Play game
dELAUb: Drop 'Em Like An Ugly Baby's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #176 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Enjoyment | #705 | 3.879 | 3.879 |
| Creativity | #1996 | 3.793 | 3.793 |
| Narrative | #2968 | 2.793 | 2.793 |
| Artwork | #3545 | 3.310 | 3.310 |
Ranked from 58 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
dELAUb is a first-person retro shooter about counting down to the beat, and lining up your shots with the music. You can't shoot off-beat, requiring the player to keep time, with different weapons having different "beat hits" they come in on.
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
MyaMusical:
Composer for Main Menu Theme, Boss Theme, and Credits Track
Iris Eller:
Composer for the Combat track
All other credits in the description
(Optional) What would you like to be called if GMTK features your game?
Mack works!
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.







Comments
Overall creative game! Hitting things to the beat once it really starts is great, and I'm going to continue playing this later as I mostly skimmed it through for the initial review and my impressions are really positive.
I think only things here are improved navigation on where to go from one place to another and this is a really solid concept.
Good presentation and general juice, the music choice, the weapons, the sfx, its great! I had to check it out even if I had [less than 10 mins remaining] and it was worth it!
Overall thank you for submitting to the game jam!
Thank you!!
Thank you for the feedback! I plan to release a bug fix build and some additional performance tweaks soon - the main thing with navigation at the moment is the core crux of it (the keycard) broke due to having to shift to windows last-minute for the jam. Its gonna be one of the first things I fix.
Thank you for playing! I'm glad you had fun with it
Great and creative game. Only thing kinda missing is an in-game story maybe. Other than that, great job!
Thank you! I originally wanted to have some in game cutscenes but ended up having to cut them for time - the in game dialogue is really all that remains as a result.
Glad to hear you had fun! Thank you for playing
I love rhythm shooters! Metal Hellsinger is one of my most favourite games ever!
This one has the potential to be really great as well!
Right now I feel like the counter and the music start to get a bit out of sync the longer you play.
Also I swear i am hitting on the beat for the pistol, but it just wouldn't "groove" for me.
The shotgun on the other hand fits right in!
Every action feels on beat and it gives me a very satisfying feeling!
The visuals are also really nice for this one!
Great job! I really liked it!
It's a game I keep going back to just for the soundtrack.
Thats weird about the music - in theory that shouldn't be possible, as the music itself is keeping time, with counters triggered by it, so if the music drifts everything should drift. I'll make a note of that though to look into - thanks! Same with the pistol timing windows.
It's great to hear you had fun and enjoyed this! I spent a lot of time just getting the music sync system to work, and applying it to as many things as I could, and it definitely helps fill that vibe.
Thank you for playing!
this was really fun, a very solid rhythm boomer shooter game, i really liked bow on princess and how literally everything moves to the beat, reminds me of how hifi rush looks
i did get a little lost though because of the high amount of details it took me a while to notice where the keycard was since it wasn't glowing, and the door was a little hard to find
also i think the smg needs to be a burst weapon or be changed significantly since it doesn't interact with the premise of the game, unlike the shotgun which felt the best out of all of them
would be cool to see something happen when the 4 second ui element fills up, like the shot it fires on the 4th beat is stronger or something
Thanks for the feedback! Stuff like the keycard is unfortunately a bug, as it is in fact meant to light up when the fight ends - but due to last-minute lighting issues, it doesn't. Hi-Fi Rush was a huge inspiration for how the game plays, that and Metal: Hellsinger, so it's good to hear that intent made it through!
The SMG is another thing that sort of fell flatter than the intention - it helped round out the sandbox, but doesn't quite mesh, so it's likely gonna switch to being a burst weapon in a future version of this project. I like the idea with the beat UI count - it was mostly there to help people keep time with another visual, but it could double as something like that in a future build.
Thank you for playing, and I'm glad you had fun with it! That bow on princess was a detail I added last minute and I'm really glad I did now haha.
Always amazed how much some people can accomplish in such a short time. The movement was smooth and the shooting was smooth. To be honest, I'm super bad at rhythm games... BUT, I quickly got the hang of it and had fun.
The artwork is good too, which is complemented by the music and the beat. :D
Congrats on the entry! <3
Thanks for the awesome feedback! I'm glad you had fun with this even if rhythm games aren't your usual vibe.
I spent a good chunk of time kitbashing stuff to get the visual look I was after, but hit some snags last minute with the web build, so ended up pivoting for a more retro lighting look, which - sorta worked in my favour I guess?
The composers utterly cooked on this one, and this game definitely wouldn't feel as solid as it does atm without their work.
Thank you for playing!
I could not make it work with controller, and I am not good enough with keyboard to time it well :( but I like the idea, and the music is just soooo good! Perfect for a rythm game, makes me feel sad about my skill issue :D
Controller support was definitely untested, as I set up my initial input bindings to let it work, but never actually got to test it. I'm sorry that it didn't work for you!
It'll be one of the things I check out and try to implement post-jam.
Thank you for playing regardless, and I'm glad you liked the vibe!
One of the best entries for this jam I had the pleasure of playing! Good graphics, loved the beats. I am still not sure about the shoot-on-the-beat mechanics, as I don't believe I understood them correctly. It runs well on Linux using Proton, if you are interested, by the way!
That's good to hear! I'm glad it runs well on proton, I never got a chance to test that.
The timing window for shooting on the beat atm is very large, as the settings panel and latency calibration had to be cut last minute due to some technical issues, but the general idea is you gotta time your inputs to line up with the music, or they become less effective/may not register. Timing your pistol shots with the rhythm for example, and how the shotgun has a two-beat cycle of shooting and then pumping. The large timing window means its pretty hard to miss though.
Thank you for playing, and for the awesome praise!
Smooth movement, also a creative take to mash rhythm game and shooting together! Feels nice when shooting with the guns! :D
Fun game! Movement felt good. Can't believe you even had a boss battle/big finale. Only complaint is I accidentally glitched out the map at the end, but other than that, really fun!!
That issue at the end is such a pain because I know exactly what the cause is - and it's due to some optimizations I was originally doing with collision meshes, to target a web build.
And then at the last moment the web build fell apart and I had to pivot to windows, and that collision mesh just - never loaded. And the reset level button also broke so you can't just - restart the boss fight. Agh.
I'm glad you had fun though in spite of the rough edges - thank you for playing!
Very fun game! loved shooting to the rythm.
Rhythm doom. I liked the shotgun - felt nice and powerful
In true boomer shooter fashion, the shotgun is like hitting an enemy with a truck. I spent a lot of time refining the sound and remixing the filters and such I'd used for it, because I really wanted it to just sound - right.
Thank you for playing, and having fun!
I HATE RTHYM GAMES! BUT I LOVE THIS ONE!. Great job Mack and the composers like Mya!
Its great to hear you had fun even if this isn't the usual kind of game you play! I wanted to go for something unique - both Iris and Mya smashed the OST out of the park and I don't think it would be nearly as good as it turned out without their work.
Thank you for playing!
Lovely game!! Rhythm games are a tough genre to get the right feel for but I feel like you nailed it!! Definitely will be keeping an eye on this one if it gets finished!!
We're planning on making some future updates so yes! Stay tuned :D
First: Doing a Rhythm game for a jam is a mad thing.
Second: SICK BEAT
Third: I'm not a fan of shooters but this game made the shooter part easy to concentrate on the count down and beat count for actions and weirdly this made a shooter I do enjoy!
Gotta say tho some impact effect on enemies would be nice, some times I didn't knew I was actually hitting the potential ugly babies.
I'm glad you had fun! The two composers absolutely knocked it out of the park, the tracks made are all absolute fire.
This isn't a typical shooter - the beat being 120bpm means people naturally sorta fall into the rhythm, which was something I researched to see how best to implement those mechanics. Getting everything from enemy projectiles, to doors, and even character animations, all to line up on time was not a fun task. It's a miracle I got this done in four days with basically no starting code or assets.
