itch.io

Every time I pick up this game to try speedrun it, I end up taking an entire hour to beat it

I find it a bit of a shame that the fighting is pretty lackluster in this. But I think the main reason for that is because of how phenomenally it looks.
Seriously with how polished that project looks I've gotten my expectations in the direction of something as well done as Sekiro.

It's not that this plays bad it's just that it doesn't live up to how fantastic it looks, which is one hell of a hurdle to life up to.

Reflecting about the combat a bit, I think the main issue is just how easy you have it to beat enemies. I think my main concern wasn't trying to not get hit, but rather trying to just remove things from the screen.

From the dodging I did do it also seemed to just kind of mess with your positioning, so it is pretty easy try to try to dodge somewhere but then be in no good position to attack, or you try to move somewhere to attack but can't really controll the speed.

Though maybe I am just misinterpretating the combat. It could also work better in a direction of being an overly powerfull character that easily goes through hordes (for that I didn't have enough enemies to destroy).

But ehhh, who cares about me overanalyzing the combat of a short 10 min game. This is one of the stylish games I've seen, even including FullPrice titles. Seeing stuff like this always motivates me to try tinkering more in 3D-Graphics. Especially the Trees work really well, even though they seem to be an extremely simple technique.

Oh yeah, I've put this game into the top Itch-Games I played in 2023 at place 4 (others are listed here)

As with the other games I would really like to donate a little money, but the itch page doesn't allow for that. Any other way I can donate it or are you planning to make a game where I can donate in the near future?

10th favourite Itch Game of 2023 (Others are listed in this Blog Post)

It's sadly been too much of a while since I played this game so I can barely say anything about it. Though I do remember being very interested in the difficulty curve.

Though the only thing I have noted down "Interesting difficulty spike at lilypad".

After a short reoplay up to that point I also really get that. Lilypad is a quite interesting level to play level and makes a lot of fun, but it also has a lot more dangerous sections than the previous levels. It's not that the feel of the character-controller isn't well enough established at this point it's just a bit of n unexpected jump at this point.

Other than that this game is really masterfull at how it satisfying it looks. The graphics are really cute but also very functional. You can very quickly notice the death zones and even the ways you drove in previous attempts. And the game over screen is very quick and barely gets in the way evough despite being extremely satisfying.

9th favourite Game of 2023 (Others are listed in this Blog Post)
Am gonna gib some few bucks when I finished post.
Just gonna repost my review here publicly as comment so I can refer to it in the post (why are itch review private anyways).

Gotta be some of the best games of this size I played.

I just love stories that are expressed with gameplay like this, actually being the character and getting your (very standard) abilities taken away is fantastic.

The jump in itself feels really good to control, though I'd say it is a bit floaty (or maybe it's just the very large gap in timing between your smallest and highest jump, it feels like the time time difference betwen how long they take to reach their apex is just too high).

The level design is also quite good at playing around with your abilities. But I'd say it is the weakest part of the game, not that it's bad it just feels some too frustrating.

I also think I will try getting through to the end with the required amount of hearts.

Top 8 favourite Itch Game I played in 2023 (Others are listed in this blog post)
I will give some money and Whishlist on Steam when I finish the Blogpost.

I really like the uniqueness of this Deckbuilding. Am excited to see what the full Steam release will offer.
If I recall correctly the normal Enemies got kind of easy after a while, though the Boss at the end was too much for me every time I reached it. But that's really the only feedback I can give now (usually I have a lot more to say but I am far too exhausted from writing lots of other stuff).

The game ended up being my 7th favourite Itch Game in 2023. The bosses are just really neat and inspired me to work on my own Boss Fight... which is now since around the time of this post in development Hell of me barely getting enough time to work on it.

So I will give some money when I finished my 2023 blog post.

Also no pressure on finishing that update for those Safespots and Jank.

Chose this as my 6th favourite Game of 2023. (Others I list in this Blog Post)

Kind of also because of how much I love your general gamestyle and how you always make stuff as high Quality as this one. Got a lot out of your Games in the past Year.

