itch.io

Hello. I didn't know it was possible for bash to ignore libraries in the same directory as the executable. Static linking would probably fix that so I'll look into it, thanks.

I applaud the effort of condensing early 2010s humor in a 20 minute game. I also applaud the effort of reducing my mouse's lifespan (I just bought a new one too).

Hello. Thanks for playing, I'll work on the movement.

The game was kind of intimidating at first with the scary music, theme, etc. but it's actually a pretty fun bullet hell. I liked it.

I tried on Linux, got a missing library error:

./rex_operari_demo62: error while loading shared libraries: libGLEW.so.2.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

So I played the windows version. Outside of the menu issues, it worked perfectly until the end. I noticed, however, that when you start the program it spawns a terminal window. You might already know this, but you can hide the terminal by using the "-Wl,-subsystem,windows" flag in gcc, or an equivalent of it.

It seems "load profile" function is broken. When I started the game, I tried to set the new profile's name as "Lily." It didn't work; I went back to main menu, tried to load profile, saw that there was already a "Lily" profile with a score of 9999; went back again, made a new profile with another name, then went back and selected "load profile" again; the game immediately crashed. I restarted the game, and it continued crashing when I selected "load profile." I reinstalled the game, went through the same motions, and it still crashes in the same way.

I played the easy mode. The stages are pretty short; I'm guessing you're going for a more boss-centric design, which is fine. The patterns are well made and nice to look at, but some of them are kind of unfair. In some patterns it's possible for you get hit by a bullet that went off the lower edge of the screen; as far as I know, that's pretty unusual in shooters, since it should be "dead" at that point. I also had difficulties with the patterns where the bullets get sucked in but I ascribe that to me not using the portal (I didn't know how to use it for most of the game).

At the end, I got to the fourth stage (Parabola V), but when I got to the boss my shots didn't deal any damage to him. I assumed it was timed, dodged his first pattern for a while (100 seconds actually), but it didn't end, so I'm not sure what I had to do to get further. It might be a bug.

It's certainly a game now, still early though. The game is too silent. There should be at least some free music to set the mood at this point. There's also many easy spelling and grammar mistakes, you should get someone to proofread the script.

Tutorial 1 soft-locks at the system game (like aeoriii said, there's no button). There's no option to leave the tutorial mid-way so you have to terminate the program. In Tutorial 2,  I think one of the working class girl's line misfired at some point. Matsuri says "Please stop talking to the director" even though she didn't say anything. Tutorial 3 is okay. I feel like 2 and 1 are in the wrong order since 2 teaches you how to build a ship and 1 teaches you how to fly it.

A ship not having a name shouldn't prevent you from building it. Just give it a default name like "Ship 1." When I did my first expedition to Langrangien, the game immediately unpaused itself, so the mission ended before I was able to see what was going on (I had speed on x16). Not huge, but I wanted to see the ship go around, since I think the simulation of orbits is the most impressive part of the game.

After I got to year 1935 or so all my missions started being "Complete Failures" without exception. I think this also happened in the last demos. The weirder part is all the ships I sent stopped going back to Galduen and instead decided to just float around in its orbit (it says they're all "Traveling to Langrangien," but they're not actually doing anything).

I actually forgot there was a roguelite mode (sorry) so I went back and played it. It seems functional despite some bugs. I'm guessing the rooms are random? I got a room once where the doors were freaky and opened and closed for no reason when I went through them. I died once (got to 0 motivation) and got an apparent soft-locked. When I respawned, I had focus on and I couldn't move or open the menu. I'm not sure if this is a problem with the mode specifically since I didn't get to 0 motivation during the story mode. You might already know this but I feel like I need to mention that the boss room is lacking collision in some parts so you can just walk out of it into the void. I suppose the consumables are kind of underwhelming, I feel like they should heal more. The bullet freeze works but I only found it useful as a panic button (it kind of reminded of Super Ledgehop. It's an old game now but it has a similar mechanic).

