Rewind

I got to wave eight \o/

So the concept is cute, and I think some bullet-hells have patterns where the bullets indeed (surprisingly) come back towards the boss, forcing the player to dodge the bullet some more. Toward the end, I was a bit unhappy that the patterns themselves were not very interesting and were just a question of finding one safe spot where you can stand throughout. Then, of course, even the reversed bullets won't get you there. I think this is still the case in wave 8 but at least visually the pattern looked a little bit different than just a fan of bullets? For a more bullet-hell type of challenge, I would have liked to see bullets flying in various directions, at different speeds, etc, etc :) Also an indicator of where the actual, precise hitbox of the player is would be nice.

Anyway, fun game, nice music loop, interesting lo-fi(?) recording that reminded me of sound samples from the 90's, and congratulations on finishing and submitting even though it was your first Godot game :)

@Aurel300
Thanks for reviewing my game! I see what you mean, I should have invested more time into bullet pattern polish. The idea with different bullet patterns is actually one I came up with but didn't have time to impliment before the end of the jam, what I ended up with is that (as you correctly noticed =D) that the bullet patterns are computer-generated after wave 8.

The hitbox of the player is about one pixel, because in my testing it felt pretty unfair when I barely grazed a bullet and it killed me. A better indicator is a good idea though, yeah.

Overall, thanks :)

I think there's a glitch that when replaying after the first game over, rewind doesn't happen and the game is stuck forever without a bullet. Other than that, a nice bullet hell game.

@esuke
I think you're right. The resetting functionality seems a little glitchy, sorry. Ideally restart the game after Game Over'ing once.

I like the idea of the bullet hell and reversing time, but as it was said, this is more a question of finding a safe spot and staying there. So it's not really a bullet hell since you don't move while a wave has started. The inertia on the ship/character is too big to move while the pattern is going. So wasn't very interesting in the end (sorry). If we had to move during the waves, and then again during the reverse phase it would have been a great game.

There is a very easy safe spot. Just go at the top of the screen.
The graphics are nice, except the explosion sprite is not in the same style as the rest and has a resolution far higher than the rest.
While I like the short music loop the quality isn't great (it saturates I believe) and a bit repeatitve if you play long enough, and too loud.

@mixer
Thanks for the honest feedback, it really helps. Glad you played the game!

Concept of the rewind feels interesting, but the "spawner" really needs to be on the center, so as to not just be able to go behind the dude and avoid all the bullets :) And the position of the player need to be changed when the rewind happens, otherwise you can just stay put and avoid everything again :D Feels like there is something to be explored more here.

Too bad you chose a pixelart aesthetic, but allowed sub-pixel movements. But maybe staying on a true pixel-perfect grid would have been a detriment to the bullet-hell gameplay 🤔

Music is amazing, too bad the sound effects are so loud in comparison :(

And the palette is gorgeous, it's very calming, especially in association with the music (despite being a bullet hell !).

Also, it's not about gameplay, but that title screen is very cool :D

Did you use a voice synthesizer for the wave announcement ? I can't get the game to crash because of a missing sound file :( Edit: "WAVE INFINITE" let's gooooooooo I beat the game 🥳

@SoKette
I'm glad you enjoyed the game! I see what you mean, I should have put more time into the patterns themselves.

You're right, I should have played around with the movement a little more. The viewport of the game is 800x600, but the actual size is only 160x120. I didn't play around with making the viewport of the game match up with the resolution, but now that you point it out it probably wouldn't've brought detriment to the game lol.

Yes, I used a tiny voice synthesizer called piper for the voice and just lowered the bitrate dramatically. Cool that you beat the game!

I laughed (in my head) when I saw the explosions. I don't agree with SoKette in that the player position should change when the rewind happens. What would have been enough is some spirals or wavy patterns where you have to move during the wave. But it was well made and pretty. Movement being slippery didn't feel nice to me. I don't know if it's normal for these kinds of games.
I was so confused at the beginning where my shooting button is because there's really no information what you are supposed to do and what the controls are. But I figured it out!

I was very confused at first because I tried playing it on the itch io page and part of the game was cut off. The aesthetics are quite pleasing, even the goofy explosion effect made me nostalgic for some reason. Without any new mechanics the gameplay gets a little stale after a while but for the first few levels it's interesting to try to find the safe spot. The music didn't get too repetitive for me but it was a little too loud. Looking at the explosions when the bullets rewind is super pleasing to the eye 🤩.

the game felt weird cause half the screen was cut off for me. :( Looks like you put a lot of effort into it. wish I could have experienced the full thing.

Very nice music, and great mood for a jam entry. Nice to get some relaxing games amongst the more manic entries. Nice work achieving so much on your first encounter with Godot! Some more developed gameplay would have been nice (as with every jam entry), the game was just too easy, but I still had a good time with it. Great entry!