I wanted to give a little itch donation as a thanks, but I can't find any downloadable Game where I can give some money. Any other way I could give you some Money? If not I'll keep it noted down for when you make a Game where I can give a few Bucks.

My 5th favorite Itch game I played in 2023 (Rest are in this Blog Post)
So there'll be a bit of money when I finish the Blog post (and that for me seems to mean some Booklet, excited to look into that).

I really don't know what to say about this other than it's really interesting and got me interested in your other stuff.

This game is a freaking trip and I have absolutely no clue what it is about, but it just has a perfect vibe... Whatever the hell that vibe is.

3rd favourite Itch Game of 2023 (other ones in this post)
Will give some money to the game as thanks

The graphical style definitely helps making this so high, though I think even without it this Game would've been my favourite Puzzle-Pame of 2023. Though I do think the Shadow-UV-Texture could've been a little but less repetitive, still an amazing effect. Any hints on how to do this, the texture is applied via Screen-UV but I don't quite know of a way to get a fitting lightness value in a Fragment Shader to make it look like shading.

I really don't know what else to write because it was such a long time since I first played it (now a year ago). So I can't really comment on the Puzzles themselves.

I would be really really interested in seeing what else this game could have to offer. So if you ever do get around to continuing this then I'll be really excited to see what it's doing.

2nd favourite free Itch game of 2023 (other ones in this post)
Meaning I'll give some money as reward, and also meaning I'll get more of the game, yay

I sadly don't remember too much anymore from the Game as I played it at the start of the years and back then I didn't write down everything I liked about a game (actually still don't)

But the Free version of the game was already a really polished good time. I don't play these times of Games particularly often (the funny difficulty type) but they cam be very fun when done well, and this one is done extremely well.

The Pogo feels surprisingly predictable, but mastering it is insanely hard and a slight slip up can end in really unpredicted Deaths. The comedic effect of Deaths is really good, the dumb splash sound effect, the little jiggle animation,  the x appearing  and abrupt Respawn makes every single one of them feel like a little Joke. The fact you often know 1-2 seconds how you die before Death catches up with you often helps with that.
The game might be frustrating to some people, which would make the deaths pretty non-funny, but for me personally it wasn't an issue because of how many difficult games I play.

So yeah, dunno what else to say here because it's been a long while since I played... OH YEAH, the sound design for the ground is absolutely amazing.

CONGRATS FOR TOPPING MY LIST OF FAVOURITE ITCH GAMES IN 2023 (other ones in this post)

I am insanely amazed by the quality of this, it's way above all the other itch games I played this year. This is so good I do view it as one of my favourite Games I played in 2023 in general.

At first I was only fell in love with the extremely unique Bullet-Hell mechanic, the Artstyle and Humor.

But with the later parts of the game the got a lot more interesting. The freaking boss gimmicks all start becoming some of the most unique stuff imaginable. Which added on top of the unique Playstyle makes this some of the most varied 6 hours I spend on a game.
There's games of 60 hours playtime that don't have this amount of variance in them (of course not the only metric of a games quality but I just wanna point that out as a reason why I love this so much).

Now towards some actual Analysis of my thoughts on this game:

As I said the Bosses are insanely varied, if I recall correctly every single one has its own Gimmick. And to top that off I wouldn't call these hard Gimmicks but rather soft gimmicks. What I mean by that is that they exist to give a boss a unique identity but don't distract from the main Gameplay by creating their own goals.
Some examples would be Fromsoftware who usually make very very soft Gimmicks, barely noticeable as Gimmicks but still enough to give each Boss its own identity and the Zelda series which usually has Hard Gimmicks to act as a challenge to the Dungeon item the Player learned.

These aren't quite as soft as the ones Fromsoftware (usually) does but I think they aren't as hard as to change the Gameplay-Loop of the Boss in a significant enough way to say the Gameplay changed.
And I just really like that, it helps highlight the strength of the unique Gameplay Mechanic in so many different ways.

I actually wanted to say that I think the Gameplay mechanic does end up being a bit too much "just suck lots of the same stuff and 1-hit". And while I do think that Aspect could use some improvements, the Game does end up with a few harder fights that do manage to make this Aspect more interesting. (and I can't think of any ways to improve this in general, partly because it's been a while since I played the game.)

