Thank you for the feedback! I plan to release a bug fix build and some additional performance tweaks soon - the main thing with navigation at the moment is the core crux of it (the keycard) broke due to having to shift to windows last-minute for the jam. Its gonna be one of the first things I fix.
Thank you for playing! I'm glad you had fun with it
It's a game I keep going back to just for the soundtrack.
Thats weird about the music - in theory that shouldn't be possible, as the music itself is keeping time, with counters triggered by it, so if the music drifts everything should drift. I'll make a note of that though to look into - thanks! Same with the pistol timing windows.
It's great to hear you had fun and enjoyed this! I spent a lot of time just getting the music sync system to work, and applying it to as many things as I could, and it definitely helps fill that vibe.
Thank you for playing!
I feel that - I wasn't able to get sounds for enemies reintegrated in mine by deadline either. Three enemy variations is a solid enough number though, especially if you've got each filling a unique niche.
I think the enemy type spread you have right now is pretty solid as-is, and works pretty well! With polish it'll definitely hit the mark.
Maybe you could have set time limits for each level, and then have a grading system at the end?
So if your overall time is more than 3 minutes you get an "Okay" ending, do it in under 3, you get a "Good" ending, and then the fail state of running out of per-level time exists still?
Its a neat premise, it definitely just feels like a pain to wrangle - but you certainly did a good enough job!
This one had an interesting premise - the idea being to actually die, and not survive, was really cool! The visual style in play here is pretty cool, and the overall aesthetic works - especially the ominous red light approaching, and the fact the camera just shows the player as the word "KILL" over and over.
With some polish and some more depth this core mechanic could definitely be built up to be a neat little puzzle game - maybe where the goal is to complete each level with a specific time?
Thanks for the feedback! Stuff like the keycard is unfortunately a bug, as it is in fact meant to light up when the fight ends - but due to last-minute lighting issues, it doesn't. Hi-Fi Rush was a huge inspiration for how the game plays, that and Metal: Hellsinger, so it's good to hear that intent made it through!
The SMG is another thing that sort of fell flatter than the intention - it helped round out the sandbox, but doesn't quite mesh, so it's likely gonna switch to being a burst weapon in a future version of this project. I like the idea with the beat UI count - it was mostly there to help people keep time with another visual, but it could double as something like that in a future build.
Thank you for playing, and I'm glad you had fun with it! That bow on princess was a detail I added last minute and I'm really glad I did now haha.
As many others have said, the camera controls here are definitely holding this back - the visuals are great, the gameplay is surprisingly fun once you get the hang of it, and it's got an awesome vibe to it.
I think the strongest part is definitely it's aesthetic - the visual layout, the building of the space, and the overall aesthetic absolutely fits and works really well with what the game is set up as. I didn't expect a full on voiced intro, or for multiple levels to exist, and it all worked together really smoothly!
My only critique with gameplay is the time limit felt - really, stingent. That, combined with restarting setting you back to the time you began at, often meant you'd be stuck in a situation on your first playthrough where you just didn't have enough time on the clock to win.
I still had fun with this one regardless, and speedrunning games aren't normally my cup of team. Nice work!
Thanks for the awesome feedback! I'm glad you had fun with this even if rhythm games aren't your usual vibe.
I spent a good chunk of time kitbashing stuff to get the visual look I was after, but hit some snags last minute with the web build, so ended up pivoting for a more retro lighting look, which - sorta worked in my favour I guess?
The composers utterly cooked on this one, and this game definitely wouldn't feel as solid as it does atm without their work.
Thank you for playing!
This one has a lot of promise - the visuals are really solid, and the first level as a whole is pretty polished feeling for four days' work!
There are some quirks - like sliding feeling a bit weird with the spike section, or the boss fight(?) at the end of the first level feeling a bit rough, but it was generally a pretty fun game! I could see this, with some more work, doing well as an old-school dungeon crawling shooter.
I think the blood mechanic is interestingly integrated - having the armour act as a buffer that instead lets it regenerate, which is neat - but I wonder if it could have been done a bit more on-theme somehow? Or made clearer through the game that armour stops you losing blood over time?
