itch.io

I've finally done it

Does the leaderboard not update immediately?

I hate the bombs so much lmao

As of writing this comment I'm tied for 10th place on the leaderboard (22). I've been trying to beat it for ages and I'm going to go back and keep trying after posting this because this game is so fun.

The music chosen is really good and mixing it with the fast percussion parts works pretty well. The art style fits well too.

I've only found one bug that makes arrows sometimes disappear. I think it's been happening when a wrecking ball falls on an arrow but I'm not sure.

The traps all feel unique and make the gameplay quite unexpected. Some more sound effects might be cool. Sounds for each trap would make the gameplay feel even more eventful, like a sound for the wrecking ball falling, spikes coming up, bombs exploding etc.

Thank you! What do you mean release btw? I was planning on just releasing it here on itch, is there anything else you suggest?

Thanks! What level did you get to?

The concept of this game is quite interesting and I like how accurate the shadows all look. Some more gameplay elements would be nice to make the levels feel more different, like mirrors, multiple boats to save, or patrol boats that also have lights and move which you have to protect your boats from.

Some polish is needed but the main idea is quite good, although I didn't really find anything unexpected. Also, there needs to be a next level button because I kept having to go to the main menu after every level.

It was hard to notice when you were taking damage as there is no sound or visual indicator other than the small bar on the left, I often lost without even realising how. Maybe add some sound effect or make the borders of the screen change colour.

Thanks! You're the first person to mention the secret stars haha, how many did you find?

The most unexpected game I've played so far!! Don't want to say too much to spoil it for anyone but this totally normal game was really well made and perfectly disguised :D

Thank you so much for the rating!

Haha the twist was definitely unexpected :D

Although I'm not good enough to actually complete the last level, I think the extra gameplay mechanic makes this game very different from the generic piano tiles game that you initially disguised it as!

The evil menu looks very cool, is that the Easter egg? I don't actually know how I got it to appear lol, I just clicked the play again button and it came up.

The main thing that would make this a lot better is more rhythm rather than just having the notes come every beat. I kept playing it with the right rhythm on purpose to make it sound nicer and it would be really cool to have it play with the right rhythm. Although, I must admit you picked a great piece that still works pretty well even if you play every note with the same rhythm!

Lastly, the sounds are great (which is obviously very important for a rhythm game) and it is very obvious when you mess up which is good too.

Thank you! :D

Thanks! I've tried to balance the number of puzzle levels and combat levels and I'm happy to hear that they have mixed well :)

Thanks for playing and featuring the game in your video! It was fun to watch you play :)

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it :D

Thanks! It was tough to come up with 25 levels but I'm glad I was able to make it :D

What did the waiter do to deserve this?

Very unexpected game, I can't believe I really spent 12:58 constantly resmearing the sauce, the game just looked so good I had to complete it. Thank you for putting in knife upgrades and especially for increasing the timer every time - otherwise I would never have finished haha

The vector graphics are really nice and the music fits really well!

Grabbing the slice at the start was really hard though - I didn't even realise anything was happening because the arm kept going back. Eventually I tried using two fingers on my trackpad which made it way easier, but it did seem a bit unnecessary. Although, it was unexpected so it fits well with the theme.

Overall a very strange but great game :D

Thanks! Yeah I did start to make some pretty tough levels towards the end haha, where did you get up to?

This is a pretty cool game with an interesting mechanic. I did quite a few levels before getting stuck, it's impressive that there are so many levels. A level select screen would be nice so I can see where I got to.

The whole system of 6 bits to change is very interesting, and each bit is unique. However, I found that I just didn't use some bits at all. For example, after the first few levels I stopped using the first bit as it seemed like it wasn't necessary. I also didn't realise when the last 2 bits were introduced because they never felt necessary to complete a level (at least where I got up to, maybe they are used more later on). I think the issue is that there are too many options which give the player too much control to complete the level while completely ignoring certain mechanics. That could also be a positive if that's what you're going for - multiple ways to solve each level.

