I got 230,000 points. I really liked this game. There was a good amount of variety with the different patterns of circles and finding the best spot to collect as many points as possible was a very unique challenge.

My only feedback was that some screens were a lot shorter than others because they gave more circles than another. To improve this you could maybe make circles give you different points on different screens so that they all last a similar amount of time. This could help the flow because you move through the screens at a more steady pace instead of getting stuck on a screen for 3 minutes and spend 20 seconds on another.

Nice bullet hell game, also like the risk reward bit, but theres no real way to lose so its kinda too easy? Controls are also a tad floaty.

Hey @lochidev, thanks for playing! Thats a good idea i gave the level different values already to smooth the curve a bit. I think you think of the first level with two circle emitters, that one is especially rough even though i reduced the point requirement. I really underestimated how long level design and playtesting takes, i wish i had more time to iron it out. Thank you for your time and your kind words, im glad you liked it!

Hey @erroneous thanks for playing! Yeah i wanted to dive deeper into bullet hell patterns to make the levels cooler but i didnt have enough time. A game over didnt feel right with this simple concept, but maybe you can find a challenge in competing for a high score and keeping your multiplier! The controls are indeed floaty, i found it a lot of fun to scoot behind clusters of bullets and hold their tempo.
Thank you very much for your time!

I got 223,702 points. The game was fun! I the mechanics of how it's a bullet hell, but you want to stay as close to the projectiles as possible. It adds a great risk/reward system. It's good!
One complaint I have is that the mouse controls don't feel 100% right. I found that I was in more control when I used my mouse compared to WASD, but the controls were very floaty and seemed inconsistent.

great idea! Love the random noise added to the motion to keep you on your toes.

Fun concept! I think the biggest gripe I have right now is the controls on the webpage. It's very very hard to get the ship to follow your cursor. It kind of feels like you're suggesting where to go instead of controlling the ship. I had to quickly move my cursor in and out of the canvas so I would have more room to guide the ship in a certain direction.

I suggest you interpolate the current ship position to the mouse cursor with a speed weight, like [ lerp(ship_pos, mouse_pos, speed * deltatime) ]. This gives you control over floatiness but it's still easy for players to control. Maybe something under 1 like 0.5 or 0.3 would work the best, if you want that floaty feeling. Higher speeds like 5.0 and 10.0 would slide to the mouse faster. Feel free to experiment with different speeds and find something you think works well with your game. If you don't like this approach that's okay :)

I hope you expand on your ideas here, I think you could make something really fun! Thank you for your game :hearts:

Hey, I enjoyed playing your game!
Things I liked:
- The risk versus reward tradeoff means you want to be very close but not get hit.
- Not too punishing, I didn't have to start over if I got hit.
- Multiple levels with interesting patterns.
Things I wish were different:
- I had lots of trouble with the mouse controls. It felt difficult to intuit how to .
- The font for the score was a bit hard to read, and the music became a bit repetitive.

Thanks for taking the time in making the game!

I really like this idea, like a bullet hell but without the constantly dying part

I had a hard time keeping my mouse on the screen but really enjoyed the game. It was mesmerizing @.@

I scored 296,155!
The way the bullet colors changed as they approached and the increasing intensity of the system sounds made for a really satisfying experience. Great job!

Very cool! Love the trippy background visuals; love the audio. Also, a very creative take on the theme. Using the mouse to control did some odd things--I noticed that eventually my cursor was over on my other monitor. Keyboard controls were more effective.

The only key thing that's missing is an objective--"Get points" is great, but when do I know that I have *enough* points? A time limit would be a simple fix: how many points can you get in two minutes?

Solid entry, especially for the Compo!

Hey, this was fun to play. I wish the ship moved the same speed with the mouse and my controller. It felt like it handled well with the mouse but went slow, and the controller as much faster but it felt too floaty. This was cool, good use of theme, thanks for making it!

This was fun. It was great that you took the time to put in some audio feedback to help the player understand when energy was being absorbed. The number of different bullet hell patterns is really high! Must have taken some time and been pretty fun to design all those bullet hell patterns.

Nice game! really like the effects :smile:

Nice work!
Simple yet entertaining. Good idea with having to stay as close as possible to the bullets.
I played on itch.io with keyboard inputs and didn't have any issues.

Simple yet fun. Btw, there is a similar mechanics in Touhou series https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Graze , but as a minor quirk, not the central mechanics.
There is an issue with embedded HTML version, as it does not fit completely, making the bottom bar invisible.

Cool bullethell game! Although wish the player moved towards the mouse position for mouse controls.

