The combat and animations feel quite smooth and polished, I would just suggest spice up the enemy ai so that they don't clump up. Oh, and audio feedback when hitting enemies goes a long way to make your game feel polished.

This was a difficult one for but once I got the hang of it everything was great! Very funny mechanic of having the player throw their gun at enemies and how some don't take damage unless you throw the gun at them first.

This game would have some more atmosphere to it if there was some sound effects and maybe music too.

Overall, I had a blast whipping my gun at enemies and bashing them all!

Also loved the 2D lighting! Really added to the visuals!

Smooth movement. Good graphics and lighting effects. Game name is hillarious. Suits the theme well, you truly did start with nunthing. Realaly well done.

After dying about ten or so times on the first level, finally got the hang of it! This game is very hard and even after getting better its still quite challenging. Overall this is a really well polished game! Awesome job!

It was really fun! But It was way too difficult. the movement and gunplay was extremely solid, but I felt that the knife should've had a bit more range or the enemy bullets should have been slower. Great job overall!

@pinosaur and @brotherbondproduction I'm glad you enjoyed the game! Audio was something I really wanted to add but just ran out of time at the end due to classes... I totally agree it would make the game so much better!

@mattdotam Ha ha, yeah the title was what started it all!

@andre-fremaux @bip I've heard from a couple people that the game is pretty hard. It was kinda intentional, I wanted a challenging but satisfying shooter like Hotline Miami. I didn't really have a chance to make anyone else test the game, so I was tweaking the numbers based on my experience, which probably overcorrected. In the future I'll have to get more people to see how things feel such as complexity, range, and speed. Thanks for the feedback!

Smooth combat! Dodge roll is great. It's quite satisfying to dodge to an enemy and take him down. Indeed it was really hard at the beginning, but once I got used to the dodge roll the game became much easier and I could finally pay back those enemies for killing me so many times! XD

Also, lighting effects really add to the atmosphere. I like it~

Smooth combat! Dodge roll is great. It's quite satisfying to dodge to an enemy and take him down. Indeed it was really hard at the beginning, but once I got used to the dodge roll the game became much easier and I could finally pay back those enemies for killing me so many times! XD

Also, lighting effects really add to the atmosphere. I like it~

Nice game with good concept.

Good job, you there!
Combat system's a bit hard, ennemies never miss and i always find myself surrounded if i get stopped even for a moment.
When i saw you lighting system, it reminded me of Ape Out and then i saw you got inspired by it :)
Overall - good game, but a bit unbalanced

Good concept and for me a bit hard to play in a first time but finally addictive. Sounds and music would be a plus. Nice.

Good game! Great difficulty curve which escalates at a rate that keeps the player constantly challenged and engaged. Lighting effects are really nice and build up the atmosphere well. Game concept is also quite innovative! My main issue with the game is that there is a lack of visual and audible feedback to the player when certain things happen. Consider adding screenshake or screenfreeze when shooting a gun, killing an enemy, etc. There also needs to be stronger feedback to show when the player gets damaged; a lot of the time while playing I didn't even notice I had been hit. If you added a red flash onto the player when getting hit, or making the screen flash red, it would make it far more obvious and wouldn't require the player to shift their eyes onto the UI health bar. Sounds and particle effects can also accomplish things like this. A lot of the moves the player can do also feel really unpolished, particularily with the roll and the shooting. Overall, well done! It's got an enjoyable gameplay loop and a humorous and interesting game concept. Excited to see more games from you.

Nice game, definitely challenging. Got a bit too hard for me after a while, but I had fun throwing my gun around and punching all enemies to death. ^^
Great idea to start with no ammo.

Good game, and the idea of breaking enemies' armor is cool, but sometimes the R button would be pressed by mistake since the E button is too close to it. (maybe it would be better to change the operation of throwing gun to Q buttom?)

I am one bad*** Nun! ;) The shooting and throwing weapons feels great. I tried to add multiple weapons to my game and couldn't get it done in time so, props to you! Great job!

