Can't see a link to the game here. Make sure you have a link. You can easily host it on gamejolt

Hey Patrick! I was wiped out last night so I decided to wait until this morning to upload it. [Play it here!](https://samloeschen.itch.io/monolith)

I've been taking notes of games I've played and prepping to rate them when we go live, but wanted to jump in quick and say this really feels like Stephen King Dark Tower, even if not intended, well done.

That was definitely an inspiration so thanks for saying so!

Okay, this looks and plays so good I don't really know what to say. Exceptional and unnerving vibe, everything fits extremely well.

This is great. Saving for vote. Really well done.

Thanks @takusan! Slightly Angry Max looks great too, will make sure to give it a spin tonight :)

Please make a linux build!

@red-fan-games want to help me test one? I don't have a linux box and I don't want to put out a possibly-broken binary

really fun game. only complaint would be its hard to tell if you're about to get hit. maybe have bullets flash or something when close to the player. Asid from that this is a pretty sweet game that looks rad.

Great theme and graphics and the sound takes me back to the 90s arcades! Great job! You were live on my twitch channel!

Good Job! Mabe the best game I have played so far. Great sound, audio, graphics, mood and a lot of fun!
Maybe you could add a healthbar and make some effects that make it more obvious that you have been hit.

If you want to try our game, here is a link:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/42-mikronikus

I played this on Livestream a few days ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiOC3F43xF0

Probably the best game I've played all jam. Great job! No complaints!

A very great game. I don't know if the theme is really important here, but the gameplay & the graphics offer a very good experience. Thanks !

Great game, great vibe and atmosphere.
Only thing that is missing is health bar.

Cool game, I like the visuals a lot. The gameplay is good, but a bit confusing as I had difficulty knowing where enemy projectile where. As the game is very fast, it is a bit hard to have fine control on the player motion. I would also appreciate some kind of segmenting, like levels or bosses. It makes you feel progressing. Anyway, thanks for making the game, it was interesting so keep up the good work !

I like the monochromatic approach to visuals, and the fast pace of the game. It is frustrating when you get killed due to the lock time, it looks to be by design and makes it a bit more addictive. The only thing I find hard while playing is knowing my health. Nice game!

@KabalaTrance The health bar is the smoke behind the spaceship :P

Best game I played up to now ! Graphics and Audio fit very good! Awesome Game! Is it a Shadder that you have written by yourselfe?

This rocks.

The visuals and audio are amazing, the style and simplicity of it all is just absolutely perfect. The gameplay I really couldn't get into though, the camera is so low down it's hard to see what I'm trying to dodge, and the lock-on system didn't feel very fun for me. Perhaps an additional weapon that is weaker but has a constant stream of bullets may solve that.

I've added rating in addition to my earlier feedback.

Still one of my favourites in this LD.

Cheers!

Smoooooth. The art style and music is very well fit together. My high score was 40. Fun.

I like the black and white artstyle, good work!

Very cool shader, game is very fast and a bit hard to play. If you get a chance please check out our entry https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/down-the-rabbit-hole

Really cool game, but i feel its too hard to tell when you are about to get hit the camera angle doesnt help that much plus you are focused on locking on targets makes it hard to actually be aware of what is going on.

That was really cool looking! Had trouble locking on without getting shot but that was a lot of fun!

Overall this is a really fun and solid title, and I really enjoyed it a lot.

While It definitely doesn't seem to fit the theme at all, you guys went on to create a very fun and compelling game anyways. I quite enjoyed the art style of the game, as well as the music.

My biggest gripe with the game is there is no health bar as far as I can tell. It makes it hard to make the right judgment calls ingame.

My only other gripe is that I find the lock on quite slow. I am sure that is intentional but I feel like I'm only looking on when I get lucky or force myself to take a couple hits (especially on the harder enemies.)

Hey @izunah! Thanks for the feedback! Yep, I basically spurned the theme this time around. Whoops. Quick tip for you - the health bar is actually the smoke coming out of the ship! If you've ever played Luftrausers, it works very similarly to that. Secondly, the lock on is definitely slow by design. Try and pull the enemies shots away to the other side of the screen and then swing back around to get yourself some extra time! It's more of a game about dodging than shooting :)

Thanks again for the feedback!

Fun and pretty ! Really cool !

Holy cow, so much style in just one game. Awesome! Loved the aesthethics you guys managed to work with. I wished I could control the ship with the mouse, I'd be a much better pilot. Freaking amazing job, guys, really. I had a problem trying to figure when bullets are coming at me, mostly because of the camera. But it looks so cool, I guess that's why you decided to keep that angle.