Audio needs a pass over too, as it's quite rough at times (i got stuck on a wall, hit jump, and the audio source echoed into the void), but what's there is good enough that it doesn't detract from the rest of the experience.
Either way - really fun prototype! It's rough, but the vibes are there, and the art style is really solid and well-defined!
Controller support was definitely untested, as I set up my initial input bindings to let it work, but never actually got to test it. I'm sorry that it didn't work for you!
It'll be one of the things I check out and try to implement post-jam.
Thank you for playing regardless, and I'm glad you liked the vibe!
That's good to hear! I'm glad it runs well on proton, I never got a chance to test that.
The timing window for shooting on the beat atm is very large, as the settings panel and latency calibration had to be cut last minute due to some technical issues, but the general idea is you gotta time your inputs to line up with the music, or they become less effective/may not register. Timing your pistol shots with the rhythm for example, and how the shotgun has a two-beat cycle of shooting and then pumping. The large timing window means its pretty hard to miss though.
Thank you for playing, and for the awesome praise!
It's simple - but the action is pretty fun, and it's deceptively tough. Having to pick your shots, always being worried that every shot might be a wasted shot, learning the layout of the facility and doing better each run is a really cool loop. Gameplay is pretty tight, it's simple and it does what it does well.
I'd almost say having that repetition baked into the game narrative could be cool, with having to mentally map out the environment and find what you're after, and get closer to the goal with each successful run.
My only critique is a lack of a visible health mechanic - maybe a more survival-horror aspect, with having to scavenge health kits and such?
Either way - pretty cool idea, pretty decent execution! Pretty fun lil action game.
I can see this being really good as a speedrunner type shooter, as a few others mentioned - though I also didn't realize how the reload mechanic worked until right at the end. The enemies and civilians thing was a cool mix - I almost wish more civillians turned up to encourage you to check your fire more, and then being randomly placed was a neat touch!
Movement felt pretty solid and clean, and the gunplay was snappy enough that I feel like with some polish this could definitely do numbers as a run and gun type game.
Nice work!
The atmosphere here was really cool - the encroaching horror of the darkness, a creature lurking, the fact that every now and then you just saw eyes gleaming back from the dark - more than once I found myself hearing a scraping sound, turning, and coming face-to-face with something mere inches from my view.
It was then that I figured out the map mechanic - I had to get to the X, and finding my way was the problem. I wonder if landmarks generated into the maze could help with that - finding a landmark like a larger chamber or pit, and then using that to figure out where you are on the map, and navigate from there.
It was a really cool idea - being forced to rely on my wits, and figure out my safe route. As I got to the exit, I glanced back one last time - and the creature was quite literally right on top of me. Damn near shat myself with that one - no screaming jumpscare, no sudden lunging snarl, it just - loomed.
This games' atmosphere was really intense, and the aesthetic blew me away with just how deep into the dark I ended up falling.
I think the creature being more of a stalking threat is cool - with it only ready to close in once the dwindling fire dies down - but I wonder if it could be cool to have more opportunities for it to act? Sabotaging your route - blocking your path in some way, leaving scratch marks and evidence of it's existence beside a set of eyes peering through the void? It could definitely fit the vibe this was going for of a subtle, build-up horror.
Really well done!
That issue at the end is such a pain because I know exactly what the cause is - and it's due to some optimizations I was originally doing with collision meshes, to target a web build.
And then at the last moment the web build fell apart and I had to pivot to windows, and that collision mesh just - never loaded. And the reset level button also broke so you can't just - restart the boss fight. Agh.
I'm glad you had fun though in spite of the rough edges - thank you for playing!
I sadly only managed to play a bit of this at first, as I had some pretty weird performance issues. I swapped over to a different browser from chrome though, and those issues went away.
I'm glad I moved over, because it was quite a fun little brawler! Throwing rocks and space debris at enemies to knock them into danger zones was really satisfying - and with some sound feedback on enemies getting hit by that debris I could really see this being some retro arcade game from the 90s. The music choice definitely cemented this, and fit the vibe this was going for perfectly.
