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!

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!

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!

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!

We're planning on making some future updates so yes! Stay tuned :D

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!

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.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

yeah the smg will change to burst fire in a post jam update. Thanks for playing!!! Super happy you enjoyed the soundtrack

Both BPM and Metal: Hellsinger come to mind as two good rhythm based shooters, with the latter being inspiration for this one alongside Hi-Fi Rush. I'm sorry to hear it wasn't running too well for you - some optimizations might have fallen flat at the last hurdle due to having to pivot from a web build to windows rather suddenly near the end of the jam.

As Mya said - the SMG is probably gonna become a burst weapon, as I think it'd fit the vibe like you said a lot better. The pistol might also get tweaked and rebalanced a bit, so that each weapon can fill it's own specific niche in the sandbox a bit better.

I'm glad you had fun! The soundtrack is fire, and both composers absolutely knocked it out of the park.

The lighting was a stylistic choice, to try and echo those old-school Doom 3 and F.E.A.R. harsh shading models, and the animations were also made to sync to the beat by hand as I couldn't easily modify existing files to hit the mark - with more time, they'd definitely be more polished, though they're certainly the two rougher aspects of the game.

The SMG is something a lot of people have mentioned - and while it fills the rounded-out role of a crowd cleaner, it's probably going to be retooled into a burst fire weapon of some kind, to keep the necessity of clicking in-time still to really drive that energy.

The two composers absolutely cooked with the tracks they made, for sure. I'm glad you had fun with this lil four-day project in spite of it's rough edges, and thank you for playing!

SO SORRY yeah we were going to implement an audio slider but time crunch made it really hard to get the QOL implemented (It will be first up on a post-jam update though!). I hope the music tracks themselves were fun for ya tho, had some good fun cooking those up for this jam

I've never actually played BPM, but I've played Metal: Hellsinger, Hi-Fi Rush, and a few other similar titles, so I know what it's putting down. I'm glad this four-day prototype manages to channel that energy well though, and that the execution mostly lands.

Thank you for playing!

Getting all the weapons to sync up was definitely something I wanted to get working, and I'm glad that it was satisfying and worked well! The SMG is definitely the weaker link of the three, and there's currently plans to turn it into more of a burst-fire weapon post-jam, with each beat hit firing 3 or 4 shots instead of a hold-to-shoot as it is right now.

That map void issue is actually one of a few bugs that happened last-minute due to having to switch from a web build to windows - the other annoyingly being the restart button takes you to the main menu instead of loading the current level again. Which - naturally - is a really annoying combination.

Thank you for playing! I'm glad you had fun!