tjmcdonald 2019-10-07 22:54
The art and the sound design are great, but I really love the idea of a twin-stick shooter with an attack pattern that automatically plays and you modify on the fly!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD45 → Soulbound
By ghost-in-the-toast, Conduit and Skawly
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 10 | 4.36 | 39 | |
| Fun | 7 | 4.29 | 39 | |
| Innovation | 25 | 4.29 | 39 | |
| Theme | 358 | 3.60 | 39 | |
| Graphics | 288 | 3.94 | 40 | |
| Audio | 65 | 4.01 | 39 | |
| Humor | 525 | 2.79 | 34 | |
| Mood | 132 | 3.92 | 36 |
The art and the sound design are great, but I really love the idea of a twin-stick shooter with an attack pattern that automatically plays and you modify on the fly!
I stuck in your game for a long time. Nice job!
WHEW, I really loved this!! This genuinely feels close to a finished game and I'm having so much fun playing - great job! :D
Spent about 1 hour in your game and I'm not even thinking to stop. :D
I love this concept and visual style!
Really enjoyed the game style, the art and gameplay were amazing, 5stars
Incredible game, I'm shocked you guys were able to put this together in a game jam! I loved the attack system, I could see a lot of cool ways to expand on that, the scatter shot being the stand out for me. It would be interesting if the bosses dropped unique items to keep the loot feeling a fresh. Seriously awesome job!
Pretty cool game with a very creative idea!
This was a really nice game it felt a bit like binding of isacc well done!
Great game! Would really like to see this one on the app store so I can play it all day on my phone!
Wow! This is really great! Only thing is that the controls are a bit odd, but other than that, amazing.
All the best~
Solid entry --- can't go wrong with a bullet hell (subtle plug for my game)!
The autofire-pattern-building mechanic is really cool, although I feel like I didn't make all that many useful decisions about where things appeared in my attack pattern. It would have been cool if there were, say, bullets that did extra damage to poisoned enemies, so there was an incentive to build your pattern a particular way.
The sound design was nice, especially the voice acting at the beginning. I think some of the sound effects were a little more grating than others (the destroy sound for the ice bullet was particularly louder than the others and got a tad annoying).
I was impressed at the number and variety of enemies. I don't even think I got to anything (I stopped after the slime boss) but there were already a lot of different enemies. I think there probably could have been a little more variety to the upgrades, seeing as I maxed out my build pretty early, but the number of items you had was already impressive for a game jam.
I think the player bullet speed could be a bit higher (if you haven't already seen "The Art of Screenshake," I'd *highly* recommend searching it on YouTube).
Overall, well done!
Great work, I love the mechanics. The voice acting at the beginning was awesome! This has been my favorite entry so far, really solid stuff you all have in here.
@jeremy-ryan wow it means so much that you took the time to write such an in depth review! We really appreciate it!
I agree about the attack patterns not being interesting enough. One of the things I had been thinking about was how to make the timeline more engaging to the player, in the end I don't think It was the best it could have been. Fitting as much in as we did meant we had to sacrifice a lot of the items we planned on putting in, and I think that hurt us the most overall.
Thanks for playing and leaving some great feedback! I will definitely check out that video!
A solid well implemented game
I must say a great entry for the jam and enjoyable as well! Played through the game a few times, trying out the different spirits while making it up to the final boss each time. So comments in regards to the game:
- The music was great and was enjoyable to listen to while playing! If you guys had more time it would of been great to see a transition during boss fights in order to interrupt the music a bit, instead of it being the constant background stream. However, I do believe the sound effects weren't up to snuff like the music. They didn't have the great of an impact when hitting enemies and it became monotonous quickly.
- The amount of enemies variety and animations in regards to those enemies were fantastic, it provided an excellent pace to the game. It was also enjoyable to see you spawn one new enemy at the start whenever you introduced them so the player can get an idea of what they do without it being overwhelming or possibly providing one of those "wait why did I die moments" that sometimes occurs in games.
- The attack bar system was definitely unique, though could of been made more interesting if you guys had more time. Perhaps a combo esque system where certain attacks in a certain order or pattern while do some extra effect. For example maybe three fires in rapid succession will cause an explosion on the first thing the third projectile contacts, doing area of effect damage.
- Some general button inclusions may have been nice, though maybe I missed these. One to skip the timer during the wait for next round and a pause button.
- As great as the voice was in the beginning, subtitles should be an addition if you get the chance for those with hearing issues.
- Finally, not a complaint/praise of the game, but I did have a few times where the Ooze/Slime Boss would get stuck in the bottom right corner and not do anything else for the rest of the fight.
This felt really polished and there was a lot of content for a game jam game!
