Nice rhythm game, I enjoyed especially the "cry", groovy slow dark synth with retro jumping dj robot.
My feedback is similar to others about making the control scheme explicit in the tutorial. For example, when the first beat comes, put the D, K Space Key inside a pulsating circle suggesting the player to press it. It will become immediately obvious how to play the game.
Thank you for sharing your game, keep making games and enjoy the process!
Thank you for the kind words! I'm glad you appreciated the ominous aesthetics with evil soul devouring mechanics.
Yes, currently I'm implementing what I left out due to the jam time constraint, but will update as soon as the rating event ends, taking this tech demo to a state of complete game.
Thank you for taking the time to play the game! I'm glad you took pleasure devouring souls of the one-eyed little creatures!
Yes, currently there is no objective, as it has no level design, enemy design, progression system, victory condition, to qualify as a complete game, but as soon as the updates becomes available, I will polish to leave the tech demo state.
Unfortunately for now, you just have to wait for the inexorable hunger to devour your own existence.
Thank you for the compliments! Certainly! There are several polish I already implemented to leave the tech demo state, and will be more omnious as soon as the update is avaliable!
Whoa! Thank you for taking your time to play the Ember Souls and for the very kind words!
Currently, yes, there is no end goal in itself, as this is a GBJAM 12 entry, the update is temporarily blocked to improve the game.
I decided to down scope, due to the time constraint, but as soon as the rating ends, I will update into a state of complete game with proper levels, new mechanics (as it is intended to be metroidvania? souls-like), progression system, enemy design, combat design, and balance, that I left out, leaving the status of a tech demo.
I'm glad you appreciated the ominous aesthetics, and enjoyed devouring the souls of the tiny little one-eyed creatures, satisfying your hunger!
About the level boundaries, that is just left out because of the lack of level design, but I also enjoy observing the tiny little creature slowly falling off the cliff, soothing experience.
About the Cormac McCarthy, if you are interested, I will recommend the Blood Meridian, definitely you will get the doom atmosphere there.
Thank you for pointing out the state of the game, sorry for offering an incomplete game, but it will be updated to a proper souls-like at least!
Unfortunately for now, you just have to wait for the inexorable hunger to devour your own existence.
Excellent, merciless game! I appreciate the choice of the core mechanic with projectile motion, requiring precision launching and positioning. Restless skeleton indeed.
Excellent gameplay de marretada, chute e fuzilada versus aliens in a familiar contexto no train station! Vi agora que Retro Asobi (Bruno Moraes) tá no audio design tb!
Excellent entry, light hearted with comical ending, each palette gave me different feel, beautiful.
The broom closet is profound, one of the coolest soundtrack I heard during the Jam. This unique dedication, remind me of the Stanley Parable.
In terms of gameplay, I think the camera could have a smaller bounding box to make the exploration easier, without having to reach the screen edge to scroll the scene.
Great effort, keep improving, and hope you guys realize the complete escape room!
Thank you for the feedback, glad you find it interesting! Yes, you are correct, right in the details! haha;
For the particle rendering, I truncated the particle floating point position to the nearest grid position, to emulate and respect the pixel constraint, but did not applied neither to the character, nor to the eye rendering.
I implemented the pixel constraint to the character and eye, will experiment with the parameters.
I'll update after the Jam to increase the low-res representation coherence, together with more polish that I wanted to make, but could not due to the jam time constraint.
Very atmospheric, beautiful color palette and soundtrack, makes it immersive. I felt isolated in the vastness. Somewhat reminded me of Axiom Verge.
I appreciate the choice of jump as core mechanic that shooting mechanic revolves around. You have to plan and make calculated jumps, while shooting to eliminate the enemies/obstacles. Would be an interesting challenge when there are bunch of enemies trying to kill you, while you have to make precision movement and jumps, at the same time hitting the enemies.
What a lovely parasite, I wanted him to evolve into a full blown parasite and navigate inside the flesh labyrinth becoming one entity.
