itch.io

"leaned on the side of being easy/gentle."

Yeah at one point during the time I first released the game I kind of panic nerfed a lot of health values; I actually went back and rebalanced the values again just now when doing a couple of test playthroughs(the new patch is patch 1.1.3) since really it was just (initially) that big soul edge/crusher guy on the first stage and now obviously the ray/sword attack reactability being divisive

I actually went back and tested dodging the ray and sword on reaction again before the recent patch because I was going to fix it if it was too egregious; I actually did manage to successfuly dodge them from a stand-still purely from zoning out and using visual cues once they showed up, again I don't have the fastest reaction speed so I can only imagine it might be some other factor I'm not catching up on. I might do some tests later on to see if there's any significant input lag in the browser version of the game vs the compiled pc version I'm testing on for example so I can figure this out (I'm assuming you're playing on web)

On the characters hitbox: I feel it's a 50/50 on whether people tend to think that the hitbox is closer to the character's vitals(in the middle of her chest, where the hitbox actually is) or on the center/origin point of the character(near where she's sitting on the broom); I think both make sense just in different ways - obviously the "vitals" one is more logical but a lot of games tend to do the other one too so depending on what they've played it might set the precedence (as is always the case with games)

Thanks for the extended input and feedback btw, you're right on the more data-points and conversation being really helpful for figuring out what's going on. I also noticed you have the highest "karma" value on this game-jam meaning you've voted and engaged with other entries the most out of all the participants, so thank you for that too 😇

Thank you :-]

The assets are painted digitally but they're done at low resolution with a pixel brush - they were painted at the size they're represented in game instead of being downscaled (so it's kind of a weird 50/50 mix of pixel art and hand-drawn especially when the assets get small enough)

Aye a few people mention the slow movement and a few attacks (especially the sword & eel thing); I'm still a bit torn on if I should have changed it or not but at least in personal testing I managed to react if I was focusing on the top/bottom portion of the screen (I actually originally planned to have a little caution indicator pop-up before it came down but yea I didn't have time to implement that and thought it might just be okay as it is though I'm not super sure now obviously)

Hey man

I wanted to try this out but there seems to be an issue with getting the game to display correctly; I'm left with like a tiny view area in the top left of my window & it's impossible to see any of the game/play it

Going full-screen, zooming in/out, restarting/changing window size etc. doesn't seem to do anything and there's no way to download a build of the game either

I'm on Max OSX and using Firefox(it doesn't work in Safari either)

Not going to lie I played the game and saw the ending but I still have no idea how the combat works; not sure if the cards aren't meant to have any unique information on them(? they didn't when I played) but I genuinely could not figure out what my character was doing and why

It definitely felt quite unrefined both in the gameplay intuition/instruction and in the presentation(just in terms of seeming grammar errors or in layout issues, text going off screen etc.) but I can see the vision and I do really like what the developers had in mind

I enjoy the idea of mixing 3d with sprites and I love the idea of the story you've been trying to create; I feel with more time in the oven and with more development & feedback this could end up quite good, looking forward to more from this project in the future

Super cute game 😇

The stages got a bit repetitive near the end(just due to the same types of enemies popping up) but I enjoyed playing it all the way through

I love the fact that singing is a weapon and that it makes a singing tone when you shoot, though I'm not gonna lie I was incredibly dissapointed that in a game so themed around music that the sound of her call/singing didn't change note depending on the music & chord progression; having her sing along with the song would have made me instantly rate this game 10/10 and my heart broke the moment it didn't happen 😢 I would have literally played it just to make different rhythms with pressing and unpressing the shoot button & it would have melted me to the bone

(also I can't help but imagine how sick it would have been if the music part of it somehow made like a rhythm to shooting so that you could control something like spread/burst using different beats to the track It would have jammed so hard)

I'll check it out once you guys update it again, looking forward to it being fleshed out more (especially the story stuff)!

The artwork is lovely in this

Some of the background and foreground assets tend to kind of blend together due to them being so similar in value, I accidentally fell off of the stage on my first run because I didn't even notice the hole when I was backing away from one of the shadow enemies; I think the shadow enemy swipe also feels like it kind of lingers for a little too after the inital swipe & I barely ever felt a need to use my melee attack over the magic

I also spent the whole stage thinking that the barbed wire was some kind of hazard(?) due to it being introduced under platforms which kind of inferred you had to avoid it, so having to purposely jump into barbed wire to fight the boss was a mental leap of faith from that perspective

The boss messed me up at about 50% but I really didn't have the patience to get through the stage again; when I lost the first time I was quite near the boss and then I struggled to make the very first jump again for like 6 attempts 😵‍💫 (it's quite tight and it's hard to tell where the platform ends and begins I think)

I still had fun, and like I said I like the art quite a bit too. I think the game could have used a lot more tweaking based on feel/gameplay - a lot more playing the game and trying to feel out how good & accurate things feel etc.

