Cool concept, great audio, and seems very original! I do think a lot of the action controls are broken, would love to see the concept in a working form.

Really interesting idea, I see plenty of complex systems in the game, and a clever way for health -> Wave Performance. I love these kind of games, and I probably guessed that you used a sin or cos function to get that circular pattern with the boss, there are so many other patterns you can achieve just with that! There is one cool pattern that you can do, which adds a value to the function, and then with a loop (maybe 5), you can decrease that value, to make a c or u shape as that pattern. If you are very interested in these games (bullet hell), the bullet hell part of it is one of the most interesting part of the adventure! I loved this game, and that's amazing that you completed it in time!

I love this type of game, little hard to tell what to dodge and what to pick up though, wasn't expecting it to keep changing like it did.

The use of theme is not very original, graphics are nice but controls seem to work not ok. I aim you to improve it, concratulations for finishing the game!

It's funny, sometimes there's too much going on on the screen. Mb any other mechanics needed

Thank you @fzsa-v @fjlucas @raptor851 @joshua-steward and @kirill-islibaev for your your feedback. In hindsight, the issue was that I attempted to do too much at once for the Jam and needed to focus on one or two key mechanics; I would have gotten it done for the Comp if I had managed to do that. It wasn't so much feature creep as the whole concept was too large & complex, I thought I had reduced it down to a small enough size but I'll have to go even smaller in scope next time.

If I choose to continue with this project post-jam I'll be sure to try and improve/fix the controls and simplify the experience. I'm not really happy with how this turned out, but I'm still proud that I managed to finish. @fzsa-v I'm glad you loved it and recognized the use of sin(), I really appreciate your suggestion about the pattern because it was really quite hard for me to figure out in the space of the jam.

A bullet hell, nice! Plays very smoothly. I didn't realize at first that I was actually supposed to collect some of the things flying around, but that's a wash, I suppose. Pun intended.

The game did crash for me twice though :(

@binaryspark Hey thanks for letting me know, if you could provide a screenshot of the crash message I'll get a fix out as soon as I can. I'll investigate personally later today and do some fixing within what is allowed in the jam rules.

I liked it overall, good job. I would have liked to see more sound and visual feedback during damage and more musical atmosphere. I think some attacks are not dodgeable (or i am just bad)

Very cool take on a twin stick shooter, I like the theming! Most of the feedback I would have given was shared by others so I'll just say nice work!

I really like the bullet hell segments, but I couldn't figure out what my health was so I ended up dying without knowing the reason a few times. I also like the setting a lot (though at first I thought the line of people was a wall I had to go around lmao)! With the constrained player area everything felt hectic, and each time I played avoiding bullets felt easier and more satisfying. Good job and good luck with this in the future!

@nyanpierre @kingofspill @postpostscript Thank you for your lovely feedback I appreciate all of you. I would have loved to include sound feedback and more visual feedback, but alas it had to be cut due to time constraints. Shouldn't have in hindsight, its a critical need for communicating to the player. I know that for next time.

This game is just... fascinating to me. In a good way!!
A lot of Ludum Dare games have shot for complex systems where I have no idea what's going on, you went for a similarly complex system, but I wasn't really confused. I was moreso baffled, if that makes sense? It wasn't the gameplay that confused me, but it felt like looking at a painting in a museum and trying to understand the artists intent and everything it means.

Which is probably reading way too much into your jam game :)

It had a lot of charm though, and is easily one of the most memorable games I've played yet.

Issues: I would always receive a strike after the red guys came and before the boss man? Is this intentional, or was it bad play?

@mopifish Thank you for your honest review, I really am glad you enjoyed it! I am actually glad you had that 'art gallery' experience, it was actually my intent and you didn't "read way too much" into it at all. I intended to make an experience where I communicated a lot of things I personally went through- and still am going through- with post viral illness. There is a lot of my self in this, and I ended up with an incredibly weird, almost feverish abstraction.

I know this game's presentation and mood isn't for everyone, but I am glad some people enjoyed it.

About you issue: The strike system is based on how much you miss of the collectable 'merchandise' in the 'customer' phase (the weird purple person), those being being the cat, piggy, and vase. I had intended to make a tutorial system (much like your game, Life Finds a Way) explaining the mechanic, but I ran out of time. It is very much a my fault thing, it is poorly communicated and a wall of text right when you start the game isn't a good replacement for good game design.

@zack-hd You're 100% right, and you really got across that artistic intent and emotional appeal. It really reflected in the game, and nailed that near feverish feel

I love bullet hells, this is an easy yes from me

Really like how hectic this game is. It was a bit hard to tell what I should shoot but otherwise really enjoyed it.

