itch.io

Really solid gameplay concept, very fitting for the jam - not too simple, with a good amount of strategy and tech you can use. Enjoyed it quite a bit - might come back for another run after the voting period is over!

Solid all around, just mildly lacking in the visual feedback, for example the strong kick should have different visuals than the fast one imo (maybe also slightly higher range so it feels more satisfying to use). There was also a bug with dash where I would get stuck in a corner and get softlocked, screenshot attached.

(P.S. our game is slightly below the median in ratings, would really appreciate if you could give it a try)

Thank you for playing and the last minute vote 🙏 Glad you enjoyed it, if I were to expand or reiterate on the concept I'd probably redesign the stages to have threats, as well as making it possible to lose/force a restart with checkpoints, which would feel too awkward if it were possible with the current iteration.

The theme was definitely a bit of a stretch, the goal was to reach at least 3 stars for it without compromising on style, you're using your S-Ball to strike at the horizontal goals but they don't really give off a conventional soccer vibe I must admit

The visual style is very polished. In fact, the game's cover art gives a false impression - the art on it looks pretty rough, but the in-game ui/assets are well refined. I suggest replacing or refining the cover for this reason.

The gameplay was okay, but it was really not convenient to use the camera, so I didn't get very far in terms of score - the game already lets you control the distance using mouse wheel, would be perfect if it let you move the camera around like, for example, in Spyro: Reignited Trilogy or The Hat in Time.

(By the way, our submission is low on rates as well, would appreciate if you could give it a shot)

Радостно слышать, что игра так понравилась! Первый трек можно послушать на странице композитора здесь - https://cybershroom.bandcamp.com/track/earth-prime (второй трек ещё пока никуда не выложен)

Насчёт темы - тут да, внезапная и очень специфичная тема джема нас повергла в шок. Уже упомянуто в комментарии ниже, но создавать генерную футбольную игру совсем не хотелось, поэтому пришлось подтягивать элементы дизайна в надежде, что хотя бы на 3 звезды сгодится

Thank you for your feedback. Glad you enjoyed most of the aspects so much! Firstly, the default controls for keyboard are actually the Arrow keys + Z/X, WASD is an alternative for people who prefer it. You can remap everything as you want.

For the theme - a generic soccer-like type of game is not my style at all. While the setting is sci-fi, the main character wears a soccer-inspired uniform and uses a ball in a vaguely sport-like setting, the rest is up to player interpretation. This is about as much as I was willing to compromise with how specific the jam theme was, the intention was to make it at least worth 3 stars in theme, it's fine if you don't agree.

"Nobody is going to play 10 minutes all over again" is valid criticism for this jam in particular, but in general - this isn't really true and strongly depends on scene/genre. It's actually on a very low end of length spectrum if you take shoot 'em ups, for example. Online leaderboards would be great, wish it were possible.

You cannot die, but some score bonuses are lost if you take hits. There are no threats until the boss fight begins, so having the player die and lose the run only during it would make little sense. I don't think it makes the game more boring or more fun, since the objective is not to survive, but to make precise shots to take down as many enemies as possible for higher multiplier.

I think that having permanent upgrades that carry between playthroughs doesn't fit the game well considering that the objective is to earn a high score. The game size is also quite large considering the scope and simplicity - using Unreal seems like overkill. If your goal was to practice with the engine then it's fine though

Получилось набрать 1459. Геймплей интересный, особенно после того, как повышается скорость и усложняются траектории. Чем-то напомнило старые игры на сотовых телефонах. Единственное на что стоило бы обратить внимание - иногда мяч начинает лететь вне экрана, и в ворота прилелеть может только в конце траектории, на что вовремя среагировать будет просто невозможно (как раз на этом мой забег и закончился)

Ещё бы предложил опцию замедления персонажа, т.к. дефолтная скорость показалась слишком быстрой. В некоторых играх для этого дают зажать Shift

Honestly - good effort for a first published game, with such a tight deadline no less.

