Holy frick, this was fun. Only suggestion would be to make the cursor a cyan, as sometimes it can get hidden amidst the rain of bullet death. Otherwise, solid effort!

Really love the music! The graphics are cool too, overall the game feels really fun and addictive, I found myself replaying it a lot to improve my score. Great job! This was my highest score (Edit: changed the image so it didn't take up your whole comment section...):


Very good game! The audio is lovely and really sets the mood, and the graphics are nice. Its a blast to play.

Good game and feels really polished! I liked these small games that are intuitive and straight to the point. Well made!

REALLLLY COOOL! LOVE IT DUDE. Is it kind of a bullet hell genre mixed with the theme?

Very good game, great mood, great fun! I had a hard time, until I decided to stick in the left corner and shoot right and up. You also get bonus points on theme in my book, making it part of the level design and not part of the main mechanic is a good take. The only thing is that the mouse sensitivity is too low. I get that increasing it will make the game easier, but it just feels cloncky. I would prefer high mouse sensitivty with more fortified enemies or something else to increase the challenge. Overall very high score, the game is addictive and I easily spent more time playing this than most games I checked out.

Great! Seems the trajectory is fixed so it doesn't follow the mouse tightly. Probably there is a better way to control the shooting, like the numeric keypad?

Thanks everyone for all the lovely comments!

@kevin-du and @elros, yes, as you guessed the fixed aiming is an intentional design decision to get you to move more and not just coast by being able to shoot wherever you want. I get that's not always the smoothest, but I think the benefits probably outweigh the drawbacks. Certainly if I'd had more time I would've worked more on custom enemy types (I especially wanted a boss but wasn't able to), which would've probably solved that better.

Thanks again for all the nice comments, and I'll try to incorporate your excellent feedback in future!

@red-stake I can get that, increasing sensitivity would really trivialize the game. Then let me suggest considering some kind of discrete-angle system, if it can work, it would keep the challenge while getting rid of the heaviness.

really cool! needs some sound effects for hitting and killing enemies to up the satisfaction factor by 100x
would comment on the music but it seems soundraw is an ai music generator; as i understand, ai *art* generators aren't allowed in the compo, but music generators might. not sure though

@velaachlorine thanks for the nice comment :)
With the music, the rules say generators are encouraged though? And I didn't just hit generate and drag and drop it in - I spent an hour or two re-editing what it generated, removing fills, changing the pattern, and re-editing the ending so it looped a bit better.
But like this is my first LD, so I don't exactly know the way it all works. Hopefully someone can clarify? I removed the rating on the music until then.

I really enjoyed the game. It would have fit right in at the local arcade! I have no complaints or suggestions to make it better, I had a blast! Thanks for making this!

Really, really fun gameplay and satisfying controls! Great art, great music, great all around! I found myself doing run after run! So much fun! Wonderful work with this one!

One of my favourite submissions I've played so far, really simple but great in its execution, music is also chill. Great Job!

Really fun and very addicting game. Love the visuals and the sound effects and music fit well. I wish the jump didn't make you go so high because it usually means instant death. Double jump never seemed necessary because of this too. I think reducing jump height would fix this but its a minor gripe. Super clever use of theme. I love the destroying platforms either being a short sanctuary or a pit of death. 79.9s was my best time. Amazing job!

That game is so cool! I love all the visual effects, they give a lot of juiciness to the experience. The game itself is minimalist, but extremely well executed. The sensations are top-notch! Only draw-back is, at some point, I had the feeling that my aiming was off... And I understood why: the direction of the shoots don't actually follow the pointer, there's only a limited set of axis! I'm not sure it feels so good. Either the aiming is done with buttons or joystick, and then it's natural that there are axis, but when aiming with a mouse, I expect my to shoot where I point to. That didn't prevent the game to be fun & rewarding though. Congratulation for making this!

Thumbs up for the graphics. :thumbsup_tone2:

I like how everything fits, it's just juicy and it feels like a finished cohesive game. That's an achievement in a short jam like this one!

Really cool game! The core gameplay is fun and intuitive, and I like the clear color language for what does and doesn't hurt you. Like others were saying, I agree that the fixed aiming doesn't feel great, as I believe that tight, responsive controls are generally better in twitch action games. And the lack of sound when killing enemies feels like a missed opportunity for some extra juice (though I imagine this was a time thing). Despite that, I still enjoyed my time with it, good compo entry!

(I am now in a rush to test as many games as possible to help, so please do not mind the cursory reviewing style.)

