general though so I don't know what would be most "optimal" but it sounds like it'd be something like that. As for the weapon stability thing, simply having more enemies that try to "get in your way" and improving the aiming would do a lot. You could have boss fights where enemies spawn periodically and you have to sort of "pick" in the moment which weapon you like best for that boss or something. Just throwing stuff out there- I think you're on the right track either way.

Very fun and punchy little game with very thrilling patterns; took me a whole day to clear it, lol. The biggest issue I found was just that in the heat of the moment there are so many buttons that it's easy to forget which one triggers which move, and it makes picking the right one kinda difficult. In general I think it would've had a bit more strategy if instead of each weapon having a random chance, each attack added a different amount (within a random range, still) to a meter, so there was more incentive to gambling on the stronger high-risk weapons. Pretty neat!

Really most of this could be solved with proper level design. Once you start making levels with setpieces and planned hazards and stuff it all becomes more obvious as both a designer and a player; so I wouldn't worry about it _too_ much.

It's hard for me to articulate but I guess you should be thinking, okay, well the Primary Goal of the game is to get to the end of the stage, and then the Secondary Goal (for advanced players and replays) is to get a high score, right? The question then becomes "what kind of play am I trying to reward?"; for example as it is right now there's little incentive to really kill enemies unless you're trying to get a high score, so the primary and secondary goals are a little TOO disjointed (in most shmups your primary goal involves killing enemies because killing enemies is satisfying and if you don't you get overwhelmed by bullets and die before making it to the end of the stage). So what you could do is make enemies a little more involved somehow (maybe have enemies try to target you more or have you need to meet a quota of defeated enemies to proceed in the stage or something). This is, in a basic way, what I mean by the focus thing. I could play the game in my "cowardly way" doing hit and runs and I didn't feel like I was rewarded but I also didn't feel like I was being punished either, so I sat in this limbo where I felt like the game wasn't pushing me to get the most out of it. I don't have much experience with 3D plane games though so I can't suggest much more "detailed" advice unfortunately, hahah, but I hope I was able to be helpful in some way.