DreamHorde

As a fan of horror games, I really enjoyed seeing your take on how to incorporate those emotions into a shoot 'em up. Great use of pixel sprites, I especially like the animation of demons crawling across the floor to you as it made me feel really unsettled. Your desired mood was strongest in the first round of play. Feeling enclosed in this small linear gameplay loop while having hoard of enemies worked well. Coupled with the droning ambient background music. To make the experience even stronger in the next levels, I would suggest amping up the background music and maybe adding different enemy types during the "frenzy" phase. You could even add some animations to the forest or make it so that colliding with the trees is harmful as they too could become "demons" This would make the game feel a bit less repetitive as well and lengthen player interest. All in all I think this was a spooky little game and I'd love to see you continue making games in the horror genre. 

Yes! Another artistic approach to the space shooter type game. The shadows and the running person implies a lot about the story, although it's not fully told through the game. The art style is definitely a plus to the overall playing experience too. I wish that I could see a longer version of it!

I actually really like your art style, even in the games before this one (remember that walking sim you worked on with Yuen and Ava?). I’ve never been any good with pixel art, but I can tell you were coherent with your choice of art/theme with this game.

I think that the environment you created really successfully  invokes a sense of fear and discomfort! Especially in the first level I was pretty horrified because I thought the creepy crawling demon was an actual spider on my screen. My favorite moments of this game were the small details like the two demons in the beginning of the round running across. I also liked being able to see the demons running through the forest breaks before they entered onto the main path. I think if you either introduce more actions or more enemy types, not only the difficulty curve but emotional curve would be more emphasized overall.  

I would not think of a horror game for a shoot em' up, however this works really well and adds to the frustration and fear you feel when you are surrounded by multiple enemies. The atmosphere is what really stands out about this game and the two animations in the beginning made me jump every time! The animations are very creepy and add to the player's fear as more enemies crawl in. I would say the game difficulty could use some adjusting because I couldn't finish the game. I think the level changes are good and the pixel backgrounds are simple and look clean. To keep the player on edge you could add different enemies or a different attack style to keep surprising the player even if they have to keep replaying to pass a level.

To start with especially, the atmosphere in this is really incredible. I really appreciate the effort you put into making animations for the characters; the shadow figures that crawl towards you are peculiarly unsettling, and the main character’s frolick helps set a strong feeling of danger. The sounds you picked really help as well; the flashlight sounds impotent enough that when I started, I felt really helpless. I think it captured that feeling of a nightmare really nicely. 

My main criticism is that, I guess as with most horror games, horror part of it started to fade as the game went on. For the first phase, where I was frantically scrambling away from the shadows, barely hitting them in time, wondering what might be next, it was really unsettling. After I got my timing down though, I became pajama-boy superman and started effortlessly juking the monsters and one-shotting them several at a time, which eroded the feeling of horror and mystery a lot, even though the ramping up of the soundtrack and stuff still helped alleviate that a bit. I think if I were to prioritize one change, maybe randomizing the monster speeds a little bit, so I couldn’t get used to their timing so much, would alleviate that issue? Or that could get annoying, I’m not sure. Something to keep up the feeling of helplessness though.

In all I thought it was really atmospheric and nice, especially for the first level.