I like the fact that you had to place the towers for the boss and not yourself. But i expected a shield would owrk both was :( it did't. But was fun to play :thumbsup:

I found an interesting exploit where you can just sit on top of the boss and fire! Fun game, well done!

Definitely an interesting idea! Shame the shields don't seem to work right. I like how on the bottom you show where the boss is as well so our eyes don't have to travel as much (I don't really play these kinds of games so I wouldn't really be sure if this is a common feature but I like it nonetheless). I wish firing would just be an automatic option since there is never a reason NOT to fire and constantly holding down a key to do it is just kind of uncomfortable.

Thanks for trying out the game. I added details to my page the shield is SUPPOSED to block YOUR shots only, it's not a bug ^^. But the exploit tho was not intended thanks for pointing that out, I don't know if I can fix it now (wouldn't take long to do). So try not to cheat or the game will be less fun people u_u.

@CalebLewis the game is very inspired by Touhou, the boss marker is inspired by Touhou 8, when you have oodles of bullets on screen sometimes it's easier to just look at the bottom (there's actually a light sound effect too as long as you're hurting the boss to help you know if you are hitting or not currently).
I understand what you say about the shooting but it seems important to be input based to me for some reason, I advise the following (and comfortable) set up : shoot on space, shift on shift and movement on arrows and you won't have any finger overlapping ;).

The idea is definitely interesting, it's definitely not something I'd expect to be mixed.

I feel like the player bullets should maybe be faster, it feels weird to move and have to wait a seconds for the bullets to catch up. I don't really play bullet hells, but I believe they usually make your attack able to be upgraded? that would've been good to see.

The anti-tower-defense mechanic is interesting, but feels a bit weird, because I don't know why my character would want to help the boss?

On the topic of the boss, it would've been cool to see him do different attacks in the different stages, instead of just more of the same ones.

In terms of art, a little bit of animation on the characters and making the background scroll to look like you're moving would've made it look much more alive.

For audio, there weren't really any sound fx besides when those fruit bombs pop, it really could've used sound effects for shooting and hitting.

The idea is cool, and the main bullet-hell mechanics work well, I never felt like the hitboxes were unfair. Could just use some polishing around the edges.

Well, I like the combination of bullet hell + tower defense but I think it should be we build towers to defeat the boss but not build towers to help the boss kill.
Character control feels smooth. The music is a bit noisy if heard with headphone.
Overall, good game. Keep up the good work.

Nice game. Had fun playing it. Keep up the good job!

Hey @ashtrail, great game!

The concept of creating and placing objects against myself is fucking cool! I really enjoyed that part of the game!
I have also some suggestions for overall improvement, things that you can do without much effort and that would help the game a lot, for example, you could make the background much more clear, it would make the game more readable, also you could try to match the player sprite closers to the hitbox size, having the hitbox a little bit smaller is great, but right now I feel like the gap is too big. Another feedback that could improve the game is that right now the game is too punitive, you could create some system to give the player a second chance to re-engage the game after getting hit by a shot.

Overall nice job! Keep up the good work!!!

Thanks everyone for the feedback !

@GiovanniBarrottu I guess the bullets could be quicker yeah. It's true a lot of SHMUPs have upgrades but I wasn't really interested in this for this game since it's only one boss fight and also I like the idea of skill being the only scaling in easiness. The player doesn't want to help the boss ^^ think of it as you as a player get to customize your difficulty. Agreed for the boss' attack but I only had so much time, her patterns get harder every time tho (more bullets, less shooting interval). I could have added a scrolling background but I didn't want to attract too much of the player's attention with that, I just patched up a background in 5 minutes that wouldn't make the player's eyes bleed too much :P. I agree for the animations but time limitation again. For the SFX it's the same than for the background I tried to put them only if they had actual info in them (you're hitting the boss, you die or a bomb pops) otherwise you'd be drowned in a PEW PEW PEW sound soup. It could definitely do with polish, especially the graphics that are all over the place and all scaled at different size making a bit of a weird mix. I did try to make it out so it didn't seem unfair (adding the slow mo hitbox overlapping on death) so I'm glad it worked.

