Play game
Eden's Exalt's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #3 | 4.316 | 4.316 |
| Fun | #3 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Audio | #3 | 4.158 | 4.158 |
| Visual | #5 | 4.474 | 4.474 |
| Theme | #72 | 2.053 | 2.053 |
Ranked from 19 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?
The fonts and some of the sound effects are third-party, the rest was made during the jam
Are you using any AI generated assets?
No AI
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
video: my 2 runs (and settings setup at the start its fine just skip a bit)
overall very good and the game is very intuitive for a shmup expectance, the stages are a little bit on the easier side but thats fine, it doesnt detract from the game at all.
the boss is much better than the stage for a survival setting, since you do have to lock in a bit, but theres nothing unreasonable.
if i had to nitpick, i would say that the 5 things that shoot inwards on one of the boss attacks is maybe a bit cramped on a first playthrough compared to the rest if you also wanna damage the boss granted i suppose i was kinda trying to tackle it like boss4 in sdoj so its kinda just user error at that point.. that and the hyper doesnt really feel very hyper. these also dont detract from the game (and also my rating) but its just something im pointing out i guess.
GG
Thank you very much for playing, your feedback and your video! I'm glad you found the gameplay intuitive (and for the difficulty I intentionally held myself back a bit to make sure most jam participants can clear, glad it wasn't an issue for a seasoned player)
Regarding the drones/options circling around phase - there are several choices you can make here, though the original intention was to make this phase a yummy target for hyper's on-hit item spawning. You can stay inside or outside the circle and then use hyper at a good moment, which will cancel and seal the bullets for a short while and give you enough time to destroy one big drone and/or a few small ones, netting a lot of score and making it easy to dodge the survivors. If your hyper is not up yet then you can either keep using spread shot at pointblank or bomb once the drones begin shooting, which are the two most efficient ways to recharge it. If you can't or don't want to use hyper at all then your approach with just staying inside and using focus is totally valid too, focus shot is strong enough to destroy a few small drones and give you more room to dodge, though it's possible to stay in the middle by moving behind the big bullets as they approach in case you want to minmax the boss dps a bit.
Regarding "hyper doesnt really feel very hyper" - in your opinion, is it more of a visual/audio thing where it just doesn't feel juicy enough, or is it related to gameplay, like it's not strong enough/doesn't do enough?
oh yea i see the hyper on that specific part that makes perfect sense!
about the hyper not being hyper its specifically just the usual cave games where u press the hyper and now your shots look angrier or something. not quite sure how to word it. daifukkatsu probably looks the most extreme for hypers feeling hyper. besides that daioujou and saidaioujou also has some beefy ones. i think even some of the touhou20 shots (mainly the hypers that gets a powered up shot) have some excellent visuals that just looks more powerful even if they arent that much more. its basically just juice yea. although the shot was most definitely much stronger with it, it didnt look to match
Solid work! games like this make me think maybe i'd quite like to get more into shmups. Lots of fun once i got the hang of the controls, some kind of tutorialization would have been nice, but otherwise the whole experience is a solid, professionally designed piece.
I have to mark of only on one aspect which is that this doesn't really incorperate the shrink theme at all, in any way i can tell at least.
Still! this is a really great game! good job! c:
It`s pure Bullet hell experience with well polished gameplay, congrats ! It`s really fun especially sfxs fits really well, i really liked that one.
Game it`s hard to me but somehow i managed the finish game :D Boss fights are really intense there is so much projectile that you must dodge. Games liked that have same problem when there is bunch of projectile in screen gameplay turns into chaos and player hard to find player in screen but here that was really easy it`s an another success for this game in my opinion !
A very polished experience. Not the only shump entry in this JAM, but clearly shows how far you can push it if you put a lot of effort in. Well played.
This is the kind of game I'd play in an Arcade Room in the 90s :D
GG
Fantastic and Authentic arcade experience !
This was an absolute blast to play. The art is absolutely stunning both visuals and music, this has tons of polish for a jam entry and displays some impressive work :o
My personnal favorites being the battle axe weilding guys during the boss fight XD
I also really enjoyed the fact that while difficult, it still felt manageable with even the tighter patterns seemingly always having some way to navigate out of, so i actually (barely cause i’m still terrible at danmaku :p) managed to beat the boss !
Congrats, awesome entry :D
Thank you so much for playing, and congrats on beating the boss! Glad that you found the patterns to be manageable - I did put some thought into balancing challenge, navigability and consistent bullet counts (for bomb/hyper cancelling into items), nice to hear that it worked out in the end!
