The theme reminded me of a game I've been working on, called Dodger, in which you play as a little bandana-clad fella whirling through portals and dodging bullets fired by a big floating eye. I came up with the idea in the first place because I wanted to make an action-y game that's focused solely on evasion as opposed to combat.

So, here I decided to make a spin-off of that game! Dodger: Swirl features the same bandana-boy swirling through an endless whirlwind of portals, dodging bullets and collecting enough points to move on to the next level.

Follow me at https://twitter.com/illdie314 to catch when Dodger gets released too!

CONTROLS:

  • Space - Start
  • Left/Right - Move left/right
  • Up - Move forward
  • F4 - Fullscreen

Includes the font "Diary of an 8-bit mage" by Chequered Ink (https://www.fontspace.com/diary-of-an-8-bit-mage-font-f28455)

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  • Chris
    Patron

    Love it! The music and sound effects were top notch and really nailed that NES feel. Gameplay was simple and fun. Awesome work!

  • Seltzy
    Patron

    Game rules. The music slaps and the main character sliding around is so fkin funny. It's very cozy in its aesthetic and the whole game flows together so seamlessly. Biggest issues are that the aoe for progressing/loading isn't clear, and I feel like the squares could be more numerous.

    • illdie
      Lv. 12
      illdie Developer of Dodger: Swirl

      1yr ago

      Yeah the balancing with the number of squares fluctuated a ton during development, and in the end (as always for me it seems lol) it ended up leaning more towards the difficult side, probably too much this time. Thanks for all the praise, I'm glad you like the character animation lol.

  • FlyAway
    Lv. 9

    The art on this game is really nice! The idea was great and well executed, and the gameplay was satisfying. Nice job with this!

  • Riuku
    Lv. 19

    The visual style is lovely, with all the animations and transitions and stuff! The little player meeple with their scarf is precious. For the most part the game felt good to play but I think the threshold distance where you'd "touch" the eye from was a little unclear! So sometimes I would reach it earlier than I meant to, before I had collected the required number of squares. Cool little game, nice job!

    Paint Fast
    Submitted

    Paint Fast

    • illdie
      Lv. 12
      illdie Developer of Dodger: Swirl

      1yr ago

      Thank you! I agree on the threshold distance being unclear, I was thinking about putting in a little indicator and probably should have made adding that more of a priority.

  • arthurgps2
    Lv. 12

    I really like the art style of this game. It's simple, but very effective. The difficulty really caught me off-guard lol, it IS pretty challenging, don't get fooled by the visuals.
    Pretty nice entry!
    (P.S.: It may just be this crappy school PC I'm playing this right now but sometimes the game just gets really laggy and freezes when I try to close it. But then again it may just be this crappy PC)
    Edit: WHY THE HELL DID I NOT PLAY THIS WITH AUDIO ITS SO GOOD

  • Fachewachewa
    Patron

    I didn't expect it to be this hard! 😅

    There were I think a few confusing parts. Someone mentionned the background, and yeah I had the same issue at first. Looks cool though :D Another thing in the limit that