I enjoyed slaying and thrusting the goblins! The color palette, background forest parallax, and lighting effect blend in a really beautiful immersive, subtle yet deep aesthetics.
On the constructive feedback side, given that the action rhythm of hack and slash gameplay is high, an edge move camera with damping would fit very well, making the scene a bit more static, it helps maintaining the surrounding awareness to plan the action sequence, while appreciating the beautiful landscape. (Blasphemous is a great reference)
Thanks for the compliment and spending your time to play the prototype! Glad you enjoyed devouring souls from the minions under the dead sky! Wanted to explore the gameplay more thoroughly in depth using the soul mechanics to design challenges, but the inevitable time constraint got us.
I enjoyed decimating and collecting heads while serving as the god's hand. Well done given the time constraints.
In terms of aesthetics, I appreciate the choice of the hollow atmosphere, the lifeless desaturated color palette. When it comes to isometric, there are particular challenge for rendering, figuring out the transformation between screen space to world space, depth sorting, but I think 2.5D is really beautiful.
In terms of gameplay, the turn-based combat is a classic, instantly becomes tactical because of action planning, it would be nice if there are:
Visual feedback of the attack range, like a high light of the adjacent cells to indicate the current attack intention.
Directional commitment, when moving input is in the same direction as previous input, move to the cell, otherwise, require another input to move to the other direction, indicating with some visual feedback the intended direction with animation on the first input. This will avoid the unintended movement, be able to adjust the attack direction.
Wait Action, to ambush the enemy
On the game balance aspect, well, loved the jam balance! We have so much time to do everything by ourselves, we have to make choices.
Oh, maybe you already know this, but I'll leave it here anyway, if you want to delve deeper into the depth: https://www.roguebasin.com
A beautiful contrast between black and blue , with a cartoon style graphics and jazzy rhythm and melody that reminds me of an innocent times, simply fun.
Loved the sudden appearance of the frenzy eye in the fifth puzzle, and the challenging difficulty of the last with mildly humiliating splash in between the restarts made me smile haha!
You clearly have identified your aesthetics, keep it up with the good art and good game!
Yes, the idea was to experiment with the concept of pixel physics engine, but due to the time limitation it became more of a tech demo than an actual game.
After the Jam, I'll do a proper level design, enemy design, combat design, and progression, with some music and sound effects.
The giant eye monster is a cute buddy that will help you devour more souls along the descent into the darkness.
Thank you kindly for the note too! I'll update the page and add as a known issue as soon as possible.
Offcourse, didn't want to spoil the quest sequence in an immediately visible area; I got frozen twice. First, in the store talking to the jetpack child; second, right after getting the flute from the goblin, after the map transition to the village.
Beautiful aesthetics, the perspective projection with pixel shader, and palette choice makes it very atmospheric and immersive; loved the transition from zero gravity to gravity; With the omnious soundtrack. indeed it feel like a _sinister_ signal.
The aesthetics, and music bring nostalgia, graveyard music is very immersive!; I loved the spooky village having a mild psychosis affecting the people, they talk real. Unfortunately, I got freezed during the search for the cat's remedy. Well done!
I did play it twice to understand the mechanics of spook and mask to avoid them; but boy, they know what they are doing; I'll attempt my bitter revenge next time! I liked the idea of spooking the ghost instead of being spooked in the adulthood.
Sorry, at that time, I safe uploaded for the Jam entry, and the gameplay state was not integrated yet. If you want to give it another try, now you can devour souls! The controls are in the description.
It reminded me of the classic Missile Commander in terms of concept, but more like Gatling Cannon Commander, with the Space Battleship Yamato.
I had fun blasting missiles and shielding the laser from octahedron (i suppose) enemy ship, while the crews kept me encouraged through the impending doom.
Thank you for playing the game, and for the kind words! Yes, it is inspired by several classic arcade shmups that I played for sometime. I had to make the level and game balance in quite a hurry, but fortunately, you had some fun!
I intend to polish and extend this game to be a full-fledged complete modern take on classic shmups, hopefully, there are more fun to be engineered =).