I didn't really understand how to get a high score because it kept resetting to 100 and I couldn't figure out why. As for survival - it's extremely easy to just keep the ball in air with fast drags until your "energy" is depleted, then kite the players away and land somewhere safe to replenish/collect items. Even with this and the general lack of polish - the game would totally go hard if it were made during the Flash era

Got a score of 711 after a few tries. I like the concept, though the random nature of each trap spawning means it's mostly up to luck if you're going to be able to get big scores per goal (some setups, like a box right in front of the goal, will make it impossible to score in a single kick). Some traps would also stack up or spawn in places where they are completely useless. Not asking to remove the luck element completely since it's impossible because of the way scoring works, I just wish the traps would be more fine-tuned to spawn in more relevant spots, and maybe avoid some others as to not completely screw your run over

I like the theme interpretation and how it's "in-season", and the gameplay, while simple, had a surprising amount of strategy to it. Really wish you could use another key for kicking, like Z, since Enter feels really weird to use together with arrow keys - I would totally try a few more times for the #1 spot otherwise

Got a win on my second try after figuring out how the game works. Really polished, plays very smooth, though gameplay-wise I mostly just clicked the ball instead of holding it like the bots do, which resulted in much stronger strikes with greater control. Also, the AI kept shooting itself in the foot - the enemy team self-goaled twice and my team kept shooting towards our goal repeatedly, which was very silly and kind of in contrast (presumably) to the experiences of other commenters

By penalties I mean the fact that you don't get the no-hit bonus if you take a hit, and the fact that your position gets reset, which might be an inconvenience sometimes

Thank you so much for playing! Indeed, it's not possible to die in this game (though there are still penalties if you get hit), the primary focus is on scoring, which is already quite tricky even without a bullet rain pouring down on you haha

Hi, are you still looking for a team? I've sent you a friend request on Discord (I'm @wingedfoxdev there), would love to chat with you about it!

I liked the idea with the visual and sound changes as the "tutorial" progresses. I couldn't figure out a way to get the progress bar to 100% (if there is a way at all), so the end of a run felt rather abrupt. You could totally expand on this with a wider range of effects if you ever revisit the idea, thanks to overall simplicity there seems to be a lot of room for cool stuff in there

The game itself seemed to have lacked strategy since spamming as fast as you can is best for points, but the visual effects combined with physics interactions are quite pretty (do the particles have their own gravity? there was that one time when a particle was orbiting another particle and it looked cool). You can probably expand on this with more advanced effects and smoother gradients if you choose to revisit this

Visually very polished and interesting - lots of interactive elements, was surprised to see that this is made with RPG Maker. Mouse controls didn't feel very responsive - nuts wouldn't get picked up or fed immediately on click, not sure if it's just my computer or a bug or rpg maker being jank. Still, really well done pushing through all the RM quirks and limitations.

Cool as a concept. Not very polished, but still had some nice touches like the Earth zooming and camera shaking, which enhanced immersion. Could do with some sound or visual effects for when the Earth is saved/lost as a finishing touch

That was hilarious, felt like just the right mix between Bartender and The Town with No Name. Lots of unexpected twists that make you laugh out loud. Thank you for brightening my day!

So pretty... Figuring out how to use the shadows well was satisfying. Some levels seemed slightly longer than 20s, but not a problem - on the contrary, I wish the levels were at least a smidge longer so we had more time to take in the scenery...

The music was pleasant and relaxing, I think it turned out well - no need for you to worry about lack of experience. I'm sure you'll get even better as you keep experimenting.

Nice amount of juice. I didn't fully understand the scoring but somehow got over 2k, would be great if there were an in-game glossary of sorts that explains how to get each medal and its value.

Interaction between the paddle and the ball is not like in other Breakout games I played (Blasterball 3, Super DX Ball...) - in those games, the ball gets deflected in a different direction depending on which part of the paddle it hit, while in your game the ball stays at the same angle unless it hits the very edge of the paddle. As a result, it feels very difficult to control the ball. More often than not when trying to redirect, the ball would deflect at a horizontal angle and become unable to escape gravity, ruining the run. I wish there were more ways to control the ball, e.g. hitting it with your bomb would launch it forward with force.

Other than that, a couple nitpicks is that the gate is covered by UI, so it took me a while to figure out that you're actually supposed to get the ball in there. I also couldn't immediately figure out what the firing button was - an in-game tooltip would be ideal, and I would advise against hiding the controls like you did on the game page. It saves space, but someone quick-scanning the info may end up never noticing them or the fact that the dropdown arrow is clickable

Cool twist on the Super Hexagon formula. Very polished, I especially like the grazing effect when you're really close to the obstacles. Could work with more difficulty options and more obstacle patterns if you ever decide to expand on this

Simple concept, but pretty interesting - fits the 20s theme like a glove. Some "objectives" were quite clever and took me off-guard, like the person with a game screenshot for a head - it was fun to figure that one out. Too bad you can't stare off the bouncer...

