I can't remember if this is a new thing or it's always been like that, but I like the icon for this game a lot! Although, it is a bit of a spoiler, but I'm sure it'll be less spoilery when there's more than one transformable enemy boss in the game.
Haven't gotten around to playing the new version yet, but I'll tell you what I think about it when I do. I like the theory of a lot of the changes, though! One thing I'd like to say based on what I've heard, though: Making the bosses be unique characters, and have multiple different transformations they can go through might be a bad choice. It depends on the game style you want to go with. If this game is meant to be more arcade-y, and by that I specifically mean "Multiple fresh runs is expected", it should be fine, as you'd naturally have the chance to see both transformations throughout your playthrough. But, if this game is going to be more of a skill-progression-based game, where you accrue pilots and resources to challenge more difficult levels, without anything resetting, you'd have to reset some aspect of the game in order to see both transformations. And you'd have to make the game VERY replayable to make that not feel like a slog or an annoyance compared to continuing to progress in the game and keeping whatever upgrades you'd have. Maybe you have something planned for all that, or maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about. But it's just something to consider/keep in mind given the situation.
Yeah changed the icon. It’s a bit of a spoiler yes, but wanted to show what the game is about. Can’t show much in the screenshots since it’s a submission to a non nsfw exclusive jam, and I think everything shows up in the jam screenshot tab.
Yeah the idea is for it to be arcadey and replayable, but that requires some immaculate design if it’s just one level. I’ve gotten bored of some of the shmups I’ve now tried to get better at, and they have been pretty highly rated. I’m not that fond of the memorization aspect of these games. So I’m opting for a randomized level to keep it fresh. You would have to beat the randomized level multiple times to see all the transformations. Or halfway the longer level, which is always the same. Was thinking the boss would be the same every time, as you wouldn’t battle it quite as often as the level itself.
But tbh I’m a bit worried about the resource balance, it’s gonna be fairly quick game with the amount of resources you aquire, since the transformed pilots keep producing and you keep getting more of them. I could make them expire but that doesn’t fit the current lore and is a bit grim. The current ship doesn’t have the bomb restriction though so it’s a mix between the two ships, hopefully the restrictions change things. The only ship that can really cash out the resources, doesn’t capture and doesn’t autobomb. But I need to make their bomb way different, spamming screenclear for 5 minutes isn’t that fun, even as a powertip I planned it to be.
Thanks for the feedback! Very good points. I’m hoping the randomized aspect would be the thing keeping the grind fresh, and it’s not gonna be a long grind with the resource gain being so explosive. Would love to hear what you think if you try the current version!
Ah, gotcha. One thing I noted, was that I got worried I might miss a stage in the transformation of the captured boss by spending too much time in one life. I still think a gallery of some sort would be a good feature. Perhaps in the form of a "vitals log" or something like that.
I like the idea of a randomized level, although I'm not too familiar with shmups, so I can't say whether that would actually fix the "memorization" issue you're talking about. In the game's current state, I don't see any problems with being able to memorize where the ships spawn. In fact, I feel like it works to make you feel like you're getting better at the game as you continue to play it, especially since there's no real "upgrades" to the game, just having more nurseries to give you more get-out-of-jail-free cards, which doesn't really make you feel more "skilled".
In terms of resource management, I feel like, instead of making the nursery-assigned pilots produce a consumable resource, it would be better if hitting certain milestones of pilots upgraded the amount of bombs you always carry when going into a level. That would make it feel more like an actual upgrade, and would make it so you wouldn't run into situations where you just only get one Core to collect even after getting 4 each time previously, which feels pretty annoying. Making them a resource feels to me like an unnecessary level of complexity, and having them be a upgrade can still carry the thematic flavor of "they're producing what you make the bombs out of". As it currently stands, I wouldn't say that the game is "quick" because of the bombs. If it went on longer, it would probably be too repetitive, seeing as there's only 2 enemy types and the boss. So, no need to make them decay or anything like that, even if you keep them how they currently are. Although, I'm not sure what you mean about there being multiple ships? If you can swap ships, I don't know how to do that.
To go along with that, I think it would be good to let you choose where you put your captured pilots. It would make you feel like you're actually strategizing, and honestly, I don't see a reason why you wouldn't be able to do that. Of course, this would matter a lot more if the other captured pilot positions were implemented. You could also carry that "putting pilots into a place is your currency for upgrades" mechanic onto all the other positions, or make the Juice the currency for upgrades (like, firing speed or something), and the spare pilots are used for extra lives.
Also, a final minor thing: I've ran into this issue a couple times where I'm trying to hypnotize a piloted ship, but the bullets from all the drones hit me, I bomb, and the ship I'm trying to hypnotize gets destroyed too. I think it'd be good if the bomb, instead of destroying the piloted ships, would just stun them for a bit while still destroying their shields. Or maybe specifically don't blow up the one you're hypnotizing? That seems like it'd be a bit hard to code, though.
