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Spinblade's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #282 | 4.077 | 4.077 |
| Audio | #1499 | 3.359 | 3.359 |
| Artwork | #2569 | 3.410 | 3.410 |
| Creativity | #2873 | 3.513 | 3.513 |
| Narrative | #5374 | 2.051 | 2.051 |
Ranked from 39 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?
The player in my game orbits around a circle in a loop
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
See description
(Optional) What would you like to be called if GMTK features your game?
mydimons
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Comments
addictive game, love it. Good sound effects, simple and effective art style.
cool game, only got 7 or so upgrades in, would be good to have some meta progression so you don't have to start from the beginning each time.
Fun game! But it felt a little easy, the health regen is very powerful. The sound effects are nice and satisfying!
Yeah kind of ran out of time to finish the balancing :/ ... But I have a few ideas to fix regen & balancing post jam!
Wow I've had so much fun with this game, sadly I didn't manage to get the win, maybe I'll give it another try later. But gosh, pretty solid game for sure.
glad you enjoyed! It is pretty long at the moment (And gets kind of boring late game), and I have a few plans to make it faster & have more content. Hope you try again later!
Sounds exciting. How can I get notified when you update it? I would like to give it a try whenever it gets updated.
For updates you could possibly follow me on itch, although I don't know if it would notify you when it updates. The best solution I have would be my youtube because I'll be posting a video once I'm done the update (And another one right after the jam ends). I do have some big plans for the update so it might take a few weeks
I love Nodebuster. It's such a good game. It's well-polished and balanced for a game jam. Looks great.
Thanks! I definitely got the main idea of the upgrade tree from nodebuster (even played it a few more times for some inspiration), but put my own little spin on it making you unlock enemies within the upgrade tree!
I really love this!!! it reminds me of something I would spend hours playing on some games website as a kid ^-^
the amount of upgrades and progression you managed to fit in here is kind of insane for a jam game.
thanks for playing! I definitely spent most of my time working on upgrades, though I couldn’t really balance the later game upgrades with the time I had sadly
That was an enormous upgrade tree for a jam game. I like the take on the theme and the gameplay was simple but engaging. The art style and music were also great. Feels like an addicting io game.
Thanks! I also had someone compare my game to diep.io!
very fun game its just i wesnt a fan of the music cutting out for a little bit then coming back on
but other then the game was really fun and can you try my game like i tried yours i will really appreciate that thx
yeah, the time between music tracks might be a little bit too long (Currently it's randomized between 10-20 seconds). I also had a few bugs relating to the music where it would just cut out randomly and play the next track immediately. Thanks for playing and commenting!
Fun little concept! Did feel a little unfair at times with shapes attacking on both sides of your loop at the same time, making them impossible to avoid.
I love the pleasing glow to everything, and the skill tree was really satisfying.
Thanks for playing and commenting on my game! I do agree that some enemies can be annoying when you cant reach them (Especially early game), but later in the game it gets a little better since you can avoid some weak enemies
Very fun game and a cool take on the loop theme. I love the artstyle and the kind of neon glow. I like the idea of an upgrade tree instead of just regular buttons. I do wish there was more to the game so it can stand out more but for 4 days this is definitely impressive. Overall a very nice game. Could you rate my game?
Thanks for playing! I definitely do wish I could have added more in the time I had (Mainly more special enemies)
Fun game, although it does get boring with time, because the player's strategy never changes. Even though the enemies have stat differences, they all behave the same way which means that the player deals with them all the same way. I'd suggest enemies that move or work fundamentally differently than any of the ones you currently have implemented, such as enemies that spiral inwards, dodge homing arrows, teleport, i don't even know, anything interesting would be nice. Overall, it had a very high level of polish and was fun to play!