The movement was pretty fun, you could probably build upon this easily with mechanics like dash or wall-jump if you decide to expand on it.

There is an extreme jump in difficulty between the three parts of the level which could frustrate the players since there is very little opportunity to learn the movement beforehand. The timer emphasizes this - I think an option to toggle it off, as well as adjusting level design for a more gradual difficulty curve could work well to make the game feel more fair

Thank you for playing! Just updated the game - you can now pause and exit to main menu as long as the timer is not active (before your first move)

Congratulations on your results! I didn't have enough time to write a detailed comment, but I did leave a rating some days ago.

Lots of creative enemy designs as always - gameplay progression felt a bit slow to me, but discovering the new enemy types was fun, and the screen-eating effect reminded me of a very old screensaver or joke program which I can't recall what its name was... Only real complaint is that the permanently obscured spots prevented me from looking at some enemy designs. It's nice that you had an option to toggle them off, though I still kept them on. Overall I had lots of pleasant vibes for the old internet/shareware era, it was a really neat experience in that regard. Congrats again!

I vibed with the aesthetics a lot. The game itself is clearly unfinished, but the melancholic feel given off by the color scheme and your choice of music makes it feel special.

Your game has a lot of mechanics, which was a bit confusing at first because it doesn't feel like each tool had any specific role to fulfill. It appears that picking one weapon over the other is a matter of preference - I went with the Ricochet and kinda broke the game, earning an insane combo on every level and never losing the chain even upon dying or falling. It felt interesting to use, but most of it came down to just pointing it in the general enemy direction and trying to dodge bullets (optional). It feels difficult to write any kind of feedback on gameplay, because it is so chaotic that I can't form an opinion - I'm simply not sure whether any specific element was designed intentionally or you just had no time to flesh it out properly.

Despite this, I had a good time. Of your gigantic library of games, so far I only tried this game, H.A.V.E.N. and Gamble for your Life, and the style of each of them really speaks to me, even if the gameplay itself may not have a defined "structure" in certain cases. I would be really interested in trying a more complete experience, I only played a few but your games seem to have so many interesting ideas that it makes me curious what a bigger game of yours would feel like.

Not sure what else to add. I think this game works pretty well as a seedbed of ideas given that you only had 3 days to spend on it. The visual style is really inspiring. Congrats on finishing the jam!

Bnuuy spotted. And a Bnuuy of Chaos no less... Dang.

Took me 3 attempts to get a no-hit. Very polished, very clean, solid take on the theme. Very reasonable scope for the jam. Nice pattern variety with solid use of the core mechanic. I honestly can't think of any serious flaws - only complaint (not really) is that it didn't feel like I had to let go of the focus button at all, though the wide shot was sometimes useful as destabilizing more parts of a pattern at once made it more likely to create a gap. The fact that the player's hitbox was the head and not the center of the body required some getting used to, but never became an issue.

Very well done. Congrats on finishing the jam!

Very creative take on the theme. I'm a real sucker for y2k/old windows/frutiger aero aesthetics, so the game was very attractive to try in that regard.

The presentation and lead-up to the gameplay were lovely. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy the patterns and the boss fight at all. There were a few reasons for this:
- The gameplay feels very slow. Every pattern continues on for an extremely long time, and the boss itself is super tanky. It would be way more fun if the boss switched patterns more often, and had more variations of attacks.
- The previous point is made even more painful due to most patterns being cheeseable. The pattern on your page's gif as an example - you can just stand in the same spot and not move and you'll be safe. And then the pattern keeps going for like half a minute? I would accept it if the pattern only took a few seconds before switching to something else that requires player action, but as is, it just felt very boring. You could make the bullet spawner rotate ever so slightly, shifting the safespots and making the player move, and it would already be an improvement.
- The massive performance drops on higher bullet counts were not pleasant, but again, you can just stand at a safespot and not move until a different attack happens. I don't think this issue affected my opinion on gameplay as it doesn't happen all the time, but it definitely clouds judgement.

Overall - I think the idea is cool. I can't think of a single bullet hell or a shmup with this aesthetic. I think it needs way more time, adjustments and playtesting, as well as a more robust way of rendering bullets (though you seem to have already fixed the performance according to one of your earlier comments). You don't need to change anything about presentation, but I would look into adjusting text spacing, icons and ui element sizes to make them more faithful to the old windows style. Understandably, it is a challenge, considering how different our modern resolutions are to the 4:3 of back then.

Congratulations on finishing the jam!

