Can easily kill the boss with all the fairies ;)

Nice touch with the theme!

@tan-kwong-yee: Thank you!

@ random anonymous: Good feedback, I'll have to re-balance it a bit :)

Adorable. Gave it highest in MOOD. You hit it.

Haha! Loved the boss fight. I had collected so many fairies. Was proud. Became dead.

One suggestion is to make the bullets more visible (larger might not be possible, but maybe more contrasting colors?). Especially during the boss fight I found it hard to dodge the bullets without looking directly at my character all the time.

@harark Thanks for the feedback! I'll pass that along to our artist and see what he thinks

Great Graphics, but the gameplay got stale pretty fast. It also wasn't very apparent what the fairies did or how they made anything worse

Really good touch the theme at the end of the game, i like it!

All game I was wondering where the theme hides. Great twist!

I really like these kinds of games the only thing that cut me off a bit was the missing hit indicator on the boss! Took me some time to figure out where to hit him.

Im stuck at the end, the angels turned against me but nothing is happening and i cant shoot them...

@mads try shooting its eyes ;)

I was thinking to myself, the more of these friends I get the better it gets. then I got to the end. Nice job with the art too.

Nice twist at the end, I was wondering how it fit into the theme. Was quite enjoyable, solid gameplay.

I can't believe they did that to me! After I saved all of them!

It was a super cool take on the theme! Congratulations!

Awesome music, totally went with the game. Graphics looked great and it played well. Great job!

Really cool game, and I like the setting (characters are ornaments, and you reach the top of the tree).

### Suggestions
- The game over screen says "fall of the" and nothing else. That doesn't make that much sense.
- Maybe add sound effects for shooting (not talking about hitting)

Overall, really cool.

Nice game and the music is so cool !

Fun game and nice art.

Thank you for the feedback everyone :)

@cameronjsamuels We have the game over screen bug fixed, but it is in version 1.1 which isn't available for rating. And I'll pass your sound effect suggestion onto our audio guy.

@michael-clavell, I completely understand that v1.1 is post-jam. That sounds good. At least you fixed it.

Great translation of Christmas iconography into SHMUP enemies/bullets, and the twist at the end is a great touch. Good job!

Ohhs I REALLY LOVE THOSE LITTLE HARPIES wwwwww

The remix music is cool

SUggestions:

I got confused when facing the boss that which parts should I shoot. Secondly, player move speed might be 1.5x faster

I really enjoyed this shmup! I was wondering how it fit with the theme... until I got to the end. That's actually a really neat mechanic!

A shoot-em-up with that art style was bound to get my attention :D The graphics are super-cute, I love them! The plot twist at the end was also a very nice touch: as I was playing the level I kept me thinking about the plot connection, and then there it was :grinning:

Gameplay-wise, sometimes it was hard to determine if your hits were landing or not, the animation changes on the enemies were subtle. Also, it felt a bit slow to me. However, despite these two things, I really liked the entry.

Awesome job!

One of the shoot-em-ups I actually really like and enjoyed. It is also well polished!

Keep up the good work.

I really liked the twist at the end! Definitely good fun. Also, music was really great

Fun to play. Found no bugs.

Cool concept with the boss. Clean visuals.

Man, is it just me or is that game really difficult for being so cute? With the fact that so many things home after you (including gingerbread corpses), I found myself getting corned a lot. I quite OK with the difficulty, just curious if anyone else felt similarly :3.

Great audio and art style! Give a great x-mas feeling!

- Falling attacks are hard to dodge. (snowman, ginger man)
- Need some sound effects for shooting or hitting.

Nice job!

I love the mechanic and twist behind the angels. Great game!

Really got me good there. First thing I noticed with the game is that the guitar is too loud in the main. The mixing is fine during the boss battle but then you restart and it feels like the mid-frequencies are turned up to 11.

The art and the enemies are really cool. I really loved how the gingerbread men snap in two and home in on you.

Apart from that, solid game, I really enjoyed it. I was kind of confused as to what the deal was on my first playthrough, but on my second playthrough I felt really motivated to take revenge on those angels. I love how when you get more angels, in addition to having more to fight you're also more likely to release more. Also, how you have to consider the fact that you would have to go through the game alone if you don't pick up any. Really interesting risk/reward mechanic.

I loved how the star is slowly revealed on the top and you feel really satisfied before realising it's actually the final boss. And then killing it feels even more satisfying. The actual boss fight itself was pretty good as well, though it could have been a bit longer or a bit more challengng in my opinion. And although you do get some feedback from the eyes, it's not continuous through the fight. Throughout the fight I had no idea how close I was to winning, how much hp the boss had. Which parts of it to shoot wasn't really intuitive.

