The Unlikely Messenger

The artworks is really stand out from other games.

The top-down combat was pretty fast paced and difficult, died the first time through but the game didn't fail me out so a small bug there. Otherwise it was a good submission!

As a friendly note: Since you used GANs and other NNs for a majority of the sound and visuals, you should exempt your submission from ratings in those categories.

The characters look gorgeous! And the fast paced combat was really fun and engaging, great job!

I liked:
- The intro cutscene holy cow! It's like watching a movie. I can tell a lot of time and effort went into this.
- The story idea around the summoning is very cool. I won't spoil it but I loved the reveal of who they summoned.
- The music is awesome.

I didn't like:
- The gameplay wasn't particularly original. There's a lot more you could add to it but I can see that you ran out of time. Maybe level two will improve on the formula. I would love to play more and see where you take it!
- I was disappointed to learn that the character portraits and backgrounds and even the music were produced by AI. I know they're allowed, and it's a game jam so you should use all the tools at your disposal, but in this case I feel like they overshadowed the rest of it somewhat.

The game was fun and I was genuinely invested in the story. Writing is often left by the wayside in Jam projects but you clearly put effort into it. Good job! The character portraits and music were great, I'm surprised to learn they are made by AI. Would you mind sharing what program you used for creating the art?

@merb1000 music was made with www.suno.com website, character portraits and backgrounds in space station are made with stand-alone local web-UI for stable diffusion using a few models from civit.ai. Though I need to say, we have already accumulated thousands of hours of experience working with AI image generation outside of game jams. So we know how to achieve desired result in a reasonable amount of time.

Anyway, thanks for the comment! As for the story, we had to cut it abruptly without proper ending 'cause gamejam time limits. Overall it's a challenge to make it intriguing, but short so it will not waste too much player's time on reading without action. I am happy you liked it!

GOOOOOODS!!!

Very cool! I really enjoyed the cutscenes. I wasn't quite sure of my objective at first. Good work!

Cool story idea, I wish I could understand more what's happening!

Bug found: Kana don't die even is the health bar is empty

Also I agree with the other comments, as AI is authorized, a lot of the game mood came from it and I think you should opt-out Graphics and Audio.

Amazing sprites! btw i like your idea of making a visual novel in game jam!

VERY BEAUTIFUL PIXEL ART. I'M PISSED.

love the art stile (anime fan here) but i seem to have found an invincibility bug when i dropped to like probably 1% health (barely alive)i died but i did not restart? and just continued? idk if this is a part of the game but it did not seem like it and i had no life point left and i was invincible. got some screen shot if it helps. love the game and keep it up.

The credit page can be stopped? a lot of work on the lore and the chara design well done. The link with the theme is far for me :/

You guys made an impressive game in such a short amount of time. Creating both a fast paced shooter and an almost cinematic narrative experience is an impressive feat on its own, but the look and sound of the AI assets contrasts so hard with the rest of the game that it makes it feel rushed and low effort.

I have to agree with the others, the use of AI in this case totally overshadows the rest of the game. I think you should consider opting out of sound and graphics as your submission goes against the spirit of the jam (and also the rules since AI did the majority of the art and sound work). There are hundreds of artists making games by hand putting their skills to the test and you guys are disparaging their effort by making them compete with an AI, and you're even betraying your own efforts by making the AI assets the most impressive part of your submission.

@codbaade @pikario so regarding the invincibility "bug". We actually ran out of time and didn't manage to make death sequence, so when your HP drops to zero you will receive a message:

But it's easily skippable when you are fast clicking to shoot.

So yeah, we cheated a bit here, but it due to simply not enough time. Anyway, thanks for your feedback!

It was nice, congrats!

I liked the artworks, bullet from enemy are maybe a bit too fast and I also was invicible at the end of the game, God like mode :D

Thank you for this game, I had great time.

Cool game, though I did manage to get turned around looking for the last enemy and walked all the way back to the beginning, lol. Still, I was sad when it ended, I wanted to see more!

I had a few problems moving around when I was too close to trees or when I tried to go diagonally, as if it was hanging. Once my first life bar ran out, I was invincible. Even if you've been warned, it feels weird.
The design and graphics are beautiful. Well done!

@k-toll thanks for the feedback! This jam game is literally our first attempt at creating a top-down shooter or any kind of game with movement system really.

So yeah, we made a lot of mistakes and making just the basic systems took a lot of time. That's why we didn't manage to make a death and restart sequence. We just ran out of time and had to at least make "an invincibility spell" as an excuse.

@nicekot

OK, apart from that, for a first, it's really good. The design character is also qualitative!

