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A jam submission

VMIRView game page

2D Topdown Shooter Bullet Hell Metroidvania Month Jam 29
Submitted by AzyrGames — 16 hours, 51 minutes before the deadline
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VMIR's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall#72.7752.775
Execution#72.9002.900
Enjoyment#82.9002.900
Sensory#102.7002.700
Metroidvania#112.6002.600

Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Team/Developer
AzyrGames

External assets
Music from Fania Katz, Enemy from Minidustry

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

I suck at bullet hells but it was pretty good, going to come back to it after the Jam and try and get past the second stage of the first boss! (please tell me there are only 2 stages), maybe I was being crap at picking up cash... but would have loved to have more money to buy power ups before getting to it..

Edit (well not strictly an edit), but self edit... I have just seen there is a heal button?!?...  I probably should have checked controls before hand!  Really cool entry

Submitted(+1)

Bullet Hell !
I haven't get so far because I'm bad in bullet hell and linux output seem little laggy ( have some visible frame drop ).

Two point for gameplay
- I think small mob is too tough compare to first ?  boss health.
- no effect on heal ? it's fine if heal is instant, but I need to hold F.

and... maybe Bug ? I got around 4~5 hit before any actual damage at the fight of dash ability.
before that, I try to heal once and use the save point after game start.

there also some bug happen while I trying to use PS4 controller, below is some detail.
- When I plugged controller to PC, keyboard movement become weird, character only move at start frame unless I keep pressing same key after 2~3s.
- Another problem with my controller is sight keep floating around the character and bullet almost shot to wrong way.
first one maybe ( well, I swear 99.9% ) cause by part of my controller problem - right stick broken and keep random move under 0.1
I haven't test external tool to apply deadzone, but this should not cause bullet shot to wrong way while I pushing any direct so there may have some other bug.
after, I unplug controller and keyboard + mouse work well.

Developer

Thanks for playing and the huge feedback.

- Yes: Enemies are tanky, by design, because you get an upgrade to make u stronger.
- Heal needs to hold; I need indications here.
- There is a known bug where the heal picks up pushes over the health cap. Happy accident, I guess

Controllers are super janky because I'm not spending enough time optimizing that.

Submitted

Is that you want ALL enemy tanky by your design ?
just suggest at least change ONE enemy ( the smallest one ) have low health ( 1 ~ 3 shot at start ) and reduce their reward to... maybe one coin ?
In my opinion, make EVERY enemy tanky with large amount of them will made player feel frustrating, unless there only have Two or Three in a room.

Developer

You get a Damage Upgrade and a Shotgun that can kill them in few shot BTW

Submitted(+1)

Nice entry, with good visuals (especially the VFX) and audio!

I'm no good at twin-stick shooters and bullet hells so I didn't get far, but I liked what I saw and was intrigued to see more of it. I also enjoyed the badge system, though I only got the magnet and coin+ badges.

I encountered a few issues though. First is the healing action really missing an audio cue both when you're focusing and then once you're healed. It made it pretty difficult to heal in the middle of fights, as you need to pay attention to your health bar instead of the enemies.

Space to dash was too far for me from either WASD or the mouse, so hitting it during the action was a struggle. This means I never really took advantage of it to avoid attacks. I would have preferred it on the right mouse button for quick access. Playing with the gamepad felt a bit better, though it was a bit strange to use the analog triggers instead of the shoulder buttons. Also, the cursor was jittering, but this may be a deadzone issue as my controller is pretty old.

The enemies felt a bit too spongy for my tastes, but again: bullet hells are not my genre of predilection. I only had a few minutes to play this evening so I gave up at the first boss's second phase. My biggest issue with it was that your invincibility period is really short (if you even have one, I'm not sure) so one mistake usually meant I lost most of my health at once. Though I'm sure I could have beaten it with perseverance, a bit of luck and maybe after grinding for the longer reach badge.

All in all a solid entry. I definitely enjoyed my time with it and I was intrigued to see more of it. It could really shine with some added polish. Good job! :)

Submitted(+1)

Well done. I wish the shape and size and position of the player hitbox was shown more clearly. I'm stuck at the second boss.

Developer

Thanks for playing!

The Player's hitbox was in the character's body, but the collision was in the feet. And ye, the second boss is kinda hard if you're not familiar with this genre, its design, so you need to be brave enough to approach the boss more closely.

 I will take care of that in the post-jam version.

Submitted(+1)

This was the one I was waiting for, as I was following the updates on Discord.

I really like the concept, as I'm a big fan of both metroidvanias and twin-stick shooters. The graphics serve the game well, though a bit more variation on some locations would have been nice. I like the main character, and the nice touch of shells hitting the ground.

I ran into lots of bugs however. Most of the time the weapon would simply not fire for me. I had to press left click repeatedly until the weapon would eventually start to fire, then holding down the button would have it fire non-stop without issues. Coin collection was also buggy. I would collect coins but the number wouldn't go up. And the music, while somewhat fitting, was too repetitive.

With a bit of polishing and sorting out the bugs this could be a great game. Well done!

Developer

Thanks for playing, and I really appreciate the feedback.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Nice work! It was really rough for me having to play with a mouse, esp trying to aim while dodging, I just can’t do it unless I’m on a gamepad so I might be stuck on the second boss. Seeing PiePie’s feedback, bummed I didn’t get the saw blade, I’ll probably get some sleep and try again tomorrow.