Hi.  It's a pretty early prototype and the level editor is still rudimentary. I tweaked the acceleration values a bunch of times and I'm still not sure how to get it right. I think it depends a lot on the kind of level design you're going for, so I'll see it as I go. The main point of the demo is the level editor: in short, there's only 5 tiles types, the first two are null tiles, which means they remove a present tile (why is there two? dunno); the last one is an invisible wall, which might cause some problems if you use it thinking it's a null tile. You cycle through them by pressing 1 and 2 (which I will probably change later). Maybe I should put all that in the readme. Thanks for playing!

Nice renovation you did to wizzy's house, now I can believe it's a true home invasion defense simulator. After playing the new levels I believe the mages' guild shunned him because he has a whole pool in his bathroom. I actually used all of the weapons this time around, but I still think the double-barreled shotgun is the best one. After you get to 30 or so power-ups the spread covers 1/3 of the screen.  Unfortunately, I was not able to get the mythical 9,99 x 10^11 unlock even while abusing it (is it even possible?)

Controller worked perfectly for me (Logitech F310). I've never played shooters with a controller so I can't comment on the aim assist, but it seems to work as it should.

I noticed a funny bug in the results screen where the score numbers will display "NUMBER" for a split second before turning into the actual score. I'm guessing that's the placeholder string for the score. I also noticed that if the big guy's cannonball hits the reflector from a certain angle (behind?) it'll just disappear, but that might be intended (having it reflect in your face would be a jackass move). Nice voice acting work.

First, I'll mention the game has spelling mistakes and then not mention it again since I don't think it's important. Some of them are pretty distracting though (like the Colonel saying 'extradimentional' right in the prologue). There's also some missing periods and other stuff that can be fixed by proof-reading.

The art is still very simple, and that's fine; that being said, I don't like the palette. At some point I thought a red bridge was a door. Maybe that's more due to the lack of shading, but it's not very nice to look at. The lack of music made me feel lonely. There's a severe lack of responsive SFX. I loved the portraits, they're very cute; the dialogue is very cute and fun, and the story is easy to understand.

Right after I started the game, I accidentally skipped the tutorial by walking on the teleport pad (probably shouldn't happen). When I went back to the prologue, I found out you can't skip the dialogue (not good). As to the gameplay itself, it's fun: I got lost sometimes, but that's more a level design question than a fault in itself. The level design, as it is, seems like a mix of Zelda-like dungeon crawler and typical top down shooter (I think that's the intention). At some point I accidentally teleported again and got lost (again, probably shouldn't happen). The Rumia boss fight was fun, but I feel like her hitbox is way too small. The red cross-hair is also too small and easy to miss; I couldn't really tell where I was shooting. You could either make it bigger, make the color stand out more, or make it follow the cursor, or maybe a mix of those, whichever you find better considering the gameplay. I think you should also be able to manually move the camera somehow, even if just a little bit off the edge of the screen, since vision is pretty important in these kinds of games.

I think some concepts could be explained better. It took a while for me to realize the laser used your shield, and that grazing replenished it, although I might have missed some explanations, since I tend to get lost while reading.

I found one bug at some point, with the red elevator, where if you stood next to the button and pressed it would push you up or down as if you're moved by a mysterious force, even though you're not actually standing on the elevator itself. I found another bug, in the section with the remotely-controlled turret, where it would go through the door leading into the room even though it's closed; apparently the turret doesn't have collision there. Otherwise, it seems pretty bug-free. I liked this game, keep it up.

Sure, done.

I think it's been 2 Demo Days since I played this. It looks like you redesigned the first area to be more linear? I found it much easier to go through. Not that having an open world is a bad thing, but when you've just gotten into the game it is a bit daunting. I had a lot more fun this time.

In the first area, I died a couple of times to the first enemies before I got the famine food (I know I'm bad). That caused me to have extremely low stamina and made the game quite a bit harder. It's not game-breaking, but it does make the game less fun for someone who's just starting out. Also, at some point I got a crash after I tried to equip/change the ammunition of the crossbow. Unfortunately I didn't get the code.

This is a lot funner than last time I played it. Did you add music? It's still extremely buggy, though. I had the following issues: the game doesn't reset properly when  you press the "restart" button. The fish enemies in the first stage stay at the bottom of the screen if you don't kill them. There's a thorn-bush enemy in the third stage that is placed very badly. It essentially just shows up out of nowhere and you'll inevitably get damaged if you don't know it's there. I feel like it's supposed to spawn at least a couple dozen pixels lower.

