itch.io

There's a lot to like here. I love the Doom movement speed. The confined space and dim lighting are anxiety inducing. The treasure feels balanced (maybe it isnt idk, but it feels ok). The combat is very shallow and i could see you taking it one of two ways. Either lean into the horror vibe and make the monsters much stronger, possibly even one shotting the player, or brighten up the setting and focus on feedback and diversity in combat. If the enemies aren't going to be much of a threat, they should at least be fun to thwack around. If it were me, I'd try for the latter. Good game.

Great first game. There's even sprinting! 

That's a good game, fun game. Very good job of setting up the player to learn elements of the game in a controlled environment before adding challenges that use those elements.

Although you should know we have not given our employees access to any VR equipment so it will not get to stretch its legs during The Judging.

Yes, AI Rule 7:

Platform Restrictions: Games can be developed for any platform, including but not limited to PC, mobile, console, or web. Participants should specify the intended platform(s) for their game during submission.

cant get the stamp to stamp

Nick's Joke: What kind of laundry soap does a rope use? Tide.

Ryan's Joke: How many champions does...can you...how many? One.

love the mspaint palette and artstyle. It's like Microsoft Wind-waker.

If it were us, we would have kept wasd locked to up left down and right respectively.

We are curious about the control scheme for movement. What led you to go with the one that you chose?

It's great!

Pros

Nick: A kidsy vampire survivors with couch co op is a million dollar idea. Not sure why we haven't seen it until now. Sounds and overall theme are very endearing.

Ryan: Its cute. its fun

Cons

Nick: Screen gets very busy with all of the telegraphed attack warnings. Most weapons feem so outside of my control i essentially have no agency at all. the orbs were easy to use and it would be nice to feel that way about any of the other attacks.

Ryan: In a game with pursuing enemiesm its surprising there is little to no crowd control abilities. May be too many enemies as the game progresses.

Wishes

Nick: More characters. Couldn't figure out how to do dual controller instead of 1 controller, 1 mouse + keyboard.

Ryan: No additional wishes.

Pros

Nick: Cool core mechanic. Controls well. Screen information is easy to parse even when things get hectic.

Ryan: Art direction, character design. 

Cons

Nick: Game does not adequately present how it 'wants' to be played. Design does not appear to do anything to make the retracting part of attacking discoverable in a way the player will easily see and retain.

Ryan: Too much downtime between shots. Pace of play.

Wishes

Nick: Mouse controls for menus

Ryan: powerups

Pros

Nick: Lovely art and music. Novel and engaging variation on the tower defense genre.

Ryan: ARPG elements.

Cons

Nick: Levels are dense to the point of feeling crowded. Not enough set up time between wave or at the start of the level. Especially true if one is just learning how the game works.

Ryan: Pace of play is too fast. 

Wishes

Nick: Some kind of digestible "these are your characters and what they can do, these are the enemies and what they do" kind of armory/bestiary files in a pause screen.

Ryan: Scroll wheel to select appliance.

Pros

Nick: Concept is pretty easy to understand. Lots of diversity in game objects.

Ryan: I like fishing.

Cons

Nick: Tough to puzzle out how to actually play at the start. Insta death with little feedback feels like the game freezing when it isnt.

Ryan: Took a lot of unnecessary deaths on the right side of the screen because of mines spawning in.

Wishes

Nick: loose string fishing line physics

Ryan: i wish it was easier to snag the treasure chests.

Pros

Nick: Good atmosphere, Gunplay is adequate, thorough map ui stuff makes it easy to get around

Ryan: Fast travel.

Cons

Nick: Most text is unreadable for some reason. Enemies respawning as I loot a room with no warning is, as they say, " :'( ".

Ryan: Enemies have too much health. They should have 1/100th as much health as they have now.

Wishes

Nick: Quick heal button, remove rmb requirement from shooting, more direction at the start as far as what i'm meant to be doing/where im meant to be going

Ryan: More cover in rooms with enemy encounters.

Pros

Nick: Art style, general strangeness, hand as gun.

Ryan: Visually interesting, movement is solid, rock solid enemy design.

Cons

Nick: FOV is too wide, or mouse sensitivity is too low, one should change. Get stuck on the wacky level geometry more often than I would like

Ryan: Made me a little sick on account of the colors.

Wishes

Nick: More gun types. Less time spent on the trench style floor space below all the interesting stuff. Better visual cues for hazards.

Ryan: Hit feedback for enemies, slightly less health on enemies.

