itch.io

A TRUE DANMAKU ON THIS JAM? LET'S GO

when i found out about it i knew i had to play it, as even if i'm a beginner to these types of games i really do have a passion for them deep inside me

i didn't play this game for more than a couple of minutes 'cause i really felt like this game had some major flaws that kept it from becoming a great experience

the hitboxes are way too big lol

the game isn't too hard, the bullet patterns are what you usually get with danmaku type games buy every sprite is so big and every hitbox is so big that it makes the game really hard to read and play and it takes away from that feeling you get when you pass through a seemingly impossible wall of bullets that you get from a game like touhou or mushihimesama

i really like the point of collection mechanic, it makes you wanna play more aggressively and fixes the problem most shmups have where every player never goes near the enemies(i made my whole game thinking of that idea lol), but the fact you can't easily navigate through the barrage of bullets like you can in any other game makes aggressive play unnecessarily punishing and not fun lol

LIKE, I LOOK AT THE GAME AND THINK "WOW, I REALLY WANNA JUST TRY MOVING THROUGH ALL OF THESE NICE BULLET PATTERNS" BUT I NEVER CAN 'CAUSE EVERY PATTERN BASICALLY MAKES AN INPENETRABLE WALL ANYTIME TWO PROJECTILES ARE SLIGHTLY NEAR EACH OTHER LOL

the graphics of this game are really nice though, just one complaint i have is that the player IS JUST A FUCKING SQUARE LOL, you could have at least made it a simple shape like the enemies and make the projectiles more readable as i feel like a lot of them are hard to see

plus hitting the enemies feels super weak, idk if it's the lack of sound effects or what but there certainly should be more JUICE to it

you really do have some great creative ideas cooking

if development keeps up i'd love to see how it turns out, but i am currently not too interested in seeing through all of this game the way that it is

ps: itch bugged and posted my review 3 times somehow lol, so sorry if you got extra notifications 'cause of it

thank you very much for the comment

the character speed is actually determined by the charge percentage, but i guess making it so you don't speed up if you're still holding Z would make it more intuitive(even if it could be harder to program(like, one extra variable, so difficult))

me and my friends wanna remake this game and give it a proper release, so i'll certainly add that to the final game or a post jam update as an option

also, the soundtrack sucks compared to what i can actually do if i try lol

my game looks like shit

that's how :D

really enjoyed the visuals

idk the difference between any of the enemies though

plus they can spawn behind you which is really annoying

this game is very incomplete and laggy, but i can't say i was frustrated or didn't enjoy it for the entire minute i played of it

pretty sure my record is double that <3

i don't personally find this game hard, just very frustrating

specially combat, the idea of you attacking with your dash is nice and all, but the fact you have two buttons for each dash direction makes it very confusing

double that with the fact that if you want to dash to a direction you have to click the mouse button opposite to that direction, while attacking you need to click the one pointing to that direction and it just causes the whole experience to become confusing

i spent the whole game just dodging enemies instead of engaging with them 'cause it just wasn't worth it trying to combat them with how weird attacking felt, which is a very weird thing since whenever i play a metroidvania i ALWAYS make sure to kill every enemy on screen, even if i know they'll respawn, but this game just makes me feel like combat is not worth it at all

i also really don't like the way the dash was implemented, in any other metroidvania the dashes stop or at least reduce any sort of vertical movement

i get that doing that would probably conflict with the fact of the dash being spammable, but i don't think there was a single moment where i though "wow, i really need to spam the left mouse button to get to this place"

i think this game tries to reinvent the wheel by combining movement and combat into one single thing, but it just ends up making the movement seem confusing and the combat very unapproachable

although, i have to say i really enjoyed the power ups you get after fighting the bosses(or at least the one on the red village, i stopped playing after i got to the second boss lol, but if they're all this creative then congrats dude) they really make navigating around extremely interesting

and i also enjoy the animations, i kind of get the artstyle you were going for, even if it feels very incomplete it still is interesting

although the background being the same texture as the floor do not look very good, i genuinely think you could have gotten away with just making the background black to add some contrast as the way it currently is makes everything very hard to read

plus, the mini map blocks my view a lot of the time, there probably should be a way to turn it off

doesn't have an extremely hard tutorial - 0/10

lol, but fr though

i feel like the idea for the whole socket system is very interesting, it takes aspects from roguelike combat that people enjoy, like synergies, and simplifies them in a way that is easy to program

a more developed form of this system could really bring a lot of diversity on how the player develops their build

however, the execution of it was very poorly done, the game is extremely slow on basically EVERY SINGLE ASPECT

you start with no ways to defend yourself, which is not a problem in a gameplay standpoint since you aren't being attacked by anyone, but it surely is a problem in an engagement sense as it makes the first few minutes of the game AGONIZINGLY slow

that coupled with the slow as a slug movement, no way to aim your attacks, no music(i'd say if you're not gonna have music just don't add SFXs either, 'cause then the lack of a soundtrack is so much more apparent) and zero curse variety makes this game a very stale experience

there also isn't any sort of xp bar, health nor a way to regain health which doesn't give the player any sense of progression

the only thing that really progresses as the waves go on is the enemy variety, but at the end of the day they are just pixels on a screen that move toward you, you probably should have spent less time making a lot of enemies and more time adding stuff that actually changes gameplay, like curse variety, as there is no point in making a bunch of enemies if the player won't be engaged enough to get any further than the first minute of gameplay

https://itch.io/jam/acerola-jam-0/rate/2582861 i dare you to get to wave 15 :)

https://itch.io/jam/acerola-jam-0/rate/2582861
i dare you to get to wave 15 :)

edit: i see you aren't playing any games with gore in them

my game has a very slight amount of gore, but the graphics were very much inspired by faith : the unholy trinity and atari games so i doubt it would be triggering to anyone

it all looks very childish for aesthetic purposes so i think it should be fine for you to play, but i guess you'll be the judge of that

I just realized a bug with the farms
you can spawn them on top of each other which will most likely crash the game
you shouldn't be able to spawn two of them on top of each other unless you have the cursed salad, which is a rare item only used to get high scores, so if you're going for high scores keep in mind to move around before spawning another farm(since their spawn is dependent on the player's position)

again, that can only happen in a very specific circumstance, so just keep that in mind

https://itch.io/jam/acerola-jam-0/rate/2582861 i dare you to get to wave 15 :)

it`s:

sadgirljiko

hey, if you still need a programmer, i'm pretty good at unity

i was going to dm you on discord, but i can't add you for some reason lol

what engines do you have in mind for the programmers to use?

wow, after a year i still haven't done it lol

i guess i just didn't have the time

maybe i could try this challange out again sometime soon :D