The pause key is set to the ESC key, so if you pause the game it kicks you out of fullscreen (in Firefox. Not a bug but it bothers me). This is just a game design consideration: the length of the side of the witch girl's hit-box seems to be the same or close to the same length as the diameter of the circle representing it, which is not a good idea since circles aren't shaped the same as boxes (I hope this makes sense). In Touhou I think it's 2-3 pixels smaller than the circle. At least one of the boss attacks starts too early, causing the animation that starts the attack to obstruct the action.

I didn't like the farm girl's second pattern (the one with the scarecrows). You're not able to kill the scarecrows so she can simply shoot them in your face. I don't feel it's awfully hard to dodge but it makes hitting the boss a hassle since it limits your movement. The other patterns are fun. I liked the ghost girl's patterns, but the last one seems to spawn bullets on top of you.

Rosemary's homing bullets are very finicky. Some times they'll home in, but sometimes they won't. I can't figure them out.

Overall I found it pretty fun, but please fix the bugs!

Hi. Fullscreen and scaling is very WIP. I actually considered making the game fullscreen by default so I could get people to test it, but I didn't want people to get crashes (like you did). As far as I tested it it didn't have any major problems, but I only tested it on my resolution, so I'll have to look at it again. Thanks for the report. I'm also considering adding a tutorial sort of thing for the next DD so hopefully the game will be easier to get into. Cheers!

Hello. Thanks for playing! I added a jump command (space bar) this version, but I haven't added a tutorial yet, so you might have missed it. You're supposed to dodge that last attack by jumping over the bullets. I think I'll try to improve the game design for the next DD. I spent most of my time this version looking over the art and making the new shot-types. It's nice to see, though, that the game is getting somewhat funner and less frustrating. Sometimes it's hard to put yourself in the player's shoes. Cheers!

Hello. It's true the lack of contrast is a big issue; I'll try to make the bullets stand out more in the future. You have an interesting suggestion there; I did actually redraw the player sprite this version to make it more noticeable, but I didn't consider redesigning it to indicate where the hit-box is. I'll see if I can make it more obvious. Thanks for playing! (lol'd at high IQ. I'm average at best)

I think I see what you're talking about. I tried to add some anti-aliasing to the sprites as well but I couldn't figure it out.

Apparently I can't run most games with my VM (Win7) due to missing libraries (it seems it can run old games like Higurashi but not GameMaker games or my own game), so I used Wine. If I can get the VM set up (I hadn't used one in over a year and just installed it for the hot-fix) I'll see if I can run it on it.

Very fun arcade game with a cute art-style. At first I thought the movement was a bit slippery, but, since it's my first time playing, I quickly got used to it. I noticed while I was playing that you apparently can't pick up a crab if it's standing right next to another stunned crab (or maybe just another crab in general. I tested it for a bit but I couldn't tell). I also don't like that you can't reset a crab's stun by punching the block it's lying on again (especially in the case of the big crabs, since you can't pick them up), but that's more of a question of game design.

Hi. I'm glad it worked! I was honestly not sure at all it would. Cross-compiling is hard. I did consider making the portraits pixel-art as well, but I feel high-resolution pixel art is actually harder to make look good than traditional art. Maybe it's more of a question of making the game's art better in general. I'll try to add a tutorial for the next version; I'm aware the controls aren't very intuitive.

You're right, most people don't play shoot-'em-ups anymore. Alas! I really like them. They have a specific design philosophy to them. Part of why I'm making this is because I wanted to have a more intimate knowledge of how they're made. Anyway, thanks for playing! (I tried to play your game, but it crashed when I pressed the start button. Probably a local issue. I found the descriptions really funny, though.)

This is still very buggy and early in development, but it has the potential to be a very fun game. I like games where you can have pawns fight for you (this kind of reminded me of Dwarf Fortress). I really liked the ancient Roman names and portraits.

I didn't find the font very readable. I think without the scan-lines it would be more readable, but it's still hard to read. Also, please add line-breaks to the info text!

