Very early on I saw your progress images on the LD page. Art is great. Audio is on par. But matching the theme is a bit of a stretch to be honest. And I suck at these kind of games so I did not get too far. You commented on this yourself. So maybe make a bit of a leveling up and smoother, gradual learning curve. Because there is lot to enjoy but it is sad when someone rage-quits :D Overall well done!

I love everything about this. The enemy designs, both artistically and mechanically are outstanding. One of my friends compared the projectile collecting to Kirby, and the red bat enemy reminds of *those enemies* in Kirby too. Docile at first, but if provoked, you'll regret it.

Goodness those animations. I'm completely in awe at the art of this game. I wish I had more to say.

The lack of Invulnerability-frames after taking damage is brutal, and I love it. This game has a perfect difficulty curve.

Here's my recording! I forgot I was alone in a voice call while recording this, so you get to hear some brief co-commentary from a friend. Cheers!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td77vhhmm1g

Really awesome game - and you did that all in 48 hours?! This is insanity! Really great job! I have had a look at your other games, you know what you're doing. Do you do this only as a hobby or do you make games/art professionally as well?

The game's graphics, music and sound are so cool! The bottle on the back is such a cool detail. All the enemies, guns and bullets, the sheer mass of content of this game in 48 hours is amazing! How did you pull this off?! :-)

One thing I noticed, not only in this game of yours: Z and X might be good for US keyboards, but for me on my German layout they are far apart :-)

Really cool bullet hell, I admire you for your efficiency ;-)

1cc:


Everything about the presentation is amazing and I had a ton of fun playing the game.

The difficulty curve is too harsh; stage 1/3 feels like stage 3/5. The difference in difficulty between the stages isn't that substantial, unless you want to farm the "heart bats" in stage 3 I guess. The player sprite is huge and I still don't know where the hitbox is, and I definitely took a few hits that seemed to have come from nowhere. No iframes in a lives-based game with contact damage feels rough (would have been different if it was health-based). Pressing "Z" to advance to the next stage also triggers a bullet, which activates a red heart bat in stage 3; I don't know if that's intended but it is pretty funny. I really like those hearts in general for punishing spamming. The "continue" button not continuing in an arcade way is whatever for me, but will probably lose you some players. I almost didn't use the X key since it was too gimmicky/unpredictable and thus too likely to activate "heart bats".

@gonutz

I really did do it all in 48 hours! Well, besides some very barebones (no pun intended!) base code. Construct2's very forgiving visual code editor and "behavior" system made it easier, too... but it was still a UFO-load of work!! And, while making games (and all sorts of stuff!) is my burning passion, it is mostly a hobby... for now!

Anyway, if you'd like, please feel free to read on for some more thoughts.

I am very lucky that everything kind of went right this LudumDare. I was very prepared with snacks and all my chores done, and I was able to hit the ground running in a way I don't always get to. The idea came to me straight away- I wanted to make something spooky, and I was hoping for a theme that could work for a shmup since I've had an itch to make one. So, a skeleton witch collecting up enemy powers in spooky areas was right up my alley. (I have a longtime passion for skeleton wizards and witches! I love Halloween!!) I was also unusually decisive, and most of what I worked on made it into the game- no changing concepts or art style halfway into the first 24 hours. I also went into this LudumDare with wanting to cram as much into this game as possible. My mindset was, "I want this thing filled to the brim!"

It also helps I finally learned my lesson and got the splash screen, title, tutorial, menu/gui, etc. done a good chunk of time before the deadline. (I usually struggle with this a lot.) The order of what got done was also very impactful- I was forced to cut things like the boss battles and the forest level (it got merged with the castle and bog!) and some enemy designs because I saved those for last, but I didn't actually lose time trying to implement them and backing out. I have also gotten very adept with Construct2, and I've learned all sorts of time saving tricks like using sinewaves to move things around in creative ways, making sprites out of many parts, reusing objects in creative ways, etc. ([See this post for an example!](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/invasive-spectral-projectiles/cheap-liquid-effect))

It was kind of a situation where so many lessons from the past 10+ years all just kind of clicked into place. It might have also helped that I couldn't sleep, and I got more man-hours out of it, but I would have traded the fatigue for a guaranteed 7-8 hours of good sleep if I could do it over! There's probably tons of other factors too... I think shmups are very adaptable and easy to scope up and down, for instance. (I should really write a proper postmortem! I keep thinking of more things to say...)

