Great game! Sounds feel a bit loud but other than that it's really well done and fun. Super smooth as well. Nice job.

Cool! I like the aesthetic style. The mechanic is beautiful. A touch point is that "alt" is not a good key to trigger dialogue, it sometimes conflict with computer short-cuts. Anyway, good luck! (Would you mind rate my game haha)

This game is gorgeous. It feels great to play on controller (not so much on keyboard, but it's ok). I just wish there were some music.

Looks great. I agree the sounds are a bit loud and zhiteng is correct - alt is not a good key for the dialog. It would also be nice to have a generic restart button after dying so you don't have to go through the dialogue again.

Nice work!

this game is beautiful to say the least, the arena especially, one of the best looking games on this jam, the gameplay at the other hand has nothing really interesting going for it, but its still fun to play around with, and the ending with the loading screen being the chef's kiss.

I've been excited to play this game after following your updates. I ADORE the art style and the idea is really unique..
I did struggle having ALT to talk, it didn't feel very intuitive to me.
Also, not sure if this was just a me problem, but the dialogue would always stop after 1 second and I had to mouse click to get it to resume. I'm playing on Chrome.
I would also like a retry option as I was a bit confused the first time it took me back to go through all the dialogue again (which was frustrating because of the issues I was having with the dialogue stopping).
Really beautiful, well made game.

While I find the game enjoyable overall, I have to admit that the controls can be quite challenging. Often feels like I'm being pulled towards my opponent, rather than having full control over my movements.

This is a kinda short yet beautiful game, i really loved the art! It was a bit hard for me because i'm not super good with the dodge-bullet-mechanic, but the controls were responsive. I agree with comments saying a faster restart button would be appreciated.

@zhiteng-chen Sure thing, I will play and rate your game tomorrow! :)

@tofucat Thank you so much! I'm also on Chrome and haven't encountered that problem yet. I'm very sorry. But at least you were able to progress through the game. I wouldn't want anyone to get stuck. :(

@all: Thank you so much for your feedback. It's really appreciated.

A tough fight! I felt like I didn't get much warning with the bullets! The art and animations are spot-on though, great work!

I like the attention to detail with the tutorial and snowman/scientist's instructions. I liked the difficulty (took me many tries to complete) and the art is gorgeous. I would have liked more feedback on taking damage, particularly from walking into the body or getting hit by the hands. You delivered a great game!

A nice bossfight! And the story setup was really high quality and humorous. I played on a controller so no complaints with the controls. I think taking damage from just touching the boss didn't feel quite right. It did pad out the difficulty enough to take me many attempts to finally beat though. The overall aesthetic and art is all really top notch!

Wow, that's just gorgeous! Plays really nice on the controller too. After many, many tries, I was able to defeat the boss. The ending felt good too. I would have liked a little clearer feedback, I didn't notice I was taking damage from touching the boss until quite a long way into my session. Maybe I flashed or something, but was often obscured by an arm at the time so didn't really know what was going on, I guess. Sound was nice too!

What beautiful pixel art! This was truly a joy to watch and play! I played with a keyboard and mouse on my laptop and everything ran just fine.

The animation style makes it seem like the screen is running at a low framerate during the 'tutorial' scene; when it's actually not. This could be a stylistic choice, though.

Text scroll speed is fairly slow, but I loved the sound it makes. It wasn't clear I needed to press 'Alt' to advance the text. I also wish I didn't have to listen to his speech every time I die.

I feel like the health mechanics might need some tuning to change the difficulty. Felt like I was dying a lot. Or maybe this exactly what you want for a jam to encourage a brief game loop.

Sound was excellent; I did feel like I was missing some music, but I understand the omission.

Overall, this is an **extremely** solid entry. Mega kudos to you! Keep being awesome!

Check out our entry: it's an immersive synthwave capitalism simulator. ^_^

Great atmosphere with nice graphics. Not so easy to learn but with a few tries, it's fun!

