hardytryer 2024-10-08 15:43
I really liked the idea of mixing a non-narrative genre like bullethell with narrative.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD56 → For Someone
By l-sien
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 2.80 | 7 | ||
| Fun | 2.25 | 6 | ||
| Innovation | 3.00 | 7 | ||
| Theme | 1.80 | 7 | ||
| Graphics | 2.29 | 7 | ||
| Audio | 2.87 | 6 | ||
| Mood | 4.80 | 7 |
I really liked the idea of mixing a non-narrative genre like bullethell with narrative.
To me, playing felt a little like when you're watching a movie, and at a nostalgic moment, a narrator's voice starts reading a letter full of emotions in the background. The symmetrical shapes created by the bullet hell animations add a nice hypnotizing effect to the game. Overall it works well and that's a good idea.
On the gameplay, it would have been extremely difficult, had there been a possibility to die (I think I finished with 47 hits or something like that). Emphasizing on the narration by not having retries was a good choice.
I would love to see more around this idea, with level design reflecting tension or illustrating the narration.
I'm thankful that you made it so that you couldn't die in the experience, because I'm not normally good at bullet hell games. The atmosphere of the game's presentation felt really melancholic and the story felt very profound. I hope that it got the intended message across to the person that you were writing it for. There's a lot more things that could be done from here on out with this concept since you have a lot of basics here that could be expanded!
This game has to be the lowest-energy bullet hell game I have ever played. For all that it defied a lot of the conversion of the genre I did it very well and felt like it fit together perfectly. The chill background music let me just zone into the gameplay and the story elements mixed in were touching. I think that not having sound effects for the shot sounds from me or the enemy did a lot to keep the mood of the game in the place that I think you wanted it. I am not the hugest fan of playing bullet hell games, but the no-stakes nature of getting hit in this one (other then a score at the end, which I accidentally hit ‘x’ too fast to read) was perfect for me to just fall in and enjoy the vibes. Overall very well done, great game!
I really liked the contrast between the frantic shooting and the philosophical dialog. The dogging was pretty fun even though I would have liked a more obvious sign that I has been hit. A small bug was that the dots disappeared just before going through the wall.
Got 206 hits and collected 173 essence.