Thank you for your detailed feedback. I'll reply in order:

- Time to kill/Blanket of Bullets - overall, each enemy wave is designed to be a positional mini-puzzle. It should be possible to either get rid of every enemy before their attacks become too much, or take down a few in a way that makes it easier to dodge the rest. They can all be managed without taking a hit, but you do have 11 hits before you lose a "life", so there's some room for mistakes.

- Enemies moving in quickly - good point. I also noticed that some waves, especially on Hard mode, arrive too quickly, so I will tweak their timings. Some sort of "danger" mark for when an enemy appears would be ideal in the future.

- Enemies being invulnerable on spawn - there is exactly one wave where this is the case, the final wave of the first stage. Every other enemy should be killable immediately after spawning. If that's not the case then this is a bug.

- Yellow loadout - the game was indeed balanced with Yellow in mind, but every other loadout was designed and adjusted to have its niche. The intention was for each weapon to have its own playstyle. Purple homing *can* hit the enemies behind you given time and lack of enemies in front, but it's not as good for the job as Yellow. This is an intended weakness, one that the player needs to adapt to. Other than that, Purple is pretty much the choice for taking care of the entire screen while focusing on dodging, something that Yellow can't do as it forces more precise positions. If every loadout had the same strengths then there would be no point adding them.

- As for the fish - I've beaten Normal mode with it without taking any hits. It's playable, and is the best in slot for crowd control, but requires a completely different approach, rewarding an aggressive playstyle and planning your moves before a wave appears/starts shooting. It has some bugs and unfortunately, tapping it instead of holding the button will cause the weapon to break, which is most likely what happened to you (charge attack is not as badly affected though because the player can't tap it). This is an issue I really want to fix but couldn't do it during the jam due to engine limitations.

Glad you had fun with the game, and I appreciate your points of view.

Thank you so much 🙏the game was indeed designed with Yellow in mind primarily, though I did try to consider how the other shot types would do in specific situations. Overall - Yellow is pretty flexible but requires more precise positioning, Purple can hit anywhere from any spot but the homing shots are slow (and the smaller crystal enemies will often tank them to keep a bigger enemy safe), Fish has unparalleled crowd control but puts you very close to the danger zone (especially when fighting bosses). The intention was for each kit to have its strengths and weaknesses and to require a different approach

Yet another authentic Kanzaki-style game. Even if most of it is third-party assets, the way they're combined feels so very fresh.

I can feel the theme implementation very strongly, yet it comes at a price - because the random element involves heavily weakening the player rather than changing the game in other ways, I think I had less fun as a result. You have so many weapons, it feels great to experiment, and honestly - I think it's fair to limit weapon usability in proportion to its power, but when you have the "Unstable" state occur multiple times in a row it really doesn't feel like a fair way to balance it. It's especially unfortunate when combined with the time bonus mechanic - suddenly, getting that 1UP and score bonus is no longer about skill and strategy, but whether or not your necessary tools are locked out.

One suggestion I would make is to allow the player to use weapons while "Unstable", but in a much weaker form, perhaps with some random behaviors as well. Even if it still makes the player weaker, it would let them use extra tools during that period, which could be more fun than just being locked to the default shot. And if you also balance each time bonus to be barely possible with only the weaker "Unstable" kit - I think the mechanic would feel much more fair and there would no longer be any excuse to failing the bonus. If it doesn't go against your vision - please consider this suggestion.

Despite this, I enjoyed the hectic gameplay. Not all weapons felt equal, but trying them all out to see which one works best (and doesn't trigger "Unstable" as often) was satisfying. It reminded me of Akashicverse in that regard, where a new player would be likely to find the 2-3 weapons they enjoy and use them most of the time. Also, the homing skulls' visuals were pretty cool.

Congrats on finishing the jam, GG!

Cool clear! Thank you so much. Nice work figuring out the wide + homing tech so quickly (and then showing some impressive restraint on the second boss)

Thank you so much. If you happen to be using Linux - consider trying Proton, the game's engine supports Steam Deck so it should run decently well with it

Poor fish... What did they ever do to you, Okuu?? 😭

It's been some years since I played a touhou, and honestly - this wasn't a bad way to get back to it. I enjoyed it, even if it took me a while to remember that item autocollection and grazing exist... Even then, my best score is barely half of the top #1 lol

The difficulty is consistently high overall, there were a few patterns that were noticeably harder than the rest, but overall the balance seems fine. The only part that felt unreasonable was during Wakasagihime's Aquatic Impact spell, the tiny spaced-out bullets that appear from behind are really hard to notice, for multiple playthroughs I kept dying from them and wondering what hit me.

