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This thread will be my devlog for the duration of "Magical Girls Forever Continue-It Jam!"

My main goals for this jam are:

• Finish the final update (Stages 7 & 8) for Camilla Pierce vs The Golden Eyed Girls
  
  • As of the start of the jam, Stage 7 is mostly complete, and Stage 8 is about half done
  • Goals are to:
    • Finish all gameplay for Stage 8.
    • Implement story segments for both stages.
    • Complete the new ending sequence to cap off the game.
• If I manage to finish Camilla early, remaining jam time will be devoted to work on TwoGoku, my second unfinished jam game.

Hi all! I'm running a casual game jam for Magical Girl games: https://itch.io/jam/magical-girls-forever-continue-it-jam

The original idea sprung from the "Magical Girl Game Jam"(MGGJ)  series that started in 2020. I've contributed to that jam since the start, and have tons of games that I planned to continue but haven't gotten to. And I'm far from the only one in this situation. So, the Magical Girls FOREVER Continue-It Jam was born!

The primary goal of this jam is to get some work done! Though the plan for many is to continue games, you may also start a new game if you'd like! Details are on the page, but you are free to start a new game using themes from any past MGGJ.

It's not required, but the ratings will be based on your devlog. If you'd like to be rated, please consider writing a devlog that you can share when you submit!

Thanks so much for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed the demo.

The "Sleep Mode" is actually June setting her phone back to silent, and attempting to fall back asleep. Most of the active game play with take place within her dream, while her time awake will be reflecting on the dream and events that led up to this night.... Though I haven't decided 100% yet. I have most of the game planned out, and there will be some variety to the gameplay throughout!

I hope you'll check out the full version when it's ready. I can't promise it'll be soon (I have a lot of projects on-going DX ) but I do plan to finish this story.

Pretty fun, but also super hard! I could only get 4-5 upgrades before getting overwhelmed... but perhaps my choices of upgrades were part of the problem. I'll have to try some other strategies and see if they work better!

Great pixel art as always.

Lovely artwork in this game! The character and story art is really good, and the music worked nicely as well.

For the gameplay, a tutorial or something like that would have helped me better understand what was going on. I've played my share of falling-block puzzle games, but I wasn't sure exactly what I was supposed to be doing. I managed to play for a while despite that, though I never quite got the hang of it.

Still, there's a lot of potential here and I think it's good work. Nice job!

A challenging (for a bullet hell novice like myself) and fun game! The artwork was cute and worked well. It took me a bit to realize I needed to hold down the shoot button. I was having a really hard time until I figured that out, but that's a me problem!

Overall great work!

I'll admit I dragged my feet on playing this one, because I've never been a fan of "performance" games like Rock Band, and the thought of having to talk out loud and look like a fool was intimidating me. But I finally found time to play late at night with no one around and... it was good!

The game had no problem picking up my voice, and I was able to beat it with no problem, despite the fact that I spoke fairly quietly the whole time. I enjoyed the concept of a middle-aged man becoming a magical girl. The scenario in general was entertaining, even if there wasn't much story. If I can pick up and enjoy this game, I'd say you done quite well, as I think there'd be a big market for people who enjoy this sort of thing way more than me!

There's one elephant in the room that I've tip-toed around so far and that's the art. While it's fairly cohesive... I'm not a fan of AI art. This probably doesn't bother everyone, but it's a big turn off for me. I am glad you declared it up front though, I appreciate that. It's not as big a deal to me in a jam game, but if you were to make a full-length game out of this I'd like to see all the art made by the artist, not just the original concepts.

Otherwise, I think this is a really cool concept that's well executed and has a lot of potential. Nice work!

Well that definitely fit the under pressure theme quite well! I was constantly under pressure the whole time hehe...

I like the idea of a top-down shooter with a variety of weapons and equipment (the hats). In practice, I found the controls just a little too complicated to get the hang of. I tended to constantly fumble as soon as a number of different enemies were coming at me. Still, it was entertaining enough for me to give it a bunch of tries. The game over is pretty brutal... but you did have a warning!

The overall look of the game is pretty good. I like the portrait of the character revealing your health status. The lighting adds a good atmosphere to help the creepy mood.

Overall a good concept that I think could really shine with some control simplification. Nice work!

Thanks so much for playing!

I had pretty limited time this jam, so I set firm limit of one chapter for myself. I do have plans to finish this game though, with 5-6 more chapters most likely. But with my IRL workload and other stuff, I couldn't let scope get out of hand during the jam.