I didn’t understand the health, sometimes I’d hear a “hit react” noise but not see any health loss. Definitely wanted a map, or at least some distinctive flooring/walls/something in the sections. I realized how the shop is the hub, but if feels so random for a while. It’s certainly possible I missed stuff, but I think having some more random enemies spawn to farm money would be nice so I could get some upgrades.

The enemy variety was decent but I didn’t like how they would pause then suddenly whip around and fire so you never knew where they would end up aiming.

It was really nice how the second boss is so close to the save, if it was a long trek, I’d probably just give up. I love the “moving” platforms. They’re a little bouncy, and I realized it’s easy to screw yourself by dashing off and the platform might end up bouncing away but I also realized the falling is pretty generous, which I really appreciate; that kind of detail rarely makes it into jams.

Developer

Thanks for playing and for the very nice feedback!

You're right, dodging and aiming at the same time is difficult, especially in a top-down shooter. The tip that I gave you now was to focus on either dodging or aiming at a time. Just shoot in a general direction, and then focus on dodging. Sure, you'll need to cover the gap, but a bit of a learning curve doesn't hurt.

And yes, I think you found a bug where picking up a health drop gives you more than the max health. Think of it as a happy accident; you get health points.

The game definitely needs a map, to be honest. I just don't have enough time, just a skill issue with the scope creep. The map sprites also need some improvement overall.

About the enemy, yes, the time gap for them to look at the player is not long enough. That's a very easy fix, though.

The "Shootable Moving Platform" section was actually supposed to be some kind of water. I just didn't have time to create a sprite that would do it justice, I wanted it to have a ripple effect.

I hope you have a better time on your next playthrough.

Jam Judge (2 edits) (+1)

Very fun! I was looking forward to play it since you've been sharing a lot of  progress for it on the server. Sad thing it still turned out fairly unfinished tho.


I like the gameplay, you can't really go wrong with classic bullet hells, and the bosses are very solid too. It has a bit of jank admitedly, I could never tell when I could or could not dash(there's no indication of it) and sometimes I was able to dash twice in a row, sometimes I wasn't, it was weirdly inconsistent.

A lot of stuff lacks clear indications honestly. I couldn't really tell wheter or not I was actually healing and also couldn't tell if  the save points were actually saving or not, since those inputs had no feedback whatsoever. It's also a little hard to tell wich weapon I'm currently equipped since they both look super similar and there's also no clear feedback cue of "weapon changed" nor anything of the sort, but that's not as much of a big deal, I can just shoot a bullet to figure out lol. ALTOUGHT, I couldn't tell wheter or not I was actually holding the right click down when I wanted to launch a sawbladie, since again, no indication whatsoever, and that was a big deal for me since my right mouse button is a little malfunctioning, so knowing wheter or not it was actually being held down would have been a huge help.  (The sawbladie launch itself also felt extremelly inconsistent, sometimes I would just do normal shotgun shots, other times I wouldn't shoot anything at all (Because again, there's also no indication of wheter or not the sawbladie cooldown is over or not), but  I'll give that the benefit of the doubt, since as I said, it could be inconsistent just for me since my mouse is broken lol).


That said, I really love the mechanics you throw around here tho! The platforms you move by shooting backwards, and of course, the Sawblade you can "stand on", THAT was genius wording!!

Like, I think it wasn't even intentional, but when a game says you can "stand on"  a sawblade, it usually just means that the sawblade won't hurt you, but here, you can LITERALLY "STAND ON"IT, as a platform!!! Like, I love this!!! It felt simply genius when I had that idea, tried it, and it worked!! If your intention was that it should be blatantly obvious that it works like that, then you kinda failed, you have to actually put your brain to use to put 2 and 2 togheter here, but honestly I'd rather you cherish that, the feeling of figuring it out is aewsome xD


I also like the aesthetics, and the music chosen is viby, but not a lot else to comment there sadly. I like the background looking like a fall to the abyss tho, I'm a sucker for "don't look down" kinda levels x)


Also, the "Victory, thanks for playing" text on the middle  of a random room just for me to walk to the side and face a whopping giant boss afterwards was very funny lol

Developer (1 edit)

Wow, Thanks for the long feedback.

I was painfully aware of those unclear indications, and there are more than you had written here, just a really unfinished aspect of the Jam game xD

The dash was intentional; you had 4 frames to execute a chained dash; if you press too soon or too late, it becomes a normal dash.

Not having clear indications is just my skill issues. The alter fire you need to hold to shoot. The saw blade had a cooldown and could only shoot 1. 

I was prioritizing QA and fixing a lot of bugs that cost me more time than I wanted.

I would need to make it clearer about "your sawblade", but I really understand the feeling where you get stuck and find out the mechanic you. I think I just captured the AHA moment here, but not really.

Submitted(+1)

Controls feel nice, but the camera is a bit too fast to follow the cursor, making it feel a bit dizzy. Enemy variety and attack patterns are solid.

I got to 92 coins before getting stuck, no more paths to take. At least not super clear which way the rest of the game is. Maybe add a minimap? 

I managed to pick up a powerup of some kind but didnt have time to read what it does before it disappeared. One of the menus/shops has "lorem ipsum"-text so it feels a bit unfinished. Not sure how to progress or where the rest of the game is.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback.
You can stand on the Shotgun Sawblade. Try to do something with it <3