Nice job on the enemy AI. I love how they can figure out how to get around doors if u try to get them stuck and how they scatter if you try to rush them. Made it hard to find exploits to the system. And exploits tend to ruin games are designed to be soul-crushingly hard, lol. Nice work!

Damn that's hard. Good concept and visuals.

@megalink I agree about the audio / visual feedback, it's something that was on my bucket list for the game but couldn't quite make it in time. Animations were in the same bucket list, so I could only work with still sprites, making the dodge roll more of a dash... Thanks for the detailed feedback, it helps a lot!

@dimlight That's a good point, I hadn't even thought of that. When I update the game I'll look into that, and maybe set it up with customizable controls.

@cafelovai Haha the AI is actually pretty simple (code wise) but it ended up working much better than I had expected, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Nice game

Great game! Very smooth controls and nice pixel graphics.

Its a really nice game, i actually enjoyed it
keep up the good work!

Ho-holy crap that was fun, I love the power trips and helplessness you feel while playing, this is not a ludum dare entry this is a masterpiece!

Great game! A little tough, but a good interpretation of the theme and fun to play. :D

It was hard at first, but you do learn the tactics. Really good use of the theme, and *love* the pixel art.
Yeah, that enemy AI doesn't mess around! :)

Cool game, a bit hard for the first few minutes. Especially love the graphics and fast combat. Great job.

There's a good variety of moves, which makes combat interesting. Unfortunately that meant that I kept forgetting the controls. One solution could be to put the controls on the edge of the screen for the first 30-60 seconds of gameplay. The difficulty did seem a bit hard. Might be worth seeing if increasing the melee range a smidge can ease it a bit, without making it too easy. I didn't really expect it with this kind of game, but I definitely felt the theme on this one, as I kept eyeing the ammo number. Overall a fairly solid entry.

@thecritterscove Yeah, its something I should have explained better. Ideally there would be a few stages before the "real" game starts to get the player familiar with the mechanics, and there is definitely tweaking that can be done on difficulty, especially right at the start, maybe with weaker enemies or stealth mechanics to avoid being detected. I'm really glad to hear that the theme came through! It was something I was a bit worried about in development, so I really appreciate that.

Very fun game, I recommend downloading ..

Very fun game, I recommend downloading ..

It was a bit difficult for me to play, but then I got used to the controls and movements. Nice pixel art and fast gameplay.

Took me a while to get used to it but when I did it was really fun. The controls are fine and the game looks really nice. Good job!

The mechanics took a bit of time to get used to but after that it was quite a fun game. A little difficult to see things, but it added somewhat to the ambiance. Thanks for sharing it with us on stream last night!

I got stuck on the second level, was going to put up a highly negative review, but reread your page and learned how to kill the elite enemies. After that, the game was awesome. Consider putting some sort of ingame tutorial, since before then, I didn't even know that you could throw the gun. :heart:

@justcamh I appreciate that you stuck with it and figured it out, yeah I wish I had time to add a tutorial screen, it was literally the next thing on my to-do list (right before audio), but I had to choose between that and submitting lol. In a post-jam update I will be sure to add it in.

Oof, beat level one before learning I could throw my gun. Guess I should've read the instructions on the game page, huh? Still, even with that, the game proves to be pretty challenging, forcing you to juke around enemies without a weapon after tossing it. I actually never used the dodge roll at all, either. Probably the most fast-paced action game I've played so far. Good job!

Hey Nun! You spent most of your days praying without any combat or military training. So here take this gun, without any ammo of course, and go down the basement and kill all those demons that shoot fireballs at you! Someone didn't plan this properly :rofl: Does the basement has a bottom? Or you just keep going on forever?

Killed my first enemy on my third try. Looks like a have a poor reaction skill))
Well, I like the graphics and the idea, but levels look to darky, it would be better it walls were a little brighter.
Nice game!

Wow! Your game is awesome! Great Job!
I developed a game with mechanics similar to yours on GGJ2019.
https://globalgamejam.org/2019/games/ashes-0

I like the way that enemmies are affraid of you when you're chasing them. Interesting entry and concept good start, keep it up !

Pretty smooth to play with decent art and I like the atmosphere the game has due to the darkness.

