itch.io

we were def more gungeon inspired than classic bullet hell inspired, and yeah ideally the game will eventually have more robust mechanics around bullet management, i'd love to not start full of ammo, and let you get upgrades like modifiers based on number of bullets, modifiers on how they're shot, and potentially special bullets you can pick up to shoot with.

thanks so much for the feedback and playing /rating our game c: 

all music and sfx was created/mixed by Granular Biomes during the week period, just like all 3d models and animations were done by me c:

we ended up having to leave our tutorialization on the itch page due to time, thank you for your feedback!!

Really aestetically pleasing, the various indie inspirations are obvious and awesome, i think this is a strong contender c:

i personally found the enemy attack patterns frustrating, our balloon man feels very floaty (lol) and it can be hard even in small form to get attacks in, and if i don't kill something it just smacks me in the back for the next 20 seconds as i can no longer do anything about it as it goes off the screen hahaha. This is obviously a skill issue, but i found this very difficult and frustrating haha 

besides that this was really engaging, i think you did an amazing job, thank you for being the last game i have to rate c:

I managed to get through a full run before posting this and figure out the controls through trial and error/looking at the keybinds menu (which is a great addition btw!) if my review seems more critical it may just be because  i tend to be more critical with games i can tell are of higher quality, and more experienced devs. it's easier to nitpick the small stuff. by 'more critically' i mean i can't rate it 10/10 but it's still a great submission in my book c:

Great submission imo, this is a real goofy micro game all in it's own right... i think i coulda spent hours on this but the damage effect is so jarring it genuinely makes me nauseous... Perhaps it's all the bullet hells i've been playing today but i would be worried about seizure warnings with how quickly the screen changes on damage.

otherwise great job c:

Very cool submission! i think it runs into the issue some other tetris likes do, where it doesn't feel particularly engaging to place tetris pieces freely in the space, and i think it slows down gameplay a lot. But this kind of game is what jams are all about, i genuinely think you've tapped something unique here, and it was a very fun play c:

I wish we got a little closer to the gameplay, the art looks fantastic but it's too small to be particularly readable. Environments got a bit confusing, and i'm still not entirely sure if we had a healthbar and could die? I think this is something really unique, and i would love to see more however c:

now i can say with confidence...

That i still have never played ultrakill.

In all seriousness i have absolutely no idea how one would dodge some of these patterns, there wasn't really anything to tell me how to play? and everything is mapped to the face buttons which makes it hard to enter focus mode and keep firing? and i have no idea how many bombs i have so i just kept throwing them until i died cause the enemy patterns are an absolute wall...

As an elaborate shitpost? 10/10 this is amazing. having to rate it as a game tho i have to be a bit more critical than that hahaha

This was an experience tho thank you c:

Psycadelic! this is a really unique art style! and i genuinely love that kinda niche vibe so great job c:

Took me two runs cause my first run i picked up DIAGNOSIS which is, and this may be harsh, completely useless. Second run i went with GROWTH, RANDOM, and ADDICTION and those 3 worked well together and allowed me to get to the end, but i think the system feels a bit flawed. I got offered words like SHRINK, but if i'd taken them with GROWTH i would have been nerfing myself at any range since i don't really have control over what the next word to come out is. Suffice to say it appears to be an upgrade tree, but in gameplay it felt like i would have mostly liked to just have GROWTH the whole time, and the gameplay made me feel the best course of action was to pick words like GROWTH as much as possible, instead of exploring the space.

That's a long winded talk on game design tho, which is subjective, but the presentation here is genuinely so cool, i love what you've done here, great job! c:

Autofire survival games like this, magic survival, and vampire survivors all have one big problem to solve; how do you impose difficulty when the player? Survivor games like this thrive because they're more math problems than skill tests, having the player navigate complex upgrade trees and hunt for powerups and items to improve their damage to escape the hordes. without those elements, there's really no reason to do anything other than jsut stand there. this is the beginnings of a survivor style game, it just needs more elements to really get there.