@glimaleite ah man, thanks a ton. yep, the camera is low/wide angle because it looks super cool, but also because I wanted you to "feel" the locations of the projectile more vaguely than the pixel perfect flying you have to do in other bullet hells like Ikaruga. To me, the ambiguity adds tension, but maybe it also feels a tad unfair at first.

Wow, I love both graphic and music style. A really interesting gameplay. The only thing I do not understand is the link with the theme. An overall fantastic experience :clap:

Very well done with graphics, sound and atmosphere, I love when a LD entry looks like a music video. The game is very hard at start, gets easier when you realize you don't have to shoot right after lockon. I believe I got very far with it in 5th try, though can't tell as there is no level numbering, points were around 60

Amazing graphics and audio! Good gameplay!

Amazing visuals! I loved that style. Gameplay is also pretty original, but only 3 hits before die is a harsh mechanic.

Awesome! This game feels like a game that someone on an 90's movie would be playing. It feels very energetic and I completely love the look of it, the shader makes for a super interesting aesthetic. I agree with others that it is difficult to tell when you are about to get hit, depth isn't all that clear here.

All in all an excellent entry! :)

Sam, this is by far one of my favorite LD entries ever. It made me really want to try to tackle 3D (and shaders, and procedural generation, and vectrocity, and...) in a future game jam with something small in scope. Again, awesome job.

This is a really strong entry! Some good design choices on display here - the black and white visuals suited the game's mood and the music was fitting. The gameplay was solid - a simple mechanic made complex and interesting as the levels went on. A nice difficulty curve and overall it felt challenging without being unfair.

Good stuff! :D

Very cool game! I like the art style a lot, and it's fun to play.
I did notice if you keep hitting Z to restart, the fade starts over and you never get to restart...
So don't do that?

The game is very great, even if it is only in black and white, it really impressed me. I think the jam theme is not here but anyway a very stunning and amazing game.

My jam game is similar to yours, please take a look: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/limited-space

You really nailed it on the game feel, art and gameplay! Excellent job!
Definitely the best game I have played so far!
One gripe that I have is that there is no way to keep locking on and dodge the enemies. So perhaps if you added something like a 'lean' that would allow you to move the crosshair a bit so you can dodge while not losing your lock. Just a thought :)

Also if you ever decide to make a tutorial on how to make something like this or release the source code please let me know :D

Nice job man, but i recommend you to try made less confuse and not so full of elements the screen!

Much nicer with the brighter bullets. I would still try something with maybe some kind of gradient to them, or some indicator that you and a bullet are on the same plane. Having full-bright white areas or something (cockpits? diamonds?)on the enemy ships might help you visually track them as well, especially with shots flying everywhere. Cool music, and cool dithering!!

Wow, what a ride. This one reminds me of the early nineties arcades and is a very cool Space Harrier/Afterburner crossover. The music is really amazing retro style and fits the game perfectly. And the rastered black and white gives everything a very unique look. Thumbs up, I like!

Fantastic entry. I loved the feel of this game. My biggest complaint is that sometimes it is hard to tell when you are going to be hit, which feels unfair, but it plays very well. After a few rounds this turns into less of a problem as you get used to how the enemies work and how to abuse them. The aesthetic of the game is fantastic though. If you don't mind, check out our game! I think you'll like it. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/roguelike-one

Really epic graphics and presentation. The dodging difficulty feels appropriate, but I wish there was a slowdown button for finer control for aiming.

I absolutely LOVE the graphics. Phenomenal presentation.
Gameplay was pretty cool, I love the bullet-hell concept done this way, with lots of varying enemy types that shoot in unique but predictable ways. my main complaint would be that the camera angle makes determining where bullets are relative to you very difficult. But it was still a great entry, good work

@samlo Sure i'll test a linux build.

VERY GOOD. Really can't think of any complaints.

Brilliant entry! I got completely hooked (even if I'm still awful at it :sweat_smile:). Controls are polished, gameplay is fast-paced and challenging, and the combination of waiting to lock on or acquire several targets and moving around to avoid projectiles works amazingly well.

If I had to add something, my only point of nitpicking could be that the camera angle felt a bit odd to me, but at the same time I think that it is placed where it needs to, to highlight the monolith.

You guys nailed the visuals and I really liked the music as well.

Amazing job!

This is great! Loved how zippy the ship is and the targets are fun. The music is catchy too.