Yeah thought of missing a stage too, atm it should work so that you only ever go to next form, even if you beat the whole level. Kinda breaks the logic of the transformation taking time, but can’t have you missing a form if you play well. Can’t remember if the overflow time counts towards the next step currently, but it really should.
Yeah I think people like the memorization and gradually improving, it’s a big part of shmups I think. But personally I’ve gotten a bit burnt out from grinding a game and playing the first levels over and over again. The randomized level would also have designed spawns, but the order and which ones appear would be mixed. So you kinda get memorization there too, if you start to recognize the first part of a spawn. The idea is that the ufo would only get 3 bombs max, just left it like this to have something to use the resources for, and so you can brute force the game with grinding if you just wanna see the lewds but don’t care for the gameplay.
Making them a permanent upgrade sounds good and would fix the problem I’m afraid of. Would be a pretty elegant solution tbh. But I’d really like to keep them as a consumable, even if it is problematic and/or annoying. The nursery pilots work currently so that they have to transform and then produce a core, and take one extra cycle to form a new core. The juice is produced constantly. I’m thinking I’ll show not only the total of personnel, but at which point they are in the cycle. Doesn’t remove the fact that you sometimes get lots of cores and next time none, but it would explain why it happens.
Ah sorry about the ships, worded it a bit wrong there I think. There’s currently only the one ship. In the final version I’m planning to have the current ufo ship with the max bomb limit. And another ship/armada piloted by the transformed pilots which can be loaded with bunch of bombs. Thinking the second ship would use the juice as a fuel, but it’s a bit boring to have multiple resources doing the same thing, mainly it’s for the flavor. Might need to rethink the resources a bit though, I’d love the juice to have some other use too. Maybe I will make the upgrade system: unlockable sidegrades with different movement speeds and different weapon spreads.
Yeah the randomized assignments is deliberate. It’s supposed to hammer in that the captured pilots make their own choice on how they’d like to contribute. But yeah it would make it more interesting gameplaywise, just losing a bit of the flavor there. Hmm maybe the choice where the boss pilot goes would affect all the assignments, they’d still be randomized a bit, but the largest group would always follow the boss. I’ll lore drop this here, don’t know how or where I’ll explain it in-game, possibly in a sequel. But the pilots are clones and the hypno actually breaks their programming/connection to a mother brain, hence they want to help since you gave them free will.
Hmm make the bomb like an EMP? Would destroy drones and shields but leave the ships with pilots alive. Sounds pretty good, a great QOL-change and it kinda fits the idea that the ufo is more technologically advanced. Shouldn’t be hard to implement at all I think.
Thanks so much for such a comprehensive feedback, got lots to think about.
Oh, yeah, EMP makes a lot of sense, flavor-wise. Brilliant idea! Different ships is also a cool idea, presumably with different attack patterns. Wouldn't really work if there's just one variant ship, but having the juice unlock those could work, if you don't want to do upgrades. Wouldn't exactly work flavor-wise, though. I guess... if the juice is used to fuel some sort of alien generator or whatnot, the energy from that could be used to construct the ship?
The captured pilots having a hidden transformation time alongside their resource production times definitely should be un-hidden in some way. You probably don't need to make a timer shown for each individual pilot, that feels a bit overcomplicated and would probably clutter the screen, but having two counters for "transformed" and "untransformed" pilots would work, IMO.
The thing about the pilots having their own choices is interesting, although I feel like it could diminish from the actual gameplay, especially if the reason is only explained later in game or something like that. Since I imagine 99% of people playing this assume you're hypnotizing and enslaving the pilots, like you'd expect from the hypno genre (and the term "captured pilots"). Maybe during the end-of-round results screen, you could mark one job as "recommended", so you'd get more captured pilots choosing that role? Or, if you get some aspect of control over it. Like, if there were 3 main "rooms" that the captured pilots choose randomly between, but there were sub-jobs within those "rooms" that you could choose. Like, there could be a "production room" with milk and cores, and a "support" room, where you could put people to... IDK, speed up transformation time or something? That's probably way too complicated, though.
Hmm yeah good point that the juice doesn’t really work as an unlock resource. Maybe you craft a new kind of core combining juice and a core, and that would define the ship. Shmups tend to have 3 or so ships: slow, medium and fast with different weapon patterns. The complexity starts to pile up though, would probably be the last thing I’d add in like a 1.1 version.