@TQV5964 as previously mention I guess a bullet hell + tower defense that help you might be interesting but it wasn't the concept for this game as I personally don't like adding anything to help the player in this kind of games.

@lukbebalduke thanks for the feedback, you gave a lot of good ideas that never crossed my mind. I thought a darker background would be more readable but I should try with a clearer one and see how that works out. Yeah the player was supposed to be much smaller but then the pixel art was all weird (I did the art very fast, it's the part I'm the least pleased with). In another context I would've made each stage harder and when you die you go back to the beginning of the stage and not the boss, but with the jam I only had time for one boss and I think it makes a neat little challenge. I realized that when you prioritize which bullets to avoid and which tower to place at each stage the games gets pretty easier but it does require to play it a few times. Btw I'm really hyped to play your game I just have to get my motivation and go through a windows session of playtesting (working on a mac).

I think I'll do a 'remastered' version of the game (same mechanics and game) but with a bit more content and polish. I shouldn't be changing anything to the jam game since it's not broken and I'd rather go full on the better version.

Loved the twist placing the turrets, played it before reading and when I got it I loved it. Nice idea and good, fun game to play.

Made me play more than once! I thought it was a pretty slick effort and the pop was indeed satisfying

Thank you @arron-fowler, it means much to me, even if I getting that pop sound was totally accidental and I can't really take credit for it, it is dear to my heart 😢.

The game was very hard and I died after placing the first turrets.... Then i randomly hit shift and found my hitbox :smile: Suddenly a walk in the park! Fun game, thank you!

Nice bullet hell action here and interesting twist to the Tower Defense, where its now ... Tower Offense? The BGM was very sweet, but I would have liked more sound FX especially when beating the stages of the boss. I think some greater contrast between bullets and background would help like the shiny bullets in your regular touhou schmup, but at least the action was slow enough for you to react to your surroundings quickly. Appreciate that you highlighted the hitbox as well as that helped with threading the needles between waves of bullets. I'm not really understanding the part about the various towers though, but I went full tilt on the shooting towers and managed to scrape a win. Good effort!

What a lovely take on the touhou fomula ! Gameplay-wise, the game flows well, the pattern, while classical, are enjoyable, and the tower mechanic is awesome and really adds something to the table ! In addition, the game is well-balanced, which is rare enough to be mentioned. My only problem was that I did not understand immediately that you had to place the towers during the "next level" screen, it would maybe help to grey out the button until all the towers are placed.

From an aesthetical standpoint, the graphics are good, as well as the audio which is well above LD standards. All in all, congrats for that pretty neat game !

@JLV good point for graying the next stage button I wanted to do it but forgot with all the stuff I had to do, thanks for the reminder.

I haven't looked at your past games, but a little something you can do to make it more aesthetic. (i don't even follow my own words here). But try using effects like camera shakes, especially in games like this. Also, try to tie the graphics together by using a color pallet.

This really captured me though, as it was around the same skill level I have for bullet hells.
I completed it on my second try and my heart rate shot through the roof. I had a fun time!

Have an awesome day!

// Rasmus from @LiquidBrain

@LiquidBrain yeah I agree, screen shakes and tweenings are things I need to add to my games, this is my second jam still have much to learn.
I think the problem of the graphics isn't actually the pallet (which I do use) but the pixel scaling isn't consistent and the art style either. I did it quickly with a mushy brain and when I realized the problems it was too late to change.
Glad you had fun and thanks for the feedback !

Nice game, I'm digging the character designs and the art in general. It's pretty hard haha. I love the slomo when you lose, I haven't seen that much in games but it really adds polish. PS about your question on what I used for timelapses - Quicktime!

@Angela He wow senpai noticed me ^^ ! Thanks for the feedback and the answer !
Actually slow mo is really easy to do in Unity it's like 3 lines of code in a coroutine, it's a cheap and easy way to show the player his death was actually fair. And I guess I'll be using Quicktime next jam then.