I updated the game:
- Fixed the softlock at the tutorial when you didn't kill the flower
- Boss nerf: less HP, easier patterns and less bullets
- Increased movement speed
It's just a small fix, there are issues with the bullet system and in general the game loop that I'll get to fix once the jam I'm in right now ends
Play Therapy
PSyChE DiVE's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Visual | #29 | 3.680 | 3.680 |
| Overall | #30 | 3.400 | 3.400 |
| Theme | #31 | 3.120 | 3.120 |
| Audio | #40 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Fun | #43 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 25 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?
Freesound sfx:
-Door, crash, knock door, power up
All the rest of assets made by me :)
Are you using any AI generated assets?
No AI
Comments
The spritework was really good! I liked the artwork and the way the cutscenes presented themselves.
Got the flower softlock because the tutorial said that bad things would happen if i killed it so i didn't
The boss has WAYY too much hp
Submitted
PseudepigraphiaI did not kill the flower at tutorial, so I got stuck and have to restart XD But yeah, the story has the theme shrink, but the gameplay doesn’t feel like it. I enjoy the visual novel style you did, and the gameplay was fun. The visual was really pretty with a bunch of bullet flying
Submitted
Mech and CheeseVisuals and SFX fits very well gameplay is really challenging for me but it`s fun also. I died so many times but gameplay was good that`s why try again was never boring.
I don`t have so much experience games like that but for me enemy projectiles are really big when they comes i couldn`t able to move i think there is no much space for me but like i said maybe that`s normal idk :D
Good job !
Submitted
Paws Inc.Game with soul poured into it!! Gameplay feels smooth, love the addition of cutscenes. One of my caveats is soundtrack; for such an intense gameplay it could use more "punch" meethinks. Some drums maybe? More agressive samples/instruments? I know its a subjective thing, but the music reminded me more of some dream, walking simulator instead of a dream, touhou like. Still, a very good entry!!
Yeah, I was thinking the same about the music, but I didn't have much time to make an agressive or more active song for the level, I'm not used to make songs like that and this is what I could come with, which isn't too bad but it doesn't fit very well the story and tension of the moment, I agree some drums would make it more intense but I also wanted to use those instruments to get used to them, maybe next time I'll be able to make a bigger range of intensity haha
Thanks for playing! ^^
I appreciate the style used for the visuals, music and the story. The background effect was really cool, and overall it definitely felt like the game had an identity.
On the gameplay side - while I managed to beat the boss on my second attempt, I really feel that the patterns have outstayed their welcome by a looooot... With how little damage the player deals, as well as the bug where homing bullets apparently don't deal any damage, and the fact the boss even shields from damage on pattern transitions for some reason - each pattern took over a minute or so and would get stale very quickly.
I think overall the gameplay design was mainly held back by two things - first, the very slow player movement with a really wide playing area. It takes a long time to move from one side to another and enemies tend to spawn on one of them rather than in the middle, which made it not very possible to reach most enemies to destroy them in time. One side would get swarmed by the waves and maybe you are safe from being hit, but it didn't feel very fun waiting out until they leave, I really wish the player had some means to properly deal with this situation, like a side shot.
Second, the underpowered bomb which, while it does protect you for a decent amount of time, does almost nothing against the enemy as counterintuitively it doesn't deal any direct damage, and the reflected bullets seem to deal very low damage. Moreover, the boss would regularly use bullets that can't be reflected, which nerfed the bomb even further making it more or less useless in the final pattern as it seems you don't even get any invulnerability frames from it. Even for the rest of the fight - the very, very long pattern duration makes the bomb's slightly longer than average duration irrelevant, even if it lets you survive 5 more seconds the pattern will last for way longer than this...
Basically, I think these two issues make the player too weak and lock them to rather stale defensive tactics, allowing little to no player expression. I wasn't able to enjoy the gameplay much as a result, it's unfortunate that you didn't have as much time to balance it properly. Still, well done finishing the jam, I think you've done a good job with the patterns (the only issue is their duration), and if you think the boss is a big step up from your previous work then that's a great thing. Thank you for sharing!
