I thought it was interesting but a few things; I hadn't realised I could shoot but when I did I just stopped moving left and right and still made it through, as the dosage got smaller the player got smaller which made it easier for me to just stay still and keep shooting, maybe making the player larger so its harder to dodge would be better? That or possibly removing shooting and replacing it with speeding up to ram into the heart while dodging the antibodies

@gear-steak Thanks for playing! I'll update the description to make it a little more obvious that it's a shooting game. But yeah as you said it's not 100% necessary to dodge, especially once you upgrade your fire rate. As your dosage decreases, you get visually smaller, but the collision boxes are actually the same.

I think some difficulty tuning will be done once the rating period is over :)

Hey, looked great, gear steak said standign still was an option but I had fun dodging anyways, Great job

Great vertical shooter! I think if you include the option to move forward/backward, while ramping up the difficulty, it'd be a really good bullet hell game!
Interesting use of the theme, and charming pixel art.

i love the graphics!

Amazingly good! The gameplay was quite simple, but the upgrade between each stage, and interesting morality explored in the narrative, as well as the amazing atmosphere/sound design kept me going until the end. Thank you for making this! :thumbsup:

Oh - you can shoot? :D That makes sense, i played it dodging until the heart appeared and than i dodged and dodged and dodged and... :D
I dig the whole package. graphics, sound, intro, style. congrats!

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

It's so funny that people aren't realizing you can shoot! I knew I should have added a 'controls' indicator to the game.

I've updated the itch.io page to make the controls more obvious ;)

Hahahah I also didn't realize I could shoot for a while. I was just staring at the heart going like what the hell. Nice concept and wow that story is quite dark xD Wish there were different kinds of enemies aside trom the white bodies. Good job

Great game! I really liked the introduction story, it was a bit morbid but I liked how it was similar to a possible future I could see our earth facing. I really like the color palette and I thought it was very well done. This was actually the first game I completed playing the storyline this competition so it held my interest until the end which was huge! Awesome work!

my first play with a pico-8 game!
nice story, and well packaged

I loved the backstory, the graphics are great and the controls are tight and precise. Also, I think that mixing this kind of 45 degrees movement with a shooter is brilliant 👏

The gameplay was solid and the sound effects built some great atmosphere. But what really made this was the story. Really affecting with so few words.

I'm very impressed at what a polished game you were able to put together, The whole presentation was great.

Very well done! I love the retro style and it was a pretty unique take on the theme :)

I liked the colors and the story was pretty fucked up, but memorable.

Nice game, but sad story... :( At first I didn't even realize you could shoot, even though it lists the keys at the start of the game! Also, Rapid fire is OP. Change my mind.

Nice one! Finally a game where you can shoot bullet without having to pay each shot with your own life :-)
Made it to the end!

Woh, nice mood. I really like how you introduced such story telling in a simple game.
The shooter is simple but the skill selection is nice. What really drove me is to know the end of the game, so, that's what I like in a game :)

The rapid fire is a bit OP, but I think it would have spoil by experience to increase the difficulty. Really interesting entry!

Great feedback everyone! I'm especially pleased you are all enjoying the story, it was my first time trying to wrap a game in any sort of narrative.

100% agreed that Rapid Fire is OP! I wasn't really able to balance the game in the time we had, and opted to make it fairly easy so that most players could finish it. But yeah, Rapid Fire is definitely the first power up you should acquire.

I might explore this game more post-jam! I have a few ideas on how to expand it.

I found the story pretty unpleasant, but I guess that was the intention. Interesting game nonetheless.

That was cool! Got to the heart on my first try, I wasn't sure what to do. I hadn't fired at all, I didn't know I could because there wasn't really a reason to. So after a few minutes I let myself die, I thought that was what I was supposed to do. I read the controls and tried again and beat the heart. There needs to be a reason to shoot early on, like a wall you must shoot in order to pass through. I like the concept a lot! You could ramp up the difficulty, especially towards the end, it felt easy, even on the last level you can pretty much just stay in the middle and hold shoot. Also, make the player's bullets bigger and brighter, they are super hard to see.

The story is great. How do you come up with these ideas? Graphics and SoundFX are also amazing!

You did a great job at exercising restraint in a lot of areas of game design here. By making it a shorter, digestable experience that wasn't artificially difficult it made it an easy decision for me to play it all the way through. The graphics, colors, and music were all subtle in the right ways for the experience, too. Another thing to consider while balancing the game could be to make the first level a bit shorter to have it essentially serve as a tutorial. That level in particular was easy enough where I just found myself standing still and shooting waiting for it to end. If that level was a bit shorter it would show what a full level was (and make sure people knew they needed to shoot haha) and get them right into the rest of the game.

One minor nitpick I had is that because I was so focused on my player and the incoming obstacles I never really was able to keep an eye on the progress or health meters. Maybe there'd be a way to represent that information closer to the player so you don't have to lose focus to see it?

Again, well done and I'm glad I played it through!

Good criticism, thanks all! 100% agree with all of it. You definitely need to be encouraged to shoot more, and the levels could be balanced better.

I'm currently working on addressing most of these critiques in the post jam version!

Nice little game! Everything is simple and efficient. I loved how shooting sounds are in the same rhythm as background heartbeat track.

This is a really good little game, good job ! I really like the PICO-8 color palette, but the contrast red/white/dark might be a little high for a game like yours which goes fast. Well done on this game :)