I won't mention the visual bugs since they're very obvious. The worst bug is probably with the fire button. It'll either not fire any character at all or fire the character immediately below the character you actually want to fire (I think. I couldn't tell what was happening), and then the character will be invisible, but still clickable. I think you fixed most of this in the last version, but firing a character still leaves an invisible clickable box. The game stopped working after I died in the caves. I replaced my dead characters but when I embarked into another dungeon it still said my party was wiped out. This game could use an indicator. I didn't know at first you could mouse over the enemies to read their descriptions.

Haha, well, the art was pretty bad last time. The horse didn't even have a mane (it took months for me to notice that). I'm hoping to get better with time. Cheers!

Hello. Thanks for the detailed feedback. I do agree the patterns are very simple, maybe due to the nature of the game (x-axis only and relatively short screen), but also because I'm not at that level of programming yet, so I prioritized gimmicks over intricate patterns. In that sense it's probably more like older shooters than Touhou, though I did take a lot from Touhou. I have trouble designing levels; stage 2 in particular I've barely changed since I first made it, so it's shorter and less well thought than the other levels. Thanks for reminding me to redesign it. Adding health bars to the bosses would be relatively simple; I'll see if I can do it.

I changed the palette of the game since the last version, so it may have messed up the contrast between the bullets and the background, especially in stage 2. I'll revise it; I also hate when I can't see the bullets on screen. Those static circles I have instead of enemies have been the exact same since the first version. I tried to change them this time when I was looking over the art, but I couldn't come up with anything better (I can't draw), so I just left them as they were. Maybe at some point they'll stop being boring circles.

I think I got something similar to your bug a long time ago, when I was making the options screen, but I can't replicate it at the moment, so I'll have to look at it later. (If you do finish the game, please do tell me if you have any more suggestions.) Thanks for playing!

I haven't played the original IWBTG, but I found this game is pretty fun and pretty pretty. I really like challenging games. There's something extremely satisfying about beating them and figuring them out, even though they can be frustrating at times. I got to the green apple wave pattern on Beginner (so about 2:10) and 0:53.816 on Normal (I keep touching the boss) so far. I played a while without recording since the start of the second pattern (the part where the bullets that spell "I Wanna Give Up!" explode) lags quite a lot on my computer (though I later realized it didn't matter whether I was recording or not. I need a new CPU).

I'll be commenting mostly on Normal. The first pattern is very hard to get; I spent a good ten minutes on it; good thing it's the first pattern so you can retry it easily. Once you learn it, though, you can do it very consistently. The second pattern is pretty and also doable once you get into the flow (I think the lagging made it a lot harder than it is). I actually found that timing your first movements to the music kind of helps. Generally the game is very learnable, which is a good thing. The patterns after that I only saw on Beginner. The wave pattern was very overwhelming the first time I saw it; I managed to figure out where to stand  after a few tries, but I died right after that.

At some point I triggered a soft-lock in the game (see the video). I was playing on Beginner difficulty and I cleared the mid-boss; it flew into the air, like it usually does, but the background didn't change and the game did not progress to the next section. That was the only bug I got, though (I played for about one and a half hour).

Hi. I'm very sorry it crashed like that. Did you actually go through the game twice after it crashed? I am also sorry for that. I should probably make a stage select option for any future testers. Anyway, I was able to replicate the issue (it's a memory leak due to the game not resetting the stages properly after you die), so I'm going to work on fixing it now. Sorry for the inconvenience. I'm aware the controls are not very intuitive, so I'll try to make a sort of tutorial stage; that's probably a better way to explain controls than dumping them in the options screen. Art is really the thing I'm worst at, but I try to improve it a bit with every version. Hildegarde does deal more damage, but the main difference is Lombard's shot is slower and worse at hitting moving targets (at least when it comes to the bosses) and the auto-aim can sometimes work against you (I think). Thanks for playing my game!

Hello. Thanks for reminding me to reset the continues after clearing a stage; that's an oversight. You should be able to continue at least once per stage before you get sent back to the start. I'm not even really sure if I'll keep this system; I'm trying decide on what kind of continue system would be the least frustrating without removing the challenge of the game.  There is an option for toggling the player's hit-box, but it's kind of hidden. You have to press T on the keyboard. As to the 2nd boss's attack, I agree it is a bit too difficult. I think the main problem is the rows being random in addition to being too close together, especially if you're at Hildegarde's speed.  I'll change it to be a bit less extreme. Thanks for playing!