The actual movement, attacks, and jump arcs actually feel quite good in a vacuum but I think the stage and enemy mechanics clashed quite a bit with some of it

I actually really enjoyed this once I understood what was going on; the game just kind of throws you in and the transformation and ghost grabbing thing was a bit confusing at first but once I got it I had a lot of fun switching back & forth and managing resources/moving in the real world to conserve meter etc.

I genuinely love the main character in this; the animation of her doing the weird goblin squid walk & doing the headbobbing/hair rocking thing is genuinely mental just in terms of how much heart and soul it imbues in her, love the contrast too it helps elevate each phase of her really well

I think a lot of the gameplay ideas were quite solid & you can clearly create great art and characters; obviously the time scale and your experience had you struggling but I think there's a real diamond in the rough with this!

Now create more please 😈

Fun little game

The main character is super cute, I couldn't stop laughing at how different her facing the camera sprite looks compared to the other angles and I hope it was intentional because I love the face:  (╯_╰) 

I had a bit of difficulty figuring out I could enter the buildings in the map on my first play; I got lost not even thinking about trying to walk into the one on the left after the first gate opens (though nobody else seems to be complaining about it )

Also the story intro was actually quite gripping I really wish there was a bit more to it; I couldn't interact with the note in the first building whether or not that was implemented/intentional or not 😵‍💫

Well I got the bad ending which left me a bit bummed but that's okay

The rival killing you mid text despite her getting whooped is a little BS not gonna lie but ye whatever

Other than those two things I really liked this; the art & animation is beautiful and the story was quite fun - I particuluarly enjoyed the design of the main character once she transforms, I wasn't expecting the knight armour elements & it looked damn cool(I imagine some of the idea here was to include more traditionally villainous design elements to contrast with the friend character? ). Now that I'm typing that out I imagine the player is kind of playing the "villain" perspective which is why the rival character is so BS but yea being on the other side of plot armour sucks man

This was super well polished and a joy to look at/play through; I'd go for other endings but I'm salty I lost

Fun little short and snappy game

The slime hitboxes on the boss felt quite egregious though; I kept getting hit by him when I thought I was under far enough and when the boss leaves the screen he can hit you to(even though it feels like he's flying up(to the sky) rather than up(to the top wall)), the rest of the game felt very easy in comparison so that was a bit odd

I'm also not quite sure why some enemies explode/dissapear when they're killed and why some stick around, I thought I was doing something wrong or if they were still alive at first before I realised they just kind of do that

I had fun

Oh I forgot to mention but yeah I'm going to test based on this feedback and I'll probably do another patch with this change and the one that shows the character's "bullet hell" hitbox more clearly

Thank you

You might be right about the ray thing; I only briefly tested that you can dodge them on reaction(well that I can react to them & I'm pretty slow too I feel), but to dodge them I really had to be focusing on the bottom of the screen and watching for the shadow(and I also might have already had the character moving before hand to skip the acceleration part of the movement). 

I kind of purposely made a lot of things distract focus(especially on the big sword and the ray); like I remember purposely tuning the rays spawn timing to shock me while fighting other rays or being distracted looking elsewhere on the screen etc. so that stands out to me as something that might be causing it(though I'm sure you know if that applies or not & yes it might just be impossible if you're not already moving if it doesn't). The sword guy has a similar concept with the fact he moves(drawing you eye with aiming) and he kind of locks you into dodging(drawing your eye into the characters body for dodging)

With the sword I also tuned a lot of the timing when staying at nearer to the bottom of the screen; if it's not that(and you weren't at the top or in the middle or something) then I guess it might also be me skipping the acceleration again but I'm not sure

Thank you :-]

I originally planned on doing hand painted backgrounds but did the 3D ones kind of preemptively to save time (and it's very lucky I did since I had to cut a ton of stuff to hit the deadline either way)

I thought of having the "bullethell" hitbox a bit more intuitive but never ended up implementing it; I could have + should have definitely just had a little glowing circle on the character showing where it is ( I'd patch it in but it's probably a bit late now)

I don't know if the ginger/cinnamon thing is some kind of trick question or personality test but I guess me thinking that might be helpful insight either way. I thought ginger and cinnamon going together was like a bread & butter type thing but I am very basic when it comes to cooking & eating Team Y2K

The art and animation is great and the sound effects, story, characters etc. fit very well, super well executed stuff

The gameplay honestly felt very unrefined though; collision shapes seem to be very gratuitously large(to the point to where getting hit feels quite counter-intuitive/unfair), a lot of the elements and segments of the game felt kind of time-wastey(like having to wait for the right log spawns, stealth segments being difficult/counter-intuitive to avoid and the alert enemies just kind of being a little obnoxious honestly) - I'm not sure what the tool you're using for development is and how it functions but it definitely feels like it needed a lot more tweaking/playing as you go (like running the game, trying out movements/areas, feeling how it felt for you and adjusting etc. and really tweaking things by feel)

The game does seem somewhat tough(intentionally so) but I wonder how much people are getting frustrated with the design elements of the gameplay over some of the intended challenge - it really sucks to admit I didn't really have a lot of fun with the game because it's beautiful and I wanted to enjoy it so much 🙁

A really bittersweet experience and review unfortunately; I wish this was just gushing about your excellent art or the story but what I experienced with the gameplay really stood out quite negatively

This was a fun playthrough

I enjoyed the prose and writing quite a lot; the scene where the main character is looking back into the mirror without her teeth stood out particularly as evocative and strong, I also quite liked the description of the tiles as "a crimson mirror" due to the blood

The concept of giving parts of yourself away to other people in order to help them is a really good theme to focus on, especially implementing it into the magical girl genre concept; I like it quite a lot.

