very cool game, my only complaint is that i cant heal when i do the special attack. nice work on this.

Awesome game, took me a while to get a hang of it. At first I wen't in spamming hits and didn't go far. :smile: But once I tried a bit more tactical approach it suddenly become a lot more enjoyable and I started to see all the details you put in. Good game design really showed here. :thumbsup:

Artwork is good looking, the red sword animation is so cool and satisfying to use.

What I didn't like so much though is when there's a lot of enemies on screen it becomes a bit too chaotic to be enjoyable. It was during the fight with the squid in the 3rd round to be specific. Even thought after replaying a few times and getting better at the game it become quite enjoyable. Perhaps the difficulty curve was a bit too high?

Also, somehow it wasn't apparent for me at first that you can break boxes. And they contain awesome items! But I'm not sure how I missed that, this might be a problem with me rather than a game. :smile:

Really cool game overall!

PS I'll probably get on your stream on one of the days, could you wait and play my game then? I always enjoy getting you feedback :slight_smile:

Awesome game!

Very neat! The presentation worked really well, and once I got used to the controls the gameplay felt nice. I especially liked the boss - it didn't feel unfair but added nice variation to the combat. Also the sounds were appropriately otherworldly. Good work!

The graphics and sound effects really came together here in a wonderful way.

I had an odd experience with the difficulty -- I played probably a half-dozen times getting WRECKED. I think the problem was a combination of having four buttons, not knowing what was effective, and the fights being really short. My fights went like OK here is a fight maybe I'll try WHOOPS, ok that didn't WHOOPS. Game over.

Despite my poor initial performance, I have to say that the controls are tight and super-clear, so it was all my fault. The enemies telegraph and everything, which is huge. I noticed there is no buffering of a jump command, so I drop the input if I press it a moment before touching down, but it's not a big deal since jumping is not a huge element.

During this struggling phase, I got frustrated by the combination of back-to-the-start, and the quite long retry delay. I was grinding my teeth and hammering the keys.

Then I hit some kind of pivot point and started wrecking the cultists pretty good. I guess I just stopped trying to blink-knife them (tho maybe that's also viable) and just got the timing of the blood magic down. I had a stellar run and managed to double-kill twice.

But then the boss kicked my ass.

I came back again, but with a new leet strat: fight nothing and just dash past the entire game. That got me to the boss no problem, with respectable blood levels. I got to the part where he summons the super-cultist wave and that did me in. I feel like I was pretty close!

The game is short enough that I can see why you back-to-the-start me. The long retry loop indicates you underestimate how bad I was when I first picked up the game, though. I was BAAAD.

Throwing both knife, blood magic, and blink at me all at once just kind of overwhelmed me initially, I guess. I maybe would have preferred Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, adding abilities along the way, and with checkpoints. But maybe that's too much scope!

I offered some critique here, but certainly not because it's bad, this is a solid and charming game. Solid tight combat controls, great art and sound, and a unique flair, complete with interesting boss fight, all in a small scope. Well done!

Really nice game!

Graphics are great, balance is good, pretty hard though. Theres an impressive amount of mechanics for a compo game here, though I did find it hard to manage all of the abilities. Last fight was super intense. Nice work!

@pkenney Thanks so much for the detailed feedback! I totally agree, having a more organic process of introducing mechanics would have make the game more approachable and better, but I only had so much time. Thanks so much for playing!!

This game has got some nostalgia for me. It reminds me of old dos action games I had sittin on the hardrive when I was in middle school, it's great. I could never beat them, but I would boot them up every once in a while and relish the graphics and sound. Nicely done.

Very well done, and well timed as I've just finished reading the collected works of HP Lovecraft. A little difficult juggling all the abilities, but not unfairly so. Tough game, and good fun, well done! :octopus:

Great game, this type of graphics really hits home for me was very beautiful :heart_eyes: overall the sfx also sold the game pretty well. Very very solid effort :)

Hahaha, awesome! Love the old school pixel gore! Some walking animation and hit effect would spice it up even more. Well done, solid LD entry!

Scholar? no,he is an assassin!

It's cthulhu-tastic! I'm a sucker for good retro-style graphics and sound, and that delivered in spades. The gameplay is a little simple but still ends up having a bit of difficulty (I hate to admit it, but I did have to try more than once) and it's fun, which is the important part. I'd love to see what you could have done with more time.