Thanks for the review! Yes the game is definitely quite long and I want to do some things to make it shorter (Or just progress faster). I tried adding the gold enemies and event enemies as a way to somewhat break this loop, but I think it is still missing is a bit of variety. I love the idea of moving enemies! I was originally going to have some moving enemies but thought it was going to take too long to develop so I ended up not adding them. But I WILL add moving enemies with some cool moves later, I'm currently thinking of some kind of enemy that's REALLY slow, and has low health, but shoots a barrage of low damage projectiles. Enemies that can teleport would be a challenge (VFX for teleporting I think would be a challenge), but would be a GREAT addition.
Again, thanks for reviewing and playing my game! Check out this post I have about the future plans of this game: https://mydimons.itch.io/spin-blade/devlog/1001546/future-plans
Great idea really liked your implementation of the hp bar!
Thanks for playing!
A very simple and interesting idea!
Thanks for commenting and playing my game!
Before I dive into my critiques, just know that it's because I think this game works well that I spent a while playing it and thinking about what could have been even better! I especially liked how enemies have different speeds, and some "enemies" (the golden ones) should be dodged rather than intercepted. It gave a lot more depth than just "turn towards whatever's closest to you"! I also appreciate the shop polish where text would zoom in instead of just appearing when you mouse over. Everything else is clean and fun in general, too!
The first thing that felt a little off to me, was that you had to unlock the enemy that "you should really upgrade your damage for these" as a requirement to actually upgrade your damage at all. It felt a bit like I was being forced to point the proverbial gun at my foot, and made me feel like I needed to save up a lot to unlock the enemy and those upgrades in one go. The same was true for the spikey enemy, although there was a set of HP upgrades in front, so this is slightly better. I think these should have been reversed, perhaps--gate the damage upgrades behind the spikers and gate the bigger HP upgrades behind the tanks. There could be some initial HP upgrades (as there already are) to encourage the HP -> spiker -> DMG -> tank path, but still allow for players to unlock enemies quickly if they just want to SEND IT.
The Tank needs a little balancing, I think--with no damage upgrades, it felt like it had as much health as the boss? I expected 2-3 hits to kill them initially, not 4-5, and 1 after fully upgrading damage as requested.
Regen is a great idea for an upgrade, but it feels a bit OP currently. It might need a bit of tuning to continue (as it effectively does now) to make mistakes feel less punishing, but not start being used as a mechanic to just ignore many of the little triangles. I started doing that closer to the end and it felt bad letting things hit me, but my HP was staying full still.
Knockback is also a fun mechanic, but too extreme in my opinion. Especially after the knockback increase upgrade, which i shouldn't have purchased, I kept wondering why bosses kept spawning... but then I realized it was just the same boss coming back after like 15 seconds! I wondered why I had 1-shot a boss, and then realized it was the one I had been hitting for a while.
The economy also probably needs some tuning--I bought all of the first set of money upgrades (before the "self" enemy) after buying the cheap (sub-$50) enemy types and hp/damage upgrades. At that point I could basically just farm money until the $1000 threshold to buy the "WIN" upgrade.
Major nitpick: The BUY text in the shop can also probably go away once you've followed the instruction! And the prices increasing after buying the last one doesn't make a lot of sense--they could just say MAX or something to make it clear that they're not for purchase anymore.
Again, amazing game though. I don't play many of the games I look at for very long, or spend time thinking about feedback unless I enjoyed it, so great work!
Thanks for the fully thought out review, tons of great feedback! I think the for the starting enemies (Spiker & Tanker) those ideas are great, and for the tanker I will try to put the first damage upgrade infront of the enemy instead of after it. This which would most likely solve them from being overpowered with no damage upgrades as you said.
For the economy, I wanted to make all of the enemy upgrades MUCH cheaper so it was easier to progress (And faster), I'll do this in a later update after the jam. The knockback is kind of weird, sometimes the enemies seem like they instantly teleport, so I'll definitely do some changes to it (Also might lower boss hp or find a workaround).
For regen I also find in lategame it can be op, since you regen 4% (I think) of your max health a second, but I think its good so it's harder to die late game which can be really punishing. But like you said, it might be a little bit TOO op and I might think about lowering the max regen amount, or maybe making the upgrades more expensive, or having a special, optional branching upgrade that isn't necessary to buy.
