Vampiric Bullet Hell

drunk-wizard 2021-10-05 17:02

P.S. Here we go again, LD 49! This time was really something :D we thought about the theme and had several ideas, but it seems, we then got overtaken by the idea of making a fast-paced 3D FPS game as we've never made one of those before :D This comment is also for me to remember, next time, try focusing on the theme more and try to think up something more original, at least, make the gameplay more experimental :)

Our excitement unfortunately led us the path of just make the game we wanted, and putting the theme second. Our initial idea was that the player's health would drain over time and the player having to fight to heal (which we did) we also implemented a feature, where if you have too much health, you get buffed but your health drains faster, thus it was in our minds - instability.

Later on we also thought it would be nice, to have the ruins/dungeon you're in, especially the arena, fall apart or change every couple of waves, this didn't really make it into the game, and ended with falling rocks that spawn enemies, and one overall change to the arena.

We were really strained for time and truly pushed it to the limit, ending with us submitting the game literally a minute before deadline. I will confess - only the next day we found two minor issues, which were fixed post LD (I replaced the footstep sound with another one, because the original had crackling in it, also the cure that was supposed to appear wasn't visible thus leaving an empty altar) and I hope, you can forgive me for that :)

The audio is also all over the place as I never really used 3D audio in Unity to any capacity, so sorry about that :X

For any who read this, your feedback is welcome and we really hope, you had at least a short enjoyment out of our project :)

robert18 2021-10-05 17:29

Wow nice one, reminds me a lot of Doom! fast-paced shooters always just have something super satisfying about them, this one is no different.

stupidhobbit 2021-10-05 17:29

It's a little hard to read those letterings because of crumpy corridors. Game feels realy nice

elmismopancho 2021-10-05 17:37

Very fun game, I could see myself trying to get better at this. My only feedback is that the small enemies are hard to hit.

threaded-lama-digital 2021-10-05 17:47

Yeah, it's alright. Bit of polish and maybe a bit of a faster reload and you'd be onto something. I'd suggest either having keys posted in the tutorial or just skip having it altogether, it's not really helpful reading a sign that says you can dash if it doesn't tell you HOW you can dash, y'know?

drunk-wizard 2021-10-05 17:58

Thank you all for your comments :)

@elmismopancho you're right, in all the hustle and bustle I didn't even realize that, something for next time :)

@stupidhobbit yup, the corridors were a bit small, they weren't really the main focus and the "tutorial" part came in last, as we wanted to focus more on the main arena

@threaded-lama-digital we discussed wether we would do the in-game tutorials breaking the fourth wall and I decided not to, and was wrongly relying on the players to read the controls on the LD page, the controls should be shown in the game, but as stated above, the tutorial part came in the last couple of hours under time duress, and I made the more immersive choice, I absolutely would want to work-in a better teaching process :) and yes, the reload is too long, another thing that I realized only once you wrote it, thank you :)

achef122 2021-10-05 19:03

Very fun game. Very polished. Movement is extremely smooth and feels satisfying to move around and dash, melee is satisfying, shooting is satisfying. Just the right mechanics and just the right feeling. Getting helath from killing enemies was a breath of fresh air since this mechanic is usualy way less used compared to healthKit pickups or self-regenrating health.

The graphics are good since the style of all assets is cohesive and the lighting was also nice to me.

It is very short, but thats to be expected from gamejam games. You have made very good basis to add plenty of levels/monster types/weapons and could make a full game off it.

player-2 2021-10-06 18:19

The controls felt very smooth and nice to use, and the atmosphere was very well done overall. The animations and art were polished as well. I found the writing in the hallways is a bit hard to read, and I felt that the game was a fair bit shorter than I was expecting. But overall I felt that the experience was fun but not really fitting in with the theme in my opinion.

drunk-wizard 2021-10-08 10:57

@achef122 thank you :) we've commited quite a large time to gameplay, as we've decided that the feeling and polish of the game is more important than more features, hence the length, if you have some experience with FPS games, it is nothing new and can finish it in under three minutes :D There are a couple od problems with movement which are usually not immediately noticable :)

@player-2 thanks for your feedback :) I wanted the players to not have to squint at tiny text, but didn't double-check it and the text ended up more unreadable :D the theme was supposed to be in the health - which constantly decreases and when reaching 100% gives you a boost with the downside of draining much more health. Due to time constraints, we couldn't implement something along the lines of unstable arena, that would fall apart as the battle progressed, that said, we just wanted to try something we didn't do before this time and put the theme second. We basically used this LD to challenge our technical knowledge more than our creativity :)

sannyix 2021-10-08 14:32

Amazing game, I really enjoyed playing it!

artman 2021-10-09 08:26

Very fun game! Movement feels great and shooting feels great! I know the time restrictions and all but would have loved to see a bit of enemy variety! Other than that its great, and a very neat and unique concept!

forik 2021-10-09 20:21

Fun game and good visual style

astramorae 2021-10-10 21:00

I want more! Ohhh... Moevement, shooting, mobs, visual style and sound feels great and - what is really important for jam - complete. Okay, there is only one level but game loop is really soft and has nice flow. Of course, I want more levels and more guns! You can make even more challages based on system "shot costs hp", it really simple mechanic but it has great potential. However, UI is close to be perfect. On my thought, icons near health bar don't match the game style. And I didn't find the exit button (but may be there is no exit?). Or I'm just blind, it's possible :D

ivysly 2021-10-10 21:53

SUPER polished and juicy! good job, though it was hard to tell at first that those blood pickups were not more enemy projectiles :P

drunk-wizard 2021-10-12 15:11

@artman thank you :) ah yes, if only we had the time, I wanted to do some floating enemies to make the action more vertical, and it would be awesome, if I had the time to implement some type of big monster boss with a giant hammer :)

@astramorae glad you enjoyed it! We wanted to have at least an automatic gun and a shotgun, but because we don't really have ammo types or mechanics, and it was our first FPS, we decided to stick with the pistol. And yes, we wanted to make the shooting a bit more interesting, with at least reloading costing health as the animation is made for it :) The UI was sort of stitched together in a hurry :D (quit is with alt+F4 :X)

@ivysly thanks :) yes I knew it was going to be a problem for players, but we didn't think of another way to differentiate, or at least, REALLY SHOW the player, that the red homing ones heal you :/

klosterliv 2021-10-15 14:59

Nicely made, especially if this was a first! Controls felt smooth and feedback good, even though the sensitivity was rather high even on its lowest setting? Kudos for including a slider though! And on that note, my primary criticism would be the absence of an FOV slider. I think the default was very low and so I got a rather persistent headache after playing :(

sleepystudios 2021-10-16 13:03

Really loved this game. I loved the vampire mechanic of doing damage = gaining health, especially when you had to get quite close to those health orbs to pick them up. It felt tense, well balanced and was overall really fun. Nice work!

drunk-wizard 2021-10-21 16:41

@klosterliv yes, it was our first attempt at an FPS game :) the mouse sensitivity had some weird issues when taking into account FPS, so I threw it out of the code, this unfortunately led to people with high FPS to basicaly be unable to decrease the speed enough :X and you are right with the FoV, I absolutely didnt realize this, I am surprised that noone mentioned it sooner, thank you, something we will try to keep in mind for next time ;)

@sleepystudios why thank you! I am glad you enjoyed it :)