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This is already quite fun in its current form, I think it's a good idea to turn this into a full steam release.

The surprise at 120 was awesome.

I'm sure you already have ideas on how to level up this prototype, but improving upon the upgrade mechanic, and potentially giving some element of player choice (choose between offense vs. defense) could be fun.

Thanks!

Okay, I finally got a chance to play on a proper computer so I was able to give this a solid playthrough.

Lots of fun as expected, it still blows my mind the level of quality on this game.

I do have a couple pieces of feedback on gameplay:

• The seems to be a delay between when an enemy finishes an attack, and when they go into their vulnerable state. This delay seems to be especially long for the bunny-type enemy. This can be a bit frustrating because you dodge an attack, and you would expect the enemy to be vulnerable and that it's time for a counter attack, but then your attack does nothing because the enemy is still vulnerable. I think if you made enemies vulnerable quicker after their attack, it would feel a lot better
• Attacking didn't feel as fluid as I was hoping. It seems that there is a cooldown on attacking, but there doesn't appear to be any indicator on what this cooldown is. I would have enjoyed if I was able to chain attacks together fluidly as opposed to having to wait for my attack cooldown to come back up.
• It appears that you can basically animation cancel your death into dodge or parry - once I figured this out, I just spammed dodge/parry and was able to get to the top of the leaderboards
• It wasn't clear to me when parrying would cause the special animation and leave the enemy vulnerable
• In the late game, you have to do a lot of dodging/parrying, so the slowmo gets a bit excessive and hinders the gameplay a bit

Really amazing entry. I think if you put a little more work into this, I could easily see myself buying it on steam for a couple bucks or even more!

Try using your dodge in a creative way :)

Oh, can you kill multiple enemies with your dash? I got my score just by making sure to use every charge of my dash possible to get kills because I noticed it gave extra points.

Thank you!

Yes, designing difficulty to be fun for everyone is something I find quite challenging. Some people prefer a more relaxed experience, while others prefer a very difficult, borderline frustrating experience (I am one of such people).

I think you are right about the hitboxes. Sometimes they are a little too big especially from certain angles because it’s 2.5D, which makes hitboxes a bit more challenging in general.

I like the idea of some sort of shield - it could even be something like a configurable handicap depending on how hard you want the game to be, thanks for the suggestion.

Thanks for playing!

Thank you so much for the detailed review, I’m glad you enjoyed!

I’m a huge fan of souls-like combat, so I’m really glad that came across!

Just in case you are curious, we are a 2 person team. My friend did the art, and I do everything else - I can’t even imagine how hard it would be if I had to do the art myself!

Thanks again for the kind words, they are very encouraging :)

PS: Since you seem to have enjoyed quite a bit - did you manage to figure out the hidden mechanic to keep your combo multiplier stacking forever?

Thanks! It was originally a bug, but then I decided to call it a feature haha

I see you doing the same yourself!

I figure since I have the time, I might as well do my part to try and help out! I'd love to see the whole game dev community prosper :)

I loved the intro sequence!

I also really like the character models and the overall vibe of the game.

Also, the custom audio was awesome too haha (I'm assuming it was custom at least)

I think it would have been nice to show a preview of where the bullet was going to go, because I found it hard to gauge visually without an indicator of some sort.

It also would have been nice to have an options menu for sensitivity, because my sensitivity felt a little too high by default.

Lots of really great stuff in this game, nice work!

Wow, this was one of the hardest games in the jam! 

I think I would have preferred if hitting at least a single balloon kept you in the game, but if you don't hit anything, you lose.

In any case, it felt like a simple but fun arcade game - nice job!

I liked the desolate and spooky atmosphere.

I think the gameplay was a bit too easy, I could see myself playing it more if it was a bit more challenging.

Also the player seemed too small compared to the enemies and environment.

I also would have liked if I got extra points for hitting multiple enemies.

This was pretty fun, nice work!

I really like the possess enemy mechanic.

I can imagine a game where you possess 1 enemy, kill another enemy as that enemy, and then possess that enemy that you just killed.

I just wish it was completed in time!

Simple but fun!

I liked the parallaxing background.

I wish there was some more juice when firing or hitting enemies.

I also wish there was a leaderboard that I could climb to the top of!

