Really cool graphics style and fun to shoot them all!

Awesome game! I played this for a quite a while and had a lot of fun. When I had to quit I popped all ~30 powerups at the same time and enjoyed and had a blast feeling like a superhero.

Great graphics and visual effects. I really enjoyed the camera movement with the play space. Something about it felt really engaging and well done.

Awesome design, awesome visuals, awesome audio. Great work!


Fun interpretation of the theme! Maxed-out pulse powerups are pretty OP — I got this far and only had to stop because my hand started Hurting. (Having shoot and harvest on different triggers would go a long way to help that, I think.)

First of all, this games' presentation is impressive! Very well polished. Secondly, it was kind of addicting! I caught myself playing it for a bit longer than intended. It is fun! It was awkward at first to get used to the harvesting mechanic, but I evntually caught on and it led me to survuve longer, of course :) nice to see the theme not necessarily the goal but rather aiding to the true aim of the game. unique!

I dig this kind of games, and this one is very well made ! Good game !

@torban thanks so much! The camera movement was inspired by Geometry Wars, I'm glad you like how it felt. One of those rabbit holes where I know I shouldn't spend much time on it, but ended up pouring hours into trying to make it just right.

@caeonosphere I agree the pulse is over-tuned lol. But I'd be lying if I said I don't enjoy stacking 2 full strength pulse buffs and one or two speed buffs and just running through everybody :laughing: Thanks for playing!

@willpower Thanks very much! I've found that all it takes is a little bit of motion in the UI elements to take them from boring to polished. I leaned into that hard for this game to make sure things fade in/out or grow/shrink rather than just popping into existence. Glad you had a fun time!

The images of the game look very impressive.

This is super polished and really cool. I really enjoy every thing about this the visuals and shooting feel great. I really want more of this and would love if you kept working on it.

Wow! It's incredible how much you were able to fit in the game in 72 hours! A leaderboard, great shader graphics, impressive main menu system, and a rich gameplay loop.

My only feedback would be to incorporate your tutorial within the gameplay itself. I skimmed over it and didn't realize the harvest ability was a thing until reading the comments and Ludum page description again. It's a very nitpicky thing, and I'm sure you had it planned, but I couldn't think of anything else. Very fun game, very polished, solid 10/10.

lol I hit 20k and decided to call it, since I saw you had 16k. Then when I submitted I saw you put up 42k :unamused: :unamused: :unamused:

There are few games where you think "why haven't other games done this?" where you have a simple concept that's really effective. I honestly can't think of another game that does the power-up-powerup mechanic, yet it works so well. The closest I can think of might be something like Smash TV where you leave powerups around for when you might need them, but in those sorts of games the powerups disappear over time.

Here it creates this nice, opt-in difficulty where you're creating your OWN obstacles of sorts. Big ramifications.

Funny story about Geometry Wars, but that game led to the very first game I ever made. I made it because I HATED how long GeoWars1 took to spin up - the first 10 minutes were super boring, so I tried to fix that problem.

But your game scales due to this opt-in difficulty. Instead of being a boring first 10 minutes, I was already trying to figure out how to get close to enemies to execute them, and generating a maze of powerups for me to avoid. So only after a few rounds I'd be pushing my limits in terms of the difficulty I was looking for. Really inspiring design, I'll have to think about what other genres you could apply that to as there is a lot more potential here.

The enemies were varied enough to give the classic twinstick feel of analyzing the screen and figuring out a strategy on the fly. If it weren't for the shield, I think I would've been done for. In late game, I personally think the most satisfying sequence was harvesting an HP regen and then snagging a full powerup once you're about to die.

Harvesting at the last second reminded me of pokemon, and there was surprising risk/reward to it. To get a regen one you would have to be very careful with your shots, while the shields were a lot easier to obtain.

Another impressive entry from you. The novelty of discovering new enemies and powerups carried the early game, and the depth of mastery carried the end game. Main reason I quit was cuz I felt like I could go forever haha


This is awesome!

interesting graphics, responsive game, fun to play.