@red-fan-games I actually got one working! you can get it on the itch page:
https://samloeschen.itch.io/monolith

A very interesting game! Art and music are excellent
But the key "Z" is not so comfortable. Pure color background is difficult to distinguish the depth.

Whoa. Very cool. I love the monochrome look and the feel of the speed. Really nice work. Sleek.

As someone mentioned above, it is hard to tell which of those bullets are going to hit you. I wonder if there's a way to clarify that.

I want this to be an arcade machine

Nice game. Graphics are nice. Has a real arcade feel to it --- I like the lock-on mechanic.

I found the visuals to be great, and the game is very fun. However, I personally am not too sold on the lock-on mechanic and think it could use a little tweaking. It feels a bit counterintuitive to have to stand still directly in the line of fire in order to lock on, and in a game this fast-paced with bullets flying everywhere you feel like a sitting duck. I think it might be helpful to do a small change to it, such as not having the lock-on tick down when your cursor isn't on the enemy in order to encourage more dodging, locking on, dodging, finish lock on, fire, etc. or to lock on faster, which would encourage dodging attacks and then getting your shot in before the next volley of bullets does.

I still had good fun with it though, I got to around 250-ish score?

I'd like to start off with the graphics: They're fantastic! I haven't seen any games that have that sort of visual style, and it ties your game together well. As far as the gameplay, it's fun, and I like the locking on mechanic, even if it was a bit confusing at first. My only complaint is that the camera could have been a bit higher, which bugged me for some reason. Fun game, and great job!

I really like the game. The visuals are simple but are very smooth. The audio is perfect background noise and the sound effects contribute as well.

I'd of liked to be able to move the ship and the lock on independently so as to make it possible to avoid getting hit, but the ship is rather resilient which makes up for needing to stop to lock on.

The audio is really good but deafeningly loud on the WebGL version. Great game but man did it scare me at first.

The visuals work really well. I particularly like the lock-on animation.

@thor what browser/OS? I can't seem to replicate that over here!

The feel of the game is spot on. Please DON'T add a 'health bar'. An additional visual cue when hit and to see how much health is left would be nice, but a bland health bar isn't the answer for this visual style. The smoke is a good start, but please explore more options. The smoke gets lost in the hail of bullets, so it is hard to know when you are damaged and the next hit will take you out. The game feels nice and twitchy as is.

That said... Any thoughts on adding buildings or other 'obstacles' to avoid?

Strong work! This was a really great game. I got a really cool lo-fi tron vibe.

I liked that before the game started you could get a feel for how the ship and camera move.

Definitely challenging, I got the hang of how to avoid enemy fire around wave two.

If you think about adding twin stick controller support, the left stick could control the ship position, and the right could move the reticle for lock-on to help avoid enemy fire. Might remove some of the challenge, but could be fun to try.

A+ I'd like to see this in an arcade as well!

## A really good game!
I really dig this one, really beatiful and retro graphics, good gameplay as well, altho I also experiencied that I don't know how close I am to the obstacles. Apart from that, great entry man.

Game was a lot of fun and did feel super fast paced. I agree with @carsen-d that the lock on felt very strange. There was not really much of a way to clear a screen without standing in the bullets. Maybe if the lock on was a bit shorter? I'm not sure, either way it was a ton of fun.

Awesome game, I've been waiting to play this since I saw you post about it the first time

Wow, beatuiful art stile, nice bullet hell, great music pushing the adrinaline level even a bit higher, well done, enjoyd playing it a lot :)

Really great game! The visuals and the gameplay itself, also the music, all good! Congrats!

Hey, really nice visuals! The lock-on system did take a bit getting used to as it would move with your controls, I wonder if removing the cooldown for the lockdown would actually make it faster paced (then you can have more bullets and just slowly buildup the lockdown in glimpses of openings). Or perhaps just adjusting the speed of the cooldown. It was also hard for me to determine where exactly the bullets and the player were in space making it harder to dodge things... it is interesting to think about in terms of how the player and bullets map to the 2D plane. Maybe having the bullets that are close to hitting you turn a certain color/tone? Anyway great job!

Really fun and fast paced shooter, love the 1-bit pixel art style. My only gripe is that the difficulty spikes way too quickly, partially because you are unable to shoot until you aim and lock on to an enemy ship, and the lock-on area is quite small. Maybe you could start off with a slightly bigger area and then progressively reduce its size as you go down. Still quite fun once you get used to it, tempted to play it multiple times.