The visual aesthetics were pretty cool too, the enemy choices for visuals were bizarre but that's the kind of thing you'd see in brawlers from that era. The throwing mechanic was just outright fun, too pancaking an enemy and watching them get crushed under a falling rock never gets old.
Really solid work!
For a solo project in four days this is pretty good! Everything from the gameplay to visual style is very retro, and gives me very new-era boomer shooter vibes. I like what this game is putting down, and the end result is surprisingly in depth for such a short span of time.
The sound design and enemy responsiveness could do with a bit of work, but it's pretty good as is, and serves as a really solid prototype. My only critique was the shotgun being a single projectile - it might've made more sense as a silver bullet revolver or something? - but that's a real nitpick.
All in all - really fun shooter! Nice work.
This one was a surprising find - with the character movements reminding me of old school Madness: Combat slightly, and the fast-paced action feeling surprisingly smooth and intuitive. Some in-game controls would have been helpful, but the actual core experience? Really well stylized. The stylization, the big bold words appearing in your face with every cool action, the flow - it all works really well for a game thats essentially about throwing boxes and clicking on things.
Some extra weapons would've been nice, but this took what it had and polished it up really well. I can't state enough just how stellar the overall presentation is with this one - with a surprising amount of depth when it comes to the different attack combinations, and using your environment to your benefit.
Really good work, especially with a timeline of four days! This could be something really fun.
I'm glad you had fun! The two composers absolutely knocked it out of the park, the tracks made are all absolute fire.
This isn't a typical shooter - the beat being 120bpm means people naturally sorta fall into the rhythm, which was something I researched to see how best to implement those mechanics. Getting everything from enemy projectiles, to doors, and even character animations, all to line up on time was not a fun task. It's a miracle I got this done in four days with basically no starting code or assets.
VFX for enemies taking damage ended up getting sidelined by a fairly big issue when trying to package for web. It ended up not making the cut - and its one of the things I plan to implement next, alongside some bug fixes and quality of life features.
Thank you for playing!
The shot spam thing is definitely an unintended side effect of having to gut my settings menu hours before the jam due to some issues - originally the beat window was a lot tighter, but when I had to drop calibration I made it bigger to compensate and - made it too big. Whoops.
The SMG is definitely the weakest of the weapons in terms of timing, so I'm planning to overhaul it and maybe turn it into a burst fire weapon of sorts, where each shot on beat fires a volley off, instead of the auto-spray it has right now.
The two composers absolutely cooked, they did so great with the music, which gave me more time to make the visuals and game flow. It's honestly a miracle I got as much as I did done in four days' time, without them doing music I don't think the final thing would be anywhere near as good.
Thanks for playing, and good to hear you had fun!
Reaver has a really cool aesthetic - I could definitely see something like that working.
One thing I wanted to do that I ended up not being able to, was have numerous different objects in the world that all also moved to the beat, like props on the wall and such. Annoyingly ended up having to cut that though for time - but I definitely wanna have way more stuff that moves and bops in time to keep the tempo going.
Thanks for playing, and its awesome to hear you had fun with this one!
Princess does actually teleport! She gets a new attack in phase 2 that lets her do a bar-long teleport lunge at you, if you're too far away. Her AI tries to choose the best attack pattern depending on your playstyle in response. She gets a few new tools to use as the fight progresses to spice up phase 2 some. It might be getting lost in the chaos of that second phase fight though.
That dashing mechanic you suggested was also something I am considering adding - but ended up cutting for time in order to refine the initial movement in true boomer shooter fashion. Jumps initially WERE gonna be timed too, but the input just felt weird, so I ended up instead trying to make their hold time synced - so you jump whenever, but will start falling when the beat hits. It's - hit and miss, though. That FPS cap thing is an issue that came up due to last-minute moving to windows from web, meaning all my settings stuff just - broke. I forgot to put in a cap on it, and it's one of the first things I plan to do post-jam, alongside some bug fixes.
I'm glad you had fun with this! Our team was super crazy given it was me and two composers, but they absolutely cooked up a fire soundtrack that I was able to do justice. I'm super happy with how this turned out for a four-day game jam, especially given I had to hand animate stuff for all three enemy types to fit the beat on their movements.
Thank you for playing!
