itch.io

Thank you very much for playing, your feedback and your video! I'm glad you found the gameplay intuitive (and for the difficulty I intentionally held myself back a bit to make sure most jam participants can clear, glad it wasn't an issue for a seasoned player)

Regarding the drones/options circling around phase - there are several choices you can make here, though the original intention was to make this phase a yummy target for hyper's on-hit item spawning. You can stay inside or outside the circle and then use hyper at a good moment, which will cancel and seal the bullets for a short while and give you enough time to destroy one big drone and/or a few small ones, netting a lot of score and making it easy to dodge the survivors. If your hyper is not up yet then you can either keep using spread shot at pointblank or bomb once the drones begin shooting, which are the two most efficient ways to recharge it. If you can't or don't want to use hyper at all then your approach with just staying inside and using focus is totally valid too, focus shot is strong enough to destroy a few small drones and give you more room to dodge, though it's possible to stay in the middle by moving behind the big bullets as they approach in case you want to minmax the boss dps a bit.

Regarding "hyper doesnt really feel very hyper" - in your opinion, is it more of a visual/audio thing where it just doesn't feel juicy enough, or is it related to gameplay, like it's not strong enough/doesn't do enough?

Wow, didn't expect my guess to be so accurate 👀 Definitely a fan of Hagane's soundtracks myself - OSFE, Maiden and Spell, Rabbit and Steel, Crosscode's DLC... Listening to your other tracks I can totally feel some of that influence, would be fun to make something of a similar vibe sometime!

Thank you so much for playing, and congrats on beating the boss! Glad that you found the patterns to be manageable - I did put some thought into balancing challenge, navigability and consistent bullet counts (for bomb/hyper cancelling into items), nice to hear that it worked out in the end!

Thank you for your detailed comment! I'm really glad that you find the challenge to be just right, my games tend to be too hard for many people so this time I wanted to make sure and balance the game so that jam participants would be able to clear. So far everyone I see was able to beat the boss and didn't complain about the game being too easy, so I see this as a success!

Regarding the things you pointed out - due to the jam version's length and how intense the stage 1 track is, there wasn't really much room to fit even a small tutorial on player abilities. So instead I tried to keep their mechanics simple and intuitive as soon as you try them for the first time - when you use the bomb/hyper, the sequence of events that always happens is: bullets turn into items > items get sucked up after a short time > hyper gauge or score increases on each item collected. In-between each event there is a short amount of time during which the player can "register" what exactly is happening - about 0.5s per event, so pretty short time, but each event individually is pretty simple and there are no complex conditions or mechanics, so should be possible for the player to learn each effect on their own.

Hyper is slightly more complicated because it adds two more events (... > player shot gets empowered > score items start to come out on each hit), they both happen within the same time window without any delays or time to mentally register, so it makes total sense why you'd want more information or relaxed opportunity to learn how it works. I'm really not sure what I can do to help with it that would fit with the flow of the gameplay but I'll keep it in mind, maybe there's a simple solution to this problem somewhere

Thank you for reporting about the resolution - in all my time using this engine I've actually never tried Windowed mode which is admittedly a pretty huge oversight, I've relayed your feedback to the engine developer so the way it works might change in the future to something that makes more sense. Thank you for playing, I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the game so much!

Managed to beat it on Hard on my second attempt. Stylish and expressive game as always - I also see that it uses Love 2D this time, curious what brought up the switch and how you feel about the engine so far?

I'm not sure if Hard is the intended difficulty and what's the difference between it and Easy/Normal, though overall I appreciate how much variety there was in attacks. Many of them were pretty fun to solve, there was even one (castle boss I think) where I solved it by moving up/down in rhythm with the sound effects - intended or not, I do love when several aspects of the game interact like that.

Only issue gameplay-wise was with the yellow homing bullets, especially ones shot by the gun-like boss - it didn't seem like it was possible to outrun or confuse them, they would always lock onto you precisely, and even if you try moving behind them for a sure-fire way to dodge there would usually be a few more yellow homing shots waiting for you. For that pattern I just had to eat hits (already spent all bombs on one of the previous bosses) and hope the phase ends soon.

One other thing is the tickrate of bullets, enemies and player - I'm not sure if a bug or not, but the way player/bullets moved wasn't very smooth, it was pretty easy to see when you compare those to the speed of moving background objects at the top/bottom of the screen. I got used to it eventually, but it did mess with my senses a bit.

Despite that, great work as always, congrats on making another stylish game. Thank you for sharing!

I started off with Ultra difficulty from the very beginning, and then died on the very first enemy or so because I thought I could get away with just holding the shot button lol... It took a couple tries to get used to the slowdown, but then I managed to clear after only dying 3 or 4 times at the boss.

I liked the game - satisfying visuals, wonderful soundtrack that reminded me of One Step from Eden of all things for some reason, and the gameplay, while complicated by the slowdown mechanic, flowed pretty well after getting used to it (I do appreciate how the enemy health is on the lower side to compensate for the player's downtime on attacking). Boss fight was pretty solid and enjoyable as well, I liked how expressive it was with its movements and wiggles.

If I were to nitpick, I'd just point out a couple things:
- The gameplay during the stage portion mostly involved timing the shots properly, dodging the enemy attacks was pretty trivial as you only have to go up/down. Some of the tougher enemies had more complicated attacks, but overall I feel like the stage portion conditioned you to simple movement/attack choices while the boss required a bit more complicated decisions, which caught me by slight surprise
- The power bar, at first I thought it's some kind of special ability - I tried pressing a bunch of buttons while it was full and nothing (except accidentally activating a bomb), had to pause to check the game's page for controls again which is when I realized there is no special ability in this game... I'd see if it were possible to use a different way to show the power level or add a "power" text/icon that would clearly label it as such

Solid work overall, congrats to your team, and thank you for sharing!

