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somehow didn't see this a month ago 😭😭😭 thank you for your feedback aru, and i'm glad you gave it another spin. i'm pumped though!! we got third in aesthetics

Another bullethell classic by Aru 😤 this time backed up by the incredible work of Cybershroom.

It's really funny that I probably would've had a more challenging time with this if I hadn't played your previous game so much, but regardless I found the concept of a roguelite bullethell pretty fascinating! I didn't even really make the connection until you said it, but once I realized the format it was a pretty interesting design choice. As always, I enjoy the little text flashes in response to your decisions, similarly whimsical as Rotschwert but a little more bombastic with the greater color selection and energetic music. 

The sprites were very professionally on-point for the genre and the backgrounds were impressive in 3D. But I almost kind of regret that there wasn't a satisfying death animation that played when taking the devil's deals, I would've welcomed a warning screen popup or something before my ship explodes. Or even better yet, have a russian roulette-style wheel appear that decides your fate whenever you take that 10% chance to die. Would really feel like the stakes were raised.

ty aru, i appreciate the effort from one of my esteemed colleagues 😤

the aesthetics were kinda what i was hoping would carry the lack of polish we were able to bring with this one, it all runs and everything but as you've gathered, it needs some improvements LOL. the story is very likely that a war was fought there a long time ago, and countless people died on the battlefield, their blood and rage contaminating the soil, which caused creatures in the forest to become demons. like a boar that found a slain king's cape and became consumed by its ambition, and (even though cello didn't actually consult me when sneaking in the flies boss) the flies that consumed the corpses of soldiers learning bloodthirst. when slain, their blood again floods the forest, and their souls are laid to rest, or at least so the arms demon tells you. she actually lives in the blood of rage, bathes in and drinks of it, and lives to provide arms that keep battles going. but mortilla was born of that lingering hope that those arms would forever be lain to rest, the hearts that sank into the earth that yearned for a better future, and so secretly pursues slaying her. "mortilla," evoking a "small death," acknowledging the minimum amount of violence for peace. ripping off the arm that feeds if it causes you to bleed. that was the initial plan.

the game started out with a bunch of soulsborne players designing it, including myself, but none of us wanted it to just be a soulslike. so i emphasized verticality and aggression by a lot, but there are still similar elements that don't seem obvious. like for instance, you can sprint and not outrun the boar, of course, but to avoid its attacks you must jump a lot. the character is crouched and low to the ground to imply that springiness, and is very roughly frog-themed if you squint. so the equivalent to the grounded dodge roll is to sprint and then jump, which does give you a boost that is enough to avoid attacks if you travel laterally to the boar's charge, and unlike in souls, you can attack out of it as well while being close enough to follow up. when the boar charges you, you are supposed to charge a jump in anticipation, so the boar will slip under you and you can counterattack. i made it very jump-oriented, but i couldn't really communicate its design ethos haha. people seem to have wildly varying times with it contingent on whether they're spamming jump attacks and constantly moving very fast or not, so i tried to make the game more conducive to frantically running and sprinting at and around the boss so you're not wasting time getting back to it. if you're knocked away, there's a built-in slingshot if you immediately charge a jump slide to re-engage.

there was an initial design process where i wanted to communicate that some weapons are simply worse at engaging bosses than others, and initially i wanted it to be that the weapons distributed on the battlefield corresponded to the weapons that were worse against the boss. like "these were the weapons that fail to kill them." until the last ten minutes, the Burning Splinter (the long-ass sword) could not be used against the flies grounded either, and it was horrible to fight them with that weapon. but i relented and increased its vertical grounded hitbox and it trivialized the fight a lot, i feel like i should've kept it LOL. 

