Story

Oh, it's Touhou in a Zelda dungeon! Interesting! I literally thought this is going to end after the first boss, being an LD jam game and all.

Little did I know...

I initially disliked the idea of having a time mechanic that makes you rush through a dungeon you'd want to explore meticulously. Not to mention that after all lights had went out, that 'gotta go fast' aspect disappears completely.

But as floors went on, the mechanic started to make sense: the rooms were very repetitive, so you actually WANTED to rush the game instead of conscientiously killing every enemy in every room.

And oh boy did that mindset make the later floors much more enjoyable. I actually made into fourth floor's boss while the lights were still on there and almost had it - but it got me just before the end!

I liked especially the third and fourth boss - there was a winning strategy to be found, and wrong moves could be fatal.

Speedrunning type game with great presentation. The controls and hitboxes are precise enough that dodging bullets feels fair.

Amazing game idea and the art is sooo beautiful. Things got a little chaotic when walking on a dark room with 4 enemies shooting random patterns at the character but that's on me not being a very good player :p congrats on the game!!

Really neat rougelike. I felt like the right answer is always to just ruck to the boss room, but I wanted to explore the treasures. I wish the treasures were more powerful to compensate.

The game is a lot of fun! I also found that the timer disincentivizes killing enemies and exploring - in fact, there's really no incentive to killing enemies, which is a shame because it's the most fun part of the game. I really liked running out of time and having to survive in the dark! I think I would have preferred it if a key (or similar) was required to reach the boss, and finding the key required killing the (random?) enemy that was holding it - I think the idea of having to kill enemies in rooms to make it safer to backtrack through them could be really interesting. Great work! :smile:

@hndmrsh Thanks for the feedback! The playstyle I was trying to incentivize and encourage was one where you race through the dungeon as quickly as possible, probably collecting the treasures, but generally just trying to dodge bullets and kill enemies only when it's convenient as you're rushing through. It sounds like for the most part that's what people ended up doing, but I guess not everyone thought that this was the most fun way to play, even if it was optimal.

I like your idea of boss rooms requiring a key! If I make a post-jam version, I'll certainly add something along these lines.

I love roguelike! First you made a pretty well finished game. Did you make sound and music too? Cause I realy like them, especially the music main theme (the "Po! poin! poin! poin! poin!" thing).

Maybe it would be cool to have different sprites for every bosses. Each floor the player would wonder which boss he's going to find, like a reward.

Anyway good job ! And I'm glad you used lua and love2d too! :D

incredibly polished, this feels like something i'd actually pay money for.
also, dog samples in the bgm? 10/10

Nice game. I like the concept. The AI is a little tricky especially the giant crab boss. You made a really good polish too with the light effect and the shaking screen.
Keep moving forward.

@bragou Thanks! The music and sounds were made by me, this video game was a one shru effort.

Wow! Pretty amazing little gem! Suprisingly, balance seems to work very well, at least till 4th boss. Treasures may be too small for one playing hastily. Good audio and smooth visuals! I like that level is shown at the beginning.

I tried to play it quick at first, but then realized that shooting in darkness is not that bad. So I switched to 'careful' playmode, looking for every loot and breaking through slowly. And it worked out ok, I had nice machinegun and 7 lives on 4th boss, but he killed me post-mortem :)

How is it possible that this game has so little reviews, it's amazing! Nice concept and has a lot of potential. At this point I wouldn't say is like Zelda, it really is more like Isaac, but BULLET HELL! Amazing entry.

Great. I wanted to play it again. Quality elements.

Fantastic, I think this will be one of the top 10 games this LD. Besides the trusty walk & shoot game mechanic, this was very polished both for music and effects. I liked the little details such as the pulsating half-shaded lights, animated background, added noise, interlace effect, the wavy screen shake effect, the little vibration the enemies make when they die. For music I could hear some playing around with audio effect knobs :)

This was a really fun game, doing a random generated game in this short amount of time is insane. The visuals are great, I really liked the scanline effect and the static effects. The characters are nice and the color choices really set the tone. The music was good, it didn't distract from the game but it wanted you to be somewhat tense, so it was a nice compliment. And... I really liked the humor on this. So from now on, I'm going to be nitpicking...