I might have fixed it. I got rid of the library error, at least. It still crashes on my VM, but I think that's a local issue since the older versions that I know worked on Windows also crash. I also got rid of the weird command line window it spawned for some reason. Cheers.

Hmm, I don't know why that happens. Apparently, it's an issue with libstdc++-6.dll. I can't replicate it with Wine so I'll see if I can run this on Windows. Thanks for the report.

Glad to see you again this demo day! I see you fixed many of the collision problems the game had last time, good job. I had some problems with the crawl button on the controller (I think you can't press it twice to go back to standing) so I switched to the keyboard. I like how the game mixes 2D and 3D without losing cohesion.

I had a problem with the guard in the school (around 17:10). I went up to him and talked to him. Then, I jumped over the counter to get to the other side; this got me immediately tased and sent back to the menu screen. I hadn't a save so I had to play the tutorial all over again. Then, when I got to the school again, he was standing outside waiting for me. This is probably not the intended behavior. Everything else worked fine until I had the same freeze problem as Federx but with another door (at the end).

This game is very addicting. I probably played it for way longer than I should. I did not realize there were unlockable weapons while I was playing (I thought the upgrades were for WIP stuff) so I'm going to have to play it again (oh, no!). Adding an option to change your weapons in the menu after you die would probably be a good idea. Thanks for submitting, this was really fun. My high score was 597,326 (around 01:32:40),

Very nice demo. The controls feel great and the visuals are nice. The boss is difficult, but beatable once you learn it. I found it just the right difficulty (though I did resort to kiting a bit at the end). I only have one complaint: I found it very easy to accidentally activate the lock-on button by pressing the left and right mouse buttons at the same time, since it's set to the middle mouse button. It also seems I triggered a visual bug at 24:30 in the video.

I'm trying to play this but I keep soft-locking myself. There's some visual bugs. Also, I think the UI looks too harsh. Otherwise I liked the simulation of the orbits. You could definitely build upon this.

Hi. I'm glad to hear that! I'm flattered that you bothered to draw one of my characters. I posted my own fan-art in the thread as thanks. Cheers.

I sucked, then I learned how to dodge and heal and not scythe the barrels and I sucked less. But I still suck. I think I will have to play smarter if I want to get past the first two floors. I like the main mechanic of the game. Switching between the chemickals gives an extra strategic element to the gameplay.

Great visuals and gameplay! I really liked the UI specifically. I can tell a lot of effort was put into this.

I'll assume this is peculiar to the Linux build since Federx also mentioned it but I think the third level is impossible to beat (on Linux). I don't know what the objectives are supposed to be and you cannot kill the enemies unless you break the game (it looks funny, though).

This is a fun and surprisingly realistic tank game, but it still feels kind of "sandboxxy," if that makes any sense. The map is very big and the enemies are very far apart. I think you should be able to know where the enemies are as soon as or, at least, soon after you start the level. Maybe having a mini-map or a radar could help. As to the terrain, there could be more variation. It feels overall very flat. I think having the player type a sequence to repair the tank is a great idea. I also really liked the weak point system.

The movement feels great, but I had some difficulty turning the turret (some of which may be intentional). I think my main difficulty was this: if you're already turning the turret one way, and you flick the mouse the other way, the turret will start going the other way instead of continuing turning the way it was turning before, generating confusion. I'm not sure that makes sense but I hope it does. I used the rail-gun a lot 1. because it's cool, 2. because I'm bad and prefer to snipe the enemies from afar than get in their face. By the way, I feel the markers, one being red and the other being white, don't sufficiently make clear which one is the "turret" and which one is the mouse. But maybe I'm just slow. I used the other weapons in the earlier stages as well, but there was recording error.

It crashed at the end (around 29:00), so you may want to look at it. I played the Linux version.

I finally got a new GPU, so I can actually play this with over 10 FPS. I played the Linux build.