The pixel art looks great. I don't think the robot's body itself should be a hitbox since the player attacks in melee range and it's very easy to accidently take damage. Still I had a lot of fun beating the game!

It's a very beautiful game. I agree with all the reviews above. I liked the way the theme was played. Nice entry.

A nice little Titan Souls-like

art is so nice, my fav look so far of the entries I've tried!
However gameplay is too hard for me.

Fun little game & clever usage of the theme, although I do wish there was a quick restart button so I didn't have to keep talking to the Scientist

@frabjous-studios Thank you so much! :blush: Sure, I will play your game!

Yeah, it's hard, getting the difficulty right. If it's too easy, everyone just rushes through the fight. On the other hand some people like a challenge. I had planned to add 2 difficulty settings. But it was pretty far down the list (just above adding music), so I had no time for that. But this would probably have been the 'easy' variant and I would've scaled up the difficulty a lot for the 'hard' mode. :laughing:

@all About getting damaged, when touching the boss. I hear you and agree to a certain point. The problem is, that without it, the boss would be too easy. Just roll behind it, where projectiles and fists can't reach you and spam attack. This was the quick solution. (just an explanation, why it is like that. No excuse :laughing:)

Thanks for your feedback, all. I'm taking notes. :)

Nice game, pixel art is good. I had trouble using the alt button but right mouse worked. controlling the character was a little difficult. good job!

Very nice visuals and really cool gameplay. I'm sad that it is so short haha

The visuals are amazing !! Great work and the player controller is working quite perfectly. You have a great proof of concept with this game, you definitely should continue adding more levels !

Thank you :)

As an enter the gungeon fan I enjoyed the dodgeroll :smile: .The tutorial floor is a cute little scene witch does it job at introducing the mechanics to the player really well. I want to try it with the controller later on, as I felt a bit slow with the keyboard. Absolutely love the graphics and the story has a fun twist on the theme. This is a really well done game!

Great stuff! Love the graphics and the game was challenging, it took a few tries. When that bar froze a bit on 99% I thought something bad was gonna happen lol. I have just a tiny bit of feedback:

- I didn't like that you get hit by touching the face of the boss, imo it's enough that it shoots at you and tries to crush you.
- It was a (really just a bit) of a nuisance to spawn at the tutorial level every time I died.
- I wish there was some cool music to go along with the fight!

Great job on the game though.

My anxiety levels kinda rose for a bit when the progress bar reached 99% and stayed there for a while lol.
Cool little bossfight. As you already mentioned, issues like getting damaged when you touch the boss and a general lack of feedback definitely hindered me a bit, but I still played through because the boss design was good.

I think my real issues were that the smash radius of the hands was a little too big and that you had to replay the tutorial every time. None the less though, a good little entry

this is so COOOL! i love the design of the robot and of the map, you did such a great job on the graphics!

I love a good bossfight. The game also looks incredible!

I like this pixel art a lot!

Great art, fun boss fight! I agree with some of the others that contact damage doesn't feel quite right. I wish that dieing at the boss would put you back after the dialog, not before.

I like graphic style of this game. Tutorial was nice and clear. If I can suggest something it can be better if arm don't take your health when you touch it, when are lie on ground. Great job :)

Absolutely GORGEOUS!! :heart_eyes: I love the color palette and look of this. One of the most beautiful games on here...

At first I was going to give my feedback after playing with keyboard, but decided to grab my controller and give it another try.

It feels way better on controller. (but your notes already say that :stuck_out_tongue: )

I think with a little tuning, it could play as good as it looks. (Some of these might be repeats above, but I didn't read through all)

Here are my notes from playing:

- There is a slight lag or delay on the attack swing. (Maybe it's deliberate, but it's just enough it feels sort of bad).

- The choice of mouse button for attack (when on keyboard), didn't work too great for me. I was trying to play on a laptop and the trackpad for attack was awkward. It's better on A button with controller, but I still would have preferred X I think.