My favourite boss was probably HECC. I love her mechanic as it makes you quite involved with the right side of the screen so that you can control her versions. It just creates a really cool interplay of not just the Stuff you SUCC but also using the Stuff you sucked to switch to the right HECC-Mode which changes what you can SUCC. I really would have to play the Boss a bit more to fully explain why this entire thing works so well.

Something I was a tad bit sad to see was how there weren't any beautifull Danmaku Patterns, as that really is a Staple of the Series (next to the funny Girls). The Game does have unique patterns in the latter half in terms of Gameplay Mechanic but they just aren't beautifull.

Anyways lets talk sbout the funny Girls. I like wacky interpretations of the characters. I do think that's not even too inaccurate to Touhou because of how Wacky and Humerous the offical Games, Manga and other Stuffs ZUN makes already are (HECC, the thing that got closest to finishing off Reimu was Food poisoning).

I just love the funny Girls.

Also a minor complaint: Screen-Size 3 is kind of annoying because it isn't actual full-screen, and especially annoying because the places you have to click the blocks aren't the right places.

Anyways to not leave this off on such a minor complaint:

Generally, I love this game and it's definitely one of my favourite games of 2023. I will pay about 10€ for that when I finish listing my other 10 favourite Itch games of 2023 and my 2023 review Blog (not gonna finish 'em now, it's 2 in the morning).
(I noticed this game doesn't have the choose price option, is there any reason for that? Another game you uploaded does take money so I will probably just give the bucks via that one)

Some seriously good Bullet Hell!

The first half of the fight is a bit too heavy on the redirecting of bullets
But that seems to be fixed in the Ultra mode, making it more complicated redirecting.

The fight really shines in this second half, where you get some spells that are really good at abusing how hard you can macrododge thanks to the unlimited speed.
There's that attack to the right (2nd picture) which is some extremely fun to macrododge stuff.

I was a bit sad about the final attack (preeetty sure it was the final attack, but maybe I am micing up the penultimate one with final) being rather basic in comparision to the previous ones as it's basically the aforementioned attack with more danger to the side, which makes it harder but not really in an interesting way and mostly just makes it less fun.

I haven't finished ultra but the first half already seems a lot more interesting than in the original, I might try beating it when I am less sleepy to see what else there is in store.

This is some of the most funny little games I played this year, I'm happy the "assets" shown as the thumbnail of https://fullmontis.itch.io/super-pinup-smasher-2000 got me to check out your page and find this.

The concept is freaking hilarious and genuinely fun to play (though unsure if I like the heartbeat-rate being restrictive, though that's just me loving to shmove around). And on top of that is some fun character-design and some really neat sound-effects.

There's two things I would recommend to keep in mind for future games (I thought I had more but I can't remember them right now):

1. Give your character some maximum fall speed. Unlimited fallspeed is pretty much always unwanted (though in this case it might end up messing with shooting yourself down, so I might've also not bothered with trying to find a workaround for that in a jam setting)

Been a while since I played the game (2 months) and I nearly forgot to write a little feedback, really happy I remembered to do that because I really really like this one.

The concept is insanely versatile for unique puzzle levels that all follow a certain rule but can still be insanely surprising.

It's hard to have a simple ruleset that a player can understand but which also allows for tons of surprises while not breaking any rules (I've been kind of obsessed with stuff like that recently because I started watching some Mario Maker Troll levels which are absolutely insane in that (atleast for people that know the language of those levels))

The physics felt a bit awkwardly floaty at times but it really fits the feel of an oldschool newgrounds type of game. And a faster jump might also mess with the playhead shenanigans because adjusting those does need a lot of thinking which you sometimes gotta do mid-jump.

The only other game of yours I played is A Time Traveller's Guide To Past Delicacies, but from these two your way of telling a story is already really interesting.
I also really like straightforward easy-to-interpretate stories so I might even prefer this one storywise to the Time Traveller's Guide (though ATTGTPD is definetly a more fun ride with all its... stuff).
Hope I'll be able to get around the your other games soon.