Auto-fire, audio balancing/music, a bit more balancing of wave spawning, some more art for background and enemies.

That's really all i can think this is missing, the main character's design is incredibly cute, and you've implemented shrinking better than many, it feels impactful and like shrinking c: i think this is really cool, well done! 

Solid work! games like this make me think maybe i'd quite like to get more into shmups. Lots of fun once i got the hang of the controls, some kind of tutorialization would have been nice, but otherwise the whole experience is a solid, professionally designed piece.

I have to mark of only on one aspect which is that this doesn't really incorperate the shrink theme at all, in any way i can tell at least.

Still! this is a really great game! good job! c:

The visuals are quite striking, it's probably hypocritical of me to say the camera became a bit of my enemy, as having no way to turn it makes it very difficult to move towards the screen at enemies that have spawned behind me. I wish that when they spawned in they gave us a little room to breathe, a couple times i either died out right or took damage simply because an enemy spawned in and shot faster than i could react.

This is all nitpicks though from someone salty they lost haha, it's a really impressive amount of work to have done in 10 days c:

I designed the enemies and have partial credit for bullet boy, and i think this is an example of convergent evolution. my inspirations were Clippy from Microsoft Word and traditional old timey animation, exaggerating the hands and feet by making them just the only thing there. Rare games i think similarly took very traditionalist cartoon inspirations so we ended up in the same design space, i take it as nothing but a complement c:

You make this so much harder than it needs to be. I'm supposed to be picking the best one and you give me yet *another* option?? this is a quintessential shmup, all of my other top picks make some deviation from the genre, you leaned straight into it, full bore, and knocked it out of the park. The shrink explosion mechanic is unbelievably fun, i'm not even all that good at shmups and this made me feel cool and strong and powerful as the player, the slowdown helps me engage with this a lot. I think the only "critique" i can come up with is that it's a bit hard to tell when an enemy can be shrink killed? but only until i got used to it. I experienced a glitch where after respawning the music wouldn't play anymore, and that's about the only unpolished piece on this diamond. 

phenomenal work c:

I don't like the ai coding but otherwise this is a really really solid piece, Controls are snappy and responsive, the art is really really cute, and the enemy designs and powers are interesting, really good job!

What a jazzy submission! I experienced a glitch where half way through the game stopped waiting for me to pick my upgrade before starting the next wave, and some of the upgrade text is misleading, saying i'll spawn more bullets on a damage upgrade.

I love mouse based bullet hells! this was a really fun little time waster c:

Cool concept, the style is awesome! i find the hit box too big, especially when the pink squares spawn it feels basically impossible not to get hit, and the dash going only forward felt really kind of unhelpful. I love ascii art! this was really cool c:

A unique and cosy style, really cool idea, i think this just mostly needs more to it c:

Your enemy patterns were fun, i love the way you implemented shrink, tho the second arena to the right was too tight for some of the enemies and maneuvering to be effective.

the only real critique is more! this is a great start and you could expand this and it would be awesome! great job c:

I'm excited to try it c:

Genuinely paused for a moment and tried to see if i could go on without killing them, it made me question the design until i saw the ending and it really clicked, very cool and special moment. you should be proud of it c:

This is a high quality first submission!! a hold to fire for the arthtritic among us would be really nice, and limiting player movement to stay on screen  but otherwise not a lot of notes! you should be really proud of this c:

I am so annoyed at how much more i want of that. I got homing projectiles plus splitting projectiles and they stack with the projectile lifespan upgrade... that was great! like genuinely super fun to play! couldn't stop myself from taking a few extra runs to go through and beat it! I wish there was endless mode, and i also think you start too slowly, the game really picks up by bongwater and hits its stride from then on, the early stages are gonna lose some folks with how slow they can be. I also don't like that you used ai in the code, everything else is stellar! you did great! i like this a lot!