Hey, nice game ! I don't finish it because im a trashbag in this type of game but the animations feels good and the gameplay is dynamic (i think the ai move a little too fast). i really love the concept of your game, good continuation !

What a title, I love it! Took me a few tries (especially level 3) but I was able to beat it! The super-fast pace and top-down melee reminds me a little of Hotline Miami. Also, thanks for putting in the checkpoints per level. I don't think I would have been able to beat it if I had to restart every time I died!

Smooth gameplay but it desperately needs sounds and more juice when things happen.

Looks great, and I like the concept, but honestly I couldn't even get past the 1st level. Needs a less steep learning curve, but I imagine it's pretty cool once you can actually shoot things.

I found the game to be very difficult. I like what you were going for, but it still needs a lot to be any fun to play.

Mainly sounds, because it felt off without any feedback. I also kept getting stuck to the walls when I tried to make a tight turn around them.

Still a good job, and I really like the title of the game - took me by surprise when I realized the pun :)

the controls were very difficult and the enemies should be easier at the beginning to learn the mechanic -- thanks for making it

very difficult game, mainly because the controls and enemy IA! Graphics are nice. I think with some adjustments on the learning curve and enemies difficult balance will improve the gameplay.

I agree with what most people are saying regarding the difficulty and the absence of sound. The game feels good, though, so I can see with a bit of polish this can turn out to be a great little game.

I appreciate all the feedback. I have heard about the enemy difficulty and would definitely update that in a post jam version. I did intend for there to be easier enemies, or at least some kind of tutorial to start off the game, but didn't get the time to do it. I also didn't playtest the first level enough, and didn't realize the lack of obstacles would make it way harder for new players (since I already knew the game through and through). Sound and other visual feedback is something else I will definitely need to address post-jam. Thanks for playing!

Mmh, I know I'm being a pain but some people (like me) don't have a QWERTY keyboard. In most games this is not a problem because you can play with arrows, but not yours. I know you can change the setting in Windows but I suck so I'll probably break something :[ Sooo, if you have time to add this until the deadline I'll gladly play and rate your game :)

@skdf I did actually have support for arrow keys built in, I just forgot to advertise it. If you try it out and it isn't working let me know, but it should already be there. The other buttons (specifically E and Space) are hardcoded, so it might be a bit more challenging to play with arrow keys and reach those simultaneously, but hopefully that works for you!

Oh, it wasn't working last time when I tried. Eh, maybe it was my keyboard. Managed to reach E and space so it's all good :)

Throwing gun mechanic is fun and I like the simple but clean graphics, it works well with the dark lightning. Good job!

Pretty difficult, but also rewarding once you manage to beat it. The enemies all clumping AND running away from me was pretty annoying. Maybe make an easier enemy that does not run away, so it can be easily killed and add a 'keep distance from other enemies' component to their AI (literally 'if to close, add vector away from enemy to movement direction' does wonders). See me dying over and over here: https://youtu.be/-Zqkp3UVsFE

@rialgar Thanks for the video review, I really enjoyed watching it! A lot of people have brought up the AI, and it's a good point about the clumping together. One thing I noticed is that you never used the dash mechanic (press space to move forwards quickly, and you're invincible while dashing). It makes it much easier to grab your gun after throwing it, and also lets you get in close to regular enemies to hit them without needing to stun them first. You aren't the first person who has missed one of the mechanics, and that's on me for not having a tutorial in game, but I'm glad you were able to beat the game without it!

@brokenmirrormedia so you're telling me I chose hard mode :wink: Now that you mention it I did read the description but somehow totally forgot about dashing by the time I downloaded the game and set up recording :sweat_smile:

hey cool game! Gameplay loop is pretty unique and a lot of fun. Really wish there was sound, but it didn't stop it from being a blast to play! Also makes me wish more games let me play as demon-killing nuns.

Thanks to everyone here who reviewed my game, I really appreciate all the comments and feedback, and I've been absolutely blown away by the response I've gotten for my first Ludum Dare! I am glad so many people enjoyed my submission, and look forward to future game jams!