i actually wanted the dragonbreath moves on the bone to be highly effective on the flies by making the flies disperse based on how many times they're hit rather than how much damage they take, which a constant flaming hitbox would be naturally better at doing. but the strong grounded tail attack can actually hit the fly, which also trivializes the fight 😩 and i believe the bone's strong tail attacks also heal you significantly on a hit. i was going to make tree-specific moves as well as dash-jump specific light and heavy attacks, but the mechanic was a little too specific to tweak with the time we had, so i made it so you can easily jump off them or attack while on the trees. the projectile weapons tended to be really powerful grounded and let you engage from a distance if you say, tree jumped really far away, so the long windup was intentional. what wasn't intentional though is that the projectiles heal you based on a hit, and you heal when you hit trees, so the gun and crossbow heal you massively just by shooting randomly into the forest. >:'3 all the bosses i had planned involved heavy use of trees, including the boar's ability to break them. can't say i could add a crouch button though, since mortilla crouches by default anyway 😞 a taunt move is a great idea though since i wanted the character to feel feral.

i sent you some DMs :]

yea i was trying to find you on it 😭 i'm on there under the same name as well :]

that works for me either day though!

yea, the playstyle of the game is kind of out of the ordinary, so the ambition of trying to get it across was hurt by that we lost a lot of time up front - w -;; if we had the time we thought we had we could've made all the mechanics feel more cohesive.

the original concept was actually that your weapon breaks permanently and you have to select a different one, but later i wanted it to be that your weapon gets stuck in the boss you're fighting before it sinks into the blood again. but either way i'm glad that what we made got the idea across!

yea the axe gun is a reference to Princess Mononoke, actually! well, in name at least. i called it  "Eboshi's Cunning," after the antagonist in it that kills a forest god using a gun. it's my favorite in terms of design, i had a lot of fun putting it together. i also wanted to limit the amount you can shoot it in the air to two times but that slipped through the cracks :'3

the forest is all Cello, he threw together a procedural forest super quick, it's insane. and then he and Double collaborated on making the trees break, since i wanted that to be a major part of the game. the tree jumping was supposed to be much more important in fighting the bosses, since i wanted an emphasis on verticality and advantages from the air, but charging a normal jump and sliding around while charging jumps made it easy enough without the tree mechanic. still think it was really cool at least.

thanks though dude! Cello crammed in the flies boss using the main character's model and a fly model he made like two days before the jam ended and he did that really clever thing where the fly makes up the eyes. i had drafted 4 bosses you fight, and two of them were modeled (one textured and rigged completely) and those simply got cut LOL.

thank u dude!!! yea, Double came up with the idea of a blood rain in a forest, so i wanted to use red/green complementary colors for the setting, and make it so that your weapon selection was cleanly delineated from when you go back to the forest. Cello also threw something together really quick because our original composer didn't feel well, so the music that got in still ended up being really good. can't speak to his inspirations though, maybe he could chime in on that.

i wanted to tune the difficulty more, especially since i designed the character combat such that hits don't waste your time or punish you too badly with your jumping ability, but that was really really late in development. :'3 same with the boar AI, that it stands still and lets you destroy it if you're close enough was an oversight we just ran out of time on. the "staff" you mentioned is actually just a really long fucking sword with a constant hitbox at the end, the hit registration sounds were something that also slipped through the cracks. Cello had the foresight to give them damage sounds when we were really struggling at the end. i was looking into it near the end, but i wanted to make the sword, the "Burning Splinter," make a sizzling sound when in contact with an enemy to make it clear that it's a damage zone. but i counted on it being a favorite considering it just looks really cool. and then yea, "Carnot's Claw," the hook sword, was meant to have you spinning to win, but more with an emphasis on bouncing on the top of the boar. that the forest king's AI is busted kinda messed up some of those design decisions LOL.

thank you for playing, i'm glad you enjoyed it. :] 

nice! are you on discord somewhere

any time that works for you before the deadline for voting would be good :] i'm pretty free most of the time, so if you're on discord it would be pretty easy to meet up :]

Once I got the hang of the mechanics, I was having a lot of fun. Could use a bit of feedback on being damaged, but overall once you refine it I'm sure it'll be a banger. :]

hello! i am looking for developers who would be willing to let me ask them questions about their dev process while i play their games on stream. yours looks pretty interesting, so if you're down i would love to hear about it from you. :]

hey! i thought the cover of your game looked neat and would like to play a bunch of games at the jam while interviewing them about the process on stream. especially since you say you're starting on a journey, i think it would be great to hear about your first steps in the arena. if you're interested lmk!