Really love the dithered rendering. I think the lock-on time is necessary to trade off the shooting, but it maybe feels a bit long to stay in the enemies' fire.

leafo's game is actually has a very similar mechanic: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/sphincter-quest

wow awesome game! i was very impressed with this game. i really enjoyed the variety of enemy bullet patterns. the art style was fantastic as well, particularly the ship you are flying just feels good to fly around. the three jetstreams on the ship were a really nice touch. i felt like the lockon fill-up meter should decrease slower when you are not locking on, so that you could dodge a bullet quickly and go back to locking on. however, i do see the difficulty that you probably face when trying to get the balance for this mechanic just right. i also would have liked some sort of indication of my health. those small gripes aside, this game was really fun to play and it felt very good. i liked the music and it fit cohesively with the rest of the games aesthetic. the camera movement was also very nice, i almost forgot to mention that because it worked so well you tend to hardly notice it as a player. the only other downside to your game is that it wasnt a compo submission, so i cant peek at your sourcecode to see how you did the ground scrolling xD! nice job with that too by the way. awesome job, this is definitely one of my favorites!!

This game has a cool concept. I like the idea of a bullet hell where the bullets are coming towards you. It can be a bit difficult to dodge without any real depth perception though. This game would probably work better in VR for that reason. I like the lock on system and how it forces you into danger in order to get a lock onto your opponents. I also like how it encourages risky play by locking onto multiple enemies for a score multiplier. I'm a bit mixed on the washed out sounds though. It works really well for the music, but the sound effects wind up not being impactful, which hurts game feel. Also, not having any on screen indication of health (or at least none that I noticed) is a bit of a problem that could be fixed. Overall, I really enjoyed myself with this game. Great work!

Cool aesthetic, good variety of enemies, nice audio. Read the tip about kiting the enemy bullets and it helped a lot, though I still found it hard to get a multiplier going :)

Wow you killed it. What a great entry. The visuals and audio mesh so well and go way beyond gamejam standards. I think they kept me playing longer than I otherwise would have. I wish it had been a bit harder, to be honest. The aesthetic would have set me up for "hard but fair."

Great use of greys. I especially appreciate the washed out look. Goes super well with the audio and hits dystopian despair right between the eyes.

Also, this was a game MADE to be a gif. It screams "play me, play me right now" on that itch storefront.

@ryguydavis Harder! Haha! That's awesome. I actually softened the difficulty a lot right when I first put it up on itch as a bunch of local devs in my city thought it was super hard - mainly because some of the enemy timings will utterly smash you without warning. I'd like to actually make it harder than it is now, but also less punishing/more fair. Thanks for the kind words!

@samlo Fair is such a weird balancing act. It's easy to make things hard and it's easy to make things boring, but finding the balance between is really tough. I think what this has going for it is the packaging signals "this is not casual" so as a player you go in prepared for it. I actually was disappointed by the ease at which I was going through levels, since the packaging suggested it would be a bit relentless and arcadey.

Beautiful graphics, good music, and an interesting controlscheme for lock-on.

I couldn't make it very far, in part because bullet hells always leave me paralyzed (blame a certain famous developer of 2015 for that), but I did like what I saw.

(Finally, how'd you get that graphical style to work? I've toyed with shaders for doing such a thing in the past, never had any luck actually getting Unity to accept one with exploding.)

The feel, the music , the mood. I loved it, would play again. implement xbox360 controller(it's an order from someone not familiar with the availability of your time to do so, half jokingly, half let me know when )

When I think about how I would create what you've made here, it shows that you were really productive with your design decisions. I admire that! The stylised look was really effective too. I love the dithering with your shader.

I would screenshot this game and hang it up on my wall. Amazing work. I'm very impressed with the attention of detail you put into the look of this game.

Unfortunately this game wasn't quite for me. I didn't find the gameplay to be terribly interesting, as it basically boiled down to: how long can I sit directly in front of this enemy before I start taking damage? There were usually a few things to focus on at any given time, but not really in the sense that I had to start multitasking. My brain was just in 2 basic modes of thought: (1) avoid bullets (2) sit in front of enemies.

Holy butt that got hard! I immediately thought of Stephen King Dark Tower when I saw the monolith, and again after I started getting shot at. I went from a score of 2, to 25 from 1st to second round so it was easy to pick up, but man it became a 3D bullet hell quickly. Really enjoyed playing this.

Great asthetics and feel to the game. It is really fast paced. Only one negative, imo: it is very hard to see where the enemy bullets are heading. But I really liked it. Congrats a lot!