Submitted
Eden's ExaltFirst of all, I appreciate it sooo much your in depth and honest feedback, this is the kind of feedback I always seek because they are the ones that help me to improve my games faster
About the boss hp, I over did it, while I was testing, I noticed that if the player gets both “rate-up” upgrades, the boss could be melted quickly with the original hp, and I got a little worried that if that happened, the player would lose interest. The next day, after the submission time ended, I realized that if the player doesn't pick both upgrades, then the boss becomes a sponge
At the end it ended as a sponge because the homing bullets don’t work and also realized after the submission time was over, so the fight is already longer than it should
The attacks overstay because for some reason when I tried to stop the attack and free the bullets or remove some patterns, it crashed the game in a line that hasn’t anything to do with the bullets, but before when I was trying each phase individually it didn’t
Also the shape patterns are chopped, when I tried to fix it, the game started to behave strange so when I fix my bullet system, the attack duration should be better…
About the not making damage between phases, I couldn’t implement the original idea, it was supposed to be a damage “race” with easier patterns than the actual ones, if you didn’t break the shield in 30 seconds, you would get a status that makes you “shrink away” but I didn’t do that and forgot to reduce the timer on the animations…
About the speed, thanks for the observation, I’ll check it more when I go back to continue the game. I left it as it is now because I thought that if the player was faster, they would collide more than intended with the bullets or the flying enemies. Which can be dumb to think that but the day I was building the level and boss, I already couldn’t think properly and decided to keep building the stuff because I felt if I start to change stuff I wouldn’t make it on time
The bomb, I agree it’s useless in the last part of the boss, with the gray bullets and it can also be useless with the flying enemies once the 3 seconds of “invincibility” ran out. I decided to make the last part of the boss like this because I would like to have just a “skill” check but since the homing bullets are bugged and the boss is a sponge, it ended as a bad and slow part, and I don't want the player just spam the bomb but that's hard to balance
I could rework bombs after the jam since I would have more freedom and not just stick to “shrink away” bullets but also I couldn’t make attacks that could benefit from this shield/bomb better due the technical issues I mentioned above haha
This said, I’m sorry this game didn’t give you an enjoyable gameplay experience, also congrats on being the 1st person on beating the game or I know of!
Thanks for reading the credits, I’m happy you gave my game a try and still decided to give the feedback despite the inconveniences
Thanks for playing! ^^
Really cool game, and I found the boss to be incredibly challenging, with the amount of HP she has!
Not being able to deflect white bullets makes this stage especially nerve-wracking, lol.
Really like kaleidoscopic background shader effect you have. UI design and music really give this game such a good vibe, it becomes kind of relaxing, despite the difficulity :)
Submitted
EndoLancerThe art is gorgerous, the visual novel part was also very nice, and the shmup part it looks like a Touhou game, the tutorial also was a great addition, but I couldn't beat it at all, I tried several times and the screen always clutter too much to me before I can kill the enemies, I couldn't get to the boss, I tried yesterday and once today, I will probably come back because I want to see the boss, still, really great game, I think it needs quite a bit of balance though.
Submitted
Iron NestYeah, it looks like a Touhou game, which is funny to me because I have never played those games but since the communities I was part of in the past really liked that game, I ended up knowing and thinking about the UI and visuals for the hitbox and stuff like those games haha
About the level, the advice I could give you is that, try to be on the side of the screen where the “rate up” power ups appear, I kind of tried to make a path with enemies that leads to the “solution” of how to beat the level, at times I put a “fake” path that usually it’s the “bomb” power up and use the bomb when the 1st sun appears so you can spam the shoot in its face until the next wave appears
I’ll try to record the gameplay once the jam is near the end, I still need to fix the delay there is each time I record my screen haha
And I also think it needs a balance, I only did the boss and level in a day and a half so that’s why it’s very hard xD
Thanks for coming to play more than once!