This game was really fun! At first I thought the dithering filter made it hard to see, but I eventually got used to it so it's not that big  of a deal. I think it adds to the atmosphere. By the way, I really liked this game's atmosphere. It is a problem, though, that it makes some dark sections darker than probably intended (I got confused about where I was multiple times during the first few stages because of that, and back-tracked once).  Making the flashlight a bit brighter would probably fix it. My favorite weapon was the nuke. I like that it deals an absurd amount of damage but you can basically insta-kill yourself with it if you're not careful. The nail-gun is kind of weird. I'm not sure what it does. Sometimes it doesn't even seem to deal any damage. The flame-gun, on the other, is weird but in a different way. It's really strong, but it doesn't look like it should go as far as it does. I can be standing ten feet away from an enemy and still deal damage.

The stage with the boosters was really fun. I like Ace Combat and the flying around in a big stage looking for turrets to destroy reminded me of AC2. I found it funny that the enemy mecha AI in the duels starts running away from you if you're beating it up too badly.

As for the bugs/weird behavior: the screen resolution setting doesn't seem to work. I set it to my resolution and restarted the game, but it didn't do anything. In fact, the settings in general are awkward. For example, the mouse sensitivity option doesn't seem to kick in until you've started another stage, which is far from convenient. There was noticeable freeze before I fired some weapons, but that may just be my toaster acting up. This is more of a design choice, but I don't like that the hover stops at a set height. It feels weird. I feel it should either gradually lose velocity, or just be a simple hover, that is, not make you go up at all.

(I graciously accept my "wasted the whole day" award.)

Hello. Thanks for playing! I'm using SDL for this game. I actually think the base is kind of wonky but I can actually see all the terrible code and small weird bugs that don't affect the gameplay enough to be noticed normally (thanks for calling it solid anyway). I've been trying improve the art, especially the background art, for a while, but I'm scared I'll just spend all of my time on that instead of working on the game and then have it be bad anyway. But it used to be ten times worse, however impossible that may sound, so I think I'm making progress. I agree with what you said about the characters. They are very WIP, especially the guy, since until the last version he didn't even shoot. I was actually planning on giving them different bombs, but it's not very high priority compared to the other stuff. Ultimately the idea is for them to complement each other, but I've also considered making them completely different shot types.

Making the difficulties actually isn't that hard. Most of it is just changing a variable or two. I didn't plan on having them initially but I added them because people were dying too much and I want people who aren't good at shmups to be able to finish the game too. Anyway, thanks for all the detailed feedback. Thanks for the shmup recommendation, too; I'll check it out and see if I can take anything from it.

Hi. Stage 2 boss's second attack is probably the most gimmicky one, so it might be hard to get from intuition. But I also think Lombard might be simply too slow to dodge it properly (I haven't done much balancing on that). I'm glad you didn't have any problems with the controls; it's been an uphill battle to get those to work properly. I agree the effects are way too underwhelming. As for fullscreen, I've added an option for it (though with no proper scaling, so everything will look fatter if your screen isn't 4:3). Lombard does not talk because he's a cool guy, and cool guys are silent. Or perhaps I just can't find a way to fit him in the scenario. He'll probably talk one day. Anyway, thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!

All right, after testing for a few minutes I was finally able to replicate the movement bug. It seems like if you press left and right on the joystick and only on the joystick too fast it'll send you flying one direction. As to the aiming one, I'm not sure I've been able to replicate it fully, but I found that if you press the aim key for too long it'll change your aim as if you had pressed it again. Thanks again for reporting as I'm not sure I would be able to spot this otherwise.

Hello. I think I'll add a "toggle" for showing the hit-box by default since I figure it's not very intuitive if you're not used to it. There actually is a sound effect for taking damage, but I mixed it so low it's barely audible. In fact, this whole game has a problem with sound effects. Anyway, thanks for playing!

Hello. Now that's a new bug with the controller. It really shouldn't be doing anything by itself at all. I'm guessing it doesn't do the same with the keyboard. I'll look over the mapped buttons since I may have messed something up there. I've also had times I took damage without noticing so I'll see if I can give it more of an impact. Thanks for playing and thanks for the report on the buggy buttons.