Heaven Slash by FireSlash

[raw]
made by FireSlash for Ludum Dare 47 (JAM)

Overview

Heaven Slash is a retro PC98 game in the vein of Crime Crackers; meant to feel like an old doujin game dug out of someone's closet and machine translated for the western audience to enjoy.

Gameplay wise it's a mix of Crime Crackers and Ikaruga; the E key switches between Avery and Ouka. Avery uses long range blue attacks, and takes no damage from blue projectiles. Ouka is a short range melee character and takes no damage from red projectiles and melee attacks. Similarly, enemies take significantly reduced damage from same color attacks.

In short: - Blue hair girl absorbs blue bullets and deals more damage to enemies that shoot red bullets or are melee. - White hair girl absorbs red bullets and deals more damage to enemies that shoot blue bullets. - Each level requires 3 keys

coolgif.gif

Controls

  • WASD to move.
  • E switched between Avery and Ouka
  • Spacebar shoots

Ratings

Overall 235th 3.953⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Fun 539th 3.567⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1076th 3.065⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1502th 2.707⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 143th 4.333⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Audio 70th 4.167⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Mood 239th 3.935⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Given 32🗳️ 39🗨️

Feedback

Big Pear Studios
06. Oct 2020 · 03:25 UTC
I ran past all the enemies so I can't say much about the gameplay, but the characters are cute. No mouselook is kinda cringe, but I'll accept it for authenticity's sake. Homoerotic ending's always a plus, though it's missing an animation file (hopefully you patch that bug soon, in which case I'll change my scores to all 5's)

This is game is, dare I say it, based.
MisaRavensoul
06. Oct 2020 · 03:42 UTC
Love it Spitko~
1257th or nothing
06. Oct 2020 · 10:05 UTC
Graphics and music are really nice !
I really liked the retro-game style, reminded me of the old wolfenstein3D or quake :)

Good job here !
DeusExJaeger
06. Oct 2020 · 14:01 UTC
I demand the Erogif
eldogg
06. Oct 2020 · 15:57 UTC
Cool art work and aesthetic. The gameplay was fun too and it felt like a complete game. Good job. The weapon upgrades were good. The two character system was also cool.
Tsunscreen
07. Oct 2020 · 02:37 UTC
I wouldn't have minded being able to strafe, but aside from that it's amazing. Totally hit the mark with the PC98 feel. I didn't expect there to be multiple themed levels so that was a nice surprise!
MikeW
07. Oct 2020 · 03:45 UTC
really smooth gameplay with great graphics!
toasteater
07. Oct 2020 · 08:03 UTC
Nice game, but whoever ported this did a terrible job. How can they leave out ouka_ero.gif?
No Grapes Games
07. Oct 2020 · 08:47 UTC
The game looks very very good! Very impressed. It did not fit the theme at all and you didn't really have to fight anything. Just run around, collect the stuff and exit.
jusw85
07. Oct 2020 · 14:46 UTC
I liked the retro aesthetic for this entry! I liked the ending as well :) although navigating stage three was abit of a nightmare, it was slightly difficult to tell the difference between doors, walls, and monsters. Also, wouldve preferred the switch to be bound to another key, instead of together with the left hand on navigation, it becomes harder to switch and move at the same time.
🎤 FireSlash
07. Oct 2020 · 19:18 UTC
@no-grapes-games Yeah, this was a bit of a fear that cropped up at testing in the last 30min or so. However, I was pretty hesitant to up difficulty or make core changes with so little time left. My experiences with last minute "difficulty adjustments" have been... less than optimal.

In retrospect I probably needed a forcing function to get players to engage enemies; either making them block the player, or having them drop the keycards instead of being in the map already.

Thanks for the feedback!

Also since a few people have mentioned the input limitations (mouselook, strafe), that was an intentional choice for better or worse. We were actually going to make it even more convoluted (keyboard aim on top of keyboard movement) but in the end settled for this middle ground. Ultimately we wanted the game to play slowly and encourage a more methodical approach, but it didn't quite pan out that way in the end.
730
08. Oct 2020 · 01:08 UTC
Really great aesthetic with that kinda PSX feel, music is really good too though sadly it's only 2 tracks.
Gameplay is confusing if you don't read the instructions (wow who would've thought you need to read that), and even then it's pretty frustrating and not very fun. Too easy to lose HP, hard to dodge, and most importantly, it *feels* bad/clunky. I guess it's ok if it's for the sake of staying true to the inspiration. Another big deterrent for me was the confusing samey layouts (which I later learned were procedurally generated), they're a nightmare to navigate with my poor spatial awareness that heavily relies on points of reference, and there are no points of reference here, just rectangular rooms and corridors.
The damage type the enemies are weak too being dependent on their bullet color instead of their actual color is also very confusing, especially when it cites Ikaruga in the description where the mechanic is different and much more straightforward.
Johnsensei
08. Oct 2020 · 01:26 UTC
Man I love that anime-style PC98 look. What engine was this made in? Gameplay and everything was all very smooth.