No problem, and yup it totally was, i’m not really that skilled at bullet hell and i thought the balance was well done here ^^
Wow, a very polished game and very fun to play! :)
I like the song because it doesn’t feel repetitive and the boss intro is very cool. The visuals are nice, I really like the design of helpers with the axe of the boss and the bullets are clear to see
I’m thankful that everything can be played with the control, not having to change to the mouse to pick an option is great
The difficulty is good enough to be a challenge without feeling overwhelmed and never felt unfair, maybe if there were more enemies coming from your side of the screen outside the intro, an indicator would be nice but since that doesn’t happen isn’t needed
I think I would like a really small tutorial or space to see what the Hyper does, I could see it on the game by pressing the button but I like when there is a relaxed space to test the controls and see how the actions are
Also the menu for the resolution screen is a little strange, only let me change the resolution option when it’s on "fullscreen" but not when it’s on the "windowed" option. Since this doesn’t affect the gameplay and I didn’t change the screen resolution, it didn’t affect me, just a little strange to navigate that menu section
Other than those 2 little things I can point out, there is nothing I can say, only good things, the patterns are good, the game gets intense when it need to and I like the way of playing this, as the page says, its aggressive and rewards the risk, on my second gameplay I saw this through the gameplay and it feels very rewarding seeing the hyper and bombs in action. And talking about the game page, I like it, also nice story setting, when I finished the game twice, it really left me wanting more of this. This is the kind of game I wanted to see when I joined this jam and I'm happy I could play this
Really nice job, this was very fun! ^^
Thank you for your detailed comment! I'm really glad that you find the challenge to be just right, my games tend to be too hard for many people so this time I wanted to make sure and balance the game so that jam participants would be able to clear. So far everyone I see was able to beat the boss and didn't complain about the game being too easy, so I see this as a success!
Regarding the things you pointed out - due to the jam version's length and how intense the stage 1 track is, there wasn't really much room to fit even a small tutorial on player abilities. So instead I tried to keep their mechanics simple and intuitive as soon as you try them for the first time - when you use the bomb/hyper, the sequence of events that always happens is: bullets turn into items > items get sucked up after a short time > hyper gauge or score increases on each item collected. In-between each event there is a short amount of time during which the player can "register" what exactly is happening - about 0.5s per event, so pretty short time, but each event individually is pretty simple and there are no complex conditions or mechanics, so should be possible for the player to learn each effect on their own.
Hyper is slightly more complicated because it adds two more events (... > player shot gets empowered > score items start to come out on each hit), they both happen within the same time window without any delays or time to mentally register, so it makes total sense why you'd want more information or relaxed opportunity to learn how it works. I'm really not sure what I can do to help with it that would fit with the flow of the gameplay but I'll keep it in mind, maybe there's a simple solution to this problem somewhere
Thank you for reporting about the resolution - in all my time using this engine I've actually never tried Windowed mode which is admittedly a pretty huge oversight, I've relayed your feedback to the engine developer so the way it works might change in the future to something that makes more sense. Thank you for playing, I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the game so much!
This is sick. One of the best if not the best game I've played this jam. I love how the game used the UI to signal incoming attacks from the sides. I haven't seen it done quite like that before.
Score: 835.7
damn. this is awesome
The team you assembled this year made a fantastic game per usual, slightly smaller than your previous games yet like the previous poster said also arguably of even better quality if that's even possible. It's notable that you tried to replicate the arcade feel more directly this time and it's not a bad thing as I like the result.
The art, music and staging are all phenomenal, I like the visual feedback on enemies' death and enjoyed dodging and timing my bombs and hyper.
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much! This time I've definitely stepped out of my comfort zone in terms of style and gameplay design, which also resulted in not being able to finish the entirety of planned scope in time, but I think it was still worth it to try. At the very least you and other commenters seem to really enjoy the result!
It was a great learning experience, I'm really grateful to Sylvysprit and Mongo for granting me the opportunity to work with them
Hey, I played your game from the previous shmup jam, Reverie Breaker, and enjoyed it a lot. Eden's Exalt is a bit shorter, but at the same time feels somehow more fleshed out.
The game is pure joy to play through, and soundtrack is nothing short of amazing. Great work as always!
Thank you for playing, I'm really happy to hear that you enjoyed both games so much!
nice bullet patterns :)
Tons of juice. Fantastic job on the soundtrack Sylvy!
JUICY
I REALLY enjoyed this. How did you even make something of this quality in just 10 days? From the music, to the art, to the bullet patterns, the gameplay feels really great too, it is amazing to play, I don't know what level of difficulty thi is in comparison to a Touhou game but it was a bit over what I usually play, but it was soo fun to graze the bullets and build the hyper for the right moment, I think I will get back to play this and try to finish it without dying.
What game engine did you use for this? It feels like there is so much behind this. I genuinely would play much more of this.
On the game page they cite using the shmup creator engine.
Only thing I find searching for shmup creator is this, which is a drag-and-drop engine for creating shmups: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1289520/SHMUP_Creator/
Thank you for playing! I'm really glad you enjoyed the game. As LoGanon mentioned the game was made with the SHMUP Creator engine