Super hard but super cool! really traditional style! i wish games like this would explain what power is exactly or how much of it i need to upgrade my gun, but  i know that's not the style so it shouldn't really reflect in the review. I originally thought "why would i ever get out of blue form if i can break the big bullets" only to realize in a later run that the spread shot is great for enemies i can't get directly behind, though i wish that the red form also had a bit to show me what my actual hitbox was, as that gets a bit confusing.

But that's emergent gameplay! as a player i'm learning and developing strategies while playing! which is an incredibly good sign, i think this is belongs as a top pick honestly.

Visually very engaging, Hard to understand my hitbox and most rooms the solution ended up being to bumrush every enemy as fast as possible to pacify them before they got a chance to shoot. I wish there was more! you've hit on a unique style here c:

Cool concept, really flavourful execution with a lot of personality! The hit detection on attacks is really hard to understand? several times i'm basically on top of one of the adventurers and the bite doesn't do damage or heal me, it's fine vs everything but the knight, i can cram myself up against the mage or ranger until it works, but yeah some more clear indication as to where damage happens i think would be helpful. Some sfx feedback on damage and attack would also help too. This is an interesting concept! you should roll with it!

Cool concept, i dunno if i've ever seen a shmup about getting ontop of the spawners before, but it felt very hard to approach any of them, and as i got smaller the edges of being on top of an enemy didn't count, i had to ge tmyself directly on the center, meaning i can't be dodging other shots, which sort of leads me to the alternate strategy of not attacking anythign and just running away until they all kill themselves trying to get me. I think just a bit more readability and this is a top notch game all on it's own, dead enemies making more of an impact, and an easier way to tell when i'm successfully eating something and that something has finished being eaten c:

Lots of personality here! really strong submission. Your bullet patterns are highly cheesable tho, i think i found either a safe spot or a consistent easy to survive location in every wave. The music is a bit too NES for my taste as well. But bob is a very charming square! and you got a chuckle out of me with the 3d phase fakeout, i also wish we could ahve done that! This was fun c:

Bit difficult for my personal skill level, cool concept tho c: I think it needs some polish.

No sound is a hard thing to have run into, the concept here is interesting, but at least for my skill level or set up, everything in this was basically impossible to dodge, i was hit on every pattern, if i'm too close to the centre i have no room to dodge, if i'm too far outside i have no time to react and no movement speed, the green lasers are especially egregious. This needs more player feedback. Otherwise cool execution! i wish had the sound cause i bet this game rocks hard with it!

This is an awesome concept, i love the sprite work as well, the little robot is very cute and marketable, your music slaps hard, your design is interesting.

It is *incredibly* exploitable however. One of the issues with picking debuffs is i'm incentivized to pick upgrades that provide the least interesting gameplay, since interesting gameplay is dangerous, and i found a few different exploits in your current system.

1) you offer "x modifier up" modifiers before i've taken the X modifier, for example Zone Movespeed Up, Bullet Rotation Speed Up, Bullet Aim Speed Up, Bullet Boomerang Speed Up. I was offered all of these before having taken their prerequisits (Zone Moves, Bullets Rotate, Bullets Aim at player, Bullets Boomerang) and i think only rotation speed did anything, allowing me a good 5-10 waves getting a basically null modifier.

2) bullets Aim and Bullets Rotate are in direct conflict, i picked up that one rotation speed up and my bullets began to slightly yaw to the right, and then i picked up bullets aim and... now if i stand still none of the bullets will ever hit me, aiming is calculated before the rotation meaning every bullet now just sort of lazily flies past me, allowing me to stand in the center of the screen and not move to beat the level. i got to wave 18 before writing this, at this point my best strategy is to pick up movement speed downs, bullet speed ups, zone shrinkings, and those aformentioned dead draws of "x modifier up" mods, making me fairly confident it would be a good 20 rounds before i had to pick something that would actually force me to move.