Also about your major nitpicks, I definitely found that to be a bit of an issue (Mainly the maxed upgrades). I'm pretty sure I was almost going to add this, but ran out of time. I did kind of have a way of communicating that the upgrade was maxed via the outline, but adding the "MAX" Text would not be very hard to implement and a great addition! Also about the "<- BUY" text in the tutorial, I will add a thing so it gets removed after buying the first upgrade.
Again, thanks for the great feedback and some things I will definitely implement once the jam is over! Here's a little post I have for future plans: https://mydimons.itch.io/spin-blade/devlog/1001546/future-plans (Just updated it from these awesome suggestions)
Amazing!
As for putting damage upgrades in front of the Tanker--I'd suggest at least doing it in parallel rather than as a requirement to unlock them. Otherwise you're essentially lowering their health, which kind of negates their special property!
I think giving the player CHOICES on how they want to progress is the fun bit. Even something like exposing enemy stats instead of suggesting a strategy might put more power into the players' hands to make their own choice and live with the consequences. If there's a big number in the HP stat, with maybe a description like "defensive shapes" or something rather than "go buy damage before buying this!", it will make the player feel more clever when they decide to prioritize the damage upgrade first!
I think making enemy upgrades cheap to encourage progression is a great idea. I didn't notice that, but I think I enjoyed the game more because of it!
Check out the game Nodebuster if you haven't -- it has a unique "combat" system and a nice progression. The shop has a good system to represent the bazillion states an upgrade item can be in.
I have tried Nodebuster (And finished it), and after a day of working on this game I realized how similar it was and then started to take inspiration from it (This is why I added a skill tree, but put my own twist on it with the enemies).
For the damage upgrade in from of the tankers, I think doing it in parallel would be a good idea, but for the upgrades after the damage & enemy, you would either need to have both upgrades to unlock the next upgrades, or have the enemy unlock a new branch of cool upgrades.
Also implementing more choices with completely optional upgrades would be very cool, I've had some people suggest paths that will lock another one (Someone gave the example of giving the saw a fire or ice upgrade, but you can only choose one)
Thanks for EVEN MORE amazing feedback!
Mutually exclusive branches sounds so fun!! I want to play it :)
This game is ridiculously addictive! Well done :D
thanks so much!
Very addictive game, i fell into it for at least half an hour :D
Good job on your submission!
Thank you!
Splendid entry! Simple but well thought out. The atmosphere is sold perfectly with 3 colors and some sound design and it is a satisfying experience overall. The only tiny annoiance I would say is having to press for the upgrades in the middle of the action without breaks, in later stage it became annoying. Other then that, fantastic job
Thanks for playing! I did have a few other people say that to me, but I couldn't come up with a solution in time for the jam. (Any ideas are welcome if you have any!)
Totally fair, ours dosen't have half of the content we prepared ahah
My 2cents: Maybe plan the enemies as hordes (since you have the bosses too) and open the shop automatically after beating one, like in Vampire Survivors when you level up. It's less flexible maybe, as you can't upgrade on the fly, but it puts more stakes on reaching that milestone and gives you room to think
might look into some of these, mainly the enemy hordes. Thanks for the feedback!
I don't think I've ever played a jam game for as long as I played this one, it's so fun! You did a great job making the most out of such a simple mechanic, and I love the depth of the skill tree. I've never seen a skill tree where you purchase enemy types before, very interesting, it was like its own minigame. Music and SFX were very cool too. 10/10
Purchasing enemies adds a risk factor (and makes me want to save up money for the enemy and the upgrade after it at the same time)
Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed!
Wow, they even managed to make an internal store! The only thing missing is a pause button. This looks like a great game. And it's addictive, so I'll be breaking triangles soon :D
special thanks for the infinity mode, so many games lack this
Thanks! The shop does work as a pause button (Pressing Tab or MMB), since it freezes the game until you exit it. Glad you enjoyed the infinity mode! it was a last minute addition.
Very fun game! I love the progression throughout the game. I had a lot of fun with this one!
Thanks!