Pros

Nick: Sound and art design feel great. Things are explained in a way that is easy to understand. Probably more, but we had limited time and haven't yet deeply dove into the game. The idea of losing battles expanding the narrative rather than giving out game over is the most interesting piece of this game that we encountered. Curious to see what it can do.

Ryan: Pacing is good. No big lore dump at the beginning. The player gets control very quickly and the game reveals itself through gameplay rather than just cutscenes.

Cons

Nick: It's a JRPG. Not anything you can do about that. Just not my thing. 

Ryan: Con is we can't play enough of it.

Wishes

Nick: Nude bath scene.

Ryan: More time. Time wizard powers.

Pros

Nick: Great music, cool premise, lots of potential to expand on the idea.

Ryan: Beautiful art, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy. DO NOT SAY THAT. Animations look great.

Cons

Nick: Floaty platform physics, wind mechanic more frustrating than fun. Saliva pursuit needs tuning to feel fair/functional as intended.

Ryan: Saliva throw and spike timer seem random and not set to a particular clock or position.

Wishes

Nick: My number one wish is some kind of forward dash so it feels i have more direct agency to combat the wind mechanic.

Ryan: More vertical wind sections

fantastic

Great Game! This deserved more attention than it got.

we are not. in fact, we are missing this week and our next thing is SBIG jam on the 7th

Music is real good. Movement feels a little funny, like its not 1 to 1 it feels like you're kind of being snapped to a grid when you stop moving. Also it'd be cool to get more than a quarter second between the level starting and the boss stomping your face in. Great art. Mechanically solid boss fights.

Its very polished for a solo dev in the time frame. There are a few parts of the UI, movement, and gun behavior that would do well with some tuning. I'm sure you've already got all kinds of tweaks youd like to make. What would be first on your list of stuff to polish up?

Our doors are always open for testing.

Love the grimy music. Can't speak much on the game as it is only there in a very rudimentary way as we're sure you are acutely aware. The core concept is a cool one. QA testing could be a great way to justify a compartmentalized, episodic, and linear set of combat challenges. Hope we see a DX version someday that really let's these bots go to work.

There are a couple of things here that stand out. Firstly, the game works well and is conceptually very cute. Works well as in not buggy, very smooth and complete. Second, the combat system is very annoying straight away. It could have potential in a resident evil sort of 'you cant move while youre shooting' kind of way, but it primarily just felt irksome to constantly micromanage combat zoning in an RTS style game. Maybe modern RTS design has us spoiled with its auto combat. Last, just as a tip, finding some fair use music and SFX and slapping them in there as a placeholder is quick and easy and does SO MUCH to bring a jam project together.

Keep making!

In what directions do you see this game growing as far as mechanics? It is soaked through With style. Just absolutely pitch perfect unity of artistic design. it could be ten more hours of rail shooter spaceship and we would still be excited.

opens game page

*sigh* i miss mega man legends

fantastic style choice on the art

is 42 a world record? 

It was intuitive enough that I got it eventually, which is good.

There does not appear to be a tutorial or explanation of how things work even written up here on the game page, which is bad.

We saw the caution sign for attack. Couldn't navigate around or attack the pipes best as we could tell.

Dont understand how to get past the pipes. List of controls in the game or on this page or anywhere would have been helpful.

How is one meant to get past the ancient statues? Couldn't figure it out.

Its fun but the pins do not stand out from the background very well.

Not bad at all! A nice little QoL could maybe be seeing your zombies health bars while they are off screen. Also if you can move the cards around we didn't figure out how and overlapping cards have their text obscured. Good blend of card game with a tower defensy kind of vibe, though.

There are a lot of things about this i like. The character controls smoothly, the rails are a cool addition, the music and art are great. There are others i would change. Level design being paramount among them. So many spaces, even the first jump in the entire game, are far too close to what is the absolute top end of what the character is capable of. I realize platforming games have come a very long way since the old super mario days, but the precision you're asking of people from the get go is far too much of a skill cliff. I don't know who this game is meant to be for. If its for the Celeste/super meat boy/IWBTG crowd then its ok. Any one with a more casual perspective of platform games is going to find it too demanding. The I-frames you get from spin jumping also don't last as long as I would expect. If it were our game we'd set it so you're spinning right up until you land again. This is the only thing we see from you on itch so maybe this is one of your first entries into game design. If so, it's a great start and I encourage you to keep working. You're on the right track.

Can we get the song as a standalone track? Its really good.

Great game. The way the music builds on itself across levels is masterful.

is 5528 a world record?