In addition, the fact that almost all bullets are pink made it way harder to parse attacks. If they had more detail or animation (like in Mushihimesama) it'd work better, but I understand this wouldn't really be touhou-styled anymore. I would just try and mix bullet colors a lot more.

The music is nice. Visuals are funny. Pretty cool overall. Congrats on finishing the jam!

Thank you for playing. In terms of balancing, Yellow shot type is the baseline - boss kill time among the three shot types is about the same from my tests, though in practice this will of course vary from player to player and how they approach positioning. The fish has a somewhat janky implementation - for example, its normal swing deals higher damage right in front, enough to oneshot the most common enemy. It's not very intuitive, so I want to add some extra visuals for it before deciding whether it needs a buff.

For the Hard mode, I will most likely add separate stages for each shot type instead of force switching to Yellow like it does now, with potentially some new and different corrupted crystal effects

Thank you so much. Balancing difficulty is notoriously... difficult... because there are so many people of different skill and experience. In the future, I would like try adding checkpoints before each boss so you don't have to restart the entire level when you die, which should remove some excess friction from having to learn the boss' patterns

In simple terms, "Core Stability" is like your lives counter. It depletes when you lose all "Integrity", and some theme-related effects trigger based on how low it is. However, if you're doing very well and avoid dying (losing all "integrity"), you never get to interact with this mechanic. Seasoned shmup players are understandably confused. It is a problem I would like to find a solution for, but for less experienced players that definitely die at least a few times - the mechanic works as intended, so I think it serves its purpose for the scope of the jam.

Hard mode has been designed with Yellow in mind, which is why the switch after Stage 2 occurs, it was just not communicated very well. In the future, I would like add separate Hard mode stages for each character. Thank you for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed the game.

Thank you for your detailed comment.

Overall - the main goal for this prototype has been to create a solid gameplay/mechanical foundation, and focus wholeheartedly on the audiovisual presentation. I'm happy to hear that you enjoyed the aesthetics and the music. Your complaints about gameplay are perfectly understandable coming from (who I assume to be) a seasoned shmup player - however, I believe most of your criticism comes down to expectations.

Every enemy wave is a sort of positional mini-puzzle. The "lack of decision-making" may be applicable to the absence of the strategic elements like bomb, hyper, rank and other kinds of management, but the tactical considerations are definitely present. You are forced to react to each new wave and decide on the spot - Where do you move? Which enemy do you shoot first? Which enemy do you switch to after killing the former? Some waves are trivial in this regard and literally never shoot you, but others may pose significant threat if "solved" incorrectly. Purple and Fish subvert this dynamic heavily, but with Yellow it is the primary intention, especially in Hard mode.

Sounds to me that you've played advanced shmups so much that those tactical situations have become trivial to you, being able to engage threats optimally on the fly. This is fair, and I can certainly relate. However, from my experience making games, talking to devs and observing the scene, very few players actually possess such sensibilities. Judging by how the other commenters note the game's simplicity without outright saying it's a flaw - I think it's a valid reasoning that most people are satisfied with the amount of decision making currently present. I guess we'll see once there are more comments.

That said, the game is really meant to be a foundation to be built upon. I had a lot of ideas that couldn't make the cut due to time trouble. For example, the way in which our game implements the theme - Core Stability (which you managed to completely avoid interacting with through no fault of your own, oopsie) - is rather limited at the moment, mostly affecting the audiovisual aspect and not so much the gameplay. It's also made completely irrelevant if the player never ever dies. Which, to be fair, mostly people that aren't you or me would die at least a few times on Hard, which will force them to interact with it, so I consider it a decent implementation.

I appreciate the music idea. Music-synced bullet hell is something I've already done before, but for this jam I wanted to avoid scopecreep. Synchronizing Reverie Breaker to the music would result in a completely different game, so this is unlikely to happen save for a TLB or something. Either way, I'm glad you could still enjoy certain aspects of the game.

Funny that you mention homing and hard mode. I actually got yelled at by the musician because he ran into a bug that let you keep it. It was funny, I think he died very quickly, hard mode has been designed with Yellow in mind and other weapons probably make it unwinnable. In the future, each memento path will probably have a customized hard mode, with different corrupted enemy positions and/or behaviors.

I'm glad you enjoyed the game. Thank you for playing.