itch.io

I much prefer game jams that have a large number of participants as it tends to make the experience more exciting as well as increases motivation. Plus jams with a high number of people joined tends to mean that the jam is properly planned and makes sense (as people don't tend to join jams with silly themes or ridiculous rules).

Instead of only the default sorting (which is by whatever is the closest to finishing), I think an ability to sort all the jams by the raw number of people joined would be useful as it would eliminate needing to scroll and comparing numbers.

Edit: Well I just noticed a similar request on the second page for sorting by submissions and saw the admin response. I'll leave this topic open just to express my desires as well but if it seems redundant, please feel free to just delete it and forget I said anything.

Made a video of me playing it with my critique in the description. im sorry if i came across as an asshole by not finishing it

Made a video of me playing it with my critique in the description

Made a video of me playing it with my critique in the description

Made a video of me playing it with my critique in the description 

too long

what

Press the action button (E by default) 

Thank you very much.

Hm, in that case I think I'll make an option that will toggle the 3d environment. Thank you for taking the time to answer.

In Unity, I have my game passed onto a render texture at 64x64 and projecting onto an ingame tv. The environment is static, non-interactable and is only there for aesthetics as well as reducing eye strain for fast low resolution movement.

Is this still considered in the spirit of the jam as the game itself is 64x64? Or does the entirety of the visuals also need to fit onto a 64x64 screen?

Sounds to me by the way you're talking about it that you still want to finish it. All the things that you mention are perfectly doable! I think the big thing that would make development easier for you would be some code refactoring (since you've mentioned the code being a mess). A big thing about game dev is actually finishing the game. Yeah, the experience counts but even if you cut half the planned content, nothing is better than actually finishing something. 

it wasn't bad. in fact for a first game ever, it beats the hell out of my first games. everything was functional.

the only real problem is poor design. the game was just boring. nothing to really keep you on your toes. more enemy variation, weapons, etc would have been nice. im sure your next projects will benefit greatly from the experience from this. good luck!

Always a joy to see progress on this game. Haven't played it yet so this is my first time.

• If you go to the object that says "closed", you get an error. Might be implied but still worth mentioning.
• Game has no sound! Use bfxr and put some placeholder sounds in! Takes a couple minutes and makes the game feel a lot more alive!
• Using either dash button while crouching will slide in the direction you're facing while using them while standing dashes in the direction of the corresponding button.
• The metroid style wall jumping seems kind of unintuitive for fast movement. Megaman X style might be better suited?
• Boss tells feel a little on the short side for how varied they are. If the bosses only had a couple moves, it would be fine but it's difficult to know which way to dodge when you only get half a second's warning.

Oh forgot to add:

• The player can also get stuck on enemies if they're trying to slide past them.

I played for a while and was unsure if there's an actual end to the demo and eventually stopped.

It plays solid enough and I didn't find any kind of inherit issues, but I do have some suggestions.

• There's no sound. This is understandable as it's a WIP, but at least use Bfxr to get some placeholder sound effects in. The visuals for shooting felt meaty but also underwhelming due to the lack of sound.
• Spawning enemies in the current view is a big no-no. But a while loop or an if statement in your spawner object that checks if the spawn location is inside the view and if it is, pick a new spawn location.
• Due to the amount of enemy projectiles that can be on the screen, the player's hitbox is too big. You should either lessen the amount of bullets enemies shoot or shrink the player. Bullet hells get away with that because the player has a small hitbox and moves quickly so they're always in control.

That was fun as hell! I beat the three levels after a few tries and enjoyed pretty much every second of it and cannot wait for more! Good job! When this comes out you can bet that I'll be buying it!

Feedback will be left on the game page since there's a character limit here.

The game was good, and I really enjoyed it. It felt like an authentic arcade experience down to the possibility of a second player with a flashing push start button.

I did have some trouble seeing what's going on because of how hectic the screen can get. Some way to easily identify the player would be really nice.

Shooting felt satisfying. However I was not a fan of the sewer area. It lasted way way waaaaaay too long and to top it off your reward is a "good job" and get sent back to the title. At least say "end of demo", lol.

Overall I enjoyed this and I look forward to seeing your progress posts.

I didn't get very far before giving up. The game plays well and has a very authentic classic feel which is great. I think the difficulty curve could stand to be smoothed out a bit as it's currently pretty frustrating especially the bees and the owls which are very difficult to avoid (more so the owl projectiles. The bees feel very random) . I never made much progress as I kept dying in every direction I went but the game is very solid.

Keep up the good work, but please evaluate the difficult curve!

Feedback left on the game page.

This feels really good. The framerate can't manage to keep 60 on my rig but it's aging so I don't fault the game.

Controls very tight and I love how hectic things can get. I never finished to finish the first level (I'm not good at dog fighting I've discovered), but I very much enjoyed what I played.

Good job!

To be honest this is the main game that I look out for when I visit the thread. I love Metroidvanias and Clarent really genuinely excites me.

I recorded my playthrough as I find watching somebody play your game can help visualize how other people see the game. My extended thoughts are in the description.

I am genuinely looking forward to watching this game grow.

The game was fun and I enjoyed it. However I am unable to complete it as for some reason the enemies are able to hit you pretty much at any time during your attack, making it rely on luck with whether you take damage or not. I'm not sure if it's a bug or design but I think some kind of invulnerability when you connect a hit would do the game wonders!

Overall pretty fun though. Good job!

Of course! And I'm sorry if I seemed really critical in my post, haha. I was a little salty- it definitely has that classic "Nintendo Hard" difficulty, that's for sure, lol!

The game was good and had really good GameBoy feel, but I felt that it was very frustrating as well. I never made it past the second level, but there a segment that involved jumping up a bunch of falling platforms that is excruciatingly difficult to do without wasting your lives. After dying ten or so times and only making it past that part twice, I gave up.

I think the game would be better if the difficulty curve was smoothed a bit as it's kind of jarring how difficult it gets within two levels.

Sorry if this seems overly negative. Your game is really cool and has really nice music and GB feel!

Thank you! I'd also like to note that I made a small update which increased the backwards movement speed a little.

Thank you very much! That's a flaw that nobody else has pointed out yet and I didn't realize. I'll write a note down to tweak that real quick when I have some time.

it was pretty cool, but felt more like a tech demo than a game. i dont know if it was just my end, but there also werent any sounds.

still looking forward to see where this goes, though.

it was cute and difficult. i liked it

I'm really digging the music here. Did you compose it yourself? It's excellent.

Good to hear! I didn't use a controller but it was a nice convenience to not need to unplug it for keyboard.

The game was fun. I enjoyed the arcade-y premise and feel, though I do feel like the game is lacking variation. I can see that the village seems to be semi-random each time, but perhaps some kind of progression (like work towards bigger villages or something) would help liven it up as I felt like I was just replaying the same level for ten or so rounds I played. Keep in mind I only got to level 4 or 5 as the furthest, so I may have missed something. Overall good simple fun and I enjoyed it! I liked the music and art too.

Something seems to be up with diagonal inputs. I'm not sure what's going on there but there seems to be some sort of strange priority or at least that's what it felt like. Maybe I'm just crazy though.

Overall good fun! Keep up the good work! Sorry if this post seemed overly critical but I don't know what else to say other than "I had fun and enjoyed it".

Yeah, that was probably the problem. I always have a couple of pads plugged in. I assume you're using Game Maker based on the folder structure?

If you are, you should probably set your movement controls to variables that = keyboard || gamepad in order to prevent these kind of issues in the future. That's what I've done and it seems to work fine for now.

If that doesn't work with your current setup, then adding a manual controller input options would be much appreciated.

So I'm playing the latest demo (3.1), but I can't seem to move. When I press either the arrow keys or WADS, the player sprite faces the corresponding direction but simply does not move. Am I missing something or is it a bug?

As pretty much the entire experience was positive, I'll only leave the criticisms here otherwise I'd just explain why I loved every single thing and that would be pretty much pointless as I would describe the whole game.

• The volume keys on my keyboard skipped the intro. I assume you have it so any key skips it, but maybe just leave it to enter or space or something?
• First trip to the shop and I wasn't sure where the money indicator was. You might want to add "G" or something next to it on the top of the screen so it's consistent with the shop. Needless to say I figured it out pretty quick but still a little nitpick.
• In the shop W looks like an H. Super tiny nitpick but worth mentioning.
• The scanlines don't effect the cursor. Maybe this is to easily distinguish it? Still seemed kind of odd aesthetically, however.
• The bosses seemed challenging, fun, and fair except for Behemoth (out of the ones I played). He seemed a bit too unpredictable and hard to follow what's going on, especially when he starts to litter the entire screen with bullets.
• Waterfalls don't slow music like the water areas do.
• Some enemies (like the small brown guys) are hard to follow because they look similar to the bullets.
• Can sometimes be hard to find the player amidst all the chaos but I understand this is typical for bullet hells and difficult to have a solution for so I don't fault you for that.