Anyway, thank you for your enthusiasm and for playing! I am sorry it was an awkward control scheme for your keyboard. I think in this case, adding control options is within the spirit of the compo, so I will try to add that within a few days. (Without adding any meaningful content/polish!)

(And, hopefully this wasn't too long, hehe.)

@alaah

Great feedback, thank you! I have some tidbits in response if you're interested.

I intended the game to be health-based (like in, say, Cave Story) but this might be a different use of the term I'm unfamiliar with? While there's no healing in levels, the hearts refill every 'swap break', and you can trade the pickups for an extra heart each swap break.

The player hitbox *is* specified in the tutorial, but I don't blame you if you just jumped into the game! It should have been more obvious at a glance- a little flashing frame over Theia's noggin on hit could have helped...

The bullet-start was an oversight I didn't have time to fix, but the moment in the Haunted House was an extremely funny happy accident, which I embraced instead of moving the bat a little.

I might not know what you mean by the "arcade way", but if its letting the player keep score/pickups from before the level when continuing, well... I wish it worked like that! But I ran out of time to log what the starting totals were before the level to reset back to on continue. 😅 I should have planned on implementing it that way when implementing the score system, but alas.

And, yes, I'm very happy with the red bat design! ("Heart bat" is a great nickname for 'em.) They *ended up being a bit of dynamic difficulty- if you're low on hearts you can try to avoid them, but they can also create funny and exciting moments when hit by mistake. Their "bullets' power" is also funny because, being a spreadshot, it's a little too good at hitting sleeping bats, especially in the Haunted House. And, they're a good challenge for those who are trying to go for a huge score, especially when the fragile pinecones are nearby, hehehe...

All other feedback, I have no, uh, feedback-back for! Haha. But it's good feedback regardless! Thanks again for playing.

Wow, I'm blown away by the amount of content in this one :o

It was really hard for me to stop playing, I love these kinds of hardcore arcade-style games, and I also have a soft spot for shmups! (big Musha Aleste fan :) )
Having said that, I have to admit that I haven't beaten the third stage yet (because I'm too proud to use the continue feature I guess... :shrug:) I'll be back... :)

I always look forward to playing your LD entries :)

Great game! I love the music and graphics, they took me right back to my childhood, when I spent hours on my 8-bit console

This game is simultaneously brilliant and frustrating. Everything is polished super well, and the whole thing feels great to play, but it is so aggressively unapproachable at times that it makes it a little difficult to feel happy about beating. It sort of felt like I lucked into my final victory more than earning it. I have many more thoughts in my full playthrough linked below, but overall it was a fun time, just one that was maybe a little too much for me.

https://youtu.be/cpJUvEtdSm0

Nice graphics, I saw some of your progress on the homepage before it came out good

I tried the first level for 5 times but can't seem to beat it :D
Are there more than 1? The level introduction title implies so.
I managed to use the "stolen" (collected) enemy projectiles, but it didn't help that much :D
Avoiding the projectiles with a head collision box proved to be harder than it sounds. I always tried to avoid with my whole sprite. :(
I like the vibes this game gives me, but it happened to be also just as difficult as these older games were :D
This is a hard to rate entry as I would have to play it for much more time to have a chance to even see what else it has to offer

I ended up playing this game after seeing a few of your posts on the feed throughout the event. You clearly have a passion for game development, the artwork, the mechanics, the theme, etc. As with others, it's too hard for me, but it reminds me of Cuphead (which I also can't beat) and I think you executed it perfectly for the genre. If I ever get much better at this kind of game, I'm going to remember the creepy skeleton pirate thing and come back to this.