Playing as a massive mech will never not be fun (or maybe I just enjoy Evangelion)

I loved the destructible environment.

I would have liked if the location of your bullet after you shoot it was more prominently displayed (like an indicator or something)

Cool submission!

I got an error and am unable to play unfortunately (error is "Couldn't load project data at path '. Is the .pck file missing?")

EDIT: I managed to get it working.

This was fun!

I think it would have worked better as a rhythm game, because the music was great, and I found myself pressing the keys in sync with the music naturally!

Great work :)

Very fun core mechanic.

I loved the particles that explode out when your bullet hits the ground/wall.

I found the game to be a bit too challenging - but I do prefer too hard over too easy. 

It seemed like sometimes enemies spawned in locations where it was impossible to hit them without dying.

Really cool submission!

I liked the theme, it felt unique, and the game had a certain charm to it.

It felt like there was a lot of polish, and it was cool that there were different skins to unlock.

I also really enjoyed the variety of enemy types - I think I may have nightmares tonight about those gnomes...

I think controlling the crow to deal damage was a cool concept, but it felt a bit clunky to me. Maybe it would feel a bit more fluid if you could send your crow to a location and then recall it to your player's position, or something like that.

I enjoyed this one, good stuff!

A solid base for a game!

I would have preferred left click to shoot.

I also wish the leaderboard worked - I would have grinded it out to get the top.

Congrats on your submission!

Cool core mechanic, with lots of little bits of polish that make the game feel good.

I got stuck on level 5 though and have no idea how to proceed.

I really like each of the abilities!

I think that proper collisions, different enemy types, and different animations for the player and enemies would make this game feel really nice!

I had quite a bit of fun playing, and managed to get second on the leaderboard!

Cool concept, but I struggled with the controls. It was hard to turn and move around.

This concept is quite cool!

I loved the camera animation for when traps were activated.

The controls were a bit rough for me - the mouse sensitivity was high so it was hard to aim.

I also would have preferred if I could activate a trap from any angle

With the sound effects, and some particles/juice for when enemies are killed, I think this game would be very satisfying.

Congrats on your submission!

This looks like the start of something cool.

My feedback would be to not allow unlimited towers - make a limited resource so the player needs to be strategic about what they're gonna buy.

Congrats on your submission!

What I liked:

• Super cool atmosphere
• Nice music/sound effects
• I really like the concept of a deck builder where the cards are your bullets!

Feedback:

• I got stuck with no ammo on my first playthrough
• Pacing feels a bit slow for a game jam game
• Decision making/strategy felt very simple - the right choice felt fairly clear, and it was just mainly rng I was playing against

This feels like a really cool idea for a game outside of the jam!

A cool spin on space invaders!

It was frustrating when the ball would go out of bounds to the right and it didn't seem like there was anything I could do. I would have preferred if there was a wall that it would bounce off instead.

I also had some issues with submitting scores to the leaderboard.

Other than that it was quite fun, nice work!

Wow! One of my favorites from the jam!

I loved the background art, the explosion particles, the sfx, and lots of other things.

I really like how you kept it simple - it was well scoped or a game jam game. 3 types of enemies was enough to keep it challenging and engaging.

My feedback:

• The ship turned at too fast of a rate - I had to release the keys very quickly to make sure it wouldn't overturn. I wish the default was less sensitive, or that there was a menu option to adjust this
• The audio for the ship was kinda abrupt/ buggy if you are doing several very small movements - I think because it's triggering the same effect every time a key is pressed. Maybe you could mitigate this by not playing the sound effect if it was very recently played.
• It felt a bit too easy to get bullets. At the start they feel like a very valuable and limited resource, and then after a couple seconds of ships colliding into eachother, you have more bullets than you would ever need
• I think you could make getting points more exciting - maybe extra points for killing ships as opposed to them running into eachother, maybe bullets pierce or have aoe and you can get multi hits, or maybe you can stack up a multiplier by getting many kills in quick succession. Also you could add some classic arcade juice with colorful numbers and numbers racking up

Really awesome entry, very well done!

Seems like a cool concept - wish I could see what it would look like fully finished!

I like the idea of turning enemies into snowballs and pushing them around to hit other enemies.

Enemies could definitely use some more juice when they get hit.

Some cool stuff in this game!