Yeah the timer implementation is super lazy and the numbers would be easy to show. Just felt that it would need some more info than just the numbers to explain the system, so left them out. Also this way hid my laziness haha. Each captured doesn’t have their own timer, they just all move to a next phase when the accumulated mission time hits the required time and resets. Hmm yeah maybe just “transformed” and “untransformed”, but that wouldn’t show the core cycle. Maybe I’ll add that info, or ditch the cycle completely, which would fix a lot of problems. But I like the flavor that incubating a core takes some time.
Yeah I wanted the reveal to be kind of a twist. But twists are a hard to get right. It waters down the hypno part a lot. And it might be too misleading if I use the word captured everywhere. Maybe I’ll change the terminology so it’s not that much of a twist, or ditch the idea completely. I just like the clone thing and have have a game idea for a sequel, not a shmup though, this will probably be my only one haha. But that’s way in the future, so I’m probably gonna leave this pretty open ended. Very good insight, didn’t think completely trough how people would experience it.
Yeah I could reuse the current boss assignment screen for that too, just change the text to recommended and hide the boss sprite. And if you capture a boss others would follow like with the recommended screen. I do like the idea of a support room, they would “assist” the personnel in production, speeding the transformation and maybe increasing the amounts. They wouldn’t transform themselves any further but I could give them some cute outfit hehe. But yeah some more complexity and I need to refactor the current menus somewhat. Great idea though, will definitely think about it.
For background, I rarely play vertical shooters and so I am by no means an expert on them. Gameplay wise, I think being able to 'bend' the hypnotic purple beam is a fun and unique mechanic, I just wish there were more opportunities to use it. It could also use a few more (basic) enemy types I feel, as currently the assault of weak enemies is easy to sidestep while also easy to be overwhelmed by, if that makes any sense?
The currently implemented incubation scene is DEFINITELY my thing holy heck~ As was probably made obvious by the rest of my comments, gradual feminization TF where boybits are left intact is 100% my fetish, and I love mpreg stuff equally so! Looking forward to seeing more :3
Rereading the intro text, I never realized that the hypno-beam also has close range effects, as it's a lot of info to take in at once, maybe there could be an option to re-read the intro text in-game?
Good luck with your next game jam, and I look forward to seeing what you're able to come up with :3
Yeah pretty happy about the beam, there’s just that one insufferable bug I tried to mitigate with the beam jumping at specific angles, but I think I still have seen it once or twice after, infuriating haha. Now that I think of it, I should make the beam also hypnotize the ships that cross it, giving it more use cases other than killing the small popcorn drones.
Had couple of other enemy types at one point but reformat a bit and didn’t update them for this release. Also made a first draft framework for different movement patterns but it was so janky I didn’t bother to use them for this first release. New variations of the ships are pretty easy to make, but not completely sure the framework is good enough, don’t want the designs go to waste if I change the system much.
So glad the scene didn’t disappoint hehe. More into feminization, preg and small dick stuff than hyper, so don’t really know how I’ll proceed with the other transformation. Hmm maybe I should go for hyper breasts this time, or maybe both at random, you’d have the anticipation to see which one they start to turn into. Ooh and maybe just huge balls option hehe.
Yeah good point about the text. Maybe the next version will have a prettier how to play option in the mothership menu.
Thanks! Pretty excited about the dungeon crawler jam, might do some quickies for the monthly NSFW jams too. Hopefully coming back to this with some fresh vigour after. Thanks for the lovely and lengthy feedback, love to read em.
Yeah just the two. Haven’t updated yet, working on a bigger patch. Plan is for two branching transformations from the current final one. Both have a couple of stages each with a bigger illustration in the end. Got art for one branch done, the other I’m not 100% on the direction I’ll go for.
I always love seeing more of your games, so I'm excited to see where this is going. What you describe considering for updates sounds very fun, being able to capture and feminize (not necessarily in that order) civilians and enemy pilot bosses sounds very fun.
I think it'd be cool if there were Space-Invaders-esque sections between larger boss fights, and you'd capture the pilots of those smaller ships instead of "civilians", since I can't exactly see how that'd tie into the boss fight?
I’m glad to hear! I think I’m gonna take short break from the jams and try build up on this.
Was thinking something like a classic shmup/bullet hell stages with a boss at the end and a short management/power up between. You’d assign the captured in different parts in the mother ship, collect what was produced during the last stage and buy upgrades or lives and bombs, depending how arcade like I want this. The civilians would just be numbers, but when you capture a boss you’d also assign them and get image(s) showing how they transform in their field.
Yeah no idea why I didn’t think of capturing the pilots ahah, makes a lot of sense. For some reason I had the idea of all the smaller ships before the boss being drones, and you’d collect scrap off of them for more ships/lives. And then there would be transport ships with civilians you could capture somehow, and maybe be punished if you shoot them down. Ooh maybe there should be 2 guns, the normal one which blows up ships and the hypno beam that is slower but the enemy self destructs and ejects an escape pod.
