I like the fake demo disk aesthetic this has going on. All the graphics are great, and I love the effects on the title screen. Audio was good to and fitted in with the style. Gameplay was pretty standard for a shooter of this type. It managed to keep me entertained for a while, but I must admit I wasn't great at it; One hit kill was a bit too much for my skill level in the end. All that said it's still a solid entry. Good stuff :8ball:

Nice shoot-em-up game! Fantastic intro with demoscene-like effects, and banger music. Game itself has nice pixel art. Gameplay is challenging hard, but I see imprevements and by 10th try I've reached blue boss, but not defeated him yet. There are various gun upgrades, I liked that brrr brrr one the most. My humble suggestions - reduce player ship or it's collider. Good luck with your game!

A quality game, when I got a machine gun it became noticeably more fun

This is a very polished shoot’em up, but it was too difficult for me. If I got hit even once, I had to start all over again, and after a while it started to feel more frustrating than enjoyable.

Engaging and simple, with smooth gameplay.

I don't have a gamepad. And the keyboard is inconvenient to play on 😪

Wow you were not lying that was brutal. Very polished and nice experience. Music was phenomenal and graphics, combat, everything fit together so well. It felt like i was playing a long lost shmup from late 90s. Also little detail but i loved that the item drops were not random, made planning the route way more fun.

Those music tracks were pumping! fit the whole aesthetic really well. Overall pretty fun and tight gameplay. All the upgrades i saw felt really nice and juicy, the mini gun was great, i also really like the addition of the ammo counter and customising each side.
I'm not sure if there were additional checkpoints later on, but it would have been nice to restart closer to where i died.
Great entry.

Great game! As soon as I got to the main menu with that awesome D&B track and the aurora borealis, I knew this would be a great experience — and it really was.

The game is a bit too difficult, but still very engaging. I’d suggest allowing 2–3 hits before death, as well as adding a way to restore health during gameplay.

Other than that, I have no complaints — great job!

Addition: what’s the name of this track? I listened to it for over 10 minutes without even starting the game — I’d love to add it to my playlist

@miclefirst It's called "Signal Received" it's available on Soundcloud & Bandcamp right now, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon, etc. coming soon!

https://soundcloud.com/officialconduit/sets/aurora4prelude

https://conduit-edm.bandcamp.com/album/aurora-4-prelude-2001-demo-disc-original-soundtrack

@conduit Thank you very much for the link!
Really great tracks

I like pixel art

The one life - one hit dynamic is really brutal. Artstyle and Audio on point, really got the feeling of those old school games back then. Great Job!

I liked the art and music! I do love a shmup as well.

First off, this game looks really nice! The title screen alone is incredible, and the 3D buildings on the sides of the road are an impressive feat using GameMaker. The game feels good to play, too; shooting down enemies is satisfying, and I liked how the speed the player moved along the street changed as the game progressed (it didn't affect gameplay, but it certainly gave the game an exhilarating feel).

I think the progression and lives system, though, is flawed. The hitboxes in this game aren't especially forgiving, and so dying in one hit became frustrating quickly. The player is nominally given three lives, but that didn't appear to actually mean anything, as dying always sent me back to the very beginning no matter how far in I got - and hence a game over was no different to any other death, besides a longer time to wait until the next attempt (on that note, the death animation is probably a little too long... it would be fine if you didn't die in one hit, but since you do the long animation feels a bit extraneous). The game also didn't appear to keep any kind of score, so while the level was clearly not procedurally generated, I had no way of knowing whether I was close to the end or not (assuming there is an end).

Overall, though, I had a good time with this! The presentation is on point, the game felt polished and solidly made, and it was fun to play. Nice work :)

My feedback is similar to @python-b5: one-hit death in this particular game is kinda frustrating and diminishes the potential fun a lot. Otherwise, pretty solid game with a good amount of juice and vibes. Maybe not very innovative, but I guess that's not the point of this game. Cool!

A typical spaceship game from the early days of the internet. It was a trip down memory lane.

One-hit kills are a common mechanic in this type of game (along with items that prevent it, such as shields, bodyguard ships, or any other item with that purpose), and that didn't bother me, but starting the game from the beginning is a real bummer. Over time, the desire to continue diminishes. I'm terrible at this type of game, so I couldn't get very far.

The gameplay is smooth and very polished, and the graphics are very beautiful. The music kept me engaged the whole time; it's great music for this style of game.