I love the colosseum feel, the smoke particles, and the POW that shows up when you hit enemies.

I like the look of lines on the screen when you move, but I think it's excessive for every time you move - I think that would be good to display when dashing or something like that.

The physics felt weird to me - I was flying around and bouncing off of walls. I think this type of game would fit better with snapper movement with more friction.

Congrats on your submission!

Loved the intro sequence!

I also enjoyed the visuals, and the lighting.

I really like the idea of the telekinesis, but it felt clunky to me, specifically having to drag the item away, and then back so it had enough momentum to hit the enemy. I think simplifying it might help, something like: you activate once to have the item hover in front of you, and then you activate again to throw it in the direction of your mouse.

I also think the potions were a bit complicated for the scope of a game jam - I think Occam's Razor would help here.

Lots of cool stuff in this game, nice work!

I like the idea of timing your strike perfectly to get the most amount of points.

I'd recommend focusing on making striking the wood feel satisfying and juicy, especially when you do it very close to the threshold. Then once you have that feeling good, think about how to expand the mechanic to make it a bit more interesting/engaging - maybe something like having many planks come in quick succession.

Congrats on your submission :)

Wow, the visuals on this game are amazing, and I enjoyed the music too.

Aiming felt odd - it seemed as though the ball would always launch upwards from where the preview was showing.

It took me several tries to hit a planet, and once I did, there was some icon that blocked 1 of the inputs so I couldn't see what I was supposed to hit.

The game also freezes for me when I hit the black hole.

I wish I could play a version of this game without the issues that got in my way, it looks like it would be a lot of fun!

This is the start of something quite fun!

It felt satisfying to play even in its current state - I liked the screen shake when you hit the target.

Next steps I think would be adding sound effects, some visual effects for when you hit the target (maybe the projectile breaks apart and fades away), and some more interesting patterns for the target - something like a series of levels to progress through that get harder over time would be fun.

Ah, a classic.

To make it closer to the original, you should allow the player to press down to return to the ground quicker while they are in the air, and also allow them to press down on the ground to duck.

Congrats on your submission.

I am obligated to give this 5 stars for originality haha.

The game felt very zoomed out - I think it would have played better if the camera was more zoomed in, and you had some sort of indicator to show you the direction of items to pick up.

I also think there should be something put in to prevent playing extremely safe for many rounds to cheese the high score - maybe only a set number of rounds.

Honestly quite fun, nice job haha

I loved and hated this game at the same time!

Love the core mechanic, the minimalistic music, and the cute feel to the game.

I ended up rage quitting after 132m, but it was a fun experience.

Surprisingly fun (and frustrating)!

Took me a couple minutes to realize I had to move my mouse in the same direction that I start leaning over - this felt counter intuitive to me personally, I think it would make more sense the other way around.

I also think the mouse sensitivity is waaaaay to high - it feels almost impossible to make the micro adjustments you need to stay straight.

Pedaling also seemed a bit odd - it seems like you have to start with the right foot or else you go backwards?

With some adjustments to make the bike a bit easier to ride, I could see this turning into a very fun game navigating obstacle courses.

Wow this game felt very professional: controller support, clean menus, and the tutorial was very well done.

Lots of awesome polish too, like the animations on the health bar and player sprite in the top left, the animated bar that shows the next waves spawning, it all looks really really good!

I also loved the sound effects, and hitting enemies felt satisfying.

My feedback is that the pace of the game felt a bit slow. I like the concept of only having 1 bullet that you need to go retrieve, but in practice, it was a bit frustrating to do so. I think it's because the ball slides so much, and the map is so big, so sometimes you have to travel a very long way to retrieve your ball. I think if you upped the spawn rate of enemies, and made the ball have some more friction, it would really help the feel and pace of your game.

Overall, very impressive submission, well done!

Short and sweet! This was really well put together. I loved the quick load time, simple concept, and how it effectively made me want to get the best score possible.

There's 2 things I would have liked to see which I think would have made me want to chase that top leaderboard spot even more:

1. The ability to restart a level to try and get a better score once it is completed. Or alternatively, let me go replay a specific level, and then have my leaderboard spot be a combination of my best score from all levels! 

2. Knowing what the maximum time bonus I can get is - I think it would be satisfying to see something like 200/200 to know that I completed the level as fast as possible.

Very well made!