Play game
Reverie Breaker's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #1 | 4.208 | 4.208 |
| Overall | #5 | 4.167 | 4.167 |
| Visual | #14 | 4.292 | 4.292 |
| Fun | #14 | 3.917 | 3.917 |
| Theme | #59 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Are you using any third party assets?
We made everything during the jam, except sound effects and the font:
- Game SFX Treasury pack by Steven Melin
- Silver font by Poppy Works, Wolfgang Wozniak
Are you using any AI generated assets?
No AI
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Spoilers ahead
This feels insanely polished for the game jam. I honestly didn’t expect a hard mode, but when it appeared, it was like a new kind of game unfolded before me. It instantly gave the game some light puzzle elements as you try to avoid destroying the unstable enemies. Well done!
The UI is very polished! I also appreciate the remappable controls, though some buttons use Enter and some use Z.
As for the gameplay, I think the time-to-kill of the basic enemies is a bit too long, given that they often spawn in a group. Also, they all shoot at the same time, and each shoots two bullets at different speeds, which creates a blanket of bullets that is hard to dodge, especially when cornered by their movement.
Talking about movement, I dislike how the enemies are invulnerable when they move in at high speeds. Most of the time, I cannot outrun the enemies spawning offscreen and get crushed. I think the formations are very cool, but maybe reduce their speed or indicate their movement before they appear.
Finally, the loadouts are a cool concept, though I can't help but feel that the game is currently balanced around the yellow loadout. The purple loadout has abusable missiles (holding Z and occasionally pressing X), but no shooting backwards is a game-breaking disadvantage. The fish... it has laggy hit detection and hitsounds. It would be viable if it could knock back bullets like a baseball bat. But currently, with the frequency and density of bullet spawns, melee is not playable.
Overall, it is a fun game to play!
Thank you for your detailed feedback. I'll reply in order:
- Time to kill/Blanket of Bullets - overall, each enemy wave is designed to be a positional mini-puzzle. It should be possible to either get rid of every enemy before their attacks become too much, or take down a few in a way that makes it easier to dodge the rest. They can all be managed without taking a hit, but you do have 11 hits before you lose a "life", so there's some room for mistakes.
- Enemies moving in quickly - good point. I also noticed that some waves, especially on Hard mode, arrive too quickly, so I will tweak their timings. Some sort of "danger" mark for when an enemy appears would be ideal in the future.
- Enemies being invulnerable on spawn - there is exactly one wave where this is the case, the final wave of the first stage. Every other enemy should be killable immediately after spawning. If that's not the case then this is a bug.
- Yellow loadout - the game was indeed balanced with Yellow in mind, but every other loadout was designed and adjusted to have its niche. The intention was for each weapon to have its own playstyle. Purple homing *can* hit the enemies behind you given time and lack of enemies in front, but it's not as good for the job as Yellow. This is an intended weakness, one that the player needs to adapt to. Other than that, Purple is pretty much the choice for taking care of the entire screen while focusing on dodging, something that Yellow can't do as it forces more precise positions. If every loadout had the same strengths then there would be no point adding them.
- As for the fish - I've beaten Normal mode with it without taking any hits. It's playable, and is the best in slot for crowd control, but requires a completely different approach, rewarding an aggressive playstyle and planning your moves before a wave appears/starts shooting. It has some bugs and unfortunately, tapping it instead of holding the button will cause the weapon to break, which is most likely what happened to you (charge attack is not as badly affected though because the player can't tap it). This is an issue I really want to fix but couldn't do it during the jam due to engine limitations.
Glad you had fun with the game, and I appreciate your points of view.
This game was so good! Really great polish on pretty much everything!
I'm speechless at how good this is.
Played through twice, with the yellow 4-way shot and with purple spread. It took me some time to get into the groove on the first boss the shield, but then I figured it out and beat the first boss, and then the second stage and the sword boss. It felt great.
I like the 4-way shot best, and it kind of feels like the game was mainly designed around it (forgive me if I'm mistaken). It allows for a greater degree of maneuverability, you can fly freely around the screen and you're always able to hit the enemy, almost like in twin-stick shooters. And enemy fly patterns seem to accommodate for that degree of flexibility.
The fish weapon seems like fun, but it would definitely require some getting used to, the first boss seems really hard with it.
I don't even know how to approach the hard mode, my precision in not hitting the purple enemies is really bad :)
The game is amazing, I absolutely adore it. Thank you for making it!
Thank you so much 🙏the game was indeed designed with Yellow in mind primarily, though I did try to consider how the other shot types would do in specific situations. Overall - Yellow is pretty flexible but requires more precise positioning, Purple can hit anywhere from any spot but the homing shots are slow (and the smaller crystal enemies will often tank them to keep a bigger enemy safe), Fish has unparalleled crowd control but puts you very close to the danger zone (especially when fighting bosses). The intention was for each kit to have its strengths and weaknesses and to require a different approach
Polished feel !
Thanks for playing and the kind comment! :)
Sick music, really like the simplicity but the game itself felt very polished. Very well made!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the soundtrack! :)
This was really fun! Felt very polished, i liked the audio and visuals. Ended up a bit too hard for me to get through on an input delay sadly, so I hope I get to play it on not a vm sometime.
11/Big fish, would recommend.
Thank you so much. If you happen to be using Linux - consider trying Proton, the game's engine supports Steam Deck so it should run decently well with it
good game with interesting mechanics. it would be cool if the focus mechanic slowed down time. it would have helped a lot with the boss since some of the generated attacks are impossible to dodge.
This looks and feels so good to play, it feels so polished :) I didn't really get what the stability meter did, but it was very fun nonetheless
very polished, the progression felt good. some satisfying gameplay. i got to the boss and i couldn't dodge anything, skill issue i guess.
I just realized that you made that game last year, i tried it before this jam started and it was amazing but this one is even better. Thanks for rating our game and hope you win this year jam.
I loved your game last year and had to try what you made this year. You did not disappoint. The art style looks great and I love the idea of the character select, although I started with fish girl and that was not a good idea as it felt way harder than the homing/wave one, but that's just a skill issue on my part lol. Really cool game play and as always, great job
I loved the art style and bloom! Destroying the crystals was also very satisfying! Overall, it's a great game! Good work :D
Very cool game, I loved the atmosphere!
Imo the focused shot type is quite OP if you know how to use it properly. I think the big fish should’ve done a bit more damage given the risk you have to take to get closer to the enemies!
Shattering the little crystals is really satisfying, and the patterns are fun to dodge.
The hard mode mechanic didn’t quite convince me, I found a bit annoying rather than fun, but perhaps that’s just me.
Overall, great job!
Thank you for playing. In terms of balancing, Yellow shot type is the baseline - boss kill time among the three shot types is about the same from my tests, though in practice this will of course vary from player to player and how they approach positioning. The fish has a somewhat janky implementation - for example, its normal swing deals higher damage right in front, enough to oneshot the most common enemy. It's not very intuitive, so I want to add some extra visuals for it before deciding whether it needs a buff.
For the Hard mode, I will most likely add separate stages for each shot type instead of force switching to Yellow like it does now, with potentially some new and different corrupted crystal effects
Stellar presentation and a nice touch of humor as well !
I really liked this one, the 3 different character selection is really cool and i like the portraits, just for fun the 1st one i tried was the one who fights with a giant fish and i didn’t know what to expect from the description haha. Then i got absolutely anihilated cause its a melee character :p
Tried the other 2 ans i understood a bit more how to survive some sections cause having projectiles to keep a bit of a safe distance with the enemies made things a tiny bit easier.
OST is also fire.
My only gripe is that it’s a bit difficult, some of these patterns are quite fast and dense and i have no idea where you are supposed to navigate to dodge all that, especially on some from the boss.
but regardless it’s a really cool game, you all did a great job :)
Thank you so much. Balancing difficulty is notoriously... difficult... because there are so many people of different skill and experience. In the future, I would like try adding checkpoints before each boss so you don't have to restart the entire level when you die, which should remove some excess friction from having to learn the boss' patterns
Yup checkpoints could be good ^^
very good.
Thanks for playing!! :)
I cleared Hard Mode with the middle character. It was an excellent game. The sound of the crystals shattering is incredibly satisfying, and it makes defeating enemies really fun. The description mentions two levels, but since Hard Mode offers a completely different gameplay experience, it felt like I got to enjoy the equivalent of four levels. The boss attack patterns are also unique and really cool.
That said, I never quite figured out what "Core Stability" actually means. Also, in Hard Mode, the player ship change from the normal, which was a bit puzzling. But that might be intentional and not a bug.
In simple terms, "Core Stability" is like your lives counter. It depletes when you lose all "Integrity", and some theme-related effects trigger based on how low it is. However, if you're doing very well and avoid dying (losing all "integrity"), you never get to interact with this mechanic. Seasoned shmup players are understandably confused. It is a problem I would like to find a solution for, but for less experienced players that definitely die at least a few times - the mechanic works as intended, so I think it serves its purpose for the scope of the jam.
Hard mode has been designed with Yellow in mind, which is why the switch after Stage 2 occurs, it was just not communicated very well. In the future, I would like add separate Hard mode stages for each character. Thank you for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed the game.
So simple yet so fun. The game is way too hard for me tho lmao xD Smooth animations. Beeg fish raised my rating a lot HAHA
Thanks for enjoying the game :D
I beat the normal mode with each of the 3 mementos, could never even reach the boss in hard mode (I suppose technically with neither of the 3, I was wondering how the hoaming missiles would behave with the things you shouldn't hit, I guess we will never know ).
You made an amazing game as usual. It just is so smooth and feels so good, it's a delight. The music is awesome, the controls and speeds are perfect and the visual and sound feedback so, so satisfying. The patterns of the shield are inventive and you really feel the weight when it bumps into the wall, same with the charge attack with the fish. The 3 mementos do feel different, I never thought I was doing the same thing again when playing with the next one.
The difficulty is pretty much perfect for me, default is satisfying to beat and none of the sequences I've seen in hard mode felt absurd even if I'm not able to chain them without losing all my lives in the process.
I guess as it triggers automatically the fish charge attack may as well be autofire.
I had a ton of fun playing this one.
Funny that you mention homing and hard mode. I actually got yelled at by the musician because he ran into a bug that let you keep it. It was funny, I think he died very quickly, hard mode has been designed with Yellow in mind and other weapons probably make it unwinnable. In the future, each memento path will probably have a customized hard mode, with different corrupted enemy positions and/or behaviors.
I'm glad you enjoyed the game. Thank you for playing.
This was a fun experience that I can see developing into much more with time. Great work as always Aru