Very challenging game with a lot of attention to boss patterns and a satisfying switching mechanic that makes for a hectic fight. I'm still chewing through boss 2 but I can't wait to try and beat boss 3. :]

Really loving recreation of the 90s pixel art aesthetic and sensibilities that looks and plays great. :] I love the authentic music and art direction, and of course the great many references and allusions to the games that I grew up with. As with anything, there could be some refinement, but the variety of weapon styles and strategies you can employ made this a really fun and charming experience.

yooooo topoftheyear!!!! yea i really wanted to make sure that made it in LOL, also if you charge a jump while sliding backwards you can slingshot your way back forward. really wish we didn't lose so much time, i really wanted to refine the gameplay so much more :'3 glad you enjoyed it!!!!

Very polished game for the jam, has a lot of thematic and mechanical consideration. It obviously looks really good and plays the way it should, and I'm impressed with the amount of style and care went into it. Great contribution to the jam, I'm sure it's going to place well. :]

thank you!! yea i am really pumped at how the aesthetics turned out, obviously there could always be more but i was really fighting the deadline with everything i had, haha. i'm glad you enjoyed what you got. :]

tysm dude, yea you've seen me on the journey LOL. but oh nice, you figured out the rebound slide move!!! yea that was honestly a really cool compromise for getting knocked back dramatically while still letting you get back to the action quickly, i was stoked because it was so easy. literally just had to not tell the engine to slow you down when you go in for the slide jump. unfortunately some weird-ass bug crept in where sometimes your tree jumps will happen in slow motion and it's weird as hell and makes it hard, but when it's working it's really fun to zip from tree to tree. and if a tree breaks in the middle of the lunge then you can get tilted and your character won't be able to select a weapon 😭 but i'm glad you found some enjoyment in it, i can't wait to get to your game >:3

ty so much ; = ; i'm glad it still turned out cool enough for people despite the problems lmao

yea, we didn't have enough time to take it to feature completion :'3 a bunch of terrible stuff was happening over that month that really killed our ability to stay on top of it. i was literally about to add a timer to the boar that makes its behavior randomized if it stays still too long but i was working on it down to the wire. i also wanted to add boss defeat tracking but we hardly were able to get UI in. i spent most of my t ime trying to make satisfying movement and weapon mechanics, there wasn't a single sound until the last week of development LOL. but thank you! i really feel in my element polishing up the aesthetic side of things.

YEA >:3 that gun is actually my favorite weapon, i really like long matchlock rifles like the tanegashima. if you're familiar with the Honest Woodcutter, i used that as inspiration for the silver axe head, because there's also a golden pickaxe. glad you tried out all the weapons. i should've left it in but originally it used to be really hard to kill the flies with the Burning Splinter, because your ground move couldn't connect, but i literally extended the hitbox on it in the last ten minutes because i'm a coward. should've left it hard. :'3c

yea, the first thing i did was try to make smooth and satisfying movement. i thought i was onto something with how often i would get distracted just running around spamming moves LOL 

i'm glad you liked the atmosphere, our music situation was looking a little dire so i'm glad we managed to get something in :]

aw, dang! i thought it would've been disorienting since it's not a closed arena and the gameplay is so fast. because you can travel arbitrarily far, the enemies needed teleports to keep up and they'd constantly make your lock on drop😭 but i'm glad you enjoyed it! thanks for playing :]

man dude that's such high praise 😭 thanks so much, i wanna make even better stuff next time

thank you sm tzeryushi, i wanted more too LOL

yoooo, pretty huge actually! thank you for the video, i'll probably be thinking about this when it comes to the full game.