What I didn't like about the game was that you couldn't see enemy bullets in the dark, The game encourages you to be as fast as possible, so if you're rushing you can just be shot without having a warning. To resolve this I had to shoot all times so I can see where the bullets are coming from and dodge them. I don't know if it was the intended way or not.

Another thing I would have liked is that if you have your life full and there is a health pickup, the pickup either gave you a little more life (think it like the blue hearts on the Binding of Isaac if you're familiar with it) or have them change to other powerups, so that your travel to the item isn't wasted because you had full life.

And lastly, this is just an idea, but you could add some rooms that can't be accessed if they don't have light, so you can't have the powerup/treasure they have if you don't arrive in time. So you could encourage even more the speed aspect and having some reward to it.

Overall I really liked this game, I would like to see what you come with if you were to do a post-jam version.

When i try to click(to fire), it crushes and shows such error -

I am on Windows 10 x64

Having the same issue as @taras on Linux with LOVE 0.10.2

The art looks pretty tho!

Honestly, best game I've played in the jam so far. So well done.

Firstly, I need to tell you that when I start the game the window appear weirdly in a corner, I press F for full screen and then everything work well.

And then I got addicted to the game, is so much fun to play. Suprisingly difficult, but I enjoy go to each room and shoot down enemies as fast as I could. I think the rate at which the rooms lost power is a bit too fast, but I'm not sure.

It was so satisfying to get ncreased fire rate, I almost achieve machine gun speed.

One thing I would suggest is to don't show where the exit of the room is, I enjoy the preview at the beginning of each room but knowing where the exit is make me want to go straight there and don't explore as much.

I get to the 4th floor, and I enjoy a lot your game. you get 5 stars from me.

:D

Oh my god, where did the time go? I think I literally just spent an hour playing this game. Honestly, I have played many, many games in this competition so far and... I think this one may have been my favorite. I seriously did not give 5 stars overall to many games - maybe one or two. None have been more deserving than this.

In my opinion, the most important thing a game should have is satisfying, engaging gameplay - check. The shooting is fun, the movement is nice and responsive, the enemies are appropriately difficult (save for the boss - a little time in between shooting waves would be nice, as currently the player is always trapped in a corner).

Additionally, a good game must create an interesting atmosphere, either by the use of effective visuals or sounds - check. I love the art style; simple as it is, it still feels so polished, and I love the design of every enemy, tile, projectile, and upgrade in this game. The lighting effect looks really neat when the power goes out too! The sound design is great too; the sounds were sharp and subtle, almost melodic (my sister heard the sound of continual shooting at a high fire-rate and thought that it was actually a song).

I don't know why such a simple game captured my attention for so long... Maybe it was the feeling of progression as I earned more upgrades, or the variety of situations and rooms I would have to survive. Seriously, great job.

@taras @klowner @sebastian-m I've fixed the crash you folks were seeing, along with the issue where the game appears in the corner of the screen. (These issues are both related, btw.) I really appreciate you guys taking the time to report it. I've uploaded a newer build to the itch.io page: https://shru.itch.io/hydrocrypt

@maldo19 Thanks for all of the feedback. I'm not 100% satisfied with the way all of the elements play into the darkness mechanic either. Just so you know though, the health upgrade works exactly as you described. If you pick it up with full HP, then your maximum HP will be increased by 1.

@sebastian-m It seems like rushing to the end of the floors is a common thing people felt compelled to do. Not showing the exit certainly would be one way to deal with that, although I think I'd need to polish the map first to make it more obvious where you've been.

@drachmor Thanks for the doting review, it means a lot to me! <3 The bosses definitely give you some time to maneuver between their waves of attack, bosses 1-5 I all can beat without taking any hits. I think with some more practice you should be able to move well enough to not get caught in a corner. :) (Boss 6 is total bullshit though, but that's what you get when your game just indefinitely scales for infinite levels... ^^;;)

Oh no... That's embarassing. I'm so sorry for having said that without realizing that the health pickup did exactly that... I'm dumb.

Whoa, really nice work! The visual style chosen really is great, I like how enemies contrast with the background, while your character kinda blends in with its palette! Audio's really nice too as are the controls, and it fels really good, and challenging, to play the game!

Nice take on a roguelike, great job using Löve!

Lovely graphics, fun game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 39 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwlGq7uM8W4