​I really enjoyed the Sparta kick. Amazing :)
I like how the Sparta kick teaches the player how to kick with right-click. Learning by doing is really powerful.

I like how the game is relatively forgiving with the powerups and lives. It's not too unfair, but definitely challenging at the same time.

If I were to try improvements, I think that the jetpack UI could be close to the player so that I don't need to read the corners of the screen. Also, I felt inclined to kick the 2nd enemy, but it didn't feel effective enough, so I resorted to the gun.

The shotgun was fun to use. I used the recoil to dodge bullets :)
The music bops. I like it :)

Thank you very much for reviewing it, you are absolutely correct about everything. This kind of constructive criticism worths gold and makes me a better game developer, so thank you again!

A nice game which wasn't too easy or too hard. The graphics and sound was obvious signs of polish and care, which paid off in the end. If I was to nitpic I would ask to spread out the tutorial controls into not a slab of text but it didn't ruin my experience in the slightest. Nice game!

I had to restart a few times before triggering the sparta kick and getting fuel, otherwise I was kind of rushing through the spikes not understanding what to do :D . Fun little game overall, that's pretty impressive especially since you're using your own engine, kudos for that!

This was super fun, and the music in particular was excellent! I had a great time playing. My only issue was that the first couple of times I played the sparta kick didn't trigger and the enemy just fell into the spikes, so I didn't get the fuel and ammo. That said, the music was good enough that I tried a few more times just to listen a bit more and then it worked!

The jetpack was pleasingly zoomy and navigating through the spike corridors was challenging but not frustrating - and the sprites were pretty charming too. Great job!

Thank you all guys, I think I have an idea why the spartan kick wasn't always triggered, hopefully fixed now.

I love this game, with the impressive addon of being with your own engine!

The Spartan Kick is inspired, if a bit weak, and the gunplay feels good. I love the music, and everything looks great and sounds great. I think the UI could be closer to the player, as @cammin said, but impressive game overall!

Very impressive game, especially considering the engine is your own. Keep it up!

Man you have my fives. Own 2D engine!! that's amazing. I was like you years ago, trying to do everything without using libraries or engines but too big to continue that. Claps for you!!!

Thanks everyone! :)

Hey, I'm having trouble getting the entire game window visible. My monitor is 2560*1080, so maybe that's the issue. The top and bottom of the game are cut off since the aspect ratio is much wider than 16:9. Worst of all, it cut off the settings I needed to change the resolution in the video settings menu. Something to think about for your engine, maybe.

What I could see was a lot of fun. Some of it was a little tricky, like the jetpack felt too sensitive for me to be able to negotiate the spike-lined corridors without hitting anything, and there were a _lot_ of bullets flying at me at times.

But an excellent start for the 48 hours, well done!

The game alone is good. The fact that is was made on your own engine is really impressive. 5/5

Music is good and I like the intro. I wish the kick could have a little longer range, feels kinda helpless against the turrets without ammo.

@kieron-woodhouse , thank you for your feedback! Unfortunately I only hardcoded some of the most popular 16:9 screen resolutions and aspect ratio, this is causing your problems. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to submit a fix for this after the deadline, but I can, I'm happy to do it (an easy workaround would be starting the game on a much lower resolution if the screen aspect ratio is not 16:9). About the jetpack controls: I should have spend more time of tweaking this as it's just a matter of tweaking 2-3 variables (friction, gravity, forces, etc.) but I was so focused on the other aspects that I did not have time at the end (the finished version was submitted something like 10 minutes before the deadline :) ).

@ristoretto , thanks! agree, the kicking thing was a hit and miss, I should have put much more focus on it, but I had no time to do the final touches, so I just tried to make it playable by throwing in more ammo into the game, hoping that it will be just enough without relying in the kicking :)

@chiller thank you so much!

Great work, especially impressive that this was done in a custom engine!

The jetpack felt really nice -- I used it constantly to dodge bullets from the turrets. Once I got the hang of it, I didn't even have a need to shoot the turrets. Overall the platforming felt really tight (great job on this), the jumps felt a bit fast at first but I got used to it almost immediately.

It took me a couple tries to beat and I think the difficulty right where it should be - challenging but fun : )

I saw an above comment saying you were looking for some constructive criticism so here it goes:

Some things you could consider:
- I think it would help a lot if it was more obvious you were taking damage (maybe screen-shake?)
- The lava only seemed to be an issue for me early on
- The object permeance of the bullets was AWESOME but I would also make them more visible. (I'm part of the school-of-thought that bullets should be the size of watermelons)
- I had a glitch during one run where the camera didn't zoom back out after the spartan kick, not sure why this happened
- I highly recommend this video/talk *(youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U&t=409s)* if you're looking for quick and dirty ways to improve game-feel

Ok where to start... first of all the theme is awesome... not sure if Mullet Time is a play on Bullet Time, but even if it's not it's still awesome.

You wrote your own engine??!!? The first thought that comes to mind is WHY?! But I remember when I started we had to do that, it's just that today you don't need to, you can use Unity for example. Still I commend you for learning what it means to actually make a game engine.

As for the gameplay, I can't get past the first set of flames after I get the jetpack because I use the jetpack and instantly die. I just can't control it for some reason.