Thanks for the comment, always love to read em. Having a bit of a slump in motivation and new ideas. Probably taking my time with this one, would really like to nail the gameplay even if most people probably wont care that much.
Yeah, that drone and transport idea is probably overcomplicating things. A blend of simple mechanics and new ideas is good for a game, adding that sort of complication would probably distract from the main focus: the hypno and TF, and the management aspect.
One thing I hope you can implement in the game is a gallery of some sort. One issue with a lot of these real-time TF games is that you don't really get to appreciate the TFs when you're actually doing the fighting, or you risk getting distracted.
I love that idea of the normal vs hypno gun! Probably the hypno gun would be worse in some way, either less accurate, or takes more hits to defeat a ship.
I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the upgrades, although I feel like you might want to start the ship off with a lower fire rate/projectile number per shot, so it can get upgraded more later.
Also, I had an interesting idea: What if, when you captured people, each area you assigned a person to had a sort of "representative" who would slowly TF as you added more prisoners to that section of the ship. That way you wouldn't have to make art for each prisoner, but could still get the experience of TFing them.
Yeah probably scrapping the scrap idea, but might make the smallest popcorn enemies drones that won’t be affected by the hypno gun.
Gallery is probably a must. And I might add a downtime between the boss forms to have some time to check the side panel, though the downtime can get a bit frustrating if you’ve gotten bored of the arts.
Yeah and I kinda would want it to have some other effect too, maybe it would slow down the affected ships shooting speed or something.
Might keep the upgrades pretty tame if I even go that route, I do like powerful and interesting upgrades and rpg mechanics but I’ve heard they are a bitch to balance.
Yeah exactly! Though I was thinking that the representative would be the boss character, so you’d get to see how they turn out. But it would mean I need more levels and boss characters, or make the level replayable and you’d capture the same character multiple times. And the first run should be really easy and fast. I could explain the same character with that the enemy species use clones or something ahah. Was thinking there should be at least a milking area and maybe one transformation would be a new pilot.
Pretty into this project, but I’ll take it slower this time and try to engineer it a bit better so I can actually scale it up. Maybe I’ll try making devlogs and release a bigger update later.
Huge fan of the art, as I'm sure is obvious by now feminization and gradual TF stuff is definitely one of my favorite fetishes, and you do art quite well too.
For the gameplay, I quite enjoy bullet hells even though I haven't played too many, and this seems decently well done as far as controls and bullet patterns go. I will note however that switching between shot types with Z and X is quite finnicky, as pressing both buttons at once doesn't switch between firing types properly.
As for the lewd integration with the gameplay, it is a bit counter intuitive to look off-screen towards the changing character portraits while trying to hyper focus in on playing a bullet hell game. Not sure a proper solution to that, but if this game continues to get worked on, a gallery view after the fight to look at the portraits would be handy.
Really enjoying this lore slowly being fleshed out between games, with the aliens that assimilate other species through transformative hypnosis. I know I'm just one person on the internet, but I eagerly await seeing the games and art you create >.>
Aaw dang thanks so much! Really into it too hehe. Really bad at keeping on model when I draw, so transformation fits pretty well for me I think, gives some wiggle room.
Started to research and try out some shmups/bullet hells prior the jam, tried some in the past but never got that into them for the difficulty. Had trouble starting the project, since I felt I don’t understand them even after multiple hours on different games. But it’s a porn game anyways so the gameplay probably doesn’t need to be that tight. Probably making it pretty comfy difficulty wise. The X is super dirty implementation, noticed the hiccups too but had to focus on getting something presentable out. Should be easy to fix but just didn’t have the time.
Yeah, one reason I didn’t implement player death at all for this proto. Might try and make the gameplay so lax you have some time to ogle the side panels too hehe, but a gallery is probably a must.
So glad to hear it! Usually don’t flesh out anything this much, not much of a writer. But I’m really enjoying these aliens, super happy people like them. Comments like this really make my day and make me wanna keep creating stuff. Thank you, it means a lot.
Uhhh, from what I've seen, you just get hit once. Your ship model vanishes making you unable to be hit, and you shoot the 'boss' ship to death given you no longer have a hit box. Might wanna fix that.
Yeah left it like this because didn’t have time for life system and wasn’t sure if the patterns are good at all. So if they are shitty, I’m not forcing people to endure the gameplay to see the arts. If you want to try to beat it like I meant, just reload the page if you disappear. Not leaving it like this, was just moving at breakneck speed and had to cut corners for the jam.
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I can't remember if this is a new thing or it's always been like that, but I like the icon for this game a lot! Although, it is a bit of a spoiler, but I'm sure it'll be less spoilery when there's more than one transformable enemy boss in the game.
Haven't gotten around to playing the new version yet, but I'll tell you what I think about it when I do. I like the theory of a lot of the changes, though! One thing I'd like to say based on what I've heard, though: Making the bosses be unique characters, and have multiple different transformations they can go through might be a bad choice. It depends on the game style you want to go with. If this game is meant to be more arcade-y, and by that I specifically mean "Multiple fresh runs is expected", it should be fine, as you'd naturally have the chance to see both transformations throughout your playthrough. But, if this game is going to be more of a skill-progression-based game, where you accrue pilots and resources to challenge more difficult levels, without anything resetting, you'd have to reset some aspect of the game in order to see both transformations. And you'd have to make the game VERY replayable to make that not feel like a slog or an annoyance compared to continuing to progress in the game and keeping whatever upgrades you'd have. Maybe you have something planned for all that, or maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about. But it's just something to consider/keep in mind given the situation.
Yeah changed the icon. It’s a bit of a spoiler yes, but wanted to show what the game is about. Can’t show much in the screenshots since it’s a submission to a non nsfw exclusive jam, and I think everything shows up in the jam screenshot tab.
Yeah the idea is for it to be arcadey and replayable, but that requires some immaculate design if it’s just one level. I’ve gotten bored of some of the shmups I’ve now tried to get better at, and they have been pretty highly rated. I’m not that fond of the memorization aspect of these games. So I’m opting for a randomized level to keep it fresh. You would have to beat the randomized level multiple times to see all the transformations. Or halfway the longer level, which is always the same. Was thinking the boss would be the same every time, as you wouldn’t battle it quite as often as the level itself.
But tbh I’m a bit worried about the resource balance, it’s gonna be fairly quick game with the amount of resources you aquire, since the transformed pilots keep producing and you keep getting more of them. I could make them expire but that doesn’t fit the current lore and is a bit grim. The current ship doesn’t have the bomb restriction though so it’s a mix between the two ships, hopefully the restrictions change things. The only ship that can really cash out the resources, doesn’t capture and doesn’t autobomb. But I need to make their bomb way different, spamming screenclear for 5 minutes isn’t that fun, even as a powertip I planned it to be.
Thanks for the feedback! Very good points. I’m hoping the randomized aspect would be the thing keeping the grind fresh, and it’s not gonna be a long grind with the resource gain being so explosive. Would love to hear what you think if you try the current version!
Ah, gotcha. One thing I noted, was that I got worried I might miss a stage in the transformation of the captured boss by spending too much time in one life. I still think a gallery of some sort would be a good feature. Perhaps in the form of a "vitals log" or something like that.
I like the idea of a randomized level, although I'm not too familiar with shmups, so I can't say whether that would actually fix the "memorization" issue you're talking about. In the game's current state, I don't see any problems with being able to memorize where the ships spawn. In fact, I feel like it works to make you feel like you're getting better at the game as you continue to play it, especially since there's no real "upgrades" to the game, just having more nurseries to give you more get-out-of-jail-free cards, which doesn't really make you feel more "skilled".
In terms of resource management, I feel like, instead of making the nursery-assigned pilots produce a consumable resource, it would be better if hitting certain milestones of pilots upgraded the amount of bombs you always carry when going into a level. That would make it feel more like an actual upgrade, and would make it so you wouldn't run into situations where you just only get one Core to collect even after getting 4 each time previously, which feels pretty annoying. Making them a resource feels to me like an unnecessary level of complexity, and having them be a upgrade can still carry the thematic flavor of "they're producing what you make the bombs out of". As it currently stands, I wouldn't say that the game is "quick" because of the bombs. If it went on longer, it would probably be too repetitive, seeing as there's only 2 enemy types and the boss. So, no need to make them decay or anything like that, even if you keep them how they currently are. Although, I'm not sure what you mean about there being multiple ships? If you can swap ships, I don't know how to do that.
To go along with that, I think it would be good to let you choose where you put your captured pilots. It would make you feel like you're actually strategizing, and honestly, I don't see a reason why you wouldn't be able to do that. Of course, this would matter a lot more if the other captured pilot positions were implemented. You could also carry that "putting pilots into a place is your currency for upgrades" mechanic onto all the other positions, or make the Juice the currency for upgrades (like, firing speed or something), and the spare pilots are used for extra lives.
Also, a final minor thing: I've ran into this issue a couple times where I'm trying to hypnotize a piloted ship, but the bullets from all the drones hit me, I bomb, and the ship I'm trying to hypnotize gets destroyed too. I think it'd be good if the bomb, instead of destroying the piloted ships, would just stun them for a bit while still destroying their shields. Or maybe specifically don't blow up the one you're hypnotizing? That seems like it'd be a bit hard to code, though.
