You are a dream catcher. Your task is to destroy the grimoire. With the help of other clans, you managed to get through the battlefield and get into the shelter of the artifact. Now everything is up to you.

wasd - move

cntl - slow move

left mouse button - shoot

(The exe version works better)

I use 3th party font monogram. I really like how it's look.
https://datagoblin.itch.io/monogram

And palette sirens at night.

https://lospec.com/palette-list/sirens-at-night


Download

Download
Chain.exe 65 MB

Comments

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I like the concept, it's neat to go through the game the first time thinking "this is a bit lackluster" only to see I got a bad ending. Unless you want it to be part of the difficulty, it would be nice to have a way to go back through phases when you target the good ending, as dying will reset the current phase, but harming the boss enough will go to the next one, forcing to reset the whole attempt.
That may only be me but with the various small rotating elements I had trouble locating my mouse cursor on screen at times.

I am really glad, what my idea with good and bad ending work as intended :)

And, yes, restart button for chapter (and for all game), I wanted to add this, but don't have enough time for this. In post-jam version, it will be first thing for adding.
Thank you :)

(+1)

Wonderful game! I really enjoyed it! The music is repetitive, but its fine, the art looks gorgeous.

The movement, the firing is nice. I really love the two endings. The first ending really easy to achieve, which I like. The good ending does require quite a bit of retries.

I love the fact that what made the bad ending easy, the rings around the thing, become a thing that makes the good ending harder, although that fact is a bit underutilized.

The lose a life - remove all bullets is a nice feature as well, it can be used tactically to lose a life but get into a spot where the things wont shoot at you.

And thats really my only problem with this. I get that general "spew bullets into the room and let the player dance around it" is a feature of bullet hell games, but there is more than that. A lot of little bullet spawners can be cheesed by the player. I would have loved to see some things that targeted the player. It felt a bit frustrating at the end, because it wasn't a wave based player targeted attack, it was just "spew a lot of bullets and call it a day" which was annoying. For example in Enter The Gungeon, a lot of enemies have focused attacks. They shoot at you. And then there are the few "spew a lot of random bullets and geometric shapes into the room and let the player dance around it" which is fine.

But apart from missing player targeted attacks and the game feeling a bit cheesable, I think its great. But there was a typo of space being "spase to continue"

(+1)

Thank you so much for this extensive critique.

I am very happy to know that my design decisions are working as I planned. And the fact that there are things that I can improve.

Yes, I agree that the music is quite repetitive, unfortunately this area is one of my main weaknesses so far. I don't know how to compose something long, if I managed to make something short, I'm already happy.

The three spinning rings are really added to complicate the good ending. Previously, there was only one ring in the center and it was very easy. But yes, if I could expand this idea further that would be great. Change patterns between chapters, conditions, etc. This could go well with the narrative.

The loss of life came as a surprise to me. I did it without thinking. And the more I think about it, the more it seems like a good idea. Now I remember how I used the loss of life in the game as a tool to achieve the goal. Change location or attack aggressively.

And yes, "spew bullets into the room" I can't argue with that. In the early stages of design, I thought about how I would make enemies. Will they shoot at the player or will they shoot all over the room. And I had no idea that the best solution is both. If I created several types of enemies, then more interesting situations could be made. At the end of the game, I tried all the interesting ways to use enemies. And the use of new enemies could only make the game better.

And the last chapter. I wanted to reflect the chaos before the end. Perhaps I really overdid it and made the last chapter not as interesting as I wanted.

And the last thing about chees. I know about it. There are special safe places. At first I thought how to get rid of them all. But then I started to worry less about it. If the player finds chees let him use it. The game is sometimes quite difficult.

Thanks for playing :)