As for the horror aspect, that was more a light inspiration than a target. Creepy and somewhat atmospheric is what I was shooting for, but not true horror. As the full story unfolds, I think it'll make sense... in the end this is still a magical girl story, and I want it to feel that way when it finishes.

I'm not sure how long it'll take (especially if I pause for MGGJ10 lol), but I hope you'll consider coming back when it's finished!

This was one of the more active idle-games I've played. (Admittedly, I've only played a few) Mixing up abilities and trying different combos was pretty entertaining. On all my runs I've ended up overwhelmed, but I made a little more progress each time.

I think this is a great idea! Nice work.

Wow that was harder than I expected! I got the 1st ending fairly quickly, but took many tries to get the second ending. I think that the hitbox for the familiar is larger than the star seems to suggest. (But I'm not great at bullet hell, so take that with a grain of salt)

The artwork was nice, and I enjoyed seeing the two endings. It's a short game, but it's a game jam so that's to be expected. I could see this being expanded if you added more story and enemies to encounter. Nice work!

I just noticed that this is up and running now!

It's definitely in the prototype stage, but I like where it's going. The characters are adorable (as always) and there's nothing like a little gatcha to keep me coming back! I got all three characters. That arrow attack is OP!

Hope to see you in the "Continue-It" jam!

I've played my share of RPG maker jam games by now, and one thing that always makes them stand out is custom assets! The original art and music really make this one shine... really great pixel art and illustrations, and the music is well done. The only thing I would have liked to see is more than just tiling floors during the story segments... you see a lot of that, and it does stand out as unfinished looking. But I know this is a prototype, so I imagine that's on the to-do list!

The story was good so far! My only critique there is that the dialogue slightly stilted... but overall it works. I think with another pass to give it a bit more of a natural flow and it'll be perfect!

I did unfortunately hit a crash-point in the web version. When fighting "Boss Rekka" she was invisible, though I could still battle her. But when I defeated her, the game go stuck there... music still running, characters moving, but no ability to do anything or leave the battle. This could be a web-specific issue. If I have the time, I'll try and checkout the download version later!

Overall, what I played so far was great! I hope you are able to keep working on it!

Thanks so much for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I tried to keep the puzzles as un-frustrating as possible, and it seems to  have work out!

I do have plans to continue this game! I currently have most of chapter 2 planned and sketched out, and the overarching story is also largely planned. It'll likely be 5-6 chapters total, so it make take awhile to finish though. Drawing all the scenes eats a lot of time ;-;

I hope you'll come back and check it out when it's ready! :)

Like others who played before me, it seems I reached the current end of the game (Mors's basement). There's a picture on the wall that looks like it can be interacted with, but nothing happens.

The pixel art is lovely, and there's a good creepy atmosphere, particularly the final areas! Finding objects and such was a little hard, but not so hard that I couldn't progress (until the basement anyway, but again, assuming that's unfinished)

Overall, what's here is great! I hope you finish this game, nice work!

Short, but cute. I enjoyed the animation style, and the minimalist 3D character looks great!

I found the battle impossible my first try, but easily beat it on my second.... I guess I just needed to get good. XD

I hope you'll keep working on this , it's a great start! (There'll be a Magical Girl Continue-It jam that I'm planning to host tentatively starting April 13th, in case you need some motivation!)

Thank you so much! I'm really glad you enjoyed it. This was a tough one to squeeze into my schedule, but I'm happy with the results... even if I wish the jam edition could have been longer!

Also, really glad that you liked the puzzles haha... I have a huge pet peeve with nonsensical adventure puzzles. It's probably a way to "extend" a game, but if the extended time is just banging your head on a keyboard or looking up a walkthrough... I'd rather not.

Thanks so much for playing!

Oh, I see! My strategy largely revolved around action denial... I could perpetually keep the lightning stun debuff on it, and occasionally sleep if I needed a breather. Because of that, the stacks never got too high on anyone, and I didn't notice the transfer effect... though I guess it did finally get him in the end!

Ah... well, maybe that's on me. I never really understood what it's gimmick was?

I got it down to between 100-200 hp, and it did get some sort of "death spell" moment where it was finally defeated. I imagine that was the gimmick, but it flew over my head... I was on track to defeat it with pure damage though, my 3-member team was doing fine.

It took me two nights to complete (though not in a row, I got busy...)

