Vitality! by Avi
Sacrifice your health to gain the power you need to survive against the uprising of cuboid shapes!
https://youtu.be/5kM_3kAgfoc

Try the game online here: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/721121
My first solo game jam!! :D
Ratings
| Overall | 536th | 3.413⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 324th | 3.5⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 770th | 2.841⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 722th | 3.152⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 520th | 3.5⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 455th | 3.132⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 782th | 2.267⭐ | 17🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 913th | 2.588⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 25🗳️ | 36🗨️ |
Though, if my case, it was too easy. Once I had the fully upgraded weapon, I could 1-2 shot pretty much anything.
Possible fix would be to make more powerful weapons consume more energy per shot? I dunno.
Overall though, great fun!
Yeah -- i was having trouble figuring out how to balance the difficulty lol. I had some friends try it out, and they said it was too hard, so I changed the
exchange rate to 1 health to 2 spirt, till you get to 500 points, and then it becomes 1 health to 1 spirit and eventually becomes less and less
Yeah I should have made the shotgun shots cost more spirit -- will do so after the Jam is over!
Good job!
Difficulty is a bit weird. I started with reserve hearts scattered over the floor while I stood still and gunned down every cube that showed up. I ended circling the enemies with no spirit left (I could definitely notice the ratio of health to spirit changing, as you mentioned). Even then, it isn't really that *difficult*, per se; you can mostly outrun them while shooting them.
I think the main thing in that regard is just a lack of mechanics. Games where the enemies simply home in on you and touch you to damage you tend to fall a little flat in engagement. If you're too slow, it's unfair; if you're to fast, it's tedious and too easy.
Given some differences in types of enemies and some extra mechanics (and more than 3 days to make the game, of course), I could see it being challenging in a more meaningful way.
The sound was nice. I like the kick in the level 1 weapon sound; honestly, it felt nicer to use than the stronger weapons just because it had more "oomph" to it.
The environment is somewhat hard to see. Enemies, being all neon-bright, were super easy to spot and had great contrast, but the player and the pillars in the environment were kind of hard to keep track of.
All in all, good job! It controls and plays well, especially considering the time frame!
*P.S.: I managed to get my movement stuck early on; not sure how I did it, but some combination of using WASD and arrow keys at once caused me to be stuck moving diagonally up-right even when I released the keys. I fixed it by pushing them at the same time a bunch until it worked.*
Yeah, Ill definitely try to make it more of a challenge Post-LD
regarding the lighting-- its a bug that I didnt notice till later haha. The lighting is much better on the desktop versions (see screenshots up top)
Ive figured it out how to fix the bug, and have it ready for me to upload -- but im not sure if Im allowed to do that? The bug was due to incorrect "Color Space" build settings in Unity...

All in all, the core is good and the basic aesthetic is coherent and consistent. The tie to the theme is there and a few more mechanics to force decision making on the player will spice this up nicely.
@peachtreeoath hahah yeah I had a tough time coming up with a good exchange rate... Ultimately I decided to stick with a linear exchange rate that changes as you get more points. Based on the reviews, Im still not sure how to proceed -- some people who have commented said it was too easy. Maybe I just need a difficulty setting that the player can manually set. As for additional enemies, I was thinking of one that shoots, and one that has a shield in the front, and some that are faster zombie like enemies. I was also thinking of maybe assigning waves of enemies rather than a continuous stream. Opinions on waves of enemies VS continuous stream?
So, maybe, I would like myself to see the horde of 10 cubes coming from a lot of directions instead of a coalition of them together, it doesn't have to be a continous stream, it could be waves distributed around the map so you don't have an easy escape.
About difficulity the default weapon is enough for getting rid of your enemies. So maybe changing the % of convertion and weakening one the default weapon in favour of the second weapon will be great, you sacrifice a lot of health that you may or not recover. Therefore it makes sense to balance it that way.
This game is yours and you should decide how to balance it. It isn't the most original game but I keep seeing amazing new popular games of shooting like a game about cubes (actually I have never played it). So maybe you get some inspiration on those games
Yeah I think spawn locations and making the default weapon weaker are simple changes that can help!
And yes, I dont think this game will become the next Hollow Knight, I think id just like to improve it for my own satisfaction :) was thinking about training an ML Agent to play it -- that might be interesting.