Yeah thought of missing a stage too, atm it should work so that you only ever go to next form, even if you beat the whole level. Kinda breaks the logic of the transformation taking time, but can’t have you missing a form if you play well. Can’t remember if the overflow time counts towards the next step currently, but it really should.
Yeah I think people like the memorization and gradually improving, it’s a big part of shmups I think. But personally I’ve gotten a bit burnt out from grinding a game and playing the first levels over and over again. The randomized level would also have designed spawns, but the order and which ones appear would be mixed. So you kinda get memorization there too, if you start to recognize the first part of a spawn. The idea is that the ufo would only get 3 bombs max, just left it like this to have something to use the resources for, and so you can brute force the game with grinding if you just wanna see the lewds but don’t care for the gameplay.
Making them a permanent upgrade sounds good and would fix the problem I’m afraid of. Would be a pretty elegant solution tbh. But I’d really like to keep them as a consumable, even if it is problematic and/or annoying. The nursery pilots work currently so that they have to transform and then produce a core, and take one extra cycle to form a new core. The juice is produced constantly. I’m thinking I’ll show not only the total of personnel, but at which point they are in the cycle. Doesn’t remove the fact that you sometimes get lots of cores and next time none, but it would explain why it happens.
Ah sorry about the ships, worded it a bit wrong there I think. There’s currently only the one ship. In the final version I’m planning to have the current ufo ship with the max bomb limit. And another ship/armada piloted by the transformed pilots which can be loaded with bunch of bombs. Thinking the second ship would use the juice as a fuel, but it’s a bit boring to have multiple resources doing the same thing, mainly it’s for the flavor. Might need to rethink the resources a bit though, I’d love the juice to have some other use too. Maybe I will make the upgrade system: unlockable sidegrades with different movement speeds and different weapon spreads.
Yeah the randomized assignments is deliberate. It’s supposed to hammer in that the captured pilots make their own choice on how they’d like to contribute. But yeah it would make it more interesting gameplaywise, just losing a bit of the flavor there. Hmm maybe the choice where the boss pilot goes would affect all the assignments, they’d still be randomized a bit, but the largest group would always follow the boss. I’ll lore drop this here, don’t know how or where I’ll explain it in-game, possibly in a sequel. But the pilots are clones and the hypno actually breaks their programming/connection to a mother brain, hence they want to help since you gave them free will.
Hmm make the bomb like an EMP? Would destroy drones and shields but leave the ships with pilots alive. Sounds pretty good, a great QOL-change and it kinda fits the idea that the ufo is more technologically advanced. Shouldn’t be hard to implement at all I think.
Thanks so much for such a comprehensive feedback, got lots to think about.
Oh, yeah, EMP makes a lot of sense, flavor-wise. Brilliant idea! Different ships is also a cool idea, presumably with different attack patterns. Wouldn't really work if there's just one variant ship, but having the juice unlock those could work, if you don't want to do upgrades. Wouldn't exactly work flavor-wise, though. I guess... if the juice is used to fuel some sort of alien generator or whatnot, the energy from that could be used to construct the ship?
The captured pilots having a hidden transformation time alongside their resource production times definitely should be un-hidden in some way. You probably don't need to make a timer shown for each individual pilot, that feels a bit overcomplicated and would probably clutter the screen, but having two counters for "transformed" and "untransformed" pilots would work, IMO.
The thing about the pilots having their own choices is interesting, although I feel like it could diminish from the actual gameplay, especially if the reason is only explained later in game or something like that. Since I imagine 99% of people playing this assume you're hypnotizing and enslaving the pilots, like you'd expect from the hypno genre (and the term "captured pilots"). Maybe during the end-of-round results screen, you could mark one job as "recommended", so you'd get more captured pilots choosing that role? Or, if you get some aspect of control over it. Like, if there were 3 main "rooms" that the captured pilots choose randomly between, but there were sub-jobs within those "rooms" that you could choose. Like, there could be a "production room" with milk and cores, and a "support" room, where you could put people to... IDK, speed up transformation time or something? That's probably way too complicated, though.
Hmm yeah good point that the juice doesn’t really work as an unlock resource. Maybe you craft a new kind of core combining juice and a core, and that would define the ship. Shmups tend to have 3 or so ships: slow, medium and fast with different weapon patterns. The complexity starts to pile up though, would probably be the last thing I’d add in like a 1.1 version.
Yeah the timer implementation is super lazy and the numbers would be easy to show. Just felt that it would need some more info than just the numbers to explain the system, so left them out. Also this way hid my laziness haha. Each captured doesn’t have their own timer, they just all move to a next phase when the accumulated mission time hits the required time and resets. Hmm yeah maybe just “transformed” and “untransformed”, but that wouldn’t show the core cycle. Maybe I’ll add that info, or ditch the cycle completely, which would fix a lot of problems. But I like the flavor that incubating a core takes some time.