Cool idea! I played with a controller and the controls felt quite a bit too floaty for a bullet-hell style game - generally you want them to be extremely tight when you've got a lot of precise dodging like in this game.

Fun little game though, the vibe reminded me of early 2000s arcade games.

The risk reward is cool.
Mouse control was weird, I felt my mouse was trapped in the corner and I had to pull the player back all the time.
The audio and visual feedback on getting close was nice.

Good game ! I had some problems with the mouse controls but it was easier with WASD keys. In my opinion it lacks a little bit of juice but the main gameloop is fun to play !

@seam00se @phobos001 @zookham @mrs-wheelsx @guardaro @ellaris
Thank you for your kind words! Yeah the trouble with the mouse is that in the web version the mouse is neither hidden nor captured. This leads to a lot of awkwardness with the cursor. I'm sorry you had trouble :(
I'll have a look on the floatyness of the controls. The idea was to smooth it out so much that when moving back you have an easy time to stay close to bullets. Thank you all for your time and honest feedback!

Instant nostalgia from the old browser flash games of the past. Great gameplay, good match to the theme. Congrats on a great entry.

@baturinsky Thank you for your time! The bullet hell games of the touhou series are propably the best example for bullet hell games (at least most in this series). I totally forgot them during concepting phase! I didnt get far enough with my levels, i really wanted many slow bullets on the screen but i couldnt build the progression in time.
Yeah the HTML embed is botched i need to pay attention to the guidelines for screen size next time! I added a comment to the game description, Itch.io works better.
Thank you for playing!

@candlesan Yeah! I also wanted the music to change with the energy level, but i didnt have time :/ Godot makes it incredibly easy with its audio-bus handling. The entire audio changing was done in like 45min. I'm very happy you liked it, i like this audio interactivity too!
The bullets and emitters are split into 3 parts: Emission Pattern, Emission Type and Bullet Path Modifier. This way i have a very high number of combinations i can use and they are very quick to set up

Thank you for your time and kind words

@guardaro Yeah i wanted to add an intro/outro to the FTL sequence but i really underestimated how long playtesting would take. Score was planned anyway, but this way it's more like a crutch i agree. Thank you for your time and kind words!

Like how this game pushes you to take higher and higher risks!
I just wished the controls were a bit more responsive, maybe increasing the acceleration of the ship?
Sound is pretty cool.
Overall nice game! Congrats!

@phobos001 Yeah the mouse in the HTML version is botched because the cursor is neither locked nor hidden. I switched it back on last minute and didn't notice in the HTML version, I am sorry you had trouble :/
The mouse movement is solely based on the delta of the mouse movement. so if you hold still the ship will just float in the direction its speed. An absolute speed towards the mouse cursor would be possible too, it is confusing because the mouse cursor is not hidden i think.
I'll keep it in mind for the next jam. Thank you for your kind words and detailed feedback!

Thank you all very much for playing and taking the time to write some feedback!

bit easy but I love the concept! making all the elements a bit smaller might make it a bit more complex. great use of the theme!

I enjoy bullet hell quite a bit and this game is a lot of fun! One thing I noticed was that the WASD controls seemed very floaty. I noticed that it reacts to mouse movement as well and while it seems to give me more control than WASD, it also seemed to be inconsistent most of the time. But overall I love the concept!

loved the concept, the controls seem very floaty and it was hard to get the ship to go exactly where i wanted it which kinda sucks in a bullet hell but i would love to see this idea more fleshed out

I liked the mechanic of staying close to orbs but not too close (player can decide how much risk he wants to take). I also liked the increasing buzzing sound and orb color change when player gets closer. It gives nice feedback. The variety of levels/patterns was ok. The length of game was also perfect for a game jam.

I like the concept but it feels a bit slow for what is essentially a bullet hell where you don't shoot back. Also the fact that you can kind of maneuver the ship with your mouse threw me off for a bit before I saw you could use WSAD.

Nice piece of work. I liked the concept of getting and staying closer will charge you, but too close would kill you... With some simple tactics I was able to charge up the ship so I was missing a bit more difficult maps in terms of logic... But maybe that's me I dont like bullet hells or similar games that much, I almost could imagine this game mechanic as a chill puzzler. Great music and nice clean arts. Congratulations!

I like the idea as I like shmups but the execution has problems. The spaceship has inertia which in shmups is almost always a bad thing.

I made 2012272. I just took my time to not get hit, it looks like that the scoring system doesn’t incentive you to complete the patterns as fast as possible. It looks like you can infinitely milk patterns by voluntarily take hits to reset your gauge (ok it would take a very long time to reach the counter stop given the amount of digits and the multiplier reset).