A couple of ideas to improve upon a stellar project:
1. Show the number of keys in inventory.
I picked up three things that I definitely thought were the keys (looked like an SD card) but the door didn't open. Then I found another, I think, so I guess that wasn't the key after all. Maybe just a weapons upgrade? Were the CD-ROMs the keys?

2. Change the color of the enemies to be consistent with the weakpoint system. The enemies that fired red bullets were blue, so I thought the red character was strong against them only to have her get decimated. Then the red-colored robots were the ones shooting the blue bullets and weak against the red girl's abilities...anyway that part confused me.

But overall great job. One of my favorite's of the jam so far.
Charlotte Raymond
08. Oct 2020 · 01:59 UTC
Really cool graphics on this one and liked the idea of swapping between the girls to max effect.
Colmaphis Games
08. Oct 2020 · 05:12 UTC
Wow, very very nice game!
🎤 FireSlash
08. Oct 2020 · 05:22 UTC
@johnsensei It was written in Haxe, using parts of the Heaps engine.

Amusingly perf was a big issue through a lot of the dev process, I spent a solid 6 hours getting the framerate above 60; but once I had a breakthrough I ended up breaking past 800fps with vsync off in native builds. Ultimately there's just not a lot of geometry or textures here, so once you get the draw call count down it's blazing fast.

The CDs were indeed the keys. The other items you saw were ammo boxes for the special weapons.

The weakpoint system color issue has been contentious and is a mix of oversight and not thinking through ikaruga's visual design. It came to light shortly after the jam was over, at which point it was too late to fix. I've tried to clarify the current system in the description but it's going to confuse people unfortunately.

Thanks for the feedback!
DS Nahogara
08. Oct 2020 · 06:16 UTC
Gameplay reminds me of tank games with the twist that you can swap! but the art.. this game is art man.. Beautiful sprites, fantastic soundtrack and sounds. Amazing work, you guys should be proud! I am of you, congrats :heart:
marcusnystrand
08. Oct 2020 · 19:00 UTC
I love the aesthetics! Sound and music is also on point. The only thing I think is missing is side-strafing.

Congratulations on a finished game :)
Gabriel Dias Oliveira de Almeida
08. Oct 2020 · 19:54 UTC
I loved the graphic style of your game!
Congratulations for that!
pedrohph
08. Oct 2020 · 22:49 UTC
Nice game!
Great art and music.
The player can not move to side is weird, some times I needed to avoid bullets but I just turned arround.
Good job :smile:
p-r
09. Oct 2020 · 17:00 UTC
Awesome
guimoliveira
09. Oct 2020 · 17:21 UTC
Great graphics and music. Good game, but I really got stuck in a loop. :smile:
Gilad Bar Ilan
09. Oct 2020 · 18:15 UTC
Nice games & graphics!
essarrgee
09. Oct 2020 · 18:44 UTC
Amazing game! The graphics and audio are near perfect! I would only complain that the combat might need adjusting, but it might only be me. It seemed like the melee weapon did the same amount of damage as the projectile, but came out a lot slower. Melee felt more like a last resort to use rather than something like a "high risk high reward" sorta deal. I think some people also mentioned that having a side-strafing feature would be nice, and I agree. I found myself moving diagonally against the wall to dodge attacks, but it only works so well until I hit a corner.

Overall though, I still loved it! Great job on the game!
Death_Is_Cold
10. Oct 2020 · 15:49 UTC
Nice art nice music. Found myself getting lost a lot. ch designs were cool. good job.
Chaosinism
10. Oct 2020 · 15:57 UTC
It is a nice approach to combine the bullet system of Ikaruga with first-person shooters. The art and music styles are so great as well!
Inferture
13. Oct 2020 · 01:43 UTC
Great art and audio, it actually feels like a finished game (well, a poorly translated one, but still finished) ^^
I don't have a lot of remarks since it's a very good entry already, but maybe there should be some dialogs that pop at some moments during the level (that don't interrupt the gameplay)to indicate that all the keys were found, or that one character is down for example, to further immerse the player

Impressive work !
Super Hadoken
21. Oct 2020 · 14:23 UTC
Great graphics and smooth old school gameplay. Could've done with a bigger map. Great entry.
Ranjan
26. Oct 2020 · 02:06 UTC
This has an astonishing amount of polish for a game jam entry, super impressive! Big fan of the retro gameplay, and the character design are great! Being able to strafe would be a great QOL improvement.
Peace Of Cake Games
03. Nov 2020 · 04:53 UTC
Fantastic! I really felt like I was playing a game from an old PC or perhaps something similar to a Famicom or Super Famicom! Too bad I never got to play this during the jam, I'll just say that it was 5/5 for everything. Please make sure to post a post about this if you make something like this next jam! I love these sort of retro games.

Also, two questions. What's up with the missing .gif? And why can I start the game and advance through dialogue with a controller's A button, but I cannot use a controller for gameplay?