It's a really well designed game. Each enemy mechanic is creative an interesting, they complement each other well, AND each one is a useful power up when you harvest. I feel like that's a powerful game design basis for a bigger game.

The one frustration I had was that I frequently killed enemies when I wanted to leave them low so I could harvest them. I thought that maybe the killing blow to an enemy could instead leave it at 1hp, and the next shot would kill it. But that would maybe slow down the gameplay too much. Anyway, it's probably just a skill issue :sweat_smile: .

Great work, this is super fun !

@peachtreeoath I think "opt-in difficulty" is the best phrase for it. It was a notion that one of my friends led me to during our brainstorming, that a good way to use the harvest theme is that you can harvest things at any time, but you get most rewarded if you harvest it at the perfect time. I didn't care what game I ended up making, that idea was locked in because it just felt like such a powerful game design tool. Now that you've reviewed it, I realize all it was, was opt-in difficulty. Thanks for playing!

@mnocenti Thanks so much for your insights! Indeed the way enemies complemented each other surpassed my own ideas, some things naturally happened that I never consciously intended. I was laughing in my chair the first time I had a shield guy decide to protect a healer, while the healer was linked to a another enemy. Totally unplanned, accidentally created really interesting gameplay choices.

You're certainly not alone with the frustration of killing enemies that you wanted to harvest. It was the last thing on my "unsolved issues" list when I submitted, that when you get really strong, and are killing enemies faster, it becomes near impossible to harvest them. I could say that this was designed, and that I wanted players to feel that as another choice to make, but I'd be lying. The truth is I just couldn't figure out a good way to solve it.

Regardless, glad you had a good time!

There's a lot of ideas here, some of which I think work fantastically, and others which fall a little bit short. To be honest, I don't have a whole lot of criticism to make about this, so I'll just say them first. I think the only minor downfall is how the game "feels". I don't know if I can describe this super well, but some things, especially some of the upgrades felt slightly unpolished. Notably, I'm talking about the speed upgrade in which I felt out of control at times. Other times, trying to harvest enemies felt very tedious. The pulse enemies were difficult to harvest because of their pulse, it was very difficult to get to the shooting enemies, etc. It's a really cool mechanic, but I just wish it was slightly more impactful for all the effort it took.

That's about it as far as criticisms go. Anything negative I have to say could easily be fixed with more time.

The awesome thing about this game is how cohesive it feels. Everything feels like it belongs which is a super amazing thing to accomplish. All the upgrades were (mostly) useful and each served a purpose in surviving longer. The entire concept of waiting for upgrades is an amazingly smart way to create play control. Everything I did felt very fair and I never felt like the game was punishing me for my own actions.
As always, the visuals look superb. You're really starting to figure out this style that you have, and it's super neat. It works very well with the synthwave vibe your game is going for.

Suggestions: (If you want to refine this in the future)
I think some of the upgrades were underwhelming. This could have been in the way they were visually/audibly presented, but I feel like they could have done more at points. The ones I'm talking about are the regeneration and hitscan (Regen could give you a glowing green ring around you or something idk). Mostly though, I just felt like there could have been a huge variety of upgrades (possibly some that even harm each other to pick?). I perfectly understand that this wouldn't have been feasible given the amount of time you had, but the possibilities are pretty limitless when it comes to upgrades.
If you continued to work on this, a more unique visual style would be good to separate yourself from geometry wars. Inspiration is great, but if it was its own thing I would want something more defined as its own.

I could probably say more but I can't think of anything off the top of my head as I haven't played for a few days haha...

Overall really fantastic job. Out of all your game jam games, this one is by far the most fun. Aesthetically, some of the others do a better job, but you really hit this one out of the ball park! Can't wait to participate alongside you in the next jam!

This gets the highest honour that a jam game can receive, 'genuinely fun'. The graphics are gorgeous and the enemy types really keep you on your toes. Brilliant.