thank you so much!!!! that means a lot and it's so great that people like the stuff i made!!!!! i still gotta play your game if you're down and i'll have time soon >:3

there's an oversight because i had to reprogram the way the audio waves worked, instead of each of them flipping your flag telling you to remain levitating, i made a stretched hitbox depending on how many of them are being fired, and one of the things i wasn't able to do is communicate cleanly that you're supposed to be touching both the audio waves and the corresponding port at the same time :'3 so because of the way the hitbox stretches, the audio trigger could end before the waves all disappear, making those kinds of awkward interactions. like you actually have to be touching it AT THE SAME TIME as when you can hear the audio drone, not when the visuals are on screen, because it literally reads the audio bus to trigger the wave and the stretched hitbox, not the waves, cause you to levitate. there's actually a depiction of the debug hitbox in my screenshots i forgot to remove lmao. the code is so fucking spaghetti i wouldn't mind just shipping it to you FR if you tried to use it as a base of support you'd probably ruin yourself ;w;

the writing was the last thing i added because it was the part i felt i could make the best with the least effort, i already had a good idea in my head of how it would go. i didn't really realize how strong the concept was until i started getting feedback, but with some distance, it's really hype that i think i did something interesting in the medium!! with the music, our musician was actually really not confident in the intro track, and i touched it up and now they love it. i'm really glad i convinced them to post the link to the project LOL.

i actually overscoped, i made it so that the 2D TV screens had godot functionality that lets you simply drag any 2D level scene onto it and it would just work perfectly, it was insanely cool but i couldn't use it at all because there was only one level. 😭godot is rad as fuck though for real!!!!! i also stream my stuff regularly so i don't mind doing technical demos with explanations

The presentation is top notch here, definitely a lot of style and attention to detail and a self contained narrative that utilizes all its concepts really well, like a short story or film. I am really into style choices that change the feel just by the way you alter the expected, like tilting the hand on the gun, or snapping in the modes. Great and interesting setting, and it feels really complete. Incredible work! >:3

This game has super tight level design and really well-rounded and expressive mechanics. Obviously, the art and presentation are top notch with a lot of fun quirks that shows that the team had a lot of fun with it, and even though there's a bug near the end, I feel like the competency of its design really makes you excited to see more. :3 Incredible job by the team, and I hope we see it on Dunkey's stream!

This is an awesome game top to bottom, pretty much all of it is really impressive in its own way, the professional experience behind it definitely shows. The interconnected worlds are a great concept and they're executed wonderfully. The work that went into this one feels insane. Definitely hope this gets played on the dunkey stream, the team did an incredible job! 

I can see the vision, it's a really cool concept, and it's a shame you had to leave a lot out of it, but what is there shines and looks great. I am definitely looking forward to future 3D projects, you've shown a lot of talent in that regard. This is probably the strongest demonstration of musical modes as a theme for this jam that I've played, at least. Great job!

This was a great time honestly, it took a little while to get desensitized enough to make sure I had the game feel going, but even though it was super tough, the gameplay elements have a lot of cool ideas in them, with top-notch presentation. With some more time and polish, particularly in collision detection and balancing, I think this could get a decent amount of people following it!

hey, i haven't heard from you in discord yet :p the dunkey streams are coming up fast so i'm hoping to get ahold of you before then. my discord handle is bonejackal!

Incredible music and impeccable vibes, the mechanics were really polished (if with buggy collision haha) and I appreciated the narrative that was presented. But got DAMN that music dude.

Really cute and well-made N64-inspired platformer! The art for both the character and the environment is awesome, the music uses the Mario 64 soundfont and feels really legitimate, and the gameplay is really responsive and fun to move around in, which is the best thing you could ask from a platformer, honestly. The levels are designed really well and the presentation overall has a huge amount of appeal, so I'm looking forward to what this developer has at their next game jam!

Really cool concept where your steps activate different abilities and modes, I was really surprised and intrigued from the mechanics.  It's a very clever idea, and I enjoyed getting all the way through it. A little brutal with that final checkpoint, but overall the game is certainly memorable. The presentation was also really charming and I always enjoy an absurd intro cinematic.

very cool :] works for me!

thanks for your question, i would be happy to answer any that you have!

yes, teleco 20XX™ does have a cameo from blade® in it, one of the televisions is a combination VHS player with the tape inside it.

thank you for reaching out! have a great day !

thank you! yea it's been fun showing people how cool a filter sweep can sound. i explicitly wanted to make it last within a ten minute time frame so that when it's shown on stream, it wraps up in the minimum allotted time and sells the concept. i'm really excited about all the decisions we made for the game.