MAN'S BEST FRIEND is a fast-paced, reaction-time focused game about possessing enemies with your symbiote and protecting your (completely clueless) knight companion from death! Complete the quick-time inputs (QTE) to completely take over an enemy, split your symbiote and build up a team of allies, and fight with your powerful host.


This was made for the Pirate Software Game Jam 16.

Published 22 days ago
StatusReleased
PlatformsHTML5
Authortuxedoplasma
GenreAction
Made withGameMaker
Tags16-bit, 2D, Pixel Art, Roguelike, Short, Top-Down

Comments

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The art and music are nice, and the sound effects are very satisfying! I like the button animations in the menu as well, it's a nice touch. The same can be said for the tutorial, which is well put together and takes you step by step through the controls.

I quite like the concept of the QTE's to possess an enemy. The enemies having different movesets and damage also helps with making the player excited to try possessing different enemies. I did notice that split possessing can be a bit tricky, since it seems the spawn point of the "possession bullet" is a bit far away from the character. So, when there's an enemy right next to you, you can't split possess them because your bullet spawns past the enemy.

The split posssession mechanic might be a little too op, I'd say. With it, you can "pacify" any of the normal enemies (and "pacifying" all of them will also let you go to the next stage). I saw one of the comments talking about how they took damage from the boss and I was initially confused, since I hadn't taken any. It turns out that it was because I was split possessing the boss' minions instead of directly possessing them. Split possessing them made it so I didn't have to deal with the QTE's, didn't take any damage, and could just focus on not walking on the dark spots while waiting for my possession bullets to recharge. 

This also meant that in my run, I never felt the need to heal because I didn't really take any damage, nor did I ever feel like I was in danger. So the split possession mechanic could maybe use a tweak or two to make it harder or not as op in some way. Maybe some sort of timer so that the enemies don't stay split-possessed forever.

I think the game could've used some sort of "You win" screen as well, since in my run, I played and got to the boss more than 4 times, waiting to see if there was some sort of ending. 

With all of this being said, I'd like to emphasize that the concept is very interesting. The possession through the QTE system works very well, and I think the split possession could be very interesting in the context of, say, you trying to possess a tough enemy while having split-possessed minions protecting you from other enemies that are trying to stop you. This concept opens up a lot of different possibilities and I do think it was well implemented in this.

The controls also feel very tight and fun to use and the different enemies feel fun to play. There's quite a bit of thought put into this, and for a solo project, this couldn't have been easy. It feels extremely polished, and I had a good time playing around with the possession mechanics. Very well done!