I liked the camera tilting when we move. Also art and sounds are pretty cool. Gameplay is well-implemented. Good job!

Great and polished game.

I want to see more enemies from the start, because its a little boring and easy for replay, but anyway great work!

Thanks for game =)

Very nice game, visually appealing and fun. Awesome game jam entry.

So. Many. Cores! :large_orange_diamond: :large_blue_diamond: :diamonds:

## My score

- Score 3651
- 165 kills
- Harvested 48 enemies
- Reached wave 11
- Rank 7 out of 22

## Feedback

### Game

Impressive UI and presentation for a jam game!
You even added a leaderboard!

Mechanics are fun!
Having an unique upgrade for every enemy type was a great idea! (I would've appreciated a damage upgrade of some kind, though, by the end of wave 9 I felt a bit underpowered compared to the large amount of health of "Shield" enemies...)

Music is a bit repetitive and not too much fitting to the game's mood, in my opinion... Maybe something more fast-paced would be better?

The camera rotation effect felt a bit weird and almost gave me motion sickness...
I understood what you were trying to do and I think that it is a good idea, but something is off in the implementation, and I'm not sure of what.

### Distribution

Thanks for **providing a native Linux build**!
I appreciated it!

One of the funnest games I've played!

Also graphically, this is VERY strong. Such a beautiful and clean UI, wow!

Also I love how you build your game around that stock video (Or don't tell me you ALSO did that yourself within the 72 hours?! 0:) looks really cohesive and pretty!

The whole minimalistic, smooth glowy scifi aesthetic is pretty flawless basically.

Ok, confession time: I'm your classical dumb user, sadly. Although I enjoyed it, I didn't get the harvesting mechanic at all, I don't think I saw any cores :( or maybe I'm just too bad and have to get better ^^

I also really loved how the spaceship behaved and also with the slight delay, I think you really hit a sweet spot there, too much of it would have been annoying.

I seriously think you could put this on steam for a few bucks, but definitely make either the harvest mechanic easier to understand ooooor the game starts out easier and drops orbs earlier ;D

Thanks for the cool entry :)

Thanks @angiemon! No no haha you're absolutely right, the blue line motion graphic was stock footage, then I just sampled one of the colors in it for the rest of my graphics.

Don't feel bad, you're not the only one who has struggled with the harvest mechanic, which means that I certainly failed to make it clear. I have further work to do to make it easy to understand, but the gist of it right now is when an enemy gets low on health, you'll see two blue triangles appear around them when they can be harvested. And only the stronger tier enemies would leave power ups on the ground when you harvest them.


If you wanted, check out the 2nd gif in my showcase. Hopefully you'll see that an entirely new game opens up when you start harvesting the enemy powers. You can steal a shield from them, health regen, movement speed, etc.

Probably the most polished game i played on this LD edition. The mechanics are very consistent and the particle usage is really impressive.

For me, one of the bests games on LD52.

Congrats, I really enjoyed it!

Good job with the game. It was a lot of fun to play and you did a good job with feedback which made it pretty satisfying. The harvest enemies mechanic was pretty cool but it did tend to be pretty difficult to harvest some enemies so I didn't get to use there power-ups that often. Mainly the one that gave hitscan bullets. I did like having to wait on the powerups to level up for the high duration effects but the screen ended up pretty cluttered after a while which made it a bit difficult to see some of the enemies. The enemy variety was nice and i though the shield enemies were a pretty cool design. Also the pulse powerup tended to make it pretty difficult to harvest enemies since it would usually just kill them before I got the chance to. Overall though very well done it was a blast. 

The idea that you can eat the enemy back to blood is novel, a bit of hand-wringing when playing, music and graphics to match, a very time-killing game, playing often kill the enemy, and can not care about their own blood, death is very bad, but he is indeed a good game!

damn i didn't expect such good graphics and presentation in a game jam game. esp for just one developer. the mechanics are intresting but the procedual art is the most impressive bit. made me go back to old reviews and lower them :v: