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Chroma's Curse's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #6 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Visual | #8 | 4.220 | 4.220 |
| Fun | #10 | 3.854 | 3.854 |
| Theme | #11 | 3.805 | 3.805 |
| Audio | #21 | 3.463 | 3.463 |
Ranked from 41 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?
Music/SFX were sourced through commercial licenses. All visual art made by wife.
Are you using any AI generated assets?
No
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Comments
Somehow managed to clear and reach #1 spot on my first attempt... No idea how scoring works and whether it's deserved but I'll take it.
Lovely hand-drawn style, reminds me of CryptRat's submission, though the gameplay loop is different. Overall - plenty of interesting ideas, having to "protect" the page is a neat mix-up mechanic and having multiple tools for this makes it fun. Two thoughts though - I wish the enemies were more aggressive in applying colors (in a harder difficulty setting maybe), and also it felt unnatural that you can't shoot down the blots of paint before they apply, considering how long they can linger on screen (if you don't want them getting shot, how about dashing to destroy them instead?)
In terms of abilities, the shrink didn't feel relevant at all, save for one of the patterns of the first boss where the passage between bullets is tight enough that dashing was too dangerous and precise to try. I never used the shrinking afterward, the tradeoff of losing power is just too unappealing, and the patterns were spacious enough that it wasn't necessary.
The charge shot - I think it's overpowered but in a fun way, the damage you can deal with it seems to be way higher than normal shots, and since the last boss is very mobile it's preferable to use it since you can charge the shot during moments where the boss is not aligned with you. Only thing is that it made dashing mostly irrelevant for page discoloring since it's weaker and doesn't cover as much range as charge. If the enemy was more aggressive with coloring and/or the dash had some utility like the "dash to destroy blots" suggestion - I think it would make it more useful, and also fun due to making the two mechanics interact more deeply.
Other than that, solid work overall. Thank you for sharing!
Sorry for the late response! I was on vacation during the last couple days of the voting period, so I wasn’t able to be too active with replies.
Congrats on the clear and the #1 spot! Whether the scoring was deserved or not, the leaderboard has spoken lol.
Seriously though, thank you for such a detailed write-up. This is super helpful feedback. I’m really glad the coloring mechanic stood out, because that was the main thing I wanted to feel different from a more standard bullet hell loop.
I think you’re right that the enemies probably could have been more aggressive with applying color, especially in a harder mode. The coloring mechanic was honestly a tough thing to balance, because I wanted it to matter enough that players couldn’t just ignore it, but I also didn’t want people who were already struggling with the bosses to get completely overwhelmed. So I tried to find a middle ground where ignoring the color would eventually fail you, but keeping up with it would still feel manageable. That said, I definitely think it could have benefited from more fine tuning, especially for more hardcore players or a harder difficulty setting.
The blot feedback makes a lot of sense too. Funny enough, at one point in development I actually had it where charge shots could take out the blots, but I ended up removing it because I was worried it might make the cleaning side too easy. In hindsight, I probably should have kept some version of that interaction, or maybe made dash destroy them like you suggested. That would have made the blots feel less like untouchable hazards and given dash a much clearer utility outside of just avoiding bullets or cleaning the page.
Totally fair on shrink as well. I wanted it to work more like a focus / precision mode for tight patterns, but I can see how the power tradeoff made it feel not worth using unless the pattern specifically demanded it. That’s something I’d probably rebalance if I revisit the game.
And yeah, charge shot probably ended up being the star of the mechanics lol. I’m glad it felt overpowered in a fun way, but I agree that it kind of overshadowed dash for cleaning. Making the enemies color more aggressively, and giving dash or charge shot some extra interaction with blots would probably make those tools feel more evenly useful.
Thanks again for playing and for taking the time to write all this out. This is exactly the kind of feedback that helps me see what worked and what could be pushed further in future games.
Loved the art style and the "keep the color removed" idea! The patterns are fun and diverse. Thanks a lot for the tutorial - especially for the explanation of the color removal part, I feel this made the game feel a lot more polished. And in general, polish shows!
Need to keep playing to beat the game :) Congratulations on the submission! And the leaderboard is a nice addition too.
Sorry for the late reply! I was on vacation during the last couple days of the voting period, so I wasn’t able to be too active with responses.
Thank you so much! Really glad you liked the art style and the color-removal mechanic. That was the main idea I hoped would make the game feel a little different, so it makes me happy to hear it stood out.
