RelicBound

please use zip and not rar as not everyone has winrar thats annoying

Sorry about that, I've uploaded a zip archive version of the game.

the game is rather repetitive, I didn't want to play again after my first try but the art and music are really good!

Hi, nice job! Though fairly simple, it looks, sounds and plays quite well! I might have been missing something, but I couldn't tell if I was picking up artefacts for sure until after I died and saw the stats.

a good "vampire survival like" game , make each run more unique and diversify the enemies and it will play well, great job!

@junagames 7zip should be able to unpack .rar's

As for the game, it's a solid take on a "vampire survior"-like

Nice job! I wanted a bit more variation over the course of a run, but it was fun overall

This is cool. I like the music and art, although the game is a little simplistic.

Nice game, however the enemies movement and the players limited range with the sword, made it a little annoying to attack without being hit, perhaps slowing down the speeds or perhaps giving an indication for when the enemies were about to dash.

Big fan of the sprites! There is some artifacting on the slimes, but other than that the animations were really nice and I also thought the flowers were a nice tough as well.

As far as the gameplay goes I kinda....didn't really see the point to killing things or picking up relics? It seemed to just heal you for a tiny amount and give you no sorts of upgrades? I just ran around the arena avoiding enemies for the first 4 rounds. The hitbox of the short sword swing felt really bad to use and disengaging felt like a better use of time. The hitbox of the player body also felt off? At round 5 it felt reasonable but still not really...profitable to kill enemies? I guess I get that getting relics is the "point" but seeing how many waves I could survive and collecting relics seemed like opposed goals. The crazy lag/slow down at round six kind of made me not try to make it to the next round so I died around the end of that round.

I survived a bit more than 7 mins
the slime animation was cool
the music fit
good game :)

Cool game! It just lacks more than just one starting weapon (judging by the selection screen, they were planned at least), also, it feels the beginning is hardest to attack than when you get an upgrade

Interesting game! Pretty tough too. At the beginning it's quite possible to evade all the enemies and dispatch them with the sword, but as soon as the next waves begin, I tend to take more damage than the enemies do when trading blows. Just evading the enemies for several minutes would be a solution, but then you don't collect any relics... I guess I'm just bad at the game, haha. Maybe in the future, collecting relics would give better heals or other upgrades, to help the player keep up.

I like the graphics, they remind me of oldschool RPGs!

It's a fine simple game, though feels like there's a lot of stuff you planned but didn't have time to implement, like more weapons, and a use for the different relics. Killing enemies by just walking into them was fun enough, but I feel could have been more impactful by having some knockback, same thing when you get hit. I found the range of the sword kind of inconsistent, and then I noticed that for some reason you can hit enemies a lot farther away when you hit them from above than from all other directions, so I just started going up and down the scene and squishing them. Felt like I was sweeping my room ksdk. The graphics and animations are definitely the best part, and I wish I could have seen more of them, but the waves are too long for how simple the mechanics are, so it gets boring fast. All in all the game feels like a rough draft/debug area for something that could potentially be fun, just needs a lot more *girth*. Nevertheless, I see this is many of yalls first Ludum Dare so props for finishing at all! I hope to see you on the next event with more experience ^^

@fupi Thank you so much for the cute drawing of our character! As you said a lot of features were cut and balancing of gameplay was put to the side in favour of getting the game out just in time of the gamejam deadline. Just a matter of reducing/focusing our scope and prioritize things that result in a more enjoyable finished game. Heres to next time!

@fupi You hit the nail on the head. We had a, in hindsight, large scope that we couldn't complete. Relics were meant to give stats and bonuses to the player, another item/component was going to modify the skill effects, various weapons with different skill sets, and so on and so forth. Unfortunately we had to move our goal posts to ensure we'd have a playable game out. Definitely in prototype territory. Thank you for your feedback and wonderful art!

@abcdef65g Game is currently a little harder than it probably should be, initially it was super easy and there was no challenge, adjusted it last minute to provide *some* challenge, only to provide probably too much. Relics indeed were meant to give additional effects, like increasing maximum HP and regening. Thank you for playing and your feedback!

@ferellia I'm glad you like the sprites! This was my first time really working with pixel art so I'm happy to hear it - though @isaac handled animations. Unfortunately the game is pretty much the foundation or core of what we wanted, so the purpose of killing, gaining relics, is slightly missing and only tangentially there because of the stats. Thank you for playing and your feedback!

The menus and graphics look great. The characters and level are are well done, and especially impressive for your first time! Way to go! Sound is also nicely polished and balanced with good music. Player movement felt good and the speed was well balanced relative to the enemies to provide a fun challenge.

I agree with points other people have made about the combat system. The range of your attack relative to your hit box makes it an unbalanced advantage to attack vertically from above, which I'm guessing wasn't intentional. Part of me thinks you should just lean into it, and change the sword into a broom. Turn it into a wraith sweeping game! Because it does have a pretty satisfying sweeping feel right now. :laughing:

My biggest suggestion would be that I think you should amplify the feedback in your game. Adding some more visual feedback on the attack hit would help beef up that interaction and make it more satisfying. Feedback on when the enemies are going to attack would let players play more aggressively, and would make dodging attacks more skill based instead of predictive. Add more feedback to picking up the relics, and ramp up the feedback so that when the player picks up the rare relic, it has the biggest, hypest feedback that gets them excited about getting the best relic!

The game looks really polished. This is a solid game. With some more time to inject a little more game feel into the game and flesh out the relic system that you've outlined in your replies, this could be awesome. Great work!

I think the game is a little repetitive with little progression in it. If it had more progression and somewhat more strategy in running from monsters or choosing weapon or ability, would be more fun. But I see potential in it, specially with the good art that it has!