Nice narrative twist at the end. I have enjoyed played your game for a while, good job!

nice game. the mood is excellent.

Wow nice ! That's a great game ! Worth continuing working on it !! (loads of fun...!)
Little minus for me : the music. Cool idea (casse-noisette's reprise) but really cheap :-) ... Cool be in better symbiose with the game's aesthetics (cheap sounds can be better shaped, in accordance to a style, etc...)
Our game is over here if you want to check it out : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/the-darkest-light )

Nice little surprise, it's not very common to see a shump as a LD entry and much less a christmas oriented one! Had quite a lot of fun playing this one, controls are pretty smooth and the following angels kinda remind me of Twinbee. Music is a bit high for my taste, but the remix is very cool. Congrats on making this!

Neat idea, nice art, good audio. I wish the player could move just slightly faster (not by much). Overall, very well done. :)

Very nice graphics and good audio!

The base gameplay is good but the shots are waay too slow to be satisfying - coupled with the lack of feedback when hitting enemies it makes it much less exciting than it could be. Some faster bullets, enemies and movements, and some spruced up Christmasy explosions when killing enemies and "more of everything" and this could be a nice cute little shmup! I'm a big shmup player though so I might just be wishing for more bullet hell.

Beautiful game, and scale the gameplay well. Personally, I'd like the player's attack to go a little faster, and I think he needs more visual feedback that would help him get more feeling. Congratulations.

Jogo bonito, e escala bem a jogabilidade. Pessoalmente gostaria que o ataque do jogador fosse um pouco mais rápido, e acho que precisa de mais feedbacks visuais que ajudariam a ter mais feeling. Parabéns. :flag_br:

I love the way you worked this into the theme! Great job!

I enjoyed the game quite a bit. I got all the way to the end and was like... Cool! I can take one more hit before I die... this boss is gonna be a cinch. Ready ladies? Uh... Fairies? WTF!?

So I played the exact opposite way the second time and I beat the boss.

Very cool game, I love the way you used the theme.

Simple take of the theme, but very effective. "the worst" is not only with the boss, but with the angels too : the more you have, the worst it is to avoid getting more! Very well done :)

I like shmups, I love doing shmups and I liked this one a lot.

Nice interpretation of the theme, despite being **completely** hidden of everyone who didn't play the game until the end. For this reason, maybe you'll receive bad ratings on this category, but the idea is still nice and quite creative, turning risk-reward into reward-risk.

For the gameplay, I like how smooth everything is/feels. Very well done.

You could also try putting a V shaped trail renderer on the shots/enemies. It helps with the smoothy feel.

I'd like a bit of screenshake, but no big deal. Also, the small brown shots are VERY small.

Finally, the laser boss attack wasn't shown in advance, so my death to him felt very cheap, since I couldn't possibly know an attack would happen that way.

But all in all, it is a great entry, deserving high ratings. Very solid atmosphere/mood/gameplay. Congrats.

PS: 2D art - Simply lovely! Very clean and beautiful. Congrats here too!

Haha what a twist! I was wondering how the helping little angels made things worse... and then I found out! :D

Great game! I was confused at how the theme worked, but once I got to the end, it all became clear. Nice job!

I had a lot of fun with this! Was cool to see how it fit the theme at the end there! I would definitely recommend making the nutcracker's projectiles stick out a bit more, as they're a bit small.

Okay, I'll admit: That was a neat twist at the end. :D

This is the perfect LD submission. The game is easy to jump into, easy to play, and it looks gorgeous. The audio was amazing as well. Great work!

wow...that game had it going on! Loved the music, and the change in music at the end! Loved the enemies, loved the art, loved the twist...yeah, that game came together nicely. Plus, the christmas theme was cool. In some instances, I think making a hit could have been more obvious - perhaps by adding more and/or higher contrast particles?
Really fun game, I'm now in the Christmas spirit!

Really well done! Great LD entry! I like how this game has a very unorthodox artstyle for this type of gameplay. With a little bit of extra attention you could easily release this commercially.

'Hmm, I don't really see the theme in this one...' I though as I was nearing the boss with all familiars collected. Boy, was I wrong! The interpretation is great and the visuals are just lovely.

What I'm not particularly fond of are the tiny projectiles, that are easy to miss, the 'fuck-you-snowman-heads' that are a bit too fast coupled with how the slow the movement is. It also took my at least 3 hits to realise that the gingerbread pieces are projectiles as well. But other than that, it's a great game.

That twist when you reach the boss...there's the theme! Great idea! Really like the art, and it goes well with this time of the year :)

Overall it's a great game and it was very fun to play. Congratulations!

I love a good scrolling shooter, especially a Christmas themed one! This was fun!