VFX for enemies taking damage ended up getting sidelined by a fairly big issue when trying to package for web. It ended up not making the cut - and its one of the things I plan to implement next, alongside some bug fixes and quality of life features.
Thank you for playing!
It's beat saber meets quake - action packed, tight music - this was a blast!
Thanks!!!
I'm glad you enjoyed it - thank you for playing!
The composers both utterly cooked with the tracks, and it wouldn't be anywhere near as fun without them I feel. They knocked it out of the park.
I liked it! I really did like it. It reminded me of doom eternal honestly. The final boss fight was very hectic and cool! The music is bopping and the art and particle effects go crazy! I really have no clue how you guys made this so fast!
I do have a few critiques though... I think it would be better if you had to *actually* time the shots on beat. There is nothing stopping you from just spamming click right now! Maybe it isn't what u were going for, but I would love if this game was more like a rhythm game! I also thought the music during the boss didn't have a very obvious beat, so it was easy to lose the rhythm, I kinda had to just use my internal clock during it. Also, I feel like the smg was just slightly off beat? Like it felt on beat and off beat at the same time... idk really.
Other than that though I had a lot of fun, great job on this guys!
The shot spam thing is definitely an unintended side effect of having to gut my settings menu hours before the jam due to some issues - originally the beat window was a lot tighter, but when I had to drop calibration I made it bigger to compensate and - made it too big. Whoops.
The SMG is definitely the weakest of the weapons in terms of timing, so I'm planning to overhaul it and maybe turn it into a burst fire weapon of sorts, where each shot on beat fires a volley off, instead of the auto-spray it has right now.
The two composers absolutely cooked, they did so great with the music, which gave me more time to make the visuals and game flow. It's honestly a miracle I got as much as I did done in four days' time, without them doing music I don't think the final thing would be anywhere near as good.
Thanks for playing, and good to hear you had fun!
I love that everything in this game is in sync with the beat - the shooting, the door animations, the enemy attacks, even the pickups! Obviously, the composers COOKED with the soundtrack.
If this were to be expanded into a full release, I'd be interested in a visual style that takes inspiration from a niche boomer shooter called Reaver (title is in all caps). That one also happens to have a UI and environment that moves to the beat.
Reaver has a really cool aesthetic - I could definitely see something like that working.
One thing I wanted to do that I ended up not being able to, was have numerous different objects in the world that all also moved to the beat, like props on the wall and such. Annoyingly ended up having to cut that though for time - but I definitely wanna have way more stuff that moves and bops in time to keep the tempo going.
Thanks for playing, and its awesome to hear you had fun with this one!
Feels good to see some Hi-Fi Rush inspiration, this game felt really fluid and responsive to the beat clicks. Like the previous comment, at first I also didn't realize even the projectiles moved on beat! Such great attention to detail! The enemy AI feels okay, although during the Princess 2nd phase it sometimes looked like she was teleporting to me? (That might be just an animation error, or another on-beat mechanic I didn't understand) The fight was fun overall!
I'm kinda sad there weren't more movement mechanics (I got super excited when the description mentioned Ultrakill), there could even be some cool stuff for timing jumps/dashes on beat. Don't think of that as a complaint, just a suggestion. This game is so beautiful for a 4 day project, it's genuinely hard to say anything bad. Great work by everyone on the team!
P.S. I assume the thing in the top right is an FPS counter. You should probably put a cap on that. It was reaching 600-800 for me and the pc fans were going crazy.
Princess does actually teleport! She gets a new attack in phase 2 that lets her do a bar-long teleport lunge at you, if you're too far away. Her AI tries to choose the best attack pattern depending on your playstyle in response. She gets a few new tools to use as the fight progresses to spice up phase 2 some. It might be getting lost in the chaos of that second phase fight though.