Things I liked: * Shooting bullets according to a rhythm + the trade off between health and bullets were both interesting systems! I agree that the implementation didn't end up being that deep but I think the basic concept is really neat and there are a few ways it could have go (the bullet in the center of the line doing double damage, enemies that have shields that quickly regen so they require rapid fire bullets to damage, etc.) * The variety of enemies and bosses was impressive and I like how the enemies in a stage show off new patterns of attack and you have the boss use said patterns to reinforce the skills you teach the player.
Things I didn't like: * I wasn't actually a fan of the voiceover and would have preferred having subtitles for it. * The first two bosses seemed too easy and you can just tank all the hits and have enough damage output to win directly.
Everything about this is good.
Wow, this is pretty great! Minimal, but very well made. The voiceover is a bit quiet at times against the background music, but is an otherwise excellent touch and fits perfectly. The music itself is pretty solid (with a couple boss tracks I was really into) and helps make the attack system that much better since it helps you time the shots (assuming you line them up in some logical order). The graphics were nothing too fancy but were clean and consistent. There was clearly a good deal of attention to detail in order to make do with less.
Regarding the content of the game, I was surprised how much unique stuff there was. Item variety was probably the weakest aspect (everything was either +hp or attack variations) but still offered enough interesting possibilities I can't fault you for that. However the amount of enemies was very impressive (with multiple unique bosses!) which really caused this game to stand out to me. Even still, the game did feel pretty short which I have to mention. But hey, it's a jam game.
The overall pacing of the game may actually be one of it's strongest points as it felt very well balanced with clear progression up to the bosses. Even though the bosses themselves felt a tad on the easy side (considering they were bosses), the timing of every thing worked well enough that it wasn't too much of a sticking point.
Unrelated to the merits of the game, I feel like there's a pretty strong Binding of Isaac influence here with the enemy mechanics, general look of characters/projectiles even though the actual art style was nothing alike. Also had a similar flow of getting loot from defeating enemies (which is albeit a pretty common mechanic, but still).
Overall, I'd say this is definitely one of the stronger games I've played this jam so hats-off to you guys on that. Even made me type up this feedback essay here. :stuck_out_tongue:
Also, is that red skeleton who throws bones a Paper Mario reference?
@guitarbro not an intentional one!
@ghost-in-the-toast hah I could have sworn it was.
This is a really cool implementation of a fun shooter system. One of the few games in a game jam I can safely say I would go back and play later. This is the kind of game I could easily see being expanded and would love to see more from you/you're team! Thanks for a great game!
@zoarfy Thank you for playing!
An absolute beast of a game. My god, this was new and cool. Congratulations! 5 stars
This was pretty nifty. The mechanic was really fun to play around with, and I liked the inventory limit. It really made me consider what to pick up. The only bit of criticism I have is that the attacks all felt like the same thing to me. It was clear there were meant to be some differences, but I didn't notice them much in practice. Perhaps enemies with clear resistances could've helped? Outside of that, though, there were tons of enemy types, great voice overs, and even a boss fight. I'm satisfied with that.
Great work!
I really liked the mechanics and the reduced style of this game! The voiceover really sells the feeling od a Story and gives a lot of additional value in combination with the animal portraits ( naturally i took the frog!). I wpould have liked, that the soul looks like the animal but other than that it was well executed. Love your titleart!
Great game! I like the different character classes and how you can switch the attacks. But maybe it would be neat to have a little desciption of the status effect, as I was wondering if fire and poison are just doing damage over time and why I should choose one above the other.
I can't believe that this game was made for 72 hours. This awesome!
Interesting concept. Pretty fun to play before first boss. Second sections is getting boring. Love the idea build your attacks pattern and weapon type. But I suppose confirm button when player ready is better than timer. Ability to manage items and patterns while combat is confusing, especially when I randomly move mose down and see HUGE popup about weapon which defocuses me =( Maybe split the game phases to "combat" and "prepare", and allow to player use corresponded function ONLY at needed phase. Nicely done, man!
This was really fun to play, I love the idea of a twin-stick shooter where your attacks come on a timer loop (UI is reminiscent of a rhythm game, though it isn't really one). The music was also great, although, I had a real hard time understanding what the narrator/voiceover was saying some of the time, subtitles would have helped immensely. Regardless, this is a great game.
dude why is this game so well polished it feels like yalls are cheating, I joke but this game is really good jeez. the art style is brilliant, the music is great the effects are awesome, the gameplay is so fun, there are even voice instructions (although having subtitles or text as well would be nice) and it's all just so cool! super spoopy and right for the season and perfectly on theme too. I wish that when the guy talked the background music turned down a bit though cause sometimes they fight for clarity but otherwise 10/10 game.
final rating "yalls are too good at this what the hell"/10
@gigahood Bro thank you so much for the shining review XD rest assured, no cheating takes place lol ;P work flow plus knowledge and experience really is key!
Really great idea!
it satisfies because I was just thinking I need to unleash my combination on some bonesy boys
@ohsqueezy lol no doubt! Thanks for playing :)