Not sure if it was a bug or not, but I had zero audio playing with this one - but the actual content aside from that? Is stellar.
I queued up some music, and started playing, and - honestly - wasn't prepared for what I found. The weapons felt surprisingly good, the gameplay was rough but still played really nice. Running about shooting robots felt great. I had a few bugs - like the second room soft-locking and not opening - but soon discovered the shotgun's kickback let me clip up through the ceiling and fall back in through to the next corridor beyond the closed door, letting me get to the last arena fight.
As soon as I said to myself "man - some enemy variation would absolutely slap here", I was greeted by sword bots, grenadiers, and tiny ninjas.
This game is rough, there's no doubt about it - but it's got the makings of a really fun little boomer shooter, and the weapon variety is surprisingly useful. I didn't quite vibe with the sniper, but the rocket launcher and shotgun were my go-to. The pistol maybe could have been a bit faster - and some weird delays with the cooldown on the rifle meant I ended up not using it as much.
Visually, this game is a treat, with a really retro looking aesthetic that works surprisingly well. There are some visual quirks at times, like enemy look rotations breaking, and view shake upon grabbing extra time being over the top, but otherwise this looks really good! I think enemies could have some better hit reactions, such as some kind of flash impact thats more visible, but otherwise this is really good for four days work!
I think if this had audio, and that level progression bug wasn't being a pain, it'd be an absolute sleeper hit in this jam.
The visual style is really solid, and the aesthetics are on point - it definitely needs audio to really shine, and some polish and juice to make it sing, but its a really solid foundation as it is. It's got the bones of what could be a fun lil' action platformer, for sure. I absolutely suck at platformers, though, so that first moving platform was genuinely tougher than any of the other enemy fighters I had to handle.
That boss fight issue is such an annoyance, because I deliberately added a button to reload the current section for just that problem - in case something like, say, a last-minute technical hitch caused walls to lose collision in that arena - and that button ALSO happened to just bind to the wrong thing and just restart the game. Yay.
Getting as much as I could synced to the beat to really drive the action was a high priority for me - with enemy attacks and animations, including their actual walk cycles, all being synchronized to step/swing/act on time. Projectiles was a fun one to do - even with some projectiles like the Heavies' plasma cannon that moves faster, they all tick on each beat. Doors also open and sync to the beat, and I planned to have environmental props that did the same but ran out of time due to last-minute technical issues.
The composers absolutely cooked, and put in a ton of work making sure the common beat was there under the hood, so that - without any visual cues, like the UI and the world - you can fall into that flow and just vibe through a fight.
I wanted each weapon to fill a niche in the sandbox, so while you can just take a shotgun and rush a Soldier to Drop 'Em, picking a pistol and popping him from afar might be better.
I'm glad you had fun with the fight even if that last area is a little bit rough. Thank you for playing!
This definitely feels like it took inspiration from Ultrakill, given the general flow and style of both the UI and the visuals - and that works out pretty well here. The gameplay is a bit on the rough side, but given everything was made solo for this, you did really well for four days!
I think improvement wise, some feedback on the weapon firing would go a long way, and maybe some enemy variation? Or even a bit of music to fill the empty and drive the fight. Ultrakill and such works best when you have numerous enemy types to juggle, and have to make those strategic choices and decisions in order to get through a fight by picking your battles.
Pretty decent for four days' work! Nice job especially with everything being made solo.
This was a really well put together game - the sword for the health bar was a really cool creative choice, and having the entire thing feel like ancient greek art brought to life really had a lot of charm to it! The visual style is on point, the sound design was really cool, and generally it felt really fun to play. You knocked it out of the park with this one!
I wish there was more card variation - or maybe even synergies? - to really liven the deckbuilding aspects, but the core flow is solid and works really well. I found myself strategizing - and I could see this working really well as an Inscryption-style title. Maybe some UI tweaks, such as a counter for how many shield tokens you have, but that feels nitpicky - because this entire thing was really well polished, and really fun to play.
My only critique is essentially - I wish there was more of it to play.
The core is there, and so is the vision, as others have said - having the lifesteal mechanic is pretty neat too! There's definitely some polish that it needs, and some extra features/enemy types to mix things up'd go a long way, as well as maybe some music to tie it all together.
