This game is seriously well polished! The art, sound effects, music, and game feel all work together really well. I like how your progress is shown after you lose, since it makes you want to try again to see if you can get farther.

I know this was made with a whole team, but the fact you put this together in 72 hours is nothing short of incredible. If this was on Steam in it's current form, it'd fit right in. The visuals, sound, and sheer polish you managed to cram into this thing is incredible - I have no idea why you decided to include _rebindable controls in a LD game_, but good job on doing so.
My one complaint, however, would be that the Little Fellas were hard to identify at first, and I don't think there was enough of them. They don't really look like currency, and with a name like 'Little Fellas' i assumed they'd be a creature of some kind. So, it took me a bit to realize they were the tiny crosshairs. Additionally, i never felt like I had enough to buy anything from the intermission, that might just be on me skill-wise but it might be worth looking into.
Either way, I hope this gets more ratings soon - well done!

The menu is super polished, well done! Gameplay is smooth and responsive, and the main game music loop is catchy. Only qualm I have is that I couldn't get any of the upgrades because money drops are kinda rare, and the multiplying virus things can get overwhelming pretty quick

Nicely polished top down shooter. Very impressive entry. Music sets the mood really well. Controls feel nice. The recoil on that triple gun though is extreme :)

this one's a keeper.
it feel a lot like a full fledged out game.
i was already convinced and after the 4th restart i decided to check the help menu and realised i was missing out on secret rooms.
congratulations to the whole team.
in a sort of bug report, i tried to go full screen and got portions of the game over different displays. but it absolutely did not take away from my enjoyment

I really enjoyed this game. The art and music and sound effects were great. The only thing is that I think the drop rate of the currency is to low, so you barely even get to buy things. From level 1-6, I only got to buy one thing.(I was hesitant to buy the bombs because of the before stated rarity of the money) Also, the minigun's recoil is a little extreme, But overall a great game!

Amazing! The art was great, the sfx fit perfect, the music was superb, the variety of guns and enemies, and even bosses, oh my!

I do have a qualm, however. It feels as if little playtesting was put into this game. I say this because from the get-go one can feel how hard the game is. The player's projectiles feel sluggish in comparison to the green enemies; the Little Fellas, or currency, dropped too seldomly, and made it difficult to purchase anything; the damage output of the enemies seem much greater than the speed at which a player can defeat them. I totally understand if a game is intentially challenging, but at some point it ceases to be fun if its too hard, especially if the player isn't rewarded (able to purchase upgrades) for overcoming the difficulty. That being said, it is totally acceptable given that this was made during the jam, or, heck, maybe I'm just not good at top-down shooters.

But enough about that- the inclusion of randomly spawning secret rooms, the progress bar when you lose, and a whole freaking encyclopedia bring spectacular polish and overshadows any concerns I could ever have. Excellent work! :100:

Wonderful NES era art and sound.
Bosses especially were fantastic!
Really good polish on everything, and a ton of content, it just felt really good to play.
great job!

Oh and the music was great! Felt like classic Capcom stuff from the era!

Fantastic art design and execution on this. The gameplay was a bit hard for my taste. The lack of range on the default gun felt punishing and the currency needed for upgrades was too sparse. Really impressive effort, though, on the graphics, concept, and overall polish!

I really really liked this game! I played it a lot, and it's one of the best ones I've played so far. That being said, here are all my nitpicks, haha.

After buying a gun, I checked this webpage to search for the key to cycle between guns. I heard explosion sounds, and returned to the game, but my crystal had already exploded. I expected the game to pause when it wasn't the active window. But maybe that's on me.

When I bought a gun, I expected to be able to cycle through all my guns, but was surprised to see that not only was I stuck with the gun I bought, but it disappeared when I fired all the bullets. It felt more like the gun was a "temporary powerup" than a "gun" - perhaps the guns could have the appearance and names of "temporary powerups" instead?

The visuals were quite good, but there was no clear indication about which sprites were powerups, and which were enemies. Took some trial and error to figure it out.

Does the same amount of money spawn every stage? It seemed like I picked up all the money I saw, but I still had different amounts of money between different playthroughs. It was kind of a feel-bad moment when I would make it really far, but have no means to improve my character because RNG did not bless me with much money that playthrough.

I always wanted to lure monsters away from the crystal, but it seemed like they only chased me when they were close to me or facing me or whatever. But since their movement & facing felt kind of random, the ability to lure them away felt random as well. I wish there was a way to put that more under my control. (In general, I question the decision to use RNG for the monsters in this game. What do Castlevania, Ikaruga, Zelda, and Crypt of the Necrodancer have in common? It's that the monsters have no RNG. Those aren't easy games, but you know how the enemies will act in every situation, so you only have yourself to blame if you die.)

Idk, but my gut feeling is that the attacking might feel more precise if you attacked 1x per second, rather than in bursts.

Lastly, I feel like the game MIGHT play better if there was no crystal, and you only had to keep yourself alive. You have control over your own health because you can dodge enemy attacks, but you have less control over the crystal's health because it's stuck in place, so the ability to keep it alive feels overall less skill-testing. But then it wouldn't fit the theme as well, I guess. So whatever! IDK

Anyways, sick game!

Great game! It's very polished and feels more like a complete game than something from a game jam. I love the graphical style, and it really reminds me of a lot of late 80s / early 90s shooters like Xenon 2.

Also, I am bad at this game... I found the relatively short range of the player's weapon made it quite challenging, especially when moving around.

I really like the variety of enemies with different styles of attack and movement.

Awesome game, the visuals feel incredibly polished and the music fits the environment and action. The difficulty was a little bit much, but once you get the hang of everything it becomes a real joy to play. Awesome job with the variation in enemy types, great job!

Old school! I liked the overall feel of the game, reminded me of Vlambeer games. The soundtrack induced nostalgia was great, and even tho I sucked at the game I got to see the final crystal explosion, and that was well made. Really old-school! Great job.

Your arts and music are greats !
The fact that your bullets aren't really faster than you is really problematic when you try to shoot in front of you while moving forward ^^

You managed something most jam games can't. Being kept installed on my pc. Good job

I'll have to echo the sentiments many have already stated. The presentation is great, the design less so.

The store mechanic is broken:
- The drop rate for money is so low that I only had 10$ after the first boss.
- Buying weapons is pointless because they are expensive and temprorary
- Ammo can be bought from the store, but this too is pointless as the only way to get to the store is to destroy all enemies, which usually causes the weapon to run dry and disappear!
- When I finally do have 10$, the available permanent upgrade might be useless (e.g. +1 item in the shop, which ends up as being two bombs)

There is very little reason to be stingy with the content you manage to put into the project. I would like to play around with the weapons and the upgrades, but there are a lot of hurdless in the way, including the very easy first 5 levels or so.

Here are a few suggestions:
- Weapons and bombs should be powerups occasionally dropped by the enemies
- The store is replaced by an upgrade selection system, where the player gets to choose one out of three (or more) available upgrades
- There should be no filler levels. Every level should ramp up the difficulty and introduce a new enemy (even if just a slightly meaner variant of a previous enemy)
- Some kind of a twist on the tired wave shooter formula. Defending something is thematic, but done to death. Either the character, the enemies or the world should have some kind of a unique factor to differentiate this from all the other wave shooters (and I'm talking about interactivity here, not visuals or backstory)

So, darn good job on the overall quality of the project! Darn shame about the tired and broken design, though.

Sweet, sweet entry! Looking more polished than some game from steam, really. Bit hard, but hey, challenge is always good, it's more accomplishing that way.