Stasis Core

Graphically pretty, nice animations and exciting, suitable music. Fast paced action and a simple goal.

I struggled a little with the controls on keyboard, using the shifts felt awkward with the other keys though I've got these tiny hands ;) I found myself wanting to bind the dash to A and D or something so I could control dashing entirely with the firing hand instead of dividing it between the firing hand and the movement/shielding hand.

However the controller controls feel great and aiming is a lot easier.

This is a very good entry, great work!

Oh, why can't we edit comments? I meant Q and E rather than A and D. But yeah, I loved it :)

Many thanks for feedback. I will make changeable controls in post-compo version! :)

Glad to see that you did the Compo once more! :)

The shielding/dodging reminds me of Dark Souls a lot, and that makes me happy. The cage-y mechanics are always neat to explore, and I feel like I learned each time I played the game. The element of progression was nice in that regard.

I got a bit frustrated initially that I couldn't aim in any direction, but after a while I realized that wasn't quite what the game was going for and I enjoyed things more after that.

Otherwise, lots of fun. I enjoyed it!

Oh, also, on my Xbox 360 gamepad, I couldn't press A or Start to get past the game over screen. I had to use they keyboard's enter key instead. Maybe that was just me though!

Liked the graphics, however i had to use my third arm to play it o_0

Amazing work, man!

Love the retro graphics, the music and the scanlines!

Theme usage was low, though.

Graphics is AMASING!
Unfortunately, 2hard4me. :P

Nice game. Graphics are cool, and it is funny. Reminds me somewhat to Touhou in a good way

nice retro style! reminds me of the good old times :D

Well, that was fun while it lasted. The music is great. I also liked the weapon: when you stand still, it shoots more bullets. The only downside of this game is no replayability, once you learn the fire pattern it becomes easy. Well, controls get some tries to get used to, too.

Speaking of controls, why would you even want to jump in this game? You can't even fire mid-air. I use the Up key all the time to fire upwards, and it's annoying to make a tiny hop each time you accidentally press Up before Spacebar.

Cool and hard game

The controls were definitely awkward but everything else about this entry is great! Love the pixel art.

Nice style!

I can't praise this game enough. As a sucker for pixel art, you pretty much nailed it with the flowing animations and cool tech design. The difficulty is hefty, but the game kept me motivated throughout. This is bited-sized fun on a very high level. My overall LD35 favorite so far.

The only issue I have are the controls. Let me elaborate:

- I found the jumping served no purpose because it wasn't possible to fire at the same time. Air-sliding is possible but I didn't see any advantage.

- The combination of up+left for firing up was not assigned, so I couldn't use that although it would have been more intuitive.

- It is not possible to slide while firing, which could be pretty useful. I don't mean to slide and fire at the same time but to have the slide command override the fire command so I can slide without letting go of the fire button

- I would recommend a different control scheme which I think may be a bit tighter (with YXCV keys I mean the ones on the lower left on the keyboard which may be different depending on locale):

* Arrow Keys: Move left/right, aim up/down
* Y: Fire
* X: Jump (allows jumping while firing)
* C: Slide backwards (instead of two keys for sliding)
* V: Block

This allows to keep the Fire button pressed and have the slide and block function interrupt firing as long as they are active.

Please let me know what you think about this scheme.

- finally the game over screen takes a long time to disappear. It's possible to speed that up by pressing ESC but any key should do the same.

Please don't get me wrong, I love the game and you got the highest score I have given in this competition so far, I just feel the controls stick out as being less streamlined than the rest of the game.

Beautiful pixel art, incredibly smooth gameplay and really kicking music. I played using the gamepad and it took me three times to beat that boss (the second time I defeated it just as the time ran out and I died).

My only complaint is that it's a bit irritating that your aim is only limited to forward and up-diagonal, I would have liked it if you could aim directly upwards as well.

Fullscreen didn't work for me, but I think that's an issue with GameMaker.

Thank you all guys for the feedback and comments! I really appreciete it.

@Madball yeah, jumps are useless, the reason being is that first concepts of the game had moving platforms and other elements for more 'platforming' style of gameplay, but I did not do it since I wasted too much time on the graphics.

@Cerno_b huge thanks for the detailed feedback. I will add customizable controls in the post-compo version. Controls are kinda weird now because I knew I had no time for making customizable controls feature so controls would work with all of region-specific keyboards; allowing the player to slide while firing is a great idea, many thanks! I think movement mechanics need to be reworked a bit. I'll take your advice and fix all the stuff asap. THANKS! <3

@Gamepopper thanks, i'll fix scale/fullscreen mode bug in the post-compo version

This game definitely looks pretty, and the animations are nice and slick. Those bullet hell-esque firing animation sequences are pretty.

I did feel that the aiming controls were a tad restrictive though. Good game overall though! If you continue the game after LD, more levels would definitely add to the experience!

I was looking forward to playing this, but I get vertex shader compilation errors running under wine :(

http://pastebin.com/LPe0HDJK

Really beautiful, challenging, well made game! I included it in my video compilation series of Ludum Dare games, if you&rsquo;d like to check them out :) https://youtu.be/jRtyhvCwxto

Looks great and had fun playing it. But it somehow felt weird not beeing able to shoot while jumping.

Awesome game. Art, and mechanics and music are stellar. And I love the setting (though is the shape shifter supposed to be the cor thing?) and the idea of just playing an epic last stand. The controls could be tightened a bit and the dashes were a little inconveniently mapped, but overall really fun.

I feel its too hard

Awesome graphics and audio, but the controls are really akward, rebindable keys would help a lot here.

other than that good job !

Stuning artwork, reminded my child days playing Contra! Gameplay very well executed! Well done! :D

Godamn, this game is hard but SO GOOD
Keyboard controls are hella hard, but man the feel of the game is great. It's super simple but so well done you really want to go back and beat this thing

Very aesthetically pleasing, nice color palette, enemy & character designs and animation. The shield mechanic was a nice touch as well.

The thing that stood out to me as really well done was the elaborate attack formations of the boss enemy - that was awesome. I also really liked the scan-lines option, that was a nice touch.

I didn't get too far (this is exactly the style of game I happen to be horrible at), but I still enjoyed it. Great work, thanks for sharing!

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH I LOVE IT! Very challenging! I was able to beat it after about 3 tries. Thanks for adding controller support! Love the scanlines effect and the overall look/feel of everything. Implementation of theme wasn't very unique but maaaaaaaaaan this game is smooth and tons of fun. Great entry!

well executed, nice gfx and audio. But too hard for my skill.

Pssst - You've been featured on todays Ludum Dare to Believe! Check it out at - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHOU0btz7g4

Very well executed. Just a very little regret here is that I cannot shoot and move at the same time. But except that this game is really awesome.

Great game, took me a few tries to beat it :)
Love the art style and music, though it is maybe a bit short (more stages to boss might have been more fun).

Really a nice game! I really love the graphics.

Lovely game. I'm very bad at these types of games, so I wasn't able to finish it, sadly. I was in love with the graphics though, and the scanlines option was cool!

I also uploaded a video of your game on YouTube!

Awesome graphics and feel on general.

Controls are kind of hard, I don't know... the controls are more challenging than the game itself, get it?

With a smoothest controls this game will be perfect! :D

Very nice entry! The controls feel not that direct, but you get used to it. It's quite hard, but thats more "challenging"
Well executed!

Nice work! Plan out your player mechanics a little bit more next time ;)

Just came back to let you know that after rating almost 100 games, I have to say that yours is my favorite compo entry of LD35. Great job!