Woo, what a blast! My best score eeked out at 216550:


I went with a default-shot-only strategy, plus an important cornerstone of living through the first and third level in particular: Do. Not. Mess. With. The. Red. Bats. I got very cocky in the third level and thought "Yeah I can take them" after all my upgrades, but I was humbled very fast. When I came to the part where there's ten or so hanging out, I held my fire and "sneaked" by. So yeah, might have left some points for the high score there, but I live to tell the tale!

Super fun shmup! Collecting the enemy shots as a mechanic was a cool take on the theme. The upgrades were fun as well, they gave me an incentive to collect the currency objects during the level and not just do it for score. On that note, being able to shoot and destroy some of them was a fun little touch, I thought how you made it that you can't just hold fire and rush through the level mindlessly was very neatly designed. I also liked the style of the game, the NES vibes with the vibrant foreground colors worked well here. Same for the audio design, I thought the sound effects were top-notch as well, made everything feel like it had a nice impact, they're great. Had a lot of fun with this game, great job!

This art is gorgeous! Somehow I love the death animation, which is a good thing because I suck at these kinds of games. I had a lot of fun though. Nothing beats a good bullethell type of game.
I think it's smart how you make the player shoot the ok button to check if they understand the controls

Somehow sometimes it did not shoot, and I could not a corresponding ammo-counter on screen. Is that on purpose?

The music is fenominal, what software did you use?

Nig props to 100th-coin and Mathstr0fficial for the video's! As I'm not that proficient with fast moving games like these, I could enjoy their walkthoughs

Art and the sfx are fantastic! But I'm not a big fun of games like this. I didn't even complete 1 level, because I'm suck. Good luck!

@wouter52

Only two pink magic bullets can be on the screen at once. This is a bit of an old-school genre convention that I find really fun, and in this case was inspired a lot by the game Ninpek (UFO 50). If you get close to enemies and fire at them, your shots will connect sooner, so you can fire more. I wish I added an extra indicator for this, though, so it's more obvious what's happening. Also, the collected enemy bullets' power was intended to make up for this, as they have no such limitation.

In terms of the music, I mostly used FL Studio! It's a great "DAW" software which comes with lots of instrument plug-ins and effects. I just kind of hummed to myself a little bit (I used the starting part of the classical piece "Toccata and Fugue" for inspiration, and then let it develop from there for all the tracks) and then transcribed it, and then kind of built off of it. I also used the Gameboy music software LSDJ for the Game Over track. A special note, the swap break music is 120 BPM exactly so it would be easier to sync up the dancing! :)

Thanks for playing!

This is the most polished game I have played this Ludum Dare. It's an impressively complete project for a jam. The artwork and animations are terrific, and the variety of enemies blew me away. The music and sound effects went perfectly with the rest of the game. I really liked that you got me to learn the enemy behaviors in order to efficiently kill them because of the bullet limit. Very cool game all around, nice work.

Why don't you rate other entries? Your little gem really worth to be played and rated, and so to be shown! I sucks at this kind of games but I can recognize a good one when I found it, more if it's a compo this polished!

Wow! This is such a super polished retro experience! It's just like playing a NES game! The music is really fitting too and the gameplay feels balanced! Also it's spookaween themed, so bonus points!

The game is fun, though I admit it's not my kind of game and a little too hard for me. Still, I played it on stream and had a good time. Awesome aesthetic and graphics! Great work! Here's the VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2594438644

This game is challenging for me. It's super nice and polished considered the time frame. Graphics and audio are top notch for this kind of game. Really well done!

This game was absolutely lovely, reminded me of playing classic arcade games. It was quite difficult (authentic to the arcade game experience) --- I failed the first level ~3 times, but once I got it I was able to beat the game in one go.

I will say there was generally too much going on for me to think strategically about how to use the enemy ammo, so I just primarily used my regular gun and occasionally mashed the special ammo button when I needed something extra. And I avoided the red bats because they killed me more than anything.

Loved all the little creature designs, everything had so much character and the whole package was just a wonderful experience.

Oh man, this is fantastic. I absolutely love shmups like this, and this one feels really solid. If this just had more content I could see myself sitting down and playing it for hours. (Although I feel like I say that about most of your games lol, you make great stuff!)

Gongratz on the great results!