I had a lot of fun playing playing this one! One thing that often bugs me about RPG maker games is that they can feel really same-y and the combat can quickly get boring, plowing through grunts left and right. I'm happy to say that you've (mostly) avoided this! I appreciate anytime devs make custom art for RPGmaker games. Your custom-drawn characters really help make it feel unique. Midori is out of place currently, but I know you are working on updating that.

The real meat here was the combat! I really liked the VN setup, going between story and battles. The battles themselves turned out to be great fun. It's rare that I really feel like I'm strategizing in an RPG, especially one made for a game jam, but this one really worked! I always felt deeply engaged in the battles, and tense ones like the fight with "Death" stood out. Even the non-boss battles all felt quite entertaining.... with a small asterisk...

That's how I felt about all the battles before chapter 4. However, the 2nd battle in Chp 4 (Guilt) felt very unbalanced compared to the rest. Once the grunts were down, the final enemy seemed insanely tanky and high HP. It wasn't hard, just long and boring. It's probably the only battle I started to completely check-out on. The final boss on that stage was better, although maybe a tad tanky... but seeing as that was an important and dramatic fight, it's more forgivable. (Though I do wish the story in that part held a little more weight... the resolution didn't really match the tone of the battle)

The gatcha was a cool element, I'm sure you know that I enjoy rolling for loot and characters! I was never able to roll a character, which did feel disappointing. Not sure if increasing the wishards would help... the x10 x100 options seemed useless, as I always felt gatcha-poor. Not to mention the copium... never even got enough to buy a wishard, let alone something good. I guess that's just the way gatcha goes... but while it was fine when playing, it definitely didn't leave me wanting to go back and farm shards... my luck didn't feel like it'd pay off.

Anyway, while I wish I was able to have rolled Amai or another Apho classic, I still had a great time playing this, and it ranks among my favorite RPGmaker games that've tried over the last 9 Magical Girl Game Jams! Great work!

Thanks so much for playing, and your feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed it. :D

You aren't the first to mention the walking speed, and a sprint would be a fairly easy feature to add. (Famous last words lol...)  The only section that does come to mind is the sewer chase, as you'd mentioned... I might be able to get away with simply making the area longer and requiring you to sprint to win... could even help add a little intensity to it. Thankfully that section is created with seamless tiles, so extending it is very doable.

Huge shout out to Facemelting Solos who created the full soundtrack for this game! We've worked together a number of times, and though this one was a completely different mood, he nailed it again! Couldn't do it with out him!

I've got at least 5 more chapters planned, I hope you'll check them out when they are ready! (Not setting a deadline though, I have a history of that, and still have 2 other games in need of finishing ^v^;  )

Ok, I had to google that... I didn't know that existed. TIL!  XD

As expected, very cool! I've been watching you build it during the jam, and been excited to try it. I'm happy to report that I DIDN'T experience any motion sickness, though the camera could be a bit disorienting at times.

The idea is very unique and well executed, and it all looks great. My only real graphical complaint is that during the tutorial, when the environment was very white, I had a hard time keeping track of the cursor/aim mark.

The gameplay itself feels like a solid evolution/continuation of the Song of Morus games, and it was easy for a veteran of the series to jump right into. Weirdly enough though, I think one of my favorite parts was just dodging the signs (Very nice of Desdemona to warn me they were coming XD )

One other note... and this isn't your fault at all, but MAN did Norton want to murder your game. First it auto-purged the main executable. I forced it to restore it. This next part may be on me for not figuring out how to flag the whole folder as safe, but I've also never seen this before. When I ran the game, Norton systematically deleted EVERY DLL one by one, popping up annoyingly each time. Some how the game still ran fine... maybe they all loaded before being sent to Norton prison? I don't know if the game will run anymore without me re-unzipping it. Anyway, just letting you know... not sure what to do about that other than give the finger to Norton. I was having an issue like this with NW.JS exports for awhile, so I know too well that Norton is insanely aggressive.

Anyway, over-zealous antivirus aside, really great work! I'll definitely be back to check the future updates!

I really love the aesthetic of this game! High quality pixel art, a nice color palette, and a good atmosphere overall! Reminds me a little of the Momodora series, which is a person fav of mine. I also liked the transformation moment when you get the spear!

The idea of a magical girl fighting a bunch of cuddly rabbits (and muscle rabbit men) is inherently amusing, and I enjoyed that as well. The music and SFX all fit nicely.