Hey, this is a really cool idea. The writing and story was cool, and the characters themselves are cool. I really wish this game was opted out of the audio and graphics category for voting as all of the music and portraits were not your own work.

Awesome music, artstyle and story! Gameplay didn't surprise me in any way, but probably shouldn't have :)
Overall good job, good luck with the development of the game!

Interesting game with some story before the main gameplay. I might have missed it, but there did not seem to be a hotkey to advance the text besides clicking. This was kind of annoying and hurt to click through. Same for the combat, spam clicking like that is how you get hand injuries. Perhaps spacebar for advancing the text/ shooting could have worked better?

It's a cool style!)

Showed up to cringe at what looked like another RPG maker fan service game. Found it to be about on par with my expectations. I'm a sucker for a sci-fi twin-stick after all, and even though I was a bit horrified to see all the different mixels, scaled pixel art, and obvious contrast between the AI and hand pixeled work, I was mostly just let down by the stale gameplay.

Busty AI models to not make up for game design.

@labcatgames prejudice and bad faith served you well, sir

@nicekot Seems like you would know a bit about bad faith, since you decided not to opt out of graphics and audio categories. The fact that you've avoided the topic even though it's been brought up by several people just shows that you know better. Do the right thing....

@labcatgames you came here to comment from a privileged position of an experienced game developer. To punch down a bunch of inexperienced people doing baby steps trying to make something from the scratch. Came with a specific intent to insult even before you tried out the game. This is not a critique, this is showing off and exercising in privilege.

And what is the most ironic of all, you yourself used GameMaker to make LD55 game and was hubristic enough to dismiss our work as "RPG Maker fan service game". When in fact we used Godot and wrote code for every single mechanic in game by ourselves.

Also, we explicitly listed the tools we used and for what purpose they were used. Never hiding or omitting anything. You don't have a moral high ground neither on this issue, nor on your attitude towards us and our game.

You didn't opt out of graphics and audio, even with them being AI generated. That's all you needed to do and then you would probably be getting props for how you utilized the tools. The only reason you would not have opted out is if you genuinely believe your AI generated assets are equivalent to hand made work, which isn't a position many devs are going to share.

How were you able to make this in only a couple of days?! This is so good!!!

I found the controls a bit hard to use. The setting was actually is kind of interesting.

Fantastic visuals and a story that seems it could be interesting. I did find it confusing how to kill the enemies. It seemed like once the enemy was down to almost zero health, it stopped taking damage, but did die once my character came into contact with it? Was that the expected game mechanic?

@breakfastgun enemies die half a second later after they took final hit. It wasn't intentional, just something we didn't have time to polish. The intended mechanic is just you shoot - enemies die :)

The gameplay was straight-forward but also challenging, and the graphics in game really took me down memory lane. Excellent submission, and I hope to see more of the story!

Captured a very nice retro feel. The story was interesting and the pixel art was amazing. A well made game!

Whew, that's a lot of drama in here.
Do let it break your spirit though.
The ratings will be polarizing, but you're getting experience and some people are trying your game in a fair way.

I played your game till the end (it's quite short, ahah).
I noticed that web version music sounds weird, both Firefox and Chrome can't handle it: it stutters badly.
I wonder if it's Godot issue or if it's related to the music you used somehow.

I would maybe decrease the max range of the weapons and enemy aggro, so you could see who is firing at you and vice versa. Because as it is, the best combat strategy is to shoot randomly out of the camera bounds to kill anyone out there.

I also skipped a dialogue once by accident. I was mashing the fire button during the last fight and then the dialogue window appears. I did not manage to stop firing at that very moment, which lead to a skipped line or two. A delay after the enemy is killed could have helped here a bit.

Here is a video of me completing the game:

@quasilyte the sound issue is unfortunately Godot related. The only thing that helps is using external audio libraries for the browser: https://github.com/probrain-dev/godot_web_external_audio_motor

Thanks for playing!

Amazing art, interesting plot. I like the "immune to damage" twist.

I didn't rate the graphics nor the audio due to them having been generated by AI. The gameplay is just old standard shooting but I really got into the story, I think that's what really shines here.

Nice jam. AI might have generated those songs but they were so good haha! I need links to all of them so I can listen to them while I work :smiley:. Story was cool, I wish I had more to play. Great work, looking forward to what you make in future jams.

@wisstopher Thank you for your kind words! Sure, here you are: https://mega.nz/folder/mo9mDAZB#15b48AVOL7j0p-DtG1b84w

Both the artwork and music are exceptional! Though gameplay-wise, the bullets were coming really fast and I got stuck on scenery quite often; hitboxes seemed a bit oversized... All in all, solid work!