I like the genre. I had issues with gun. I believe it can evolve

Good concept, but really weird mouse and keyboard controls. In particular having to right click to dash caused a lot of problems when playing in browser. Movement controls also controlling aiming makes game difficult and there seems to be problems with collision detection in several places, resulting in enemies that are effectively unkillable. It's got a fun premise and aesthetic and definitely has potential.

I might be missing something but I can seem to get down from this platform? 

@shaggy sorry my bad, you're supposed to hold down and press jump and you'll fall through those platforms. I'll update the tutorial.

Pretty fun, wished there was audio. Sprites and backgrounds looked very nice. It felt a bit weird having to jump with shift rather than space or Q.

@notapollogising Sweet thanks!

Well I did not expect having such a good time! The game is pretty simple, but the whole physics are polished and satisfying. The whole style is really good, kinda low resource, and the jokes go along well with the whole game. I would have loved to hear your music and see what would be next, congrats I had a good time and smiled during the whole playtrough.

Good thing I'm not a game journalist, or that tutorial would have been too much for me to handle :O
Jokes aside, this was a lot of fun to play. And not 'oh, constructive criticism' fun to play, but like- I actually wanted to be there, fighting the squid boss- fun to play. Legit well designed bosses, and the levels kept me on my toes and weren't too bad either.
First thing I would fix is some inconsistent telegraph timing- if something is coming off screen, it should have, like, a full second warning- squid charges felt really fast. Levels felt easy compared to boss difficulty- maybe longer levels would be worth the while? Also, maybe add a few indicators for where you should dash. Generally, impressive entry!

@eli-peters Hey, I found the collision detection bug and since fixed it, the control scheme also seemed to be a common problem so I switched that up as well. I appreciate the feedback

It was fun, especially boss fight :)
But k and j not the best buttons for easy operation, try next time to pick up the keys that we usually use with right hand

A few bugs, problems and weird design choices, but the boss battle was actually good, lots of different attacks by the boss, really challanging, felt like Cuphead. (but then the restart button didn't work :P)

@abk507 I'll look into the restart button bug. Could you go into details on what design choices were weird?

@notapollogising These are mostly design problems that just make the game feel a little weird or 'unstable' sometimes, or just not polished. Its just a jam game, so sometimes the dev doesnt have enought time to polish (my game, for example, is trash for lack of time).
-The restart button: screen got darker, but nothing happened. pressing space again restarted the darkness.
-In some backgrounds, the laser gets really hard to see.
-At some point, there is a flying drone shooting me, but I can barely see it and I didn't knew to the point that enemies could shoot back.
-You can't shoot diagonally. (not a problem, but would be good)
-There is a place where melee enemies spawn from the sky? and fall right in your head.

There are more flaws in the game, but it had a tutorial, coll graphics and really nice boss battle, so it was a good game and I enjoyed playing it :).


edit: There was also a glitch in sound, sometimes step makes no sound and sometimes it spams sound.

@abk507 thank you! I'm doing a post jam build so I greatly appreciate the feedback.

Had a blast playing this. Great job with the bosses. I loved the first boss' cigar attack, super funny.
I had it crash when I tried to restart after dying to the gangster boss (console said something about (not inside tree errors), and I think some of the goons in that level (the ones on the scaffolding) just walk off the edge of the level and disappear. Besides that though, I had a blast, really well done!

Looks nice, sadly no audio, as you mentioned at the end of the game.

like the art though.

I have no idea how to get very far into the game, but I really like the games visual style.

@jk5000 hey can you specify at what point specifically did you get stuck? was it on the first level? there's a section you're supposed to dash from an antenna onto a rooftop and I don't think I made it clear

Yes, it was there. But I actually tried to jump to the rooftop, but was not able to get over there. But maybe I am just really bad at platformers.

@jk5000 nah ur good, multiple people have had that problem. you're supposed to dash across but it's the first time you have to use the dash mechanic in the game so I should have come up with a way to intuitively teach the player that. thank you for the feedback though!

To much text at the start could really use a skip all button, the boss fight was fun.

beat the game, it was a cute and fun experience. but it has a few glaring design issues

the first level was a bit confusing as to where to go, one saw buildings in the background so assumed they were just sprites until i had to take a dumb guess to figure out i could jump on the buildings too. could have put a enemy within sight or something ontop of the buildings so the player could more easily figure out "oh im supposed to be here"

there was a lack of telegraphing, in the squid fight the animation for when the squid is coming only plays for one of the layers so when the squid swooshes back it feels out of nowhere with no time to react. the telegraphing animation for that could have been longer though.

not sure if this was just me but the knives in the first boss felt a bit unfair, especially since the boss afterwards was much less difficult. since the knives came at you so fast there was only one real direction you could go in and once you commit to that you would have to hope you have enough space.

lastly there was lack of feedback. when i hit a enemy i didnt know if i damaged them i just had to hope, when i shot the drone above me i didnt know if i hurt it or if i was even able to damage it but eventually it just disappeared. it would have also given a sense of progression if the boss battles had a healthbar or any indication of getting weaker.

overall for a jam game this is something you should be proud of! congrats on doing the ludum dare! i hope you can take these elements and implement them into your future projects and continue making better games! thank you for sending me this.

Oh wow, this is such a hidden gem! Thank you for submitting it to the stream, I had a TON of fun playing it :smile:

First of all, I appreciated the great writing, I'm not usually that interested in story (specially in jam games), but the humor in this one helped a lot and in the end it was one of my favorite parts of the game. The game itself is great btw, very strong Cuphead vibes which is a great compliment. Both of the bosses are some of the most fun bosses I have ever had the pleasure of facing in the hundreds (I must have passed a thousand by now, 19th LD) of Jam games that I have played.

The art is also fantastic, it's so charming! :trophy:

Cool attacks from the squid boss. Not a high score for theme. A nice game that heavily reminds me of Cuphead

Fun game, lot of cool stuff here. Amusing story, nice gameplay.

This was really cool! I'm really impressed by the Cuphead-style bosses- I noticed some frame-by-frame animations in there. Jason especially had a lot of personality. I loved the variety of attacks from each boss. It also seemed like the squid had a new attack it pulled out around half health? It was exciting, cool game!

I couldn't really figure out how to get past the first level... I went all the way to the right and couldn't progress any further, and then tried going all the way to the left, and was able to go past the screen boundary and died... I loved the sprites, and the backgrounds were nice too. The mechanics themselves were OK, I just couldn't really tell how to progress.

Great game, nice Cuphead-like experience! I see potential here) And yes I've beat your game! Squid god, was beaten!

Pretty cool game! It reminds me of Cuphead!
The graphics are cool and it feels like there is enough content (2 levels and 2 bosses for a game jam is really good) but the game really lacks sound design, even more than it lacks of music.
I don't know why but when I died in the second level I got directly to the boss!

Overall well done!

@doomshmuck its not so clear how to progress in the jam build. you're supposed to go upstairs on the far right and walk to the antenna, and then you're able to dash across to the left. sorry about that!