- Needs a checkpoint when you die. Having to re-click through dialogue is too punishing.

- The boss animation is absolutely killer!! (But yeah, taking damage when he touches you was slightly confusing, I thought I was trying to avoid his fist attacks).

- An audio mixing pass would help a lot. (Some sounds were very quiet and others super loud)

Great job on this though!!! It's pretty incredible for a jam game. Damn. :fire:

Yep, like most commented here, the artstyle and colorwork of this game is superb. I did, however, find myself a bit frustrated, mostly due to the respawn happening before the tutorial, the boss' contact damage, and the relative lack of warnings before the robot's bullets attack, which is pretty strong.
Still, I did have some fun during the fight, and the quality of the animations made the combat almost feel like a dance, which I always appreciate.

Th ending killed me :dizzy_face: Awesome job!

@scrapmetal Thank you so much for your nice comment and the feedback :blush: Oh wow, I didn't even think, that some of you might only be playing on laptop with no real mouse. Something to consider next time! I think the Ctrl key should work too, because I'm using Unities default "Fire1" for attack.

You're probably right about the audio. I just don't have much experience with sound design yet. Maybe this will become a bigger focus next time! :smile:

@aviv-levy , @badpiggy Glad to hear, that you liked the progress bar :laughing: Thank you!

@all Thanks again for all the great feedback. Some patterns are already emerging, like: respawn before dialog is too punishing, body-collision is too punishing, bullets too suddenly. Will definitely try to improve on that next time (or if I continue developing on this, not sure yet).

Noice game bro! The theme isn't that well put in the game!
But I liked!!

It is difficult to play this game but it is fun!!!!!!!!!!

The game is wonderful ! love the arts.
I would love to have some background music, the game remain a bit silent or at least some ambiant sound like wind or anything else. But keep going in this direction ! I think you'll just have to learn some boss designs with the principles of "Patterns" and telegraphed attack and then all of your next games will be great works !

Very creative use of the theme. The gameplay works well, it has a decent difficulty. The art is nice; well done!

nice game. I always enjoy this kind of monster-hunter like game so this game totally matching my preference. Perhaps adding some pre-shooting animation would be better, so the bullet is not come out all of a sudden.

Since the Robot has a monitor, so I actually imagine that the robot monitor can display what's next atk it going to deliver, or maybe just some x_x when being attacked, angry face when try to use some crazy ultimate skill. Muzzle can blink a bit before bullet come out, robot arm can be disarm so it losing the whack attack, etc etc..
well just try to express that the game could be extend a lot more in future. well done

nice game. I always enjoy this kind of monster-hunter like game so this game totally matching my preference. Perhaps adding some pre-shooting animation would be better, so the bullet is not come out all of a sudden.

Since the Robot has a monitor, so I actually imagine that the robot monitor can display what's next atk it going to deliver, or maybe just some x_x when being attacked, angry face when try to use some crazy ultimate skill. Muzzle can blink a bit before bullet come out, robot arm can be disarm so it losing the whack attack, etc etc..
well just try to express that the game could be extend a lot more in future. well done

The graphics look really nice and you got a solid base for a good boss-fighting game here. I agree with some of the feedback already provided but also believe that you are more than able to fix that. Good attention to detail on the loading bar progress in the end ;)

Nice entry! Art looks great and environment reminds me of some location from Hyper Light Drifter for some reasons. You did a great job, but it would be nice to add some music and better sounds. Also, I would prefer to strike in the direction of the mouse, rather than in the direction of movement.

Always been a fan of the pixelated games. This is so cool. Love the mechanism. Simple and easy to follow.

Graphics look amazing! Would've loved some music. The game was difficult, but the controls felt nice even on a keyboard.

It was a fun game but maybe because I played a lot of Souls-like 2d games it felt a bit like a replica. I loved the art and the atmosphere. The audio could definitely do with some improvement.