That dashing mechanic you suggested was also something I am considering adding - but ended up cutting for time in order to refine the initial movement in true boomer shooter fashion. Jumps initially WERE gonna be timed too, but the input just felt weird, so I ended up instead trying to make their hold time synced - so you jump whenever, but will start falling when the beat hits. It's - hit and miss, though. That FPS cap thing is an issue that came up due to last-minute moving to windows from web, meaning all my settings stuff just - broke. I forgot to put in a cap on it, and it's one of the first things I plan to do post-jam, alongside some bug fixes.
I'm glad you had fun with this! Our team was super crazy given it was me and two composers, but they absolutely cooked up a fire soundtrack that I was able to do justice. I'm super happy with how this turned out for a four-day game jam, especially given I had to hand animate stuff for all three enemy types to fit the beat on their movements.
Thank you for playing!
If I really wanted to leave a review on this I'd yap too much so I'll try and spare you some of that. First contact with the game felt really great and the OSTs (composers cooked btw) although quite varying across the game had a certain common beat I could trust during combat, where the point is to consume actions by timing them right.
The controls felt satisfying, fluid and immersive, and I think there's potential for a VR version of this game. I liked how the enemy AI was really simple when you just look at one of them separately, but then as a crowd they coordinate to create misery for the player: you actually have to choose the right weapon according to the situation, and the positional combat style reminded me of some old Call of Duty games. It wasn't until the Princess boss fight that I realised: the projectiles were not lagging on my device. They were actually stepping according to the beat. In fact almost everything in the game steps according to the beat which is awesome. Couldn't beat her second phase yet but that feels manageable with a bit more practice. I quit trying today when at one of those boss fight attempts, I fell through the floor at a map corner, and so I couldn't fight nor die so I had to quit, which wouldn't be so bad if it did not kill my save.
Oh and did I mention the composers cooked?
That boss fight issue is such an annoyance, because I deliberately added a button to reload the current section for just that problem - in case something like, say, a last-minute technical hitch caused walls to lose collision in that arena - and that button ALSO happened to just bind to the wrong thing and just restart the game. Yay.
Getting as much as I could synced to the beat to really drive the action was a high priority for me - with enemy attacks and animations, including their actual walk cycles, all being synchronized to step/swing/act on time. Projectiles was a fun one to do - even with some projectiles like the Heavies' plasma cannon that moves faster, they all tick on each beat. Doors also open and sync to the beat, and I planned to have environmental props that did the same but ran out of time due to last-minute technical issues.
The composers absolutely cooked, and put in a ton of work making sure the common beat was there under the hood, so that - without any visual cues, like the UI and the world - you can fall into that flow and just vibe through a fight.
I wanted each weapon to fill a niche in the sandbox, so while you can just take a shotgun and rush a Soldier to Drop 'Em, picking a pistol and popping him from afar might be better.
I'm glad you had fun with the fight even if that last area is a little bit rough. Thank you for playing!
The guns sounds where off time a bit, and the lack of sensitivity and camera settings made it rough to get through. I understand a game like this is a lot so it's gonna be a rough first demo of the idea.
Could be cool to like... reload in time too. I felt like there was an idea of a parry (the enemies flash when they do the melee attack). Things like this could make the game more engaging for sure!
Settings are definitely high on the priority list for this post-jam, as it was one of the things I wanted to get in that I wasn't able to due to some technical issues. This meant the timing window for guns got MUCH more forgiving, so that even if you're fairly early or late, you still get a chance to shoot instead of missing the beat entirely.
Stuff like graphics settings, audio settings, and some way to calibrate your latency window are gonna be things I work on first - alongside retooling the melee to be more useful as a parry mechanic. The enemy flashes are more attack indicators at the moment, but making some kind of parry system that consistently lets you interrupt them is something I definitely want to experiment with given more time.
Reloading is actually a mechanic I was considering implementing, but cut for time to keep the boomer-shooter feel, but having some kind of timed and staged reload could be pretty neat to do, especially if you can time a second reload hit midway to speed-load quicker, or some kind of rhythm mechanic for it. That could definitely slap.
Thank you for playing, and for your insightful feedback!