I really liked the art style and story overall and sounds are just on point! Everything felt in place, good work!

The mood was right and it had a bit of Castlevania to it, but the controls felt a bit wonky. The "D" magic felt pretty neat.

I died against the boss twice, not sure how close I was to beating him, but it was fun. The aspect of killing/sacrificing people to gain magic (?) is a pretty neat idea, and it does fit the theme. I like how the player has a hood too. Good work~

Art was pretty cool! Liked the concept of the gameplay, but I agree with the comment on the itch page, you can kind of just jump over everything and head for the boss. But overall really cool!

@aj-jones Thanks for the feedback. You definitely CAN do that. But you can do that in dark souls too. The issue with doing that is you don't get the power ups in the chests along the way, or the blood pickups which will all help make the boss easier.

I love the boss and effects- and color palette here is awesome for mood. Friggin excellent jam entry- you did a great job! :)

Incredible game. Love the art style.

The sliding-shut door gates reminded me immediately of Dark Souls - funny that you mention it in another comment here!

I tried the "run straight for the boss" strat, but got ganged-up on by a couple of sorcerers. Suppose that's what happens in Dark Souls as well. :D

Saw you make part of this, so I'm a little biased. With that said:

1. I enjoyed that it's a complete game, so to speak. It has a progression, with parts that get locked off after you pass them, enemies of increasing difficulty, and a final boss as well. I also like it that it has a tutorial, some lore, and a full loop with credits. Further, there are 4 different abilities. I ended up using the teleport the least, by the way.

2. Aesthetically I am torn. I enjoy the quantity of detail in the art (with some glaring absent details, like no walk cycle and no jump animation). There are castles in the background, the blood moon, different enemies with animations, an animated boss with a few attacks and so on. However, I think many of the assets look somewhat unappealing, like the ground tiles, for instance. This is very much subjective, of course.

3. I like the audio effects, they are quite different from one another and I appreciate that some attacks travel across the screen. The lack of music is quite evident though, which knocked my rating down somewhat.

4. The theme was hit in principle, however, I didn't feel any compunction whatsoever in not killing the innocent dudes. From my understanding they were either necessary to play, or in the way. So I didn't see them as sacrifices, more as blood containers.

Congrats for making another LD game. Cheers.

Now that I've played it a few times, the call-outs to Dark Souls look more obvious. The healing animation brings to mind humanity consumption, and dying in the boss battle awards a feeling of frustration.

Great stuff!

Loved this one! Fit the theme great and had a nice art style to boot. Only managed to get a few hits on the boss before it killed me on my first attempt but did a lot better on my second. Still couldn't kill it though. Guess I'm just bad haha. Great game :)

I love this game. Perfectly fit the them.

I always appreciate the rare LD game that's actually difficult. The combat, simple as it was, was surprisingly fun! Gotta always be on the other side of the enemy, which is pretty fun to time.

Really great entry. A very fun little game. The spells felt nice when you combo'd them together and the balance was on point. Music and a run animation would have been two delicious cherries on top of this wonderful experience. Thanks!

I really like the art style and the battle's really well done. :clap:
But i am sorry for that i really don't like some game play like killing people :(

this really promising i enjoyed playing it. I like the mechanic design

really great concept and execution -- it got very hard -- will be playing again

Your game was played on my stream ( https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos ) on the third day of Ludum Dare streams. Thank you for sharing your game with us! You can find the timestamp of when your game was played here: https://goo.gl/N2rkr8

An interesting game with a kind of mechanics. I put a rating) Please rating and me, thanks in advance)

Very fun game! I really like how it looked and gameplay was fun. Especially liked the final boss!

Two nits that bothered me a little bit:
1) Wasn't sure what was the point of blinking. My fighting strategy only used spells and healing and it seemed to work fine. Would be nice if there was an enemy type that would make it advantageous to blink
2) When I was fighting the final boss, I wasn't sure if I was making progress. Would be nice if there was more indication of it being more hurt every time you hit it (I did manage to bit it eventually)

Anyway, really fun game, thank you for making it!

Hey erebuswolf! Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!

If you'd like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/346058131?t=05h56m38s

Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D

💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady

https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin

Very good game! Fun to play and well made! Good Luck!