Absolutely fantastic game! I love the art style and the feeling of speed is excellent. The music fits really well. I couldn't really hear the sound effects over the music but I could tell they were there. Love that I can play with an Xbox controller - it made the responsiveness feel even better.

Will you continue to develop this and make a commercial release?

I actually played this on itch.io before I knew it's a 72 hours Ludum Dare game! It's super amazing!~ The design is very neat and the art style is pretty cool! The difficulty is kinda easy for me right now. Anyway, looking forward a story mode in the future!~ GJ!

This is awesome! I love the aesthetic, and the gameplay feels super tense, though it is a bit hard to tell if you're going to get hit from this perspective. Nice work!

Ok, this is a extremely solid entry. Amazing soundtrack and incredible visuals. The gameplay is simple, but very fun and challenging. I have to go back to it after the ratings, because I need to get to the Monolith. I want to touch it.

Wow, this is really cool game. Though I'm pretty tired from the recent "let's put a 'retro' shader on it to make it cooler" wave, your game still manage to be cool. Because of fast addictive gameplay, responsive controls and variety of enemies, mainly, but visual esthetics are still great. As soundtrack.

Wow, it kinda felt like playing wipeout. Love the dynamics and speed, and simple, yet nice graphics. Good job.

I saw this game and knew I had to try it. The game itself feels really fast and action packed, and weaving between and around bullets adds to that. I also loved the art style, it had real retro, almost comic book style feel to it. The sound was also done really well in addition to that. The only complaint that I really have would be that the perspective when flying around the outer area of the screen makes it really hard to dodge, almost impossible for me. I didn't know what was coming at me and what was missing me. Other than that great game, and I would love to see this fleshed out more

This looks really neat, it's a type of retro aesthetic that doesn't get used very often and I dig it. That said, the game is way too hard for me. In particular, I have a very hard time telling when I'm in danger of being hit, I've not managed to get a score higher than 10.

Nice entry here! The mechanic of locking down multiple enemies is really cool! The game is fast and fun! Good job here! :)

Nice work! Gotta love shaders to make things look cool!

I love starfoxes!

Good camera motion, Various enemy and reasonable difficulty curve. Curious on how the render works and terrain generator works.

Clever way to make a fast-pace and neat game for winning ludum dare.

Really fun game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P7M7EgUphM

Love the art style of this game :D It felt really polished. The gameplay was simple yet fun and challenging. Well done :)

This is a real cool looking entry. I like the aesthetics and gameplay. Overall a solid entry.

I loved it, the art, the music and the gameplay are really perfect together!

Very fun, well-rounded game! The music was wonderfully atmospheric & really made the game good for me.
The enemies had interesting variations and always posed a new challenge to master. And restarting was pretty painless, with the same button as used for shooting.
The way the player jet moved felt also really good, very dynamic and physical.

All in all a really polished, well-designed entry!

Also unrelated note to @red-fan-games : sexy avatar! The Linux version works like a charm for me :)

Really interesting visual style! Love the simple geometry of it. Nice controls, nice music, nice art. The enemies can feel a little obnoxious. I find this in many rail shooters though. I preferred the enemies that weren't shooting constantly because I actually had a choice of how and when to attack, rather than just keeping slightly ahead of a stream of bullets the whole time.

Really nice job over all!

If you'd like to play our game it's over here https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/e-at

Cheers!

Great visuals and audio, solid gameplay and controls with a polished sheen. The whole game feels very cohesive and well-scoped for a jam!

incredible game!
Very good atmosphere, great pixelart and awesome visual effects!
The 3D effect looks really nice. Just perfect! :)

Graphics and Music are beautiful. This game is perfect, except that it is hard to tell where the bullets are exactly. Great entry.

Fantastic entry. I'd love to have a go at this with a proper gamepad in my hands instead of the keyboard. I love the graphical style, too. The controls, graphics, sound, and controls are all very good.

This is a stupid amazing entry, as everything within the game meshes super well together and it's a blast to play!

That was pretty awesome

Not much to say here. I saved this page 2 weeks ago because I had no computer at the time, so I just played it now.

AND THIS IS UBER AWESOME POWERPUFFED MARSHMALLOW cool
I love the graphics
The music is the coolest thing I've seen in this LD so far

I saw your rating and got really surprised, but now I understand haha
Congratz dudes, this one is downloaded so I can play more <3

I absolutely loved the aesthetic of this game, and had a great time playing. I ended up dying quite a lot, so would have appreciated a quicker restart. Pressing z just did slow fade out to menu.

The style is very original, and is quite challenging. Nice work Sam! Btw it's Girin, your cousin!