Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Lure of the Yamabiko
By nick-howard
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1187 | 3.36 | 20 | |
| Fun | 484 | 3.63 | 20 | |
| Innovation | 1678 | 2.58 | 20 | |
| Theme | 1817 | 2.52 | 20 | |
| Mood | 1424 | 3.08 | 20 |
Nice! Killed a few minutes with this. It's already pretty fun, but could be really nice with clearer progression and structure, less visual clutter (really hard to tell what's happening at times) and an autofire option. Good job!
Played this way more than I intended haha, it's such an addictive format and the music's so banging. Only problem I had was the upgrades, sometimes I had the same upgrade with a different icon and price so it's hard to tell exactly what the difference was. Great entry to LD though, good job.
@pdotjpg Thank you for the feedback. I really went back and forth if I should have all bullets with a white outline or not, and ultimately decided to just leave them as the top-most render layer. Guess it was the wrong choice, haha. I plan to revisit this game / this concept later and make actual levels / themes for the levels instead of just pulling from random things for everything.
@excy I had no idea if mixing these styles of games would work or not, but I found myself playing it while testing more than intended and seems to be a good combo! Just need more polish to really get it feeling right. As for the upgrades, I almost had the class written that lets me make upgrades with a fixed title, icon, price, and level / point requirement, and (in theory) the upgrade screen would pull from that accordingly and not have duplicates... however, I just ran out of time, so I kept the testing "randomly generate everything" filler in place since it did half-assed get the job done. :shrug:
Really nice game. Loved the upgrade stuffs I enjoyed a lot shooting at the bunny and the fox :)
Cool game, a bit Touhou-esque but I can see a lot going on here! Music is fitting and it's polished quite well for a jam game, I enjoyed playing it.
I would've liked being able to perform fine movement; I found myself accidentally running into projectiles because movement is all-or-nothing, and doesn't really allow for carefully weaving between projectile when you're already close to them.
Great entry!
The game lacked a sense of progress for me: 1) dying is very beneficial, and upgrades are cheap enough that you can basically die quickly and then repeat, to get stronger quickly, and 2) bosses are random so you're not "conquering" a boss to progress to the next one. Maybe a checkpoint system and/or less randomness could help. The randomness really hampers the fun. Despite that, I played a lot longer than I intended to! This is a fun game it just needs some purpose and balance. :)
It was fun, interesting, and fit the theme. Wish bombs cleared bullets on screen. Liked the upgrade system. Sometimes hard to tell bullets/enemies from the background.
I generally don't find much innovation in bullet hell games so I was surprised to see your game. It had a couple things I hadn't seen before. 1. A roguelite meta with upgrades. It seems like something obvious in retrospect, but afaik I have never seen a true bullet hell with this style of metasystem, maybe a normal shmup at best. It was enjoyable to grind it out. I did maybe 6 or 7 loops, usually beating a couple bosses each time. 2. Specifically colored balls. When the fox shot out 2 orange balls and 1 white one, I thought that was a magnificent touch and it really stood out.
I liked the game but I also like bullet hells in general. I would've liked the slow button to be a bit slower, or you might want 2 levels of slow like in some Touhou games, but I managed anyways because the bullet patterns were relatively forgiving. I did find it VERY enjoyable to move point blank to the fox and bomb it for half it's health. Super fun.
Pretty nice game, best game i've played in this jam so far.
The only thing I think that it's not good, is the hitbox of getting the points/coins, a bigger hitbox that takes more points aroud, would generate less frustration when picking them up.
Good job!
Really liked the concept of the upgrades-on-death, especially the one that increases the difficulty of the game. It makes you want to keep replaying it which is great. My only annoyance really was having to dodge bullets that dead enemies left behind. It happened pretty often because there's only a small amount of space on the screen and you're travelling forwards and they're not moving at all. Overall though great work!
Thank you all so much for the great feedback! This is definitely going to be an idea I want to seriously polish and work on in the near future.
@kamilo Thank you so much! :D
@binaryspark The Touhou series are some of my favorite games. I’m glad you found it polished, haha. I felt like I seriously left a lot under polished. I did make the left-shift a “focused” movement, but it could have definitely been slower. I think I just did a half speed instead of something way slower. Thank you for your feedback.
@euix I appreciate the feedback here a lot. I have a tendency to rely on “randomness” for “expanded content” but what it really is is just “a few things jumbled around each time,” so I do appreciate that being said. When I eventually revisit this style in the future, I’m thinking of having a Touhou-like story progression, bosses with themed levels, and when you die while playing, it would restart you but give you more tailored upgrades. But I definitely do recognize that I have a tendency to think randomness would make infinite cool stuff instead of “well this is just kind of like last time but not really…” I’ll work on it! :)
@peachtreeoath I love roguelites (actually working on one in my spare time!) and I love bullet hells. I felt like it was something I hadn’t seen anywhere else, either, and I wanted to make it a reality. Definitely, when I revisit this, I’m going to really flesh it out!
@shoc Thank you so much for the kind words! I really meant to make the coins have an enlarged radius around them so they would “fall” towards the player for collection but I got so busy doing last minute things I completely forgot. But it was definitely on the todo list! I just ran out of time, haha.
@sleepystudios Thank you very much! I really like this die-and-improve system. I think in the future I’ll definitely make it the further you progress the more powerful / impactful the upgrades are to help get you through the entire game. About the left over bullets, I went back and forth of “should I despair all the bullets an enemy spawned when they died or just leave them” and ultimately left them, but forgot I had some bullets spawning at 0 moveSpeed… ^^; I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you everyone for the feedback!