Cool game! Everything I might want to say has already been said by other people, so instead I'll just say that all things considered you did a good job :)

This was solid bullet hell! Once I saw the thumbnail for this game, I clicked it right away!

The game looks pretty good, really enjoying the "boss" bullethell, even though most of the time I had no idea what am i Doing :D

very good game, I liked it, the music is pretty cool, I even stuck in the game for a while.

Very nice, game crashed once, but overall it's very fun and topical!

Spent some time to figure out how to play this. It seems that the "refill" mechanism has not worked as expectation? I didn't find the difference(or I have yet to notice it) between eating or not eating items.
And the boss seems strange, so I guess it's immortal? after play a while, I aware that its story is may related to
COVID-19, interesting concept.

It was a very good game once i figured it out. The music slaps, well done :)

Thank you @possiblyaxolotl @lvl99chicken @dingledorf @vrerabek @lisichka @ternox @justuspan and @phoenixofforce for your reviews! I appreciate all of your comments and feedback.

@justuspan in regards to the refill mechanic, its a known issue: there is an indicator but its so small and non-descript (little boxes to the left and right of the player 'heart') that it doesn't make for good UI or feedback. I was originally going to add numbers and labels to those boxes but I ran out of time.

@ternox Thank you so much for playing my game! I'm really sorry it crashed on you, I was hoping I had fixed all the crashes. If you happen to remember what the error message had said or have a screenshot that would be much appreciated. I spent a good amount of time yesterday doing a code review and fixing crash bugs as I found them, but clearly there are some underlying gamestate issues that can only be solved with a complete rewrite.

I'm also surprised a lot of people are liking the music a lot! I don't consider myself a musician by any means, but I worked really hard to learn what I do know now because its important to me that my work have original compositions. If anyone is interested, I have posted the OST of the project unreleased tracks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwJaxnDMQLM

Thank you to everyone for your support, it really does mean a lot!

The music is catchy. The gameplay goes with it. Both shoot are a good idea.

I think, less colors and items would give a better understanding.

Cool cencept and execution. I think it should be a bit more apprehensible in the terms of colors. It was still a fun experience!

Nice bullet hell! I couldn't beat it though, going to try some more times later.

I love the concept and the idea! The music was also very fitting! I got a little confused with the controls but after reading some of the comments, I managed to figure it out. I think with a few fixes and some polish it can be really great! Overall still a really good submission though!

I like the bullet-hell concept for this genre, very unique. I found the game being a good balance of challenge and fun, however, it was hard to tell how much health I had left, and it seemed as though I died randomly. Congrats though! Very impressive for a 1 man job!

Hi Zack,
the concept is really cool and unique! At first I didn't know at all what was going on, but after a short time I figured it out :sweat_smile:
Sometimes it felt weird to not be able to move more to the right/left, it would be nice if it were possible or clearer where you can move.

Thank you all for the feedback @ardakrkz, @lex , @sheol , @jakubbala , and @anaxie-studio!

@anaxie-studio Thank you for playing and pointing out issues you had, it helped to better contextualize some of the other feedback I had gotten. It will help me better understand how to communicate level boundaries.

Nice way of transforming an everyday job into bullet hell game, with all the "boss" phases translating into how it works in the real life. Took me a few seconds to understand what is happening, as there's quite a lot of systems working together, but I got a hang of it quickly. It reminded me a bit of the undertale combat system where bullet hell was also used in unexpected ways and connected with words etc.

You can tell that the message being told with this game is coming from personal experience and for me that's a plus - it's something individual that expresses the author - opposite to an "usual" approach to creating games where sometimes gamedevs do something in a certain way just because the audience wants it or it's just more mainstream/marketable.

My only complaint - would love to get a little bit more visual/audio feedback on positive/negative hits, it was still readable what was happening thanks to all the healt/stat bars and distinct graphics but some sweet fx would make it even more clear to my monkey brain while playing.

Congrats at completing the Jam entry in time! :v: fingers crossed for your next entries!!!

@aerloth Thank you for your lovely and in-depth review! I'm really glad you 'got it' with this experience. I was really inspired by Undertale, it really made bullethells more approachable, so I did end up taking a few ideas wholesale for my own purposes. I really did miss out with the sound effects aha, something I for sure will not miss out on implementing next time. I learned a lot from this experience, and Ludum Dare 51 is already turning out to be a really big deal for me. Also looking forward to seeing what you make for your next entry. :eyes:

It's cool that you have to use the different beams on each of the enemy types and it is also quite impressive to have such a variety of enemies with such a short time to make a game!
I think the title screen at the start has a really cool animation!

Pretty fun gameplay, but it was VERY crashy for me.