Also really glad the tutorial helped. I spent a good chunk of time on it because I was worried the color-clearing mechanic might be confusing without some explanation, so it’s awesome to hear that it made the game feel more polished.
Happy you enjoyed the patterns and the leaderboard too. Thanks a lot for playing, and good luck if you come back to beat it! :)
Fun game with very nice cute art style. The colour part of the game was great idea and fun to see. Tutorial very helpful and explain the gameplay well. Despite it cute art style, it rather a hard game but still fun to play, I like try get better when I got more time to do.
Love the erasing canvas idea and worked very well in the gameplay and shrinking while simple work well too. Overall had alot fun with this and great seeing the art base on mythical animals. Great work
Really appreciate the kind words! Glad the erasing canvas idea worked well and that the tutorial helped.
And yeah, the cute art style is definitely hiding a harder game underneath lol. Happy it still felt fun enough to want to come back and improve.
My wife gets all the credit for the art, so she’ll be happy to read this. Thanks for playing!
I liked the idea of erasing the canvas and keeping it clean. The gameplay is fun, and the tutorial explains everything before you start. Well done!
Really appreciate the kind words! Glad the erasing mechanic was fun and the tutorial helped. Thanks for checking out the game :)
Clear with score of 11524!!!
I liked the theming of the bosses being mythical creatures.
The "walls that stop" attack was probably the hardest of the set for me, I kept getting hit here due to the shmup cardinal sin of "player ship having inertia" please consider not doing this in future bullet hell games. (surprisingly, this is the only game I've played so far with inertia, there's a reason it's much less common for precision dodging type games)
The cockatrice boss was a standout hit for having fun to dodge patterns, but kelpie's bubble dodging attack was a pretty close 2nd. Kelpie was the hardest boss for me by far because of the walls attack, but I seemed to have encountered a safe spot at the back on one of my attempts? (the bullets despawned before reaching all the way to the back of the screen, unsure if it consistently happens)
The charge shot felt very clunky to use because the DPS wasn't that notably higher but the punishment for releasing too early was that you don't get any shot at all. It kind of worked together with the cleaning mechanic decently well though.
The shrink maneuvre came in pretty handy for the first boss's walls with gaps attack, this felt well implemented and fit the jam theme well, but I don't feel like the iframe dash was very well implemented - most times you'd use it, you'd either run into another bullet as soon as it ends, or you're better off not using it at all and just dodging or shrinking. It's like conceptually OP so it seems like you felt the need to balance it this way, but the end result is that there are almost no actual use cases for it in the game. The only use case I found was to skip the last wave of the "walls with gaps that stop periodically" attack.
Overall super fun and pretty engaging experience though. I liked the sprites.
Congrats on the clear and the score! That's awesome.
Appreciate the detailed feedback too. The movement feel point is fair. I wasn't specifically aiming for inertia, but if it came across that way during precision dodging, that's definitely useful to know and something I'd pay closer attention to in future bullet hell-style games.
Good catch on the Kelpie safe spot too. That definitely sounds like something I'd want to look into, since I didn't intend for that attack to have a free safe zone.
The charge shot and dash feedback make sense as well. Charge was meant to be more of a timing/cleaning tool than pure DPS, but I can see how the early release punishment could feel clunky. My wife actually shared a similar critique lol. Dash distance/timing was one of the things I wanted to revisit before the final build, but it didn't quite make it in.
Really glad the Cockatrice patterns and Kelpie bubbles stood out though. Thanks for taking the time to clear it and write all this out. Super helpful feedback, and I'm glad you still had a fun time with it! :)
That was a surprisingly challenging game despite its appearance. I gotta practice some more and beat the chicken already :)
Patterns are very interesting to dodge, some of them, like the bubbles, are very hard to micro-dodge even with shrinking, died several times to those until I figured out that you had to move with the flow.
Art style is incredibly charming, and inclusion of leaderboards was a huge incentive for me to keep playing.
Thanks a lot! Yeah, the cute look is definitely hiding a little bit of pain underneath lol.
Happy to hear you found the patterns interesting. The bubbles were designed so you can squeeze through some of the gaps in a pinch, but moving with the flow is usually the safer play. So it's cool you picked up on that.
Also, really glad to hear the leaderboard gave you a reason to keep coming back. Thanks for playing, and good luck taking down that chicken :)