Yeah I wanted the reveal to be kind of a twist. But twists are a hard to get right. It waters down the hypno part a lot. And it might be too misleading if I use the word captured everywhere. Maybe I’ll change the terminology so it’s not that much of a twist, or ditch the idea completely. I just like the clone thing and have have a game idea for a sequel, not a shmup though, this will probably be my only one haha. But that’s way in the future, so I’m probably gonna leave this pretty open ended. Very good insight, didn’t think completely trough how people would experience it.
Yeah I could reuse the current boss assignment screen for that too, just change the text to recommended and hide the boss sprite. And if you capture a boss others would follow like with the recommended screen. I do like the idea of a support room, they would “assist” the personnel in production, speeding the transformation and maybe increasing the amounts. They wouldn’t transform themselves any further but I could give them some cute outfit hehe. But yeah some more complexity and I need to refactor the current menus somewhat. Great idea though, will definitely think about it.
Hell yeah
For background, I rarely play vertical shooters and so I am by no means an expert on them. Gameplay wise, I think being able to 'bend' the hypnotic purple beam is a fun and unique mechanic, I just wish there were more opportunities to use it. It could also use a few more (basic) enemy types I feel, as currently the assault of weak enemies is easy to sidestep while also easy to be overwhelmed by, if that makes any sense?
The currently implemented incubation scene is DEFINITELY my thing holy heck~ As was probably made obvious by the rest of my comments, gradual feminization TF where boybits are left intact is 100% my fetish, and I love mpreg stuff equally so! Looking forward to seeing more :3
Rereading the intro text, I never realized that the hypno-beam also has close range effects, as it's a lot of info to take in at once, maybe there could be an option to re-read the intro text in-game?
Good luck with your next game jam, and I look forward to seeing what you're able to come up with :3
Hehee so glad you liked it!
Yeah pretty happy about the beam, there’s just that one insufferable bug I tried to mitigate with the beam jumping at specific angles, but I think I still have seen it once or twice after, infuriating haha. Now that I think of it, I should make the beam also hypnotize the ships that cross it, giving it more use cases other than killing the small popcorn drones.
Had couple of other enemy types at one point but reformat a bit and didn’t update them for this release. Also made a first draft framework for different movement patterns but it was so janky I didn’t bother to use them for this first release. New variations of the ships are pretty easy to make, but not completely sure the framework is good enough, don’t want the designs go to waste if I change the system much.
So glad the scene didn’t disappoint hehe. More into feminization, preg and small dick stuff than hyper, so don’t really know how I’ll proceed with the other transformation. Hmm maybe I should go for hyper breasts this time, or maybe both at random, you’d have the anticipation to see which one they start to turn into. Ooh and maybe just huge balls option hehe.
Yeah good point about the text. Maybe the next version will have a prettier how to play option in the mothership menu.
Thanks! Pretty excited about the dungeon crawler jam, might do some quickies for the monthly NSFW jams too. Hopefully coming back to this with some fresh vigour after. Thanks for the lovely and lengthy feedback, love to read em.
Are there only supposed to be two stages of transformation not including the base currently?
Yeah just the two. Haven’t updated yet, working on a bigger patch. Plan is for two branching transformations from the current final one. Both have a couple of stages each with a bigger illustration in the end. Got art for one branch done, the other I’m not 100% on the direction I’ll go for.
Cool! Just wanted to make sure I didn't mess something up.
I always love seeing more of your games, so I'm excited to see where this is going. What you describe considering for updates sounds very fun, being able to capture and feminize (not necessarily in that order) civilians and enemy pilot bosses sounds very fun.
I think it'd be cool if there were Space-Invaders-esque sections between larger boss fights, and you'd capture the pilots of those smaller ships instead of "civilians", since I can't exactly see how that'd tie into the boss fight?
I’m glad to hear! I think I’m gonna take short break from the jams and try build up on this.
Was thinking something like a classic shmup/bullet hell stages with a boss at the end and a short management/power up between. You’d assign the captured in different parts in the mother ship, collect what was produced during the last stage and buy upgrades or lives and bombs, depending how arcade like I want this. The civilians would just be numbers, but when you capture a boss you’d also assign them and get image(s) showing how they transform in their field.
Yeah no idea why I didn’t think of capturing the pilots ahah, makes a lot of sense. For some reason I had the idea of all the smaller ships before the boss being drones, and you’d collect scrap off of them for more ships/lives. And then there would be transport ships with civilians you could capture somehow, and maybe be punished if you shoot them down. Ooh maybe there should be 2 guns, the normal one which blows up ships and the hypno beam that is slower but the enemy self destructs and ejects an escape pod.