The platforming gameplay has a lot of good ideas. The ledge grab is a good mechanic, and a spear is a great weapon choice. However, I found the overall physics and controls a little clunky. Jumping and maneuvering through some of the harder sections felt tedious more than fun, and I often found myself getting hit by enemies as I floundered around. One other thing I hugely missed was some sort of aerial attack. Being locked into the flailing falling animation, while cute looking, became frustrating during combat. I got more adept at the controls as the game went on, but it always felt a little off.

Despite the challenge, I did manage to beat the game!

Overall, I do think this is great work! With just a bit of work to streamline the physics and control, I think this will be a top notch metroidvania!

Thanks so much for playing, and your feedback! I really appreciate it!

I'm glad you enjoyed the different direction this one took. I was worried that it might turn players off a bit, but so far, so good. I'm also glad you liked the mirror effect! It started as a one-off detail in the first room, but became a little more important as I kept working on the game, building up to the end of chapter 1.

For the UX... I have to admit, I've played a few P&C adventure games, but not a ton... and it's been awhile. The last one I played had a fairly janky UX as I recall. (Though it was a very good story)  Do you have any thoughts on what you'd prefer to drag-and-drop? More like, click once to pick up and hold an item? And then click again to use/drop it?  I'm not promising I'll change it, but I might consider it.  Same goes for the distance thing. I doubt I'll eliminate it, but I might loosen up some of the distance requirements.

As for your biggest complaint (the length) I assure you, I desperately wanted to add more. But I think there was brief thread on Discord about crunch and feelings around it. I made a target, ONE chapter. I mapped it out and planned it, and by sticking to those guns, this was one of my least crunchy jams in a long time. So while I wish I had been able to do more, I'm happy that I managed to do this much in a relatively healthy manner.

Still, I've got most of the story mapped out in my head, and intend to see it through! Just no promises on deadlines XD

Thanks so much for playing, and I'm really glad you enjoyed it! I'm also happy you picked up on and appreciated some of the details, like the fonts. It was definitely a little bit of a crunch for one month... but by settling on and sticking to one chapter, I managed to make it work.  My biggest disappointment was not being able to add more story content, but honestly I'm glad I didn't push it any further... because that would have gotten rough.

I'm glad you are looking forward to more, as I have the bulk of the story planned out, and intend to see it through! It just might take a little while XD

Honestly, for a WIP this still feels pretty good! I can see where it's unfinished (lack of story for instance) but it's quite fun to play. While I didn't fully understand the gatcha system at all times, it felt nice to roll and get all buffed up! The enemy waves were good, and fighting in general was satisfying. As a Nier fan, I also enjoyed the perspective-switching bonus feature! Though it seems like when you switched perspectives, some enemies would then be permanently off-screen in the top down view. (But you can still go back to the front view to take them out)

I see that you used pre-made assets, but I think you used them well. Both the audio and visual presentation were good, and it all felt cohesive together.

I was sorry to read that you had a very tough and busy month during the jam. I think you should be proud of how much you completed despite those challenges. Great job!

I found this one both hard and easy at the same time. The "battle" sections are very easy, move forward, shoot the fireballs. Perhaps if the enemies also shot back, and you had to jump and dodge, that'd make it a little more challenging. 

The hard part was the end-level puzzles. They certainly put me "under pressure!" I solved the first one (after losing once), but the second one got me. There seemed to be a bug with the puzzles? If I failed once, I would then insta-fail on my next lives, which made it tough to move past the puzzles.

I liked a lot of the artwork, especially the cute enemy sprites! I do wish it all matched a little better though, currently the mix of style is noticeable. The music worked well for the game.

I hope you keep working on this! Nice job!

It's WIP, but still fun and playable! I enjoyed leveling up my power and growing stronger, while continually defeating the mobs. At a certain point I got completely overwhelmed, but I imagine that's how a game like this goes.

One thing I think this could hugely benefit from is some audio... good juicy battle SFX and a backing music track. That'd making the experience more engaging with minimal additional work!

Still, it's an excellent start. I could see a final version of this game being a blast! Great work!

I see this game is unfinished. What's here is a great start though! I like the apocalyptic look of the game, and the character sprite is good too. The music has a nice sense of urgency, which probably ties into the "Under Pressure" theme, even if the level currently has no rush to it.

I imagine that there were plans for a sword attack? Currently you can only shoot and dash, so the big sword feels like a tease!

