Several features did not make it into the game : sprites for the player and the enemy (completely forgot), music (the drone was only supposed to be used in the menu), reactive audio, fullscreen mode, procedural generation of patterns and twitter sharing of highscores.
Really want to play! I loved Touhou Youyoumu, but only the bottom half of the window appears in the browser. :(
A few moments later: Game works on Chrome (as stated) but not IE or FF.
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On to review: -------------
Mechanically very sound game though - Was impressed :D Had to mute though after a little while. Controls are standard and responsive, and the difficulty is up where it should be, though it might be an idea to "work up" to hell-mode over the course of the first minute or so, to stop people from being killed by the first wave and quitting lmao!
Glad you like it. Indeed in my opinion the game is slightly too difficult (one pattern in particular), it might hurt a lot of people's feelings...
Thanks for the head up about the firefox compatibility issue, it turned out to be an issue with the css of the page containing the game. I had to triple check the compo rules to make sure fixing it was allowed, but the game should now be displayed correctly on Firefox.
I liked it, and the mechanic I loved most of all is such a simple thing, it's the target indicator on the bottom. I think it's genius! It shines in this basic environment with its basic style.
In these type of games it's easy to lose track of a unit, and the basic indicator on the bottom helps navigate the mass of projectiles being thrown at you. Certainly something interesting in battles with 1 specific unit on screen.
The game feels like a traditional bullethell game, but with a more simplistic art style. I enjoyed playing this for quite a bit.
@K.Chplr - I've actually never played 8, but I still have Perfect Cherry Blossom on my desktop lol. I love the music and the visuals, and the gameplay is fiendishly addictive lol.
I've wanted to produce a game like this ever since - now I'm definately inspired to actually get on with it!
I wish this was not "random" but based on an initial seed. Because difficulty can be very hard at the start, maybe it need more progressive pace. Very cool spawners. I think it needs some graphical polish and gameplay "juice" to be more enjoyable.
Thanks for the feedbacks, it is really motivating. I'll make sure to take all of these into accounts for the post-jam version of the game.
@Nardom - About the enemy indicator : to be fair this is just a feature I replicated from other games of this particular genre. Imo, the feature could also works in games with multiple units on screen with small or low contrast indicators for the minor enemies and big or high contrast indicators for the stronger enemies.
@tmpxyz, @ianh and @gre - Multiples lives, bombs, smaller hitboxes and progressive difficulty are all valid solutions for the balancing issue, I'll definitely investigate them, but the main problem may be with how random some patterns are. Most of the patterns requires too much moving around and none of them allow 'streaming' (which is one of the things which gives immediate gratification to the player in this kind of game).
@MurderSantaTeam - Yes, pure unforgiving arcade gameplay from hell ! Yes, too much hell in my bullet hell...
Bullet Hells are so hard. Loved this one though! The bullet combinations seemed very well planned and reminds me of the traditional Japanese bullet hells. I only wish I was able to see my score after I died, as it reset to 0 right after one died. I think my record was 29000 at most! Oh, and the atmospheric music was really oool. Good job on this! (;
Really hard bullet hell. Well done. I Included it in part 6 of my Ludum Dare 31 compilation video series, if you would like to check it out :) http://youtu.be/Sw1gBeS2zkc
I never did a great score on those kind of games on NES... here was not different at all... 17000 was my best after kind of 20 tries! :P
You made a big help putting a boss position indicator on the bottom of the screen... helped a lot!
The hitbox was a bit cunfusing... Sometimes bullets crossed my squareship and didn't hurt anything and other times a little touch on a minimum section of an edge took my life! :(
It was very very very hard. I would say too hard but I get the feeling that was what you where intending. The music was incredible, I would of probably rage quit much earlier if it was't for how calming the music was. I'm still not sure if such high difficulty was good, but I still enjoyed the game a lot.
Yay, bullet hell! This game was a lot of fun, and the background effects were really interesting. The sound effects were good too, despite the annoying hum.
One thing that did come up while I was playing was that the enemy seemed to have a weird obsession with the left side of the screen, often going to wait in the corner. I don't think I ever saw him more all the way to the right. This caused some problems with some of his attacks, mainly the ones that cycle clockwise, so perhaps look at your RNG to see if there's something going on there.
@Fnkee - Displaying the highscore in game sounds like a good idea :)
@taviandir - The purpose of the focus mode is to slow down and display the actual hitbox of the player (which is smaller than its sprite). I'll add a note about this feature in the game description.
@victorafael - The hitbox of the player is smaller than its sprite, but all the hitboxes are square, even those of the bullets. Maybe the confusions comes from there, I'll have to test using round hitboxes in the postjam.
@RockhopperGames - Yes, there's definitely something going on with the enemy glueing itself to the sides of the screen at times. The issue is likely with how the enemy movement is limited to the inside the screen.
You're right, this is hard! I love the background drone though, and the patterns are hypnotic even if they seem a bit unfair at times. I noticed that the enemy would stick to the very right edge of the screen sometimes.
I've always been pretty horrible at bullet hells and this is no different. I can't seem to last very long but still couldn't help but keep trying to make it further, which is a definite sign you've achieved making a bullet hell. Liked the way you could use the focus to see your hitbox, was a nice touch.
Crazy hard but very fun! Projectile patterns make for some really close calls, which is great. Really nice ambient track and the graphical effect in the background is awesome!
Extremely hard but it was fun. I do think that either the hit box was a bit too big or some of the patterns was too hard (at least sometimes when it switches)
A few moments later:
Game works on Chrome (as stated) but not IE or FF.
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On to review:
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Mechanically very sound game though - Was impressed :D Had to mute though after a little while. Controls are standard and responsive, and the difficulty is up where it should be, though it might be an idea to "work up" to hell-mode over the course of the first minute or so, to stop people from being killed by the first wave and quitting lmao!
Really nice. I hope this does well :)