DEATH STRING by miziziziz
Demons have invaded the heavenly abodes. A MECHANICAL HERO wielding the fabled DEATH STRING is deployed.
RECOMMENDED TO USE DOWNLOADABLE VERSION, WEB BUILD IS VERY LAGGY ON SLOW PCS
Ratings
| Overall | 74th | 4.178⭐ | 109🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 52th | 4.164⭐ | 109🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 7th | 4.467⭐ | 109🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 92th | 4.294⭐ | 109🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 350th | 4.051⭐ | 109🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 235th | 3.858⭐ | 108🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 7🗳️ | 1🗨️ |
Performance wise, I do not think a webGL build on its own was the best option here as there are severe slowdowns when certain conditions are met. I have not done extensive enough testing for you to quickly debug and fix these issues in a reasonable manor, but here are some conditions that cause frame drops:
* when the electric coil becomes long enough
* when too many enemies are destroyed by the coil at one time
* when the coil stays active (electrifies) for too long
* all of the above, combined (thats when performance gets really really bad).
These issues made playing certain stages a very slow process. Honestly, being a fan of your channel it didnt actually negatively impact my experience of the game, however, bias aside I think this is a serious oversight when considering a webGL build as the platform for this entry.
As a side note, I noticed that the player character's position is updating at a different rate than the in game camera? This causes some strange ghosting on the player character that makes them appear blurry.
Overall, this was a fantastic little game, thank you!
Edit: I see now there is more than just the webgl build, so my harsh criticism is was a little unjustified here, my bad
I was also having issues with slowdown in the web version like @seth-tal was, but I also tried the desktop build (Windows here), and while I didn't do thorough testing, I did notice the desktop version also had lag and camera issues when too many enemies were destroyed at once. Specifically, the camera would be offset extremely far away, then lag, then go back to normal.
This is a really original idea, and the mechanics look really polished.
I think the artstyle could get some improvements, it looks to me like the characters and the environment styles do not match. Some more VFX could also be a good addition.
I couldn't finish it because I encountered a bug (I think it happened when I died, but the UI still showed a heart of health left), the character seemed to stop colliding with the string and with the enemy bullets, so I could not progress.
There is also a bug related to the screenshake when the string is long enough, but you probably already noticed that one.
That aside, I really love the concept and I think you could definitely finish polishing it and release a bigger version, this could end up being an awesome game. :)
I loved the game. The mechanic was original and it was very satisfying to get a bunch of enemies in a loop and destroy them all. Audio and visuals were great.
I will say the loop mechanic felt a little out of my control at times. I think it might be worth looking at ways to tighten that up even further. But overall it wasn't difficult to use effectively.
Awesome work, I enjoyed it a lot!
Big fan of your channel, actually watching your videos for the past few months convinced me to try to participate in this LD (this is my first actual game jam)
Keep up the good work and great submission!
https://www.youtube.com/user/pjboy25762 he'll probably make a video on the behind scenes of that soon
That being said, I did find the controls a little weird, as I kept holding the left click thinking it would cast the rope farther. Using the same button to throw / pull back didn't click with me, but that might just be my personal preference. I'm not sure if this was a deliberate design decision, but it would have been nice to be able to retract the loop when it was electrified, although that might make things too easy. I also think some kind of visual indicator to know how much rope you have left would have been helpful.
Anyway, I think this is really the most polished, complete, innovative, and on-theme Jam game I've played so far, great job!
it absolutely brought my computer to its knees though, especially during the final boss. the screenshaking kept sending my camera outside of the map for several seconds, although i was playing on the webgl build. this is awesome though, great work!
Combat was mostly tight, some enemies were annoying to fight (ranged enemies backed against a wall are really hard to pry loose)
The final boss was really cool and exactly what I was hoping for, a nice use of the mechanics coming together for a challenging fight. I had some huge lag issues on the last boss which I assume were due to some kind of leak? It seemed the more I used the lasso the harder the game lagged to a point it was unplayable. After a bunch of retries I got there using the lasso less and didn't encounter the lag.