Really, balancing shmups is incredibly complicated, we had a terrible balance during the first days in our game, I learned a lot about this during the jam, especially playing Touhou in a specific way (not shooting), I recommend you do that aswell, it is very interesting to see how enemies actually work there, I was surprised that none of the enemies in Touhou stayed on screen, they always left to give space for new enemies, and when we put that in our game it made a whole world of difference.
I think this was also why your game was really hard to figure out, the enemies stacked really fast and had to focus just on surviving and it was very difficult to figure out a path xD.
I see, I should try that, doing the not shooting reminds me of Ikaruga and the achievements you get by clearing the levels by only absorbing bullets
About the enemies staying, maybe I over did it haha, in some way I wanted to create “time bombs” in order to cover my lack of mid boss and make the player kill enemies and not just avoid attacks because I thought that maybe if the player just avoided, they would get bored quickly…
I wanted to do something like Darius Burst, where the enemies go through the whole screen in swarms and you have to eliminate them before it gets too overwhelming, though, in that game you have a better tool to eliminate faster the enemies that stay longer, so I should check better this :)
Maybe that's why I died so much, I never use bombs if I can in these games, even if I'm going to die, I didn't know they were required to be used... I never played Darius Burst, so I don't know how they managed to do that, but every design comes with a solution, so maybe that game does something that tells the player to bomb or it is implicit in the design in some clever way. So yeah, you could do like I did with Touhou just trying different things to see how enemies behave and the different tools the player has. In my case, most of the balance of the game didn't come from just enemies coming and despawning, but enemy armor and a damage cap to balance the player's damage as it progress, these were things I learned directly from Touhou, but there are definitely other ways to do it.
This one is excellent, whether I'll be able to beat it during the jam is a different matter though. I've been coming back to it a few times, have spent maybe 2 hours in total so far, don't think I ever took half of the health of the boss and can't even consistently reach the second sequence where you can hit her again. Thanks for sharing!
Submitted
Every little toyWow, thanks you for coming back to try to clear my game, it makes me happy haha ^^
It can be hard, I think the only advice I could give is that the start of the 1st “break” between phases is that moving in little circles can help to clear that phase or using all the bombs if you didn’t use any, once you get to the vortex part, being in the corner and going slow makes it easy, the second phase it’s more of patience and sometimes going diagonally, the 3rd phase try to be under the boss the most you can
Since I didn’t make the green bullets as I should, it becomes slower and more risky than it should be. I'll fix that after the jam if I don’t join another one in a few days haha
Thanks for playing and sharing your comment! :)
This really had that classic feel, the bullets stood out visually, and the patterns looked great, combine those 2 things and it made it a really fun experience to weave through the bullet (hard though, but that is a skill issue on my end). The dialogue was a nice touch too. Great job!
Submitted
robot.zipVery polished dialogue sequences, and the paper cutout idea was really cool. The whole game felt very polished and I loved that the paper cutout theme stayed consistent across the stage intros, HUD elements, and UI animations. Gameplay-wise, it felt like a classic shmup with a really fun aesthetic layered on top. The bullets were easy to see, and the sound design was very well done. I used the bomb pretty often, and you were very generous with their availability as pickups, so thanks for that lol.
I saw you mention in the credits that you need more time/sleep to balance the boss, and I definitely empathize with you there. Even with the difficulty, the boss fight was really cool, and I loved how the story led up to it. The story itself was involved enough to be engaging, but it didn't overstay its welcome. Very polished game overall.