I love danmakus with elaborate scoring systems like Cave, but note that with an uncapped multiplier a scoring system has what could be called a “DoDonPachi issue”: reseting it at half progression is worse (roughly divides your score by 4) than at the beginning or at the end (no significant loss).

However the action is clear. The hitboxes are visible, the bullet direction is shown so the patterns are readable despite the bullets changing directions.

You also made a tutorial which is nice.

Solid concept! Took me a little while to realize the hitbox was the circle, not the whole "ship", but very nice tension in trying to stay close, but not drift into them.

Fun little bullet hell. I'm not a huge fan of the controls, they seem very loose and I kept drifting into things and had trouble with reaction times. I also found the tracking on my mouse would be lost if I left the screen. It was nice to revert to keyboard controls.

very cool concept, verry fitting audio and I like the simplicity but challenge to it. i also like the varying level types of sorts, very good job.

nice one, well made. I didn't understand the purpose of the black triangle. Challenging but fun.

The changing patters force you to not stick to one strategy, the controls feel a bit sluggish but I think that is my personal opinion only. It's a good concept for the multiplier and forcing the player to "make" his own limited space. Good one :D

nice Barrage game

Nooo, my multiplier! Lol Fun game, found myself playing this rather than reading emails this morning.

Nice sounds and easy to understand for the most part. Took me a bit to realize that the black section of the ship doesn't collide.

I like it! It took a few rounds to get a handle on the controls (the mouse stopped working a few levels in), and I eventually realized the black part of the ship didn't collide with the bullets. It's really cool that you got the player to do the space limiting, rather than imposing it.

Nice idea, it's fun to greed as much as possible without getting it. The black area doesn't counting as a hurtbox is a bit counter intuitive imo.
Good job!

@sentmoraap YOU MADE TWO MILLION? Wooow! I used a score progression simillar to action rpgs. you could stay in one spot and farm a long time but moving on gives you more points in gerneral. You are correct that you can infinitely farm each level, but loosing your multiplier of say 20 means you have to stay in a level 20 times longer to get the same score as advancing.
Were you just incredibly careful to not loose your multiplier or did you really invest that much time farming?

I also wanted to give players a flat score after each level to incentivise keeping your multiplier but i couldnt make it in time.

Thank you very much for your thorough test and time investment! Im happy you liked it!

@greenphox I planned prerendered 3D graphics but i was short on time. i had to cut almost all graphics because i underestimated the time requirement for level design and testing.
Thank you very much for playing!

Thank you all very much for your feedback! I'll have a look at the controls and the floatyness. I will make a note on expanding the tutorial to make clear what the important game elements are. Thank you very much for your time!

@2thegamechanger I did not farm however I played extra safe to not lose my multiplier. And on some patterns it was safer to stay just below where the bullets spawn.

Great game! I like how the difficulty builds up gradually, instead of just starting off really hard.

Very stylish and fun! Music, gradient background and arcade-like scoring make for 100% coolness.

I think first thing I would touch is the scoring system, I went AFK for a few minutes and got back to see +100 000 points. 😁

Thanks for sharing your work!

I truly appreciate the game's concept. The gameplay, where you have to get as close as possible without touching, is a very clever idea! Well done.

However, my feedback pertains to the game's level design. The never-lose aspect can make the game a bit dull in the long run. Also, the levels with random bullets pose some issues. I believe structured bullet patterns would be a better way to create challenging levels with clear objectives.

Still, great work! I thoroughly enjoyed the game.

Nice take on the theme :) I think it could benefit from some kind of fail state, though.

Great introductory tutorial! Nice variation in levels & patterns, nice music, good feedback when close to the projectiles. Satisfying when you're doing well.
The controls are a bit slippery, but it adds to the challenge!

I love the games music! It took some time to understand the gameplay idea, but when I first understood it, it was fun to play. The controls is interesting, but there are some issues, but this could be an issue with the WEB version of the game. Overall an interesting and fun little jam game.

Really interesting idea. I got a feeling like I was a surgeon doing a precise surgery.

It took me a while to understand that only the middle circle is not allowed to hit red orbs. After I realised it, the game actually became a lot easier. I found myself thinking more about getting closer to orbs rather than avoiding the hit. In that sense, it is not a traditional bullet hell game by any means - it feels original.

An interesting and minimalistic concept. I liked the texture of the background and the sound with which the ship is charging

The controls are a bit tricky at first but it was really fun. Remind me of Deltarune where you can get bonus where you are near the bullets. It probably also the case in some Touhou games ?
Good game tough

Cool-looking background and some nice effects on the "enemies." The player felt a little big at the start, but I soon realized it's only in the center. This is actually good in the theme; it felt like limited space :)

@plepletier Yeah i understand your concern. The randomness slowes the levels down a lot but mixed in from time to time or for coarse bullet patterns so you need to weave through it is a good way to prevent monotony. I really wished i had time for more levels and testing i wanted to ramp it up a bit more. Thank you very much for playing!