Congratulations!

Nice shoot-em-up game. Also cool music.

Nicely done and well-polished. I can't say that it's my genre (I could not get very far), but it looks and plays cleanly. An easy mode where I could take more hits would be appreciated.

Really solid shooter that was too hard for me to get far. I enjoyed the variety of weapons and the limited ammo with them. The 00s aesthetic with the art and the music were great. Nice work.

I really enjoyed this, the game had great vibes. Graphics looked really cool, and the audio matched it perfectly. I think you did a great job of recreating the feeling of games of the era. I do echo what others said though, I am not sure what the lives were actually doing for me given that if you get hit once you have to start over from the beginning. It was cool that I could practice and make it a bit further each time, but I think I would really appreciate if the lives meant I could respawn instantly and keep going. I liked the enemy variety I saw though, and I felt like I was getting a bit better with every run (as long as I got the rapid-fire gun dropped :p)

Great little shmup. Love the 90s disc loading sounds. Frantic action and retro graphics.

Excellent work -- well done!

This is a brutal game - but also magnificent. Probably best audio-visual experience I had this gamejam.
And seeing that seemingly noone else completed the game, I decided it's time to git gud and give authors what they wanted (and deserved):



- Yes, it's brutal! Hitbox is bigger than expected for a shmup, but at least not so many enemy bullets on the screen. Also, after I found out that you can pick "from the left" and "from the right", and if you have matching weapon ammo is added and not replaced, it became a bit easier.
- Yes, big blue robot is the final boss! After I got to him with extra ammo it was not that hard.

Thank you so much for creating this game. I ABSOLUTELY enjoyed the audio and sound design, and visuals were on point. Liked small detail of lamp lights looking like a sine wave :)

Classic gameplay, plays and feels very competent. Immediately addicting

Absolutely loved this one -- ive spent a lot of time playing shmups over the years so def got a kick out of this one. Sprites looked awesome, gameplay was fun as well, guns were great, and the audio was spectacular. Tiny nitpicky thing -- the stars on the sidebars I found distracting. I think black might be better! Enjoyed the bombastic energy and the retro vibes which you both totally nailed in your own way. Congrats!!

That was fun and very well made! I made it to the final boss (or first boss?) before I gave up. It's fun but pretty difficult. I think the ship might be slightly too big as I found it difficult to dodge bullets. I managed to get to the end when I started prefiring to kill enemies as quick as possible before they start shooting, and when I realized I didn't have to kill all the enemies.

The game as a whole feels very polished and the music is great!

Thank you all for the stellar feedback! Ghost and I revisited shmups for this Dare mainly because that was the genre we picked for our first Dare together. It was really cool seeing how far we've came. I'm sure I can speak for both of us that we're super happy with all the feedback we've received and glad so many people enjoyed Aurora 4 Prelude! :)

that fake demo disc aesthetic is so nostalgic music alone made me sit at the main menu for 10 mins beat the blue boss but one hit death is brutal for my boomer reflexes

Great entry! I love the demo disc aesthetic, and the drum & bass soundtrack is KILLER. There's no better music to jam out to while shooting spaceships. The 3D buildings whipping past add a great sense of speed which is only helped by those frantic breakbeats. Kudos to the musician, it's amazing work, especially for just one weekend!

The gameplay is pretty standard for a schmup of this style, but it works pretty well! I like the different weapons which add some variety & strategy to the game. Dual wielding is super fun. I did get a little confused by how you pick up weapons - it seems that weapons replace the slot on the side you move into them with, which is kind of odd and means I kept accidentally replacing weapons I wanted to keep. I think you should prioritize filling empty weapon slots when they're available. My weapons also kept swapping between sides when I changed direction, which meant there was no consistency in which button fired which gun. That definitely hurts the strategy aspect of choosing which weapon to use, but it'd be easy to fix!

As other people have said, I also think there's a bit of a difficulty issue. This genre is generally pretty hard, so I don't mind a challenge, but the one-hit kill is brutal, especially because your ship's hitbox is so large. I think letting you take maybe three hits before dying (and maybe even adding some heal pickups?) would let you keep the difficulty without making it frustrating. (Also, just as a side note, I'm not sure there's a point to the lives system - all a game over does is make me press start again on the title.)

Great work! A good schmup is always a blast, and the music was a real highlight.