Submitted
Chroma's CurseHappy to see feedback like this :)
The paper idea/style comes from inspiration from songs like “ Ado - Aiaia” or “Devil's Manner / Tatsuya Kitani”, I wanted to get more stuff/sprites in paper style but I ran out of time so I rushed at the end with the classic normal style I do. I'm happy with the visuals because it gets closer to what I want for my next main game
About the bombs, I actually made them less common, before I gave a lot but after playing the level for the day, I decided to cut the amount because pretty much you could use the bomb all the level with no punishment haha
Thanks for playing, reading the credits and your comment, I really appreciate it! ^^
Yeah, the backgrounds help with the narrative, I like how shaders can be used to make something like this, the level background was hard to draw because I think it’s hard to make a “brain” as background, at least I tried haha
Happy you liked the aesthetics, I’m trying a new style or this way of showing things as paper and I’m getting closer to what I want :)
Thanks for playing! ^^
Clever play on the theme! I couldn't beat Ema's Trauma, but i think my skill level is below a hard shmup like this one. The green bullets in the boss fight don't seem to do any damage? they act like they are but her health number doesn't go down at all. I would have appreciated a lower difficulty setting, but it's irrelevant, this is a really competent execution of the theme and genre! if i have any critique the music gets a bit repetitive after a few restarts, but this was very fun to play and i found myself having to tear myself away from just giving it "one more try" good job c:
Submitted
Bullet BoyAbout the green bullets, yeah, those don’t do damage and I realized like 4 hours after the jam submission time ended…
About the difficulty, I’ll lower it when I continue the game, it’s supposed to be the 1st boss of 3 but last day I was too tired to properly balance it so I just went this this, that was the purpose of the green bullets, so the player could focus on surviving but right now it’s longer and more difficult than it should haha
Happy to see you liked the game and I’ll take note on the song, thank you for playing! ^^
Beautiful shooter / visual novel mix !
I really enjoy your take on the theme with the therapy being an ultra hardcore bullet hell :p
The overall aesthetic is very good and i like the “papercraft” look to it especially the little detail of any changing ui element being taken away by some paper ball as if you threw away some pages in a notebook :D
Gameplay wise this seemed solid with good movement control and all and i like that the hitbox is clearly indicated at all times.
I couldn’t go all that far cause the difficulty is way beyond my skill level O_o so i can’t say much else.
Overall cool entry, good job ^^
Submitted
Tempest SquadronYeah, the game can be hard, I left the level like that because I wanted people to replay that part, the difficulty of the boss is unintended but with patience and the slowdown with a control can be beaten, when I get to update this, I’ll lower the difficulty :)
But happy you liked the visuals of the game, this style is closer to what I want for my games so seeing people liking it feels nice haha
Thanks for playing!
Nice to see another person interpret the theme the same as me! The art in this game is amazing, and the ability is really cool and fun to use. However, the game was REALLY hard (the only downside). Nice job!
Submitted
NeuropsycheYeah, I saw we interpreted the same way :)
I’m happy you liked the art, and yeah, the game is hard, I had very little time to test it due how tired I was from making everything and trying to fix a dumb bug that I couldn’t fix so the shapes on the boss get chop and can’t spawn certain shapes without breaking haha
Thanks for playing!
The game was extremely hard, the boss's health barely moved by a pixel. The ability was fine, but there was so little and can't gain more in the boss section(maybe there is but I wasn't skilled enough to see the whole thing). The theme interpretation in this game seems as fine as a text.
However, very nice art, the most I like in this game would be the character designs. And the UI hand putting/taping animation is so creative.
Submitted
Flame Robot V NinjaI agree that the boss can be hard, yesterday I was very tired that I couldn’t test the attacks properly and I was like, “Ok I completed this section once, so it should be ok”, after failing like 4-5 times xD
So the boss is very unbalanced but it can be doable, also playing with control makes dodging everything easier, though I tested everything with the keyboard haha.
About the boss hp, I also agree. Today I realized that if players don’t grab both “rate up” upgrades, the boss becomes too long making it more of a sponge, also today I realized that the tracer bullets don’t do damage to the boss so the fight is already longer than it should be…
Right now the design punishes you a lot just by missing one red power up, which is bad and I overlooked.
Glad you liked the art, I had lot of fun doing all the sprites and the UI, and thank you for playing! ^^
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