And when I die I am forced to quit the game :cry:. That's not exactly user friendly. :-(

Also the video settings don't say saved when I am forced out of the game because I died so I have to redo them every time I play... frustrating!!!

Having said all of that you still deserve a 5/5 in my book for having written your own engine!

Now you can take my advice or leave it... if you want to actually make games, then you would be serving yourself greatly to ditch your own engine and just use something like Unity... you will be able to dedicate all of your genius talent to just making the game instead of fiddling with crap.

Keep up the great work!!!

i get a error wich the snip tool cant screenshot but it goes like this:

lurum_dare_48: MulletTime.exe- Application Error
occurred in the application at location 0x00007FF826654B59



i would love to play the game but the game wont open no mather how much i click on it or i get this error

Is there a way to retry without having to close and reopen the program? I do love the attention to detail with tutorial hints, and that kick was hilarious!

Great game. It's even more impressive that you did this on your own engine. I wish we had a restart button after failing.

The motion, the actions felt super juicy with great feedback! The jetpack and jump felt hard to control sometimes (hitting the spikes quite a bit), but manage to go very far! :smile: I really enjoyed playing it with great fun! Congratulations :fireworks:

The sparta kick was a great intro to the game! I wish it was more useful later, because most of the enemies had to be dealt with by the gun quickly, or the turrets would kill you.

I think the jumping and jetpack controls are too touchy. Unless you just barely tap them, you fly up super fast. Personally, I think the game could have been more fun with just the shooting elements and no spikes, or vice-versa.

But wow, for only 5 months into a game development journey (and writing your own engine to boot) this is a really impressive accomplishment. Congratulations, and I hope you keep coming back for future jams!

@daniel-alhadeff Thank you for this detailed feedback. I agree with your points, unfortunately I had no time to polish the gameplay to the level I wanted, I finished right before the deadline. But all the feedbacks are great takeaways for my future projects, so thank you!

@kevin-s thank you for the feedback and the advices! If I was working something big, I'd also probably go for a commercial engine, but all my game ideas are relatively small, and I enjoy writing the engine at least as much as working on an actual game. The restart game option had a bug which I had no time to fix before the submission deadline, so I just removed it :(

@skvader-418 , I know that LD is not about having second-third chances, but if you'd still like to try my game, I can push an update that would create a log file for me to see why it crashes for you. Nobody else experienced this, so right now it's a mystery for me too, but I'd be happy to fix it in case you'd try a new version and send me the log.

@blackopsben, thank you! Unfortunatelly I had to remove the retry option before the submission deadline as it had a bug I had no time to fix :(

@goutye and @andrewkennedy Thank you both! Yes, some polishing would have been really nice, but I had no time :) I wish I prioritized that over other things... I'm happy you still enjoyed it though :)

Really interesting use of the theme - good work.

Wow, using a custom engine is impressive! Nice game, though I'm terrible at sidescrollers, so I didn't make it far. Sparta kick ftw though! A "restart" option would be nice on player death, rather than just having to relaunch the game.

I didn't play the game (don't have a Windows machine around), but I just had to stop by to say that I loved the title :laughing:

Great submission! Very impressive that it's your own engine too ;) For some reason I had to exit out of the game every time I died since the level didn't properly load. Other than that it was a fun little game, nice work.

The game itself was nice, but one thing I found really annoying: Restarting the whole game when dying and having to read the tutorial each time.

Nice game. Funny and challenging! I found it to be bit too hard for me, but once I accepted that I'll just keep dying and quite some fun. Well done!

Wow, this game was a blast! I liked it's blast-processing type gameplay and simple but representative visuals. The only issue is long restarts when you die.

Thank you all! Now I see how much of an issue not having restart option is, unfortunatelly I don’t think this counts as bugfix, so I’m not sure if I’m allowed to fix this at this point :(

Interesting game. Super hard for my boomer reactions! Felt pretty good

This was fun, particularly once I remembered that I can change guns. If you continue working on this or something like it after the contest is over, something you might want to consider is having the camera slide toward the mouse a little so that you can see a bit farther in the direction you're aiming. Especially when it comes to looking upwards.

Also, thanks for mentioning ecrett-music. I didn't realize AI music was this good nowadays. I like the challenge of trying to make my own music, but this will be a useful backup option for the next event in case I run out of time again (I only had 80 minutes to do my music this time and barely managed to get it done).

@lmb It runs fine in Wine, so there's no reason to let a lack of Windows stop you from getting your mullet on.

This game was pretty fun once I got the hang of it, but as you already know from other comments, having to quit and restart the game (and click through the tutorial text) every time I died got old *very* fast. Movement--aside from the jetpack, which was a little too eager to rocket you into the ceiling spikes--felt pretty good.

It also ran fine through Wine which was nice.

Game indeed plays nice on Wine! (Thanks, @pizzasgood!)

Cool game, fun to play.

I don't have anything to suggest that others haven't said yet: didn't like to restart the whole game after dying, jetpack was a bit too strong and took some time to feel natural, Sparta kick was not very useful (though was a fun moment)!

Great Ludum Dare debut!

It's impressive that you build your own engine. The game was fun, but the gun felt a little weak. Very nice ;)