1. great (vectorial?) simple yet effective and careful graphics (I am thinking of the rotations); reminds me of some from *Starwing* / *Star Fox*
2. Controls are QWERTY-only instead of layout-independent (I have an AZERTY keyboard).
3. great punchy music!
4. oh, no sound for shooting and hitting; too bad, I think this would have added to sensations! It is often a good idea to prioritise main mechanics’ sounds
5. the game does a good job at explaining itself, especially for the 10-second principle; by the way, this line-breaking reminds me of *Tetris* X)
6. I find myself holding the left mouse button; this may be an iconoclastic idea, but I think constant autofire could have been enabled! Since I literally **never** stop shooting
7. hey, Space makes you jump (and you even have double jump)! Not stated in the controls, I think!
8. it looks like letting the game over screen makes the game become laggy; memory usage because of more enemies’ spawning?
9. wow, that camera shake is crazy! And maybe a bit too much, considering this is a bonus XD
10. found a trick: when there is a gallery below, you can go undercover
11. OH NO, you lose if you go a bit out of the screen at the bottom! <:o Lost this way at 73.0 s using my trick!
12. is there an end to the game, or is it infinite?
13. I am realizing something: except for the jaggedness of the floor, the 10-second transformation/lowering does not seem to really have any other influence, as this is equivalent to staying in the same place
14. the bouncing of the bonuses is funny
15. found another trick: staying in a corner. This is safer
16. still lost (at a respectable (?) 100.5 s) because the ground suddenly crumbled under me and had me go out through the bottom… <:o I guess the strategy should be complemented with jumping when the countdown reaches 0, out of precaution

**Takeaway:** bonus points for fun, there is clearly something here! The music and sounds are great, but this is such a shame that there is no sound for firing and hitting, as this is the main activity! :o Also liked the simple yet detailed graphics, such as the rotation of the player or bonuses. Having the floor get jagged and possibly throw you to your doom is an interesting idea; as for the theme, the player really feels the regularity. If I were to be nitpicky, I would say that the 10-second transformation interpretation is one of the common ones, but I still think the game’s is fair.

Fun and challenging time, thank you! :) (And still curious about whether there is an ending or not… Pretty please?)

PS: one last nitpicky point: just *a little bit* more variety would have made the game get even more long-run interest. And also, having the time as an incentive to do better next time is a good idea.

@red-stake

> Hopefully someone can clarify?

The rules for music are not that clear cut; there is a short passage on it in the ‘Derivative Works Explained’ section from the [rules](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/rules). In particular, *sampling* is authorized. I also saw recently that CGmusic had been used by [*Total Party Kill*](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/total-party-kill) from Ludum Dare 43, so I guess there is a tolerance for some degree of music generation.

The [new rules](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51) forbidding AI-generated content for Compo this edition (‘Please submit games built with AI art generators as Jam or Extra games, not Compo’) target *graphics* more than music, because of the recent advances in image generation technology.

My two cents: I would say that you have to be ‘reasonable’ about the level of generation you used. (In my case, I used jsfxr for sounds, but this is explicitly authorized and even encouraged by the rules!) This is a problem for reviewers when they do not know the tools, such as me, since I do not know SOUNDRAW. X) (I am in a phase of exploring music tools, actually!) So, just be fair game and in doubt, explain a bit as you did in your comment, possibly pinpointing the information on the page/form, and let people use their best judgements. ;)

@mossieur-patate, thank you so much for your lovely comments! I will respond to some below:


2. I'm really sorry about QWERTY only controls, this was on my list to get sorted but I ran out of time at the end of the jam. I will remember this for the future.
4. Running out time was also the reason for the lack of shooting/enemy death sounds - I tried a few but didn't like any of them, so I cut them. If anyone has any advice for working with repetitive sounds, I would be really interested!
6. The autofire issue is a good point - in larger games I make, I generally do have some reason not to use a verb, but in this game it probably should have been autofire.
10. I'm not sure what you mean by gallery, but, yes, you can fall and die by dropping through the floor. It's intentional, I do want the player to look at the ground they're moving on, hopefully it should add some tension.
12. It's infinite! No ending, it's all about the highscore!
15. Corner hugging is an option, but obviously you will have to deal with shooting enemies/floor issues etc. In a bigger game I would expand out enemy spawnings so this is less of an issue.
"Bit more variety" - yes, this again, was on my list, but alas lack of time was an issue. I couldn't actually use the full 48 hours, so hopefully next time I can do that and make a bigger game.

Thanks so much for your detailed comments! It's interesting because what you mentioned is mostly what I thought as well, so that's good I think. Very helpful, thanks :)