The controls are hard to get used to but I don't really know how else you could have implemented them - maybe the 1-6 number keys like someone else said? If you add mouse inputs it would be intuitive to be able to just click the bit you want to update. Also, I don't think you should have to hold X to see the hints for the bits, I feel like that could just be shown to the players by default (although the current UI looks clean so I understand why you've done it that way).

The graphics and music of the game are really great and fit together very well!

The wall jump is weird but cool! I think it fits well with the rest of the game.

Overall I liked it! How many levels are there?

Thanks! I've set all the three star thresholds to be the minimum possible arrows you can use to complete a level, so only perfect runs will get 3 stars. However, the 2 star boundaries are arbitrary and they may be too hard because I didn't really know how average players would do. I can consider increasing the amount of arrows for 2 stars in some levels.

Thanks for the feedback :D

Definitely very unexpected!

The narrative and voice acting was great :D The text that showed when you died by touching an ad was pretty funny too.

As for the gameplay, I liked that the camera shook when you shot and that there was some recoil too which I could use to avoid the boss at the end. I don't think there was any use in me jumping other than just pressing the button, so maybe another obstacle that you have to jump over might be a good addition.

Overall a pretty fun game! Would be great to play more levels of that golf game too haha

Thanks! Feel free to comment how many stars you got, I'd be interested in knowing what level everyone gets to :D

Hi! Completely understand if you don't get to my game since you've closed this thread, but if you do play more games after, I'd love for my puzzle game Bowman to be featured in your videos!

https://itch.io/jam/unexpectedjam/rate/749196

Thanks for the feedback!

You're completely right about the combo meter, I will either increase the time it takes to disappear or maybe change the combo system to wait a second or two and then go down one at a time rather than completely resetting to zero.

Feel free to play it as many times as you want haha, it would be great to have people play this even after the jam :D

Thanks for playing! I'm glad you both enjoyed the game :D

Congrats on the high score! It's great that people are trying out different difficulties rather than sticking to easy or going straight to impossible haha.

Enemies spawning to close is a known problem and one that I will fix once the jam is over :)

Thanks for the feedback!

Your game is really fun! I've left some feedback on your page. 

My game is also a neon themed shooter and it would be great if you could give me some feedback on it!

https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/722074

Feel free to post your high score on the game page!

This is such a cool game!!

Good

• The neon graphics are great and the music goes very well with the theme of the game (did you guys write the music? It fits very well)
• The gameplay is fun with a variety of enemies! I like how you can see your bullets go around the planet and it's really cool that you've managed to use spherical geometry as it makes the game unique
• It's satisfying to kill enemies because of the particles and sound effects
• The path the player leaves also adds to the cool look of the game.

Could be improved

• I did not realise that I could rewind until my 3rd or 4th round. Maybe the first time someone plays you should point out the bar on the left and get players to try it out. The bar itself was also quite small, it would be good to make it more visible to players and make it really obvious to players when it recharges so they know they can use it again.
• Even after figuring out the rewind, I didn't really use it. To be honest though I only got a high score of 5.12K so I am pretty bad at this and maybe if I had used the rewind I would be better haha. I just rarely had the time to use it before I died.

Also an online leaderboard would be great!

Overall I really liked playing, 5 stars! :D

Yeah, I do mean that - right now anyone can go to my game's page, open the developer tools and look at the source code.

Obfuscating the code seems like the best option, thanks.

I was wondering how I could do something like this for a browser based game. I had a look at dreamlo as the other comment suggested it, but if I use my secret key in my code, couldn't people just look at the code and add a bunch of fake scores?

Is there a way I can add environment variables to a web based itch app so I can hide variables like keys for an online leaderboard?

(Should I be asking this somewhere else?)

I'll be sure to try out the filter! Thanks for posting all the instruments, for my next piece of game music I'll try and use some new instruments and see if I can make something different to the music I've been making so far.