Great work overall!

This was a fun fight, the visuals are stunning! Some things I feel could be cool would be for the attack to go towards the mouse rather than the walking direction, and I expected the robot to come back at 99% as a surprise 2nd phase.

Was not able to beat boss

Just to re-iterate the sentiments of others, great style / pixel art, need a little more feedback/kickback from hitting the boss itself. I.E. Hard to judge how close/far you are - close enough to hurt the boss with attack vs too close and getting hurt yourself. And again, it'd be cool to reset to the start of the level rather than spam-alt button through the tutorial.

If you want some boss-battle music, give me a shout - I make a lot of random game music :)

super cool!! i have a weak spot for boss battles and top down soulslikes so this was pleasant, well done!!

Nice game, pretty fun boss fight.

I had 2 main issues with the movement:

1 - The player movement kept going even after i released the key, I played on mouse + keyboard so i'm not sure if its just an issue on mouse + keyboard

2 - The attack didn't go in the direction of the mouse so its better to use a keyboard key instead of mouse if the only thing you'll use from the mouse is the click and not click + position

Short, but very well polished. Definitely quality beats quantity here, had a lot of fun playing it!

Really well polished! I liked the mechanics, and was left wishing that the boss would have had a bit more depth. Overall a great execution!

Very well made game! Boss fight is a bit tough but I am up for a challenge!

Looks great and very polished! I only wish that the slash went in the direction of the mouse instead of the direction the player was facing and that there would be more bosses to fight! 🔪

Keyboard & mouse gang reporting in! The controls honestly felt nice enough to me, I mean, it's not 100% frame-perfect responsive, but I just view it as a part of game design and difficulty curve: I just need to take it into account when planning my motions.
The graphics tho. Oh, the graphics. Smooth, clean and absolutely on point, clean shapes with well-balanced colours and highlighted edges. Mwah, chef's kiss.

All in all, a beautiful boss rush game that made me remember _those days_ when I struggled against Dark Souls bosses and could not wrap my mind around folks beating them with voice commands or beating on drums.

I would prefer if there was less friction between dying and getting to fight the boss again, but I still had a lot of fun, and I'm impressed with the pixel art and level of polish!

Looks amazing & feels smooth to play. Great job, please keep up the good work!

I love the robot animations, he looks so cute!

Really great looking game - though I wish I didn't have to attack in the direction I was moving, that would have made things a lot easier ;P

Still, really simple and really well done - great job!!

I think other people have already mentioned how the art is great and that it would be better if touching the robot didn't hurt you, or how there should be clearer telegraphing of incoming attacks. I'd also like to suggest that the player should become invincible for a fraction of a second after taking damage, otherwise the machine-gun attack can wipe out almost your entire HP bar if you're standing in the wrong place when it fires.

Otherwise though, I agree with the sentiments about the art, and also the animation. good job.

Really nice controls, good graphics and animation. It was fun!

I died quite a few times, it would have been nice to spawn at the bottom of the cliffs instead of back in the lab so I could try again faster.

This was fun, keep working on it and expand it! I don't really have much to add that hasn't already been said here. Great work!

Hi there!

Sorry, it was a bit to hard for me to bit the boss. Probably if I'll be more resistant to dying & passing all dialogues again and again I would do that, but today I'm too exhausted :sob:

I think you did a good boss fight (tho I would probably prefer a better checkpoint, slightly less heavy start with more learning curve with boss stages and more predictable attack pattern), which is quite rare for LD games. And I do like how it sounds & looks, so here is my :thumbsup: for that.

It's a lovely small creation and a really great result for a single person to manage during the event! Great job with that.

Thank you all for the kind words. The feedback is very appreciated!

I hope to find some time soonish, to fix a few of the most mentioned things in a post-jam version.

Nice looking art, cool boss fight

It was a pleasure to play a game that features lovely pixel art and a cool-looking boss fight. The tutorial area was also quite neat and helpful in getting started with the game mechanics.

Good game! It would be even cooler, if projectile attacks was telegraphed somehow.

I didn't like much the controls (both mapping and unresponsive movement), but still it looks great and is a neat entry!

This was pretty nice to play. The controls definitely feel better on controller. I noticed the character takes a small bit of time to stop even after releasing the keyboard movement input but that's just a minor thing. Overall, the attacking, dodging and movement felt responsive and was nice to play with. The art is great as well!

Excellent gameplay- check
Excellent art - check
Excellent SFX - check
Funny ending - check
Super fun game - check

I had a great time with this. This game actually made me laugh the hardest when it ended. I love that idea a lot. I also felt like I was super good at this game but I think it was the roll/dodge being so awesome. Excellent work all around and I can't wait to see your future stuff.

Also the scientist says, "Upload the virus. I got the idea from an old movie." Is the movie Independence Day? If so, +100 points!

Surprisingly, I don't think I've seen this type of game in an LD before — good on ya for tackling it, and nice animations!

@russ-moonbase Thank you so much for the kind comment! Yes it's Independence Day! :smiley:

@caeonosphere Thank you! I was partly inspired by this ludum dare 50 entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/wormageddon

It stuck in my head and wanted to create a cool boss fight myself since then. :laughing:

This is definitely Dark Souls 4 (or maybe Virus Souls? :), getting this guy was not easy - but the controls are crisp and rewarding (I played all DS series and Elden Ring on a keyboard too)! Great job!

Excellent work with pixel art!

The intro with the tutorials were a great addiction to understand the controls, but I missed some way to quickly restart the battle (waiting the dialogues finish over and over became annoying as the time goes by).

I agree with others comments that the controls were a bit tricky to master

Overall, a good game!

This is an incredibly visually stunning entry. Unfortunately, there's several issues with the controls that make it somewhat tedious to play. Eversyone and their mother already mentioned the Alt to talk issue so I won't repeat it, but another huge problem is the weird momentum buildup.

If you run in one direction too long, you walk for another half second without stopping. It seems like an attempt at simulating momentum, but in practice it feels like a control bug that makes it really difficult to attack the boss without running into it and dying. Seeign as this is the only way to attack the boss, it makes the gameplay difficult not by challenge, but by unruly controls. If this is fixed however, this game would be genuinely amazing.

@panpukin Thank you for your feedback!

The delay when stopping is definitely a bug and not intended. Strangely it doesn't happen on my controller, only on the keyboard.

I was able to fix this problem and uploaded a patch just now. Please let me know, if it works better now.

For those interested: The problem was, that I was using Input.GetAxis(...) instead of Input.GetAxisRaw(...)

@stefan-funke It works so much better now, yes! I was actually able to beat the boss this time around. Amazing. Are you planning on doing further work on this game? Do you have any sort of main project you're currently working on? If your other games are as gorgeous and fun as this one I really want to check them out.

@panpukin Good to hear that you were able to beat the boss! I'm planning a small Post-Jam update, where I want to fix many of the problems, that people had when playing. I have been making good progress on that over the last two days. But I'm not planning to do anything more with this game for the moment.

Thank you for the kind words. Yes I have a main project, it's called Monsters of Windy Peak. You can find it also on itch: https://stefan-funke.itch.io/monsters-of-windy-peak

I'd appreciate your feedback on that too, if you find the time!
Also let me know, if I can return the favor. :)

This one was difficult to rate... I like the pixel art a love and the combat is relatively smooth. I think you should definitely have bound dodge to A or B on controller rather than the top of the controller. Also the boss doing contact damage with his body combined with a melee only approach was... rough. I did keep throwing myself against the challenge though until I got that sweet victory. This was a very small game that could have benefited from some additional touches or options I think. Certainly needed some music. I'm skeptical about the "delivery" theme here.

Really cool game! I liked the controls for the most part. I was playing on a laptop so using something other than mass for attack would have been nice, buts a small nitpick. I did have trouble beating the computer because I kept getting too close to his body to do damage and would get damaged myself. That being said, I think this is a great entry and one that would be fun to continue to play if you continue with the premise (More evil giant robots :-))

Short but sweet. The art was amazing, but I think the game really could have done with some music. It was pretty difficult at first but once I found the right rhythm the boss went down pretty easily. It feels very polished to play, and hitting is suitably satisfying. Nice work on this :)

I couldn't beat the boss after a good number of tries. Dodging a lot certainly seems to be the way to go, but I've had trouble getting a feel for where the hitboxes actually are.
I think a brief period of invulnerability after getting hit would've made a big difference here, as the energy balls are pretty devastating.
The aesthetics are pretty good!

Nice bossfight game!

I would have liked to have changed the controls though. With Xbox controller A was hit and Y was roll... I would maybe set A to roll and X to hit, because it's slow to push Y up there to roll and then push A to hit. This was main reason why it took so many tries to win the game.


After death you could have had a checkpoint after the professors speech as the instructions were pretty straightforward and had nothing to do with actual fight tactics. Also, I died once after already beating the robot when touching the fist that had landed right in front of it in the way so I couldn't deliver the virus.

Otherwise the game looked good and polished. Pixelart was very nice. Some music would have been nice for the mood, now there was only beeping and some slash and smash sounds. I liked the gameplay despite the funny control scheme. Timing the rolling in and out of the range of attacks was stressing but fun.

Fists were telegraphed well but the guns could have also been telegraphed like heating up (starting to glow with heat) before shooting. The touch damage was a bit irritating but I'm not sure the game would have been difficult enough without it as it was pretty short when you got your moves right.

All in all, fun game :) Thanks for making it!

Always love fun bossfight games, really well done on this one! Definitely felt some hyperlight drifter vibes from this.

Some small feedback I had
- would have been nice to be able to attack in the direction of the mouse
- would be nice to allow for attacks while rolling, or if not, have some form of input buffering, where if you input an attack during the roll, then the character will attack as soon as the roll is complete
- was a bit difficult to tell where the hitboxes where, especially with the boss's main body - ended up playing pretty safely in order to kill it

But overall great job! All the art and the sounds were especially well done!!

Looks really good, play really good and overall fantastic job :-) One thing I can think of that could be done a bit different -> if you get past robot and stand behind him you basically get a free win as he cannot do anything about it :-)

Very nice little boss battle game! You implement the top-down dodge-'em-up sort of gameplay well, especially for a game jam entry. Yes, there are ways you could polish this up and make it easier to restart, align attacks with cursor/use a keypress for attack, etc. but I understand that probably just comes down to time. The art is very nice, and you implemented a lot of things that are easy to overlook: dialogue system, little cutscene screens, multiple concurrent boss attacks- nice work!! :)

@tomssuli Thanks for the long feedback! If you like, you can try the new post-jam version, that I uploaded on itch.io yesterday. I addressed many of your feedback points :) -> https://stefan-funke.itch.io/machine-meltdown

@hulien22 Yes! Hyperlight Drifter was awesome. Definitely a source of inspiration for me.

@sebhulhu Yes you are right! That's sadly a weak point of the boss. I improved on this in the post-jam version. You can try it on itch.io (https://stefan-funke.itch.io/machine-meltdown)

@hacksawunit Thanks for the kind words. Very appreciated!


Thanks all for playing and the feedback :)

Just played the jam & post jam versions. Great improvements, I really like the added telegraphing to the shoot mechanic and faster respawning. One thing is that the fist that land should definitely be targetable, it feels really weird that they are not.

This is so cool! I love the difficulty and the art -- very polished!

It's super polished, the graphic side is really beautiful and the character is pleasant to control, I really liked the boss fight I had fun playing. good entry !

Nice graphics and concept. It reminds me Hyper Light Drifter.