That's all to say this is a solid design that just needs more itteration and testing, you should be proud of your work and i'd love to see more c:

Short but effective! your Demon King's son ends up shooting himself in the foot, as i kill all the enemies coming towards him, concentrating all the powerups in one spot, making me invulnerable as i dance 2 feet from him and get 800 powerups to kill him in 1 go. I lack the skill to kill the secret boss, but all in all i don't have a lot of critique! this is a solid entry!

The narrative here is really really strong! very Spec Ops: The Line! i know everyone and the mother in this comment section keeps bringing up games this reminds them of but the room with everyone who just placidly ran from me into the corners, only shooting if i got close, really reminds me of Spec Ops, and i love games where you were the bad guy all along c:

Gameplay is good but only your boss seems to implement this shrinking bullet mechanic, everything played a bit too fast for me to play strategically but that seems to have been the intended design, so runnign and blasting through felt very visceral and real. I think this could get expanded and be a really great standalone experience!

All of the disparate pieces here, are really high quality, but i don't think they mesh very well in the end? I think some of the design decisions here mesh for a kind of sleepy gameplay experience, Enemies fire so many bullets that by the boss waves, i physically can't hit them as their shots are blocking my shots, and my hitbox is so big that dodging those patterns is a lost cause anyway. You end up just running from shield pickup to shield pickup hoping to get 1 or 2 missiles to squeak through every 10-20 seconds, which makes your boss waves really drag. I think i was on that last wave for 5-10 whole minutes haha, it also says on your page i can 'shrink time and space' but i pressed every button on controller and keyboard and couldn't find any such ability, so some extra tutorialization either in game or on the itch page might help players be a bit less confused.

I only say this kind of outright critique cause i think you've got the skills here to deliver, the visuals are top notch, the sound design is well done (maybe a less sleepy track next time tho), and the actual gameplay elements that make it up are interesting arcadey fun (missle upgrades and health pickups are a great addition to any shmup in my opinion). I know a lot of it is external packs but there's nothing wrong with that, you've put together a cohesive product with many disparate parts and that's difficult to do as a solo dev. I want to see your next game very badly c:

This is really really cute! the art style is awesome and the gameplay really strong! It's waaaay too hard for me, but i can appreciate that this is perfect for the genre, i think you really made a solid contender here! I think the taunt sfx needs tweaking tho, with the amount i'm doing it, it can get grating on the nerves hahaha

Found a glitch! if you dash at the boss it gets stuck to you and you lose in an instant hahaha

Clever idea! some more tutorialization i think would help here, and the "vomit my entire stock of ammo at the push of a button easily mistaken for the one that swaps my abilities" button did make my final fight take a lot longer, since i hadn't been successfully stockpiling from the beginning

But really cool job! this is a great entry honestly c:

Solid Entry! Controls well, plays well, i loved the simple but effective enemy designs, difficulty felt great too! Your visuals are really satisfying! I experienced some audio glitches once the red spaceshipped green aliens started appearing though, otherwise really really strong!

The visuals that are here are top notch, this is an expandable concept to be sure. I'd be careful how fast you up the fire rate in a later version, as if there had been 1 or 2 more levels i'm p sure my swearing would have crashed the game haha

The shield system felt a little unclear, i could get the little guys to stand in the road sometimes, but a lot of the others they refused to, all in all a great concept c:

Lots of heart in here, but i agree it's very hard to tell if i'm doing damage to anything, i could dash through the little enemies when fat to destroy them, but i couldn't figure out how to do anything to the larger ones. Needs more time to bake, but i'd be excited to see the end result, you've got the hardest part down which is making it unique and interesting!

Cool concept, and i love all the movement inspirations, but i think this needs more time in the oven. I tried scaling things iwth the grapple but it mostly just got me killed, and the look sensitivity was really high making it hard ot try to chain grapples, often i was getting shot at and it took me a few precious seconds to figure out from where, only to already be dead by that point.

I love grappling hooks so i wanna see more!