I appreciate the style used for the visuals, music and the story. The background effect was really cool, and overall it definitely felt like the game had an identity.

On the gameplay side - while I managed to beat the boss on my second attempt, I really feel that the patterns have outstayed their welcome by a looooot... With how little damage the player deals, as well as the bug where homing bullets apparently don't deal any damage, and the fact the boss even shields from damage on pattern transitions for some reason - each pattern took over a minute or so and would get stale very quickly.

I think overall the gameplay design was mainly held back by two things - first, the very slow player movement with a really wide playing area. It takes a long time to move from one side to another and enemies tend to spawn on one of them rather than in the middle, which made it not very possible to reach most enemies to destroy them in time. One side would get swarmed by the waves and maybe you are safe from being hit, but it didn't feel very fun waiting out until they leave, I really wish the player had some means to properly deal with this situation, like a side shot.

Second, the underpowered bomb which, while it does protect you for a decent amount of time, does almost nothing against the enemy as counterintuitively it doesn't deal any direct damage, and the reflected bullets seem to deal very low damage. Moreover, the boss would regularly use bullets that can't be reflected, which nerfed the bomb even further making it more or less useless in the final pattern as it seems you don't even get any invulnerability frames from it. Even for the rest of the fight - the very, very long pattern duration makes the bomb's slightly longer than average duration irrelevant, even if it lets you survive 5 more seconds the pattern will last for way longer than this...

Basically, I think these two issues make the player too weak and lock them to rather stale defensive tactics, allowing little to no player expression. I wasn't able to enjoy the gameplay much as a result, it's unfortunate that you didn't have as much time to balance it properly. Still, well done finishing the jam, I think you've done a good job with the patterns (the only issue is their duration), and if you think the boss is a big step up from your previous work then that's a great thing. Thank you for sharing!

Thank you so much! This time I've definitely stepped out of my comfort zone in terms of style and gameplay design, which also resulted in not being able to finish the entirety of planned scope in time, but I think it was still worth it to try. At the very least you and other commenters seem to really enjoy the result! 

It was a great learning experience, I'm really grateful to Sylvysprit and Mongo for granting me the opportunity to work with them

Thank you for playing, I'm really happy to hear that you enjoyed both games so much!

Thank you for playing! I'm really glad you enjoyed the game. As LoGanon mentioned the game was made with the SHMUP Creator engine

Thank you for playing, and congrats on your score! I'm actually not sure what the maximum possible score is, but 490 is pretty high regardless! 👏 👏 👏 👏

The arrows are supposed to give you a hint on how to move the boxes, but it seems they actually make most players confused instead lol. Thank you for playing!

Played through the game twice. Amazing level of polish - controlling the powerwasher was really smooth, transition between car washing/battles was seamless. Only flaw is that the attack patterns, despite good enemy variety, felt repetitive since you have to fight the same enemies over and over - I would see if it were possible to either add multiple patterns per enemy, or maybe to modify existing patterns in some way so that they feel different each time

Goon Rancher 👀👀
I don't understand how attack rate works, it was mildly frustrating when jackal trade attacked my goon 5 times to my 2, kinda wish there was a clearer way to tell whether a goon is going to attack or not (and maybe make it dependent on stats somewhat)

The first few stylish goons I made failed miserably, so I tryharded and minmaxed my last one:

• GOON-e2-H4sIAAAAAAAAA1NgYGCQYACBGGcGBh4nhgYmF4aG10C2OBA7ODEw9DiBpRsOOjM0LASK+UD4DA4ODAwPoPiAPQMcNNhDMBjAxQGsRFkSaAAAAA==

Couldn't burn the village, the lemonade stand, or the duck, but sure as hecc managed to burn down my framerate
10/10

https://wingedfox.itch.io/cycle-shifter - Cycle Shifter is a post-post-dystopian adventure game set several centuries into the future, where a newbie hacker tries to make a living looting ancient facilities.

Many centuries have passed since the downfall of humanity. War after war has taken its toll, and the few remaining humans - governed by a sentient AI state - are now considered an endangered species. Thirsting for loot and answers in equal measure - Crow, an inexperienced adventurer, delves into an abandoned facility hiding traces of an ancient conspiracy...

Made in about 10 days for the Bigmode Game Jam. Currently the amount of content is quite short - I'd love to expand on the game more if it gathers enough attention. Please give it a try if the concept and visuals look appealing to you.

I'll start by saying that I think the visuals are held back heavily by the inconsistency between background and sprite pixel sizes - the tilesets, enemy sprites and the boss turned out really polished and consistent by themselves, but the pixel sizes for backgrounds and dithering effects were all over the place and very noticeable, so it left a rougher impression overall.

Controls took some time to get used to, but it's not really a problem - though as Michael mentioned in an earlier comment I think replacing the instant acceleration of some actions, like turning and jumping, with a very short gradual acceleration would help out in making movement feel more responsive.

As for the positives - the game has a fun flash-era vibe to it, I was startled by and chuckled at the out-of-nowhere swearing when you die. I also liked how "bullet time" was quite literal, that one was pretty slick

A minigame every time you hack would get old pretty quickly, but a gadget or a mechanic that triggers it could be interesting 👀

I tried to make softlocks as avoidable as possible (e.g. being able to buy DP from Sherrie, making sure the crate puzzle is solveable no matter what etc.), but yeah, the nature of the game makes them impossible to avoid completely, which is why saving/loading is unrestricted. Glad you enjoyed it!

It's possible to solve the crate puzzle without the crowbar, it'll just require more moves

You should be able to find a recharging station soon - as long as you completed or bypassed the crate puzzle you won't need to use the Glove to access it

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!