Got around to booting it up and playing through the bit

The more bare-bones graphics makes it look a lot more readable and fun than your first project uploaded here

The level design also feels less chaotic but it also feels a lot more samey. Though there's only so much you can do with a player character that only has a static jump-height and no other moves.
For that it's pretty fine.

For me the Game crashes because of missing ffmpeg.dll

When I give it a copy of that .dll into its folder it gives this error

Oh thanks a lot

Though I am not too proud of it because it is "barely" (being a bit too harsh on myself here) playable thanks to Godot not properly exporting the healthbar and me forgetting to show what the keybinding is (both things I wanna fix when godot exports it properly, so I can put my dissatisfaction away).

But it's true this game looks fine. Especially the fire shader does a great effect.

But my current project is far far more impressive than this. After that one is finished (which I hope I'll still get around to this year) I'll try getting around to some more smaller Jump n' Runs like Big Jump Small Jump.

Will check out what you made later today, been a while since I had an itch.io game day so it's fitting.

I sadly couldn't finish this because of the absolutely over-intense scrteenshake
The bullets are at a speed and amount that makes it important to look exactly where they go and I just couldn't keep up when the entire screen shaked every time I fired a bullet (stopped at the flying head ball)

But the game does look really neat otherwise

Got interested in this little gem after watching a bit a video of the steam version

And now I spend about 2 hours on this version to get stuck on the drone problem, kind of a sad ending wanted to try destroying the red blocks

But that convinced me to get around to buying the steam version sometime, though first I'll probably sink 10 days into the other itch version

I think it could need some better introduction level so you get used to moving the mouse quickly, but other than that I lobe absolutely everything about this (expect the lack of more levels).

The platfoming in this is really interesting when it comes to the portals, sadly the transformations kind of fall short in comparision. Though my biggest issue with them was how I often messed parts up because of how I didn't realize I was meant to transform at that point, which became a bit tedious when using the frog or lizard.

But the neat portal shenanigans made up for it so I mostly enjoyed my time.

Also the glitch with the camera being the wrong size happens for me on the windows jam build 1.0

Oh this works really well, didn't expect it to play very interestingly when I saw the concept but I am positively surprised.
The COMs seem smart and like they have some tactics, though maybe that's just their ability to easily dodge because of the scattered shots and your own very large hitbox, but the way it's achieved is unimportant, important is that it works well

It does kind of happen that you can very easily hit the defender when you have few ships left in the middle, but it doesn't always happen so it still keeps the tension of having only few ships left.

So far the best game I've played in this Jam.

The idea is absolutely amazing and is really intersting to play. It's somehow a normal stealth game but it focuses far more on the gameplay aspect because of the difficulty of staying in eyesight. This i8s such a good and faithfull twist on the formula that it really gets me in the mood of playing normal stealth games or even making something with a simmilar concept. And I just absolutely adore things that give a genre a unique twist while still making me want more of the original genre too.

There's also the way the game plays around with level designs to keep it interesting. I didn't expect that from a jam game and reminded me how much I love trying to keep engagement through unique level design. Only issue I'd have here is that I personally don't like the laser bars introduced at the end, their instantness just makes it feel too different from stealth for me.

The visual presentation is also just an absolutely perfect extra on top. the game is extremely easy to read and understand.

Really interested in seeing more levels.

(Also unimportant "glitch" I experienced: I could only dash into cardinal directions and up-right, the other combo-directions weren't possible to me, I've been using the arrow keys, when I tested it out on WASD it did work fine, so it might just be my keyboard not liking that combi of letters)

Yeah I had absolutely no time to get on making assets for menu and switching the game-mode.

It is interesting how the writeup got you to understand the blue part. The red one is actually the one it is describing (outside of the controlls of course). In the red part you're meant to kill the skeletons (which might be hard to tell because of the glitched out health bar, thanks godot for that export bug), while in the blue part your playing the lord of the skeletons and killing the oil barons instead (you got the roles kind of reversed in your description there).