The sound and art were great, overall an incredibly strong jam game that was really enjoyable
Few things that didn't work/I didn't like: the sound effects of the blue enemies were disturbive. The camera shifted randomly? at times, especially in the boss fight, as seen in the pictue.

Love the lasso mechanic, very original. The lightning effects are really well done.
Awesome game. Feels great to move around and throw the rope. I will have to take a look at your code :)
Keep it up!
Incredibly polished gameplay, music and pixel art, leading to an enjoyable experience.
Lasso behavior might sometimes be frustrating as it is difficult to control once the loop is closed.
Awesome entry ! Thanks for this
Good job!
I will say that my game glitched/lagged out a bit on the final boss fight, I think there might have been too many things going on in the scene.
Overall, great work!
The boss was a surprise, much more difficult than the rest of the game, but it actually teaches you how to play if you haven't learned so far, and you quickly improve at it. Only part where I died. Grateful that there's lots of lives even if it's kinda unbalanced, otherwise it would've been impossible with just 3 or 4. Didn't understand heart pickups very well either, like some times it'd pick them up and some times it wouldn't.
The shock upon killing enemies is very well juiced up and the lightning effect looks cool too, feels good to kill enemies.
Most of my gripes with this game concerns balancing. I found out that once you connect the loop, your character essentially turns into a hurtbox and you can run into enemies yourself to kill them. This trivializes the game, since there's so many hearts and you restore back to full hp after each level. I think it's a lot more interesting to kill enemies by trapping them inside, but what I would've liked to see is the loop close in on itself after you connect it. I found it a little annoying to kill the slower moving enemies since I had to drag the loop myself. I think it'd also be so much more satisfying to trap a bunch of enemies, then kill them all at once by making the loop shrink. The other issue I have is in the final boss fight, sometimes the camera goes wonky after I close the loop. It might be because the camera shake is super high when hitting multiple enemies.
Overall though, definitely one of my favorite games I've played. Love the concept, and I had a ton of fun playing it.
On the other topic, I'm not exactly sure if it's Web build specific glitch... but I've experienced some bug where retracting the rope doesn't activate the death string mechanic at all, and I wasn't able to interact with other objects such as hearts and exit doors.
But again, considering that this was made in a short span of time I think this might be the most well-pollished and innovative game I've ever seen on this jam.
Cheers for the dev team, y'all did a great job & deserve a whole jug of choccy milk because y'all are epic™
You could totally make a hard mode where the player gets hurt by touching the rope too. Got to the final boss, but was too hard (that's on me though).
When I play a top down shooter my focus has always been on the movement of the character, so this game is perfectly suited to my taste in that respect and I think it is a great strength here that the player is not so focused on aiming projectiles.
wish list for a full release:
Reel in mechanic , like batman's belt grappling hook, but for murder - could be an upgrade
Cross Code style platforming to make the terrain more interesting
Dash/ roll mechanic
I'm also a fan of the channel and, as a current game programming student, really appreciate your videos!
I really really enjoyed it and I wish it was longer. I ran into an issue where the screenshake just kept on adding into itself and when damaging several enemies at once, the camera went absolutely nuts and out of the level for a few seconds, but that's the only bad thing about it. Awesome work!
First of all, I like how you interpreted the theme in the most literal way possible, yet still created a novel mechanic out of it.
The game looks good, and especially sounds good, I really enjoyed the music and all the weird sound effects.
The loop mechanic is fun and super satisfying to use. I like how simple and intuitive you made it to use this mechanic that's pretty weird when you think about it. Although, I found myself feeling out of control at many points - I really wished I could also hold the left mouse button to reel the string back in when the loop is closed. Sure, it would have made the game easier, but I think it would have been EVEN more satisfying and fun to play.
I usually don't focus on bugs with jam games, but the screen shake made it impossible to play in the later levels, so I could never beat the last boss :/ That's one bug I would really consider ok patching, even after the submission time has passed...
Other than that - great job on this game! :purple_heart: