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Dragonfly's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #43 | 3.941 | 3.941 |
| Audio | #44 | 3.529 | 3.529 |
| Fun | #56 | 3.294 | 3.294 |
| Originality | #58 | 3.588 | 3.588 |
| Overall | #60 | 3.345 | 3.345 |
| Accessibility | #74 | 2.941 | 2.941 |
| Controls | #80 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Graphics | #87 | 3.118 | 3.118 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.4-stable
Wildcards Used
N/A
Game Description
Small short Shmup with customizations and light exploration
How does your game tie into the theme?
The player pushes against an unknown frontier of tiles that impact the generation of the level
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
odenhir
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
1
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Comments
Wall of text, OMG. I really like the look of the enemies. They would fit right into my own game. I had some issues with the combat, my keyboard doesn't accept more than 4 or 5 inputs at a time, so if I wanted to shoot and move with more than one gun, I would have to pause shooting, move, then shoot again. I also found it annoying that you could only shoot forward, when most of the time the enemies went way above or behind you. And each combat section feels like it takes a bit too long. As it is, I don't think I would be able to finish the game in an hour. Too much waiting for enemies to spawn, then being overwhelmed by them and having to retry.
I can tell you spent a ton of time working on this, and the upgrade system is super complicated, but I feel like the core game-loop was just frustratingly slow and difficult, and I couldn't explore it. Maybe its just me?
I do like the art and the sound.
Nice work, it’s super cool seeing a similar but different take on the theme. I didn’t quit understand how the weapons worked at first but it was awesome once I got it (though I either don’t understand the cooldown or there where some bugs, it might be improved with some more contrast too).
I really liked the different levels of enemies and their animations. It was good to have the bottom scrolling art, but I think a larger background would make it more engaging. I went laterally but there didn’t really seam to be an incentive to not just go straight, tut this is an impressive amount of work in a short time so I’m not really complaining, keep it up!
We had fun playing. This is a good start. We look forward to seeing your future updates.
We ran into a bug where the combat background stayed after dying. We could still interact with most things, but had no way to see the map.
Thanks for playing! Do you happen to remember what the enemies were like when you ran into this bug? I'm wondering if it happened to be during the boss sequence, which uses extra logic to keep the player in the game. (these enemies are about 3/4 the height of the screen)
It was early on in our first try, with the first enemies. I think we had gone straight up twice, and then turned around to go back to the start to purchase weapons. It was on the first attempt to get back that we died.
There was a lot here! I like the music and a lot of visual effects.
The initial tutorial screen was a bit overwhelming, it would have been nice to learn things a bit more piecemeal.
I also had trouble with navigating the map. I accidentally clicked once or twice on spaces I did want to go to (or even the one I was one) and it immediately thrust into a level without any apparent way to leave other than just completing the level. However, possibly because I accidentally backtracked, the map started moving downward on me and I eventually wasn’t able to make any forward progress.
Regardless, you clearly put a lot of work into this, so nice job!
Thanks for playing! I was really happy with how the visual effects turned out. Using a few tricks with layering different animations and sprites, I was able to extend a small sprite sheet built out of circles with noise into just about every particle effect and enemy.
I definitely agree with the tutorial screen being overwhelming. I plan to make a tutorial intro level to ease the player into the the game and set up some expectations as well.
Sorry you had trouble with the map. I'll look into it moving on it's own, it should only be player driven (with the Up/Down controls). I could also have it recenter after every flight as well, which should give the player the best view of their next options. Once I flesh out the resource system more, I'll add a confirmation screen for the flights, that way the play can get a sense of expected returns per flight and have a layer of confirmation in case of misclicks.
Really liked the idea and execution here. Seems like you had a ton of stuff packed in. Unfortunately for me, it was just a little too difficult in the early stages. I really enjoyed all the upgrades and customizable features. Would love to have time to keep plowing through to the other end of the map.
Thanks for trying it out! I agree, the early level difficulty is pretty daunting. Once I get more enemy variety, I'll be able to tune it so it's a little more gradual.
For the time given and the amount of features you managed to jam pack into this game (without any major bugs) this was very impressive. I do agree with some of the points BaconEgssRL bring sup but it was still enjoyable for sure.
Thanks for taking the time to play! I really was lucky to have that stroke of inspiration in the beginning, and to be in a really good mind state through the following week. Believe it or not, it started out as a 4X farming sim, but then I got addicted to making the travel portions more entertaining.
This is really fleshed out for a first game--nice job on that! The enemy movement is pretty complex as well.
The tutorial felt a bit overwhelming at first -- I would have preferred if there was a way to introduce things to the player in stages as they play with a guided tutorial level or something.
It's also pretty easy to accidently click through the tutorial with left/right click and scroll wheel -- I think individual buttons to proceed/go back might have been better.
Gameplay-wise, I felt like the combat was a bit restrained due to not being able to fly to the edge of the screen, and not being able to shoot backwards (while your enemies can do both.)
Impressive work, looking forward to see what you do next.
-Bacon
Thanks for playing! I really enjoyed designing the enemy waves and getting the timing just right.
The in game guide was a last minute addition. I realized I had completely neglected it, and may have panic dumped everything I could think of onto it. I'm started designing a story driven tutorial level, which I'm getting pretty excited about already!
I did worry a little about the padding around the screen being too large, and the overall play area being a little tight. I do believe the padding helps a little as there's no way to memorize a level, so it guarantees you a little reaction room. I guess I could expand it a little more and add some warnings for offscreen movement.
A decent little shmup! That's a very ambitious first game. The enemies are very well designed and make the shmup side of things engaging. I don't think I have seen the genre mixed with a garage and map before which made for a fresh experience. I reached the end and had a fun time.
If I had any suggestions, my main criticism would be that the game is over explained at the beginning since the game really isn't that complicated. Most players could probably understand what is going on, and for those that don't, I don't think reading so much without context will be fun for them. Linked to that criticism, I think more investment in UI clarity would have been a big improvement. However, I understand how hard UI is to design and implement, and considering that this is your first game and that you had many ideas to worry about, you did a great job.
Well done!
Thanks for playing! I really enjoyed designing and integrating the various systems together.
I do lament the lack of a proper tutorial level, and will probably be the first thing I work on after the jam. Next would be giving the UI proper textures and icons
This was a surprisingly deep shmup! I loved all the different guns and their animations. The enemies were super cool and I loved the 'splitting bullet' bullet pattern from the larger guys. I wish there were more enemies variations, and I wish there was a biiit more polish, but for a solo dev this was great!!
One thing I disliked was the camera stutter/shake on the character, I'm not sure if this was intentional or not. I also wish the character's hitbox was a bit smaller. I also think the info dump at the beginning was a bit too much, but I figured out how to play as I went.
Great work!!
Thanks for trying it out! I can't wait to design more enemies, waves, and projectile types. Enemy design is such a crunchy, exciting, but also finicky subject. I'm glad you liked the few enemies and wave designs I had!
I'm sorry you had stutter issues, nothing like that was designed. There's a small bit of acceleration when the player starts to move to smooth it out a bit, but otherwise it's pretty straight forward using MoveAndSlide(). Would you mind sharing the following with me:
It's more of a jitter than a stutter I suck at describing things lol. But I was playing on Windows 10, using the itch.io app. I'm on 1920x1080 144Hz monitor. Here's a vid showing what I'm talking about, it happens without movement. It's not a big deal (and it might be intentional to give the feeling of movement) but it just bugs out my eyes seeing it.
Oh, that's super interesting. I'll have to try it out with a monitor with a higher refresh rate. It's definitely not intended. Thank you for finding this and letting me know!
Awesome game, I really enjoyed playing it! I liked the behavior of the enemies, as you learn how to dodge better and better throughout the game (even without reading all of the extensive manual). Also the upgrades were a lot of fun and changed the gameplay dramatically. I also enjoyed the music and sounds a lot!
Big fan of the map concept with the hexagon tiles!
Thanks! I'm really proud of how the map generation worked out, learning and figuring out how to get it all to work was quite an adventure.
I'm glad you liked the sounds! This was my first attempt at making sound effects of any kind at all and I'm glad it's so well received. I did want to make my own music too, but finding and picking out the correct mood and vibe turned out really fun as well. Maybe next time I'll plan more time for music.
I do lament trimming the tutorial. Of all the features that got cut at the end, it's the one that hurts the most. I'll definitely plan it better next time.
Awesome entry, I had a lot of fun blowing up purple jellyfish. Per my comments on stream, a tutorial would be good instead of the info dump, but otherwise solid entry. :)
Thank you so much for reviewing this game live! I'll admit I was nervous, but I came out with a whole page of notes and ideas!
It immediately reminded me of UN Squadron. The difficulty was tough but not so much to be frustrating. Controls felt nice and it was good upgrading my ship with a bunch of guns. I was caught by surprise when I noticed they have limited ammo and have to recharge. I enjoyed my time very much with this game.
UN Squadron was one of my favorite games growing up! The game is very much inspired by it, Phalanx, Einhander, and Darius Twins.
I expected the reload mechanic to be an adjustment to players of the genre and hope it wasn't too jarring. I did find it useful in limiting overall DPS and incentivizing weapon diversity. I do like the reload in this context compared to weapon pickups and limited ammo.
Thanks for taking the time to play and review!
I liked it! Its a good game but I think the fact that you can farm up your weapons and stats at the base node kind of discourages you from going further.
Thanks! I did worry that could possibly be the case. There was a time pressure planned (ie. how many flights you can make). I removed it when I removed the story. I had originally wrote it for the "Are we the baddies" wild card, but didn't like possible messages I was conveying. I'll likely keep the time limit a little loose though, as I do like the thought that if a player finds the game too difficult they could adjust the difficulty as a reward of their own actions and progression.
This was a tough exploration game, but even though it took me a while to get past the first few levels, I almost got to the end on my last try!
Great work!
Thanks! I've always liked those kinds of games where you can pick your equipment granularly. I'm glad that shone through here. I agree that the difficulty is sudden in the beginning, and I hope I can improve that curve once I've made more enemy variety. I really enjoyed designing the map system, I can't wait to start fleshing it out more once I have more enemy types.
This was cool! I liked the different weapons and it changed up the gameplay quite a bit. The first couple of levels were really hard for me though, I kept getting hit by the enemy weapons. I prevailed through and made it quite far!
Thanks! I put alot of time and math into the weapons, I'm glad they made a positive impact to the gameplay! I do agree the initial difficulty is rough, I'll definitely put time into designing more enemy types and waves.