Thanks for the comment, always love to read em. Having a bit of a slump in motivation and new ideas. Probably taking my time with this one, would really like to nail the gameplay even if most people probably wont care that much.
Yeah, that drone and transport idea is probably overcomplicating things. A blend of simple mechanics and new ideas is good for a game, adding that sort of complication would probably distract from the main focus: the hypno and TF, and the management aspect.
One thing I hope you can implement in the game is a gallery of some sort. One issue with a lot of these real-time TF games is that you don't really get to appreciate the TFs when you're actually doing the fighting, or you risk getting distracted.
I love that idea of the normal vs hypno gun! Probably the hypno gun would be worse in some way, either less accurate, or takes more hits to defeat a ship.
I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the upgrades, although I feel like you might want to start the ship off with a lower fire rate/projectile number per shot, so it can get upgraded more later.
Also, I had an interesting idea: What if, when you captured people, each area you assigned a person to had a sort of "representative" who would slowly TF as you added more prisoners to that section of the ship. That way you wouldn't have to make art for each prisoner, but could still get the experience of TFing them.
Yeah probably scrapping the scrap idea, but might make the smallest popcorn enemies drones that won’t be affected by the hypno gun.
Gallery is probably a must. And I might add a downtime between the boss forms to have some time to check the side panel, though the downtime can get a bit frustrating if you’ve gotten bored of the arts.
Yeah and I kinda would want it to have some other effect too, maybe it would slow down the affected ships shooting speed or something.
Might keep the upgrades pretty tame if I even go that route, I do like powerful and interesting upgrades and rpg mechanics but I’ve heard they are a bitch to balance.
Yeah exactly! Though I was thinking that the representative would be the boss character, so you’d get to see how they turn out. But it would mean I need more levels and boss characters, or make the level replayable and you’d capture the same character multiple times. And the first run should be really easy and fast. I could explain the same character with that the enemy species use clones or something ahah. Was thinking there should be at least a milking area and maybe one transformation would be a new pilot.
Pretty into this project, but I’ll take it slower this time and try to engineer it a bit better so I can actually scale it up. Maybe I’ll try making devlogs and release a bigger update later.
Huge fan of the art, as I'm sure is obvious by now feminization and gradual TF stuff is definitely one of my favorite fetishes, and you do art quite well too.
For the gameplay, I quite enjoy bullet hells even though I haven't played too many, and this seems decently well done as far as controls and bullet patterns go. I will note however that switching between shot types with Z and X is quite finnicky, as pressing both buttons at once doesn't switch between firing types properly.
As for the lewd integration with the gameplay, it is a bit counter intuitive to look off-screen towards the changing character portraits while trying to hyper focus in on playing a bullet hell game. Not sure a proper solution to that, but if this game continues to get worked on, a gallery view after the fight to look at the portraits would be handy.
Really enjoying this lore slowly being fleshed out between games, with the aliens that assimilate other species through transformative hypnosis. I know I'm just one person on the internet, but I eagerly await seeing the games and art you create >.>
Aaw dang thanks so much! Really into it too hehe. Really bad at keeping on model when I draw, so transformation fits pretty well for me I think, gives some wiggle room.
Started to research and try out some shmups/bullet hells prior the jam, tried some in the past but never got that into them for the difficulty. Had trouble starting the project, since I felt I don’t understand them even after multiple hours on different games. But it’s a porn game anyways so the gameplay probably doesn’t need to be that tight. Probably making it pretty comfy difficulty wise. The X is super dirty implementation, noticed the hiccups too but had to focus on getting something presentable out. Should be easy to fix but just didn’t have the time.
Yeah, one reason I didn’t implement player death at all for this proto. Might try and make the gameplay so lax you have some time to ogle the side panels too hehe, but a gallery is probably a must.
So glad to hear it! Usually don’t flesh out anything this much, not much of a writer. But I’m really enjoying these aliens, super happy people like them. Comments like this really make my day and make me wanna keep creating stuff. Thank you, it means a lot.
Uhhh, from what I've seen, you just get hit once. Your ship model vanishes making you unable to be hit, and you shoot the 'boss' ship to death given you no longer have a hit box. Might wanna fix that.
Yeah left it like this because didn’t have time for life system and wasn’t sure if the patterns are good at all. So if they are shitty, I’m not forcing people to endure the gameplay to see the arts. If you want to try to beat it like I meant, just reload the page if you disappear. Not leaving it like this, was just moving at breakneck speed and had to cut corners for the jam.
Good job, love the art! Can't wait for a full release
Thanks so much! Had real grandiose plans but got stuck in planning and research phase. Hopefully I can turn this to a proper game.