The decision making felt a tad forced towards self-sacrifice(which makes me wonder if it might have been more effective in third person maybe playing as the mother or something?) but I still enjoyed it quite a bit and obviously it was kind of required to tell the story from the main character's perspective (though I do feel that perhaps the player input was a tad limited for what it is)

Loved the game, the themes are right up my alley too 😈

This game is really promising & I'm looking forward to playing a more developed version :-]

I quite enjoyed the writing so far; the premise, setting, world building etc. really fun and cool stuff. I loved the characters too(both the writing and the art & designs)!

The music was quite fitting and competent; I felt like it was a little too understated in the first parts of the opening dungeon you were trying to create but I understand it's unfinished(?)

(This review was written with the idea that that the first dungeon crawling area of the game isn't done yet, let me know if there's more to the game I'm missing beyond that first dark first person area that's seemingly empty.)

Looking forward to more dudes!

Was a pretty fun and ambitious title considering the time limit; I've got me playing the game here(no commentary):

If we're trying to be honest with reveiws then I'd wish the script writer would have had a bit more confidence in their ability to create a funny scenario with elements of pop culture references. To me the final result ended up being a bit too self referrential and self demeaning for me to really get into it - it felt like the script said "I'm just a silly script please don't judge me!" very brazenly to begin with and I'd much prefer if it said "Yeah I know I'm funny what'cha gonna do about it"(I think a bit more confidence and bravado could have gone a long way in making the humor work personally)

The models were lovely and I enjoyed the character designs too (definitely see the megaman legends inspiration & the assets are real good)

The music was a bit short(especially the alert theme), I think it could have done with like two bars of minor variation and it would have done a lot for the loop not getting a bit redundant(though I think I suffered with this issue too; time constraints and all), beyond that it fit quite well

Some mechanics(like the first person view) seem to kind of get disabled somewhat arbitrarily depending on the scene of the game; I think whenever the camera is taken control of (and also on the fire boss guy I think it happens too) it seems to disable the mechanic(which is a little confusing given the kinda strict ps1ish controls) beyond that I didn't have any problems with the controls & generally had a fun time with the movement and gameplay

But yea I think this was a really ambitious and fun entry - I love the gall to include fully voice acted and motion captured cutscenes, that definitely takes guts (to both aim for and to shockingly practically deliver). I hope you dudes didn't crunch out too hard and still have plenty of game development to deliver, looking forward to more! ☺️

ops

well nice models and sick art by TalDS either way; u were credited as art so I just assumed you did all of it my b

this website confuses me and makes me feel like a boomer I struggle to create hyperlinks

o dude I didn't even realise you were part of the jam too I'm dense

Your artwork is sick too I really like the sketches in the BG/intro on the jam page; I haven't played the actual game yet but I'll get to it soon 😵‍💫

I made it so the P key also works as a toggle & I added an indicator to the top left to show if invincibility is on or not(it's like a red dot next to your health). Hopefully that helps and let me know if you have any more problems

Update 1.1.2 should be playable now(the one with that change)

Aye that guy's the first boss of the game(and the end boss of the first stage), there's 4 bosses in total and two of them have stages. You might have been shooting his teeth(which I gave a seperate hitbox that did 0 x damage), your comment made me make all the "deflect" areas at least do a bit of damage(like 0.5x) at least and I changed the health values of the tougher enemies slightly just incase it was that instead. The deflect areas did have a "tell" but it was pretty inconsistent and a drip in a puddle so to speak with everything going on in the screen, sorry about that.

 ( I definitely neglected giving this game to other people for testing as being part of the development process 😵‍💫, thanks for the feedback so far man. The patch is up if you wanted to give it a go)

I'm so sorry you got squished on you're meant to be able to kill that fella

Everyone is having trouble with that dude and I didn't catch it during testing 😭

I'll get a patch up asap, would love for you to try it out again!

Do you mean the soul edge looking dude? Because that's like 10% of the game lol, I think I might have overtuned the fella (I'll have a patch up in a bit, sorry!!!)

Yeah it seems like someone else was having a tough time with that enemy too

I wanted you to get almost squished and kinda be able to just panic kill it but I must have been aiming up knowing where the hitboxes were without thinking about it. oops, thanks for the feedback(I might actually patch this quick).

I agree the character is a tad sluggish, I wanted to capture some more "horror" aspects of slow positioning and timing w/ the reloading etc. but it might have been a bit much

Thanks for trying it out man