The base gameplay feels a lil weird, with the camera sway and such, so it takes a bit of getting used to - mechanically though, this works fairly well, but it's in desperate need of some polish and TLC to bring it up to scratch.
Not bad for something made in just four days though, a solid start for sure! The bones are there - it just needs teeth now.
The first time I saw it I was like "ah they mistimed that okay, not too big of a bug but surprised they didn't catch it", and then the second playthrough just cut in after a moment of awkward silence.
I think to make it really land, having a record-scratch play at the interruption would make it clear it was intentional, and cutting the crickets-chirping for the end bit. Just have the camera awkwardly hold on the body for juuust too long, before swapping back to the intro again.
Humour in games and in general is very subjective, and I can see the vision you were going for there.
This was a delightfully charming little game! The puzzle mechanic was surprisingly well-handled with some really good depth, and there was some really creative use of those simple-on-paper systems, such as having a full on boss fight incorporating the different movesets. Honestly, a really stellar idea, with some awesome execution.
Having the guards to show that you can bypass 2d and 2.5d enemies using those modes, only to then have them turn up in the final boss fight, is a really smart move - and it lands really well here. The humour is sparse enough that it doesn't overstay it's welcome, while still having enough lightheartedness to land the punchline when it does appear.
My only critique is maybe the sound design - which is likely a product of the time limit - but it does add to the charm, and while it might not be my cup of tea it definitely fits the vibe of the game.
For a four day project, this is really impressive, and really well put together. Nice work!
Settings are definitely high on the priority list for this post-jam, as it was one of the things I wanted to get in that I wasn't able to due to some technical issues. This meant the timing window for guns got MUCH more forgiving, so that even if you're fairly early or late, you still get a chance to shoot instead of missing the beat entirely.
Stuff like graphics settings, audio settings, and some way to calibrate your latency window are gonna be things I work on first - alongside retooling the melee to be more useful as a parry mechanic. The enemy flashes are more attack indicators at the moment, but making some kind of parry system that consistently lets you interrupt them is something I definitely want to experiment with given more time.
Reloading is actually a mechanic I was considering implementing, but cut for time to keep the boomer-shooter feel, but having some kind of timed and staged reload could be pretty neat to do, especially if you can time a second reload hit midway to speed-load quicker, or some kind of rhythm mechanic for it. That could definitely slap.
Thank you for playing, and for your insightful feedback!
Both BPM and Metal: Hellsinger come to mind as two good rhythm based shooters, with the latter being inspiration for this one alongside Hi-Fi Rush. I'm sorry to hear it wasn't running too well for you - some optimizations might have fallen flat at the last hurdle due to having to pivot from a web build to windows rather suddenly near the end of the jam.
As Mya said - the SMG is probably gonna become a burst weapon, as I think it'd fit the vibe like you said a lot better. The pistol might also get tweaked and rebalanced a bit, so that each weapon can fill it's own specific niche in the sandbox a bit better.
I'm glad you had fun! The soundtrack is fire, and both composers absolutely knocked it out of the park.
The lighting was a stylistic choice, to try and echo those old-school Doom 3 and F.E.A.R. harsh shading models, and the animations were also made to sync to the beat by hand as I couldn't easily modify existing files to hit the mark - with more time, they'd definitely be more polished, though they're certainly the two rougher aspects of the game.
The SMG is something a lot of people have mentioned - and while it fills the rounded-out role of a crowd cleaner, it's probably going to be retooled into a burst fire weapon of some kind, to keep the necessity of clicking in-time still to really drive that energy.
The two composers absolutely cooked with the tracks they made, for sure. I'm glad you had fun with this lil four-day project in spite of it's rough edges, and thank you for playing!
The audio settings is such an annoyance - because I had to cut them last minute due to some problems that meant they just didn't work, and I ran out of time fixing them, which is super annoying. These changes also meant that I expanded the beat window a bit to make it easier to play and compensate for no calibration settings.
It's good to hear you still sorta had fun though, even if it's not the kind of game you usually play! Thank you for the feedback.
