I reached the boss but couldn't finish, unfortunately the very traditional "go to last checkpoint after dying" mechanic contributes negatively here due to how overly prolonged and uneventful the stages are...
In terms of feedback I think other commenters (and your replies) pointed out most or all issues already, so I won't go into too much detail, though I think the fact that the entire game is written in C from scratch is an impressive feat. The visuals are also solid, only held back by the stage design and lack of variety in objects. Despite the shortcomings it's pretty awesome that you were able to implement all this in just 10 days
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EndoLancer's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Visual | #13 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Audio | #40 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Overall | #40 | 3.107 | 3.107 |
| Fun | #48 | 2.964 | 2.964 |
| Theme | #59 | 2.393 | 2.393 |
Ranked from 28 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?
Used music tracks:
https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=173085 (Public Domain)
https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=190562 (CC-0)
Are you using any AI generated assets?
No AI
Comments
The visuals are fun! The game progression felt empty-ish to me - I didn't feel I was having progress in the game. Mostly I could just avoid the enemies. It felt polished, the only thing I noticed was the restarting music, but making a loop is not trivial. Small peeve - a spaceship shouldn't be able to "move" back and pick up an item while flying forward!!11 :D And the flight felt "slow" to me, but honestly I have no idea how to make it better without making the game needlessly hard when navigating tight spaces.
Btw, an impressive engineering feat! Extra thanks for sharing the source, it was great checking out a modern game written in C.
The visuals and music were really nice, and it's impressive that you programmed it in C. That being said I felt like the enemy design was a bit lacking. There wasn't that many of them on screen and it was really easy to just fly past them. The only time they felt like somewhat of a threat was right near the end when the corridors got narrower.
I’m impressed that you wrote this from scratch using C. It’s rare to see things like that in a game jam, but it’s always a commendable accomplishment. The visuals remind me of early 90s shoot-em-ups such as Salamander / Life Force, and they perfectly fit the shrunken-down theme. The ship slid around more than I thought, but it was manageable. Other than that, this is an impressive entry!
Fun and solid gameplay !
Normally I really like the visuals but i played in web version and there is no fullscreen button in that version. That`s why I must play with background image and I felt little bit pain for my eyes because of that :D
Moving narrow places that was good but action felt like litte bit slower. There is not so much enemies actual difficulty came from narrow places for me.
Overall it`s a fun game ! Congrats.
This is very impressive for a jam, making a game in C is already impresive for me, I've always used an engine, but doing it from scratch? That's another level. The art is really great, and the level design is very fun, the cover art is also quite good, like one of those retro games from early 90s. I think the controls are a bit too slippery which makes controlling the ship for specially cramped places very difficult, and restarting the level every time is also a bit punishing, especially when the levels are long enough. Those two things are the only things I didn't like, but over all it was a nice experience, especially navigating the levels avoiding the walls, it was very fun.
nice visuals, but the camera lagging behind was a no go for me. Amazing its all C. Raylib?
Its so cool how you made this game from scratch using C! However, I feel like the theme of "Shrink" could've been used more in the game. I know it might have been hard to do something like that tho (no experience with C so idk). It was a nice game nonetheless :D
I wish this game was better. It looks great but there is basically nothing happening during the stage except that you have to fight the ship's very notable inertia which makes the controls feel unresponsive and makes basic movement a scary – not that there is much movement needed to complete the game. The boss also looks great and is passable for a stage 1 boss in something like Salamander.
The game froze when the boss died.
Thank you for the feedback!
Yeah, adding inertia for movement was a very bad call, I don't know what I was thinking. Stages, enemy placement and behavior definitely needed a lot more time and thought than what I could afford.
Thank you for trying it out! Next time I'll definitely make something better.
Really striking visuals!
I agree with everyone that there needs to be more to do, though i think the more important critique is in the gameplay. I ran into one of those bone spikes innitially because i mistook it for a background element, and i got a fully upgraded machine gun, only to get a laser powerup that instantly reset me to 1 projectile, the next stage a machine gun powerup dropped ontop of me and it rewrote my laser power up with a basic 1 shot machinegun, which was frustrating. only other thing is that an auto fire or holding down the button would have been nice for the arthritic in the audience.
This has a lot of style! i would love to see more! c:
I am all in for a retro gameplay, it was addictive to play. initially in the game starting I realised you could basically dodge majority of the enemy, now just my personal choice, but I like having high threat gameplay right from the beginning. But, it was good.
At 1st I had fun but after a few tries in the second level, I would like that there was an actual threat during the level, once you get your 2 red power ups and the 2 missile one, you ran out of motives to shoot until the end before the boss, which can feel a little boring to wait to reach the boss again
Trying the level again when you lose to the boss isn’t bad, so I wouldn’t suggest a checkpoint before the boss, just more active threats
Outside that, the game can be fun, I like the design of the skulls and I like that it’s clear what gives you power up after the 1st level, I didn’t like to pick the green weapon because I prefer to see 3 bullets than 1 single shot and for that it didn’t feel powerful haha
I also liked the visuals, good boss, but I would like 1 more attack pattern, the sfx and the mood of the game is nice
The game crashed just after I kill the boss which was funny but I take that as my victory :)
I love this game!! The gameplay is really fun and so is the art style.I was so scared when playing the game because im bad lol.
This had such a classic arcade shooter feel to it, both visually and gameplay-wise. The music and visuals were spot on, and I really liked the background art too, especially the nice use of dithering. The boos looked really cool, and the fight itself was fun. I also thought the level design felt carefully crafted. You can tell a lot of thought went into the layout, especially with the branching paths where one route was clearly tougher but rewarded you with weapon upgrades. That was a really nice risk/reward touch.
Also making this in C from scratch is seriously impressive. It already felt like a very authentic old-school shmup. Great work. I didn't see any of the crashes you mentioned in the game page, but I did manage to crash my ship a lot XD
Haha totally feel you on just trying to make something work at all. I’m always surprised when I get anything out the door without one random line of code breaking the whole game XD
Yours came off really well though. It felt well built, even if you didn’t get as much time for level layout and enemies as you wanted.
Always nice to see another C dev in the wild haha. However I'm a baby compared to you lol.
I was really enjoying playing a well made game while also being able to poke around in your engine. I am impressed. The logging around renderer/window/backbuffer sizes is super useful and yeah the scene interface is just all around super practical imo. Really impressive work!
Really nice Salamander / Gradius style shooter with some stellar presentation, spritework is on point complete with some nice dithering on the background ^^
Gameplay wise this was quite fun as well, the difficulty felt just about right even if there were a few segments requiring some extreme precision to navigate through :o
I gotta say my main gripe is with the shooting, the slow firerate and no autofire didn’t feel that much comfortable to play :/
Managed to reach the boss and somehow beat him, but after he exploded it seemed like i went back to the start of the level so out of curiosity i played the entire level again and when reaching the boss he was invisible so… that was something XD
Now despite that it’s a rad entry and i’ve had quite some fun playing it.
Well done :)
Great aesthetics with the style and choice of music. I just wish it was faster pace at the start a little bit. But I can appreciate the upgrades being at the same location so know how I can get them when I missed it at first.




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