I hope you keep developing this, great work!

Very nice character design, and a cool aesthetic to the game! I was able to beat the first enemy, but the game ended there. (Not sure if the desktop version goes further... I'll try and check that out later when I get a chance!)

I hope you keep working on this, it has a lot of potential!

I like the concept of a magical girl building an army of her own clones, only to have them rebel against her!

As a game, it's pretty simple and straightforward. That said, I could imagine this working as a mobile app game. It reminds of the "HeroWars" ads I always seem to get, and in the comments there's always people wishing the game was like what the ad showed. I think with a little more development this could work well, and fill a demand for that audience! As it is now, it's a solid prototype.

Fast, frenetic, and fun! I had a blast playing this, but at the same time, I'm glad for the easy mode... it was quite hard. (The levels more so than the bosses) But touhou/bullet hell style games have always given me trouble, I'm sure it's just right for seasoned vets!

The artwork is all very nice, and the SFX and music fit well. All and all a great package. Awesome work!

I was playing in-browser. I can imagine the downloaded version might run better. (Though I'd ultimately be playing on a slower computer,  so it might not run better XD... I'm extremely picky about downloads on my primary workstation, I appreciate you having a web-build!)

The part where it started snowing had a lag so long and intense I thought the game had crashed, but waited a minute and it came back so I was able to continue. Otherwise, the lag built slowly as the game progressed. But never so bad that I couldn't win. However, if the enemies had been more aggressive I probably couldn't have completed the game. By the end I was crashing into them regularly as the lag made it tough to precisely move about.

You noted that this was a prototype with many bugs, so I went into it with that understanding.

The opening cutscene was difficult, as others have mentioned, with the slow pacing and grammatical errors. One thing I think you could update that would make a huge difference would be that instead of a mouse click skipping to the next line of dialogue, it could first finish the current text. And then clicking again would start the next line.

The battle system actually looks like it's off to a good start! The UI is simple but nice looking and easy to read. The character sprite is nice too. It's still pretty buggy here though. I got close to winning a battle, but I couldn't get "skills" to work so the last enemy beat me when we both had a tiny amount of HP.

The artwork and sprites in the DevRoom all look great! I think is this off to a good start, and I hope you keep working on it!

Very interesting game! The isometric perspective was cool, and the entire game had a great spooky aesthetic that I enjoyed!  It was very engaging and tense throughout. I wasn't even sure if the enemies could actually hurt me, but they were ominous enough that I wanted to avoid them anyway. I also thought the whole UI was very cool!

The story seemed interesting, though I'm not sure if I understood it at the end. It also seemed more sci-fi than magical girl, but it's possible that my choices effected that.

The game ran a little slow on my PC, though not so slow as to make it too hard to play... but the lag seemed to get worse the further I got. My only other critique would be that I found the controls fairly difficult. I'm not sure why, but my mind consistently had the horizontal and vertical movement reversed... so I'd press a key expecting to go one way, but then go in a different direction. I managed to get semi-used to it, but made mistake all the way to the end.

Overall, impressive work! I really liked the atmosphere, it's rare that a jam game feels so immersive for me. I hope you keep working on this!

Really nice retro-metroidvania! Feels like a classic Castlevania game in particular. Great spritework and fitting SFX and music. The gameplay was very solid, though a bit hard! I was surprised that the checkpoint didn't remember any of the pickups I had collected (beyond the chicken power anyway). I'm not sure if those are necessary or optional collectibles. I had a lot of trouble with the spike rooms... those were tough!

I encountered a possible bug... after beating the chicken boss, there was no music in the game, just SFX.

Excellent work!

Thanks so much for playing! It may be a little while before I can get back to working on it, but I more or less have the rest of the game planned out!

Bullet hells, I knew nothing of them before I starting doing MGGJ, now I feel like I'm slowly but surely being indoctrinated. (I've even made a few now)

This was an interesting take on bullet hell... sort of like a 2D Zelda perspective movement, but with the shooting and dodging. I have to admit, I forgot about the teleport ability almost immediately... I liked the different items and pickups!

The art was charming! In level it has a bit of an MS-Paint look, but it all works well together! The only part that messed me up was the level with no floor texture... walking around while dodging bullets did something really weird to me visually. Without any reference point it was hard to keep track of what I was doing. I also really liked the Ayumu character art in the story segments. The story itself was goofy, but works for a jam game. I got both endings!

Great work!