No worries, someone used this format to give me feedback and I found it really helpful so I've been using it too :D

I noticed you've used bosca ceoil to make the music and if you don't mind I'd love to know what instruments you used. I used bosca ceoil too and I really liked the sound of the instruments in your music. I've just been using basic saw and square waves in the chiptune section.

Good

• I like the music, well done if you made it :D
• The graphics are simple but they work really well for the game. The particle effects on death are nice too (also on the menu, that looks good as well)
• The rewind effect looks nice.
• Level design is pretty good and the rewind mechanic is explained well (although I think I managed to cheat a level, explained below)

Could be improved

• The bug mentioned by others where the replay is inconsistent. The boxes sometimes move differently when the actions are replayed, so in Level 2 the box sometimes moved too far to the right and went into the spikes in the replay.
• I don't know if it was intended (probably wasn't) but in Level 4 I just ignored the box completely and used the pink player to boost the blue player to the exit by making the pink one constantly jump and using it as a platform for the blue one to jump on. I did a similar thing in Level 5 but I think it was intended there.

Overall, the game looks really good and has great music. Once you fix the bug about the replay being inconsistent and add some more levels, this could be a pretty good game!

Sadly it doesn't really relate to the theme as others have pointed out. But I'll ignore that for the rest of this comment.

Good

• Nice sound effects in the game
• Variety of different asteroids to hit
• Actually pretty fun once I got the hang of the controls

Could improve

• More music? Like in the menu and while playing
• The controls are a bit weird but maybe I just wasn't very good at using them. I ended up just going for coins because it felt too risky to try and shoot the asteroids
• I often died when hitting the blue asteroid because it split directly towards me, maybe make it split 90 degrees away from the direction that my bullet came from? rather than being random

Overall it is a fun game with some issues I've mentioned above. Good job :D

Woah Dani was there too!

I think you've already played my game, but if you ever have time during a future stream, I'd love to watch you play it on the stream haha :D

https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/722074

This is pretty cool and I'm just posting to get it back to the top so more people see it

Sadly I'm not much of a platformer person so I couldn't get past the spikes on the 2nd level lol

Good:

• The intro was cool, I haven't seen any other game with an intro like that
• The lighting effect was interesting and added a bit of a challenge in looking carefully before I made a jump
• Controls felt pretty good, I haven't played many platformers though so idk what wall-jumping etc is supposed to feel like. Personally I liked the wall-jumping and the different sprites for each action
• I really liked the music, I know you didn't make it but you picked some good music that fits with the game well imo

Could be improved:

• The first time I died I had no idea what had happened because [a] the spikes are really hard to see if you aren't looking for them, [b] there is no indication of death (sound effects, particles etc) and [c] on dying, the character sprite takes a second to appear - is it reloading the image every time you die?
• Sound effects in general would be nice, for jumping and dying etc
• I didn't see much to do with the rewind theme, BUT I did only get to level 2 so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt since the plot seems to be related to the theme

Overall it was a nice game. Unfortunate that you couldn't upload all the files, but since you streamed my game I figured I should put in the extra effort to take a look at yours :)

ALSO: wanted to thank you again for playing my game on stream because you were able to record a major glitch! I had a look at the stream again to see what happened when the tutorial said you saved yourself, and it seems like there is a slight inconsistency in the positions of the player and bullets when it rewinds and replays. I think the positions of the bullets may be off by one frame, which doesn't affect gameplay most of the time but sometimes just one frame could allow you to move out of the way of a bullet. Wouldn't have been able to see this if you hadn't played my game on stream, so thanks :D

Thank you so much! You're right about the enemy spawns, I need to increase the minimum distance away that enemies spawn from you. 

Hi! If you're still playing games, it'd be great to get more feedback on mine :D

https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/722074

You've managed to make a pretty challenging game with some great level design and a lot of levels. Sound effects would make it a lot more satisfying to play, but overall this is a great game.

Hey! It'd be great to watch you play my game on your stream!

https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/722074