@nash Thank you for your very kind words! Im glad you liked it!

Really nice tutorial ! I am god awfull and the fact that the levels don't go harder before you reach a certain amount of score is really apreciated :)

awesome game! but not so easy to control with the mouse

Interesting idea. It took me a while to understand that the collider is just on the blue dot. Also at first I thought the sounds match the rhythm (which may be a cool idea for you to implement?). And so the music was great too :)

I like the way you make "losing" not a punishment and just keep trying.

Cool game! I wish it was more clear that the collider was only on the blue dot but overall it was pretty fun!

I liked the presentation of the game. Both in how you introduced the gameplay in a way that was easy to grasp and how the player gets a meaningful choice in how they want to play, either faster but more dangerous or slower but safer. Also, some of the patterns were great, like the zig-zag and the one that's straight lines followed by a spread of obstacles. I do agree that the gameplay feels better with WASD than with the mouse controls, but it's pretty solid with WASD.

Such a nice game, the controls are a bit hard with the mouse, but overall pretty great :D

Loved the music, and gameplay was smooth. Nice job! 

Really hard to get to a high score, it was fun to play!

Very funny, specially the SFX with whip sound... haha
I got a bit confused at first because of the mouse movement, but after I realised I should use the keyboard it got really funny to play! Congrats!

trippy, and cool, and smooth to play

Super funky vibe, loved the aesthetic of the music with the font and background. Gameplay was intuitive and fun

I have to say, it took some time to understand what I am supposed to do. Cool idea! Well done.

@sevansevan Thank you! In most games i think the fail state is handled by convention. I think giving feedback and loosing the multiplier is punishment enough. The game that inspired me most in this regard was oddworld abes oddysee, where all points are optional but you get a different ending based on how strongly you committed. and 70% is enough, doing a 100% entirely intrinsic. The comparison is a bit too high but i appreciate that you enjoyed my approach :D
And then there are people like @sentmoraap who take the mere score as a challenge and invitation :D

@cymusi yeah i thought about that, too! I really would like to try that but I dont feel confident implementing that as a side feature yet. But it would be cool as the focus of the next challenge :D

And thank you all for the feedback with the collider! You are correct that it is not explained sufficiently and I will keep it in mind! I think that is one of the best things about those challenges, you get really good feedback about what works and what doesnt.
Thank you all for taking the time to comment!

I liked the "double purpose" idea behind red orbs. I've got to like 120k points :)
The controls was a little delayed for my liking, but I think this was on purpose.

Neat game I think my biggest gripe is that it seems to take quite a long time to finish, I'm not even sure if there is an end I played it for about 10 minutes straight.

gosh there are so many good compo games this round. This is another one of them. Maybe I cheesed it a little bit? On some patterns you can just park your ship in a safe spot and still get tons of bonus for being close to the red dot spawn locations.

`327'975`

Cool game, i wasnt sure how close to get to the orbs or if getting even close was better vs the risk of hitting it. The controls felt a bit spongey too, but otherwise great game!

As you probably know the controls feel horrible. The only time I feel like I have control over the player is when Im not moving. If it tracked the mouse perfectly or even smoothly it would be fine but I have no way of knowing where the player will be and having to dodge things in that state feels like pure luck.

The idea of getting close to the danger was already used in some shoot'em up, but it's a nice one.

Mouse controls seemed random for me, so I just used keyboard and it's OK.

A little intro screen would be useful, instead of just having the game immediatly starting. I was searching for the description, which is not on itch.io and only on the Ludum Dare website. And while I found and read it, the game was playing, which is really confusing.

The different combinations of the bullet paths should cover all the game area. When you go down right, you never get hit. That's a bit dumb, because you don't get any score, but it would be better for the gameplay to have the feeling that no place in the game area is 100% safe.

The controls are definitely a bit floaty/unresponsive. The feedback is really good though, the sfx combined with the changing colour bullet when you get closer is a really nice touch. Mouse control was confusing but the keyboard/WASD was fine.

Very original and funny concept, congrats!

I like the idea, but I think it's too slow

nice game.. simple, nice, addictive

I really like the idea that I have to be close to the red dots but not very much... it makes me take risks

good work

The gameplay does feel a bit too long sometimes. It would be great if they could break it down into levels or stages.

Interesting audio, as well as visuals, but there's nothing to do, just parallax,