I hoped that side-switching would be apparent enough from setting and high-score descriptors. But a proper intro could make it far better (but absolutely zero time for that because I only thought up the story within the last hour).

This game has a really fun lighthearted feel. The voice changer lines are barely audible but just having that gives it a fun atmosphere.

I think my main issue is how it feels to play the game (partly being the keybindings just being unusual to me). It is barely possible to do any auto shooting while casting other things and there's little reason to switch up when you found something that worked, all spells just kind of have the same reason to exist none really feel like they have a special reason. Maybe they could each have more special effects or just be a bit more spammable so it can give the power fantasy of a boss with many moves.

But I think with a bit of balancing I could have a lot of fun with this, it just doesn't feel like you're being particularly powerfull when you play the game.

Another thing, I think you have some setting wrong on the textures, their blurr looks a tiny bit like what you get from Biliniear filtering. It interpolates between the pixels instead of just cutting off as is usual for pixel art (there nearest filter is usually used). But I haven't used GameMaker so I can't give any specific advice.

The presentation is extremely polished and the idea sounds insanely interesting and fun.

The only citique I can really give is that the aiming is more time intensive than the game gives you. Maybe selecting the fruits, deciding when to slowdown and aiming is juust a little much to do. My ideas to simplify it would be to maybe allow the player to choose from any fruit at any time (though just doing that without any thought would just end up in people spamming the same combo), and making the slowmo timer activate itself instead of being player controlled (simmilarly to return to sender). I also think that while the assets do look fabolous they are a bit distracting from the main action and take up a lot of the space from which you wanna throw from.

But overall I really enjoyed the game, even if I didn't play it too much because of not being able to aim that quickly.

I didn't even think of setting the gameplay apart but you're right, the two modes are pretty lacking in that regard. I've never really experimented with these genres so it makes sense they are pretty basic but it surprises me how I barely noticed how basic they are, especially the second half could've used some more brainstorming to come up with something a little more intersting.

Thanks for the feedback.

I have been thinking about something like this for a while but never thought seriously on trying it out because of how hard it seemed to make. So I am really happy about seeing an implementation of the Danmaku as boss that is realistic to make.

The patterns aren't particularly well balanced (rotations have made it impossible to hit anything) and I've had a hard time deciding what to choose because the options have little to no explanation (a preview  to the right would've been perfect).

The balance of beating the player is also a little broken, you can either accidentally get a horrible combo or beat the player rather quickly because of a good combo (and I kinda don't wanna beat the player when I have a pretty combo).

Something I didn't expect at all was the usage of the Spell-Timer as a countdown when to change your attack without loosing an HP. That is a really nice concept and could probably make for some balancing that could work in a larger release.

I also really like how the game is presented, it's just missing some fancy background elements for the real shmup experience, but otherwise I love the sprites and dialogue. even if they're not much they're great.

The most fun I've had with the game was when I tried out a few combos by just waiting in the corner to farm some points (seemed like the best way to do it) and it allowed for some fun stacking of combi. might revisit the game some other time to let it run in the background for longer so I can make some seriously idiotic combos.

(also for review unimportant crash: the game crashes when you change the window size while the battle is running, the menu resizing works fine though)

I always forget to explain the controlls in-game. And when I thought of it it was too late to properly put it into the game so I've just put it onto the itch page.

There's also the fact that the health bars suddenly glitched out on export. Doesn't really help.

But thanks for playing, didn't even think about letting the player attack in different directions. Could might be a good addition (though no clue where to bind the keys in that situation).

Thanks for playing!

Used this one and the RPG Prototype in a recent GMTK-Jam submission: https://stardddude.itch.io/oil-saga

These skeletons singlehandedly lead to a downward-spiral that'd end up creating the entire theming of the game (in code I referenced them turning into oil after being beaten).

Used this for a GMTK-Jam submission: https://stardddude.itch.io/oil-saga
I used it for the second section of the game because of how perfectly it contrasted with the first one. And in general I just really like this track, though I have been considering to use one of your "Emotional Music Loop" because of how much I love them, but figured it wouldn't fit as well and contrast too harshly with too little context.

Heyope, I've used this track for a GMTK-Jam submission: https://stardddude.itch.io/oil-saga
Searched around a bit and it was a perfect fit for the first section of the game. It somehow manages to have a serious boss-tone while keeping a mini-gamey feel.

Ooooh, this one's interesting.

I really like the attacks but they just feel kinda exhausting. It just takes a long time before you reach something new, but at the same time I did take quite a time to actually get used to the attacks.

Ther's a bit of jank in a few attacks, especially when they combine, or half of the second bosses attacks being beatable by safespotting. But it did end on a high note with the tripple combo of that cat. I really really like that one, and it is surprisingly rare for it to get unfair (sometimes the arrows or spear force you into the other but that's the only thing).

Maybe Boss 1 and 2 (first half) should've been made shorter. They don't really life up to their length.

That sounds great, looking forward to the rework.

Just got around to setting up that games page (https://stardddude.itch.io/throw-frog-at-bird). It is a very minimalistic project so I hope it doesn't seem like I am making too big a deal out of this, I just really enjoy the Assets you upload and wanted to make sure I credit you properly.

Wanted to inform you that I used these files and some of the UI SFX you had up recently for a little miniature high-score-esque project.

Did wanna credit you but the SFX pack isn't up for me anymore, wanted to ask how exactly I am meant to credit those or if you don't want them to be used anymore for some reason, because it is kind of a shame I can't link directly to them.

(Project isn't up yet, but it's finished only gotta set up the website)

Congrats on your first project, really good in that context.

As for critique, honestly gotta join the other peeps in the comments, the game is too hard. I know that's the point but it just starts out impossible for 99% of the traffic you'll get here. Which leads to most players giving you feedback from tryin to get the first jump done for 5 minutes before deciding to drive all over the ocean floor. Which is what I did before finding out about the slowdown... Which made me clear the first jump but then was so slow I didn't wanna continue like that.

There's nobody who'll judge you for releasing a short easy game, especially on itch.io where people wanna get tastes of hundred kinds of games. But I totally get wanting to cater to a niche (especially as I see you've already got a good following on youtube), my first project also ended up with sections far too hard for average traffic.

I'd advice to give the games intro something easier to let people who are unfamiliar tip into what you are doing, doesn't even have to be much, just something short that beginners can get through.

Other than that I also gotta mention the graphics feel bloated. Of course not to downplay the experience you gained from going for this style and the work you put into it, but the final product just looks generic to me and eats resources for no good reason.

I can't give you any specific advice because I use Godot and don't know how things are dealt with in Unreal Engine. But generally speaking I would reccommend to try tone effects down, there's no real need for those reflections and lighting effects. It might feel like an insane difference when comparing it side to side in the engine, but if you have a passable color balance barely anyone will actually take not of the fact that the orange of some block isn't realistically reflected onto another surface.

But then again, knowing which parts of the graphics to turn down while staying within  certain style is a hard thing to do. So don't get too worked up about it, it ran for me after turning everything to the lowest setting so you didn't make any catastrophical mistake where the base is only playable with a great graphics card and the lowest setting changes absolutely nothing.

I abolutely love the feel of this game, though it is still a bit too tricky to get used to.

I think there are 3 main issues with this version

1. The randomly generated area is just not friendly to traverse in at all, there's endless impossible appearing situations because of misfortunate sphere placement

2. the turrets can just shoot you while you are in an arc that leaves you no escape route

3. It is really hard to land shots and get good drifts. I get that is a core part of such a game but I think there could be some tweaks to the character movement and aim to make it a little easier to get to a satisfying point

I think a possible improvement could be gained by giving the player a short slowdown ability, I found the slowdown given by shooting turrets helped a ton when trying to style. So I though it could be extremely cool if you had the ability to just activate that when you notice an opportunity that is too hard for you (though of course non-slow downed shots should yield more points).

Anyways I think I'll keep a tab for this game open, seems like the kinda game I gotta get better at.

The Tutorial could need some help I am stuck doing things like this, but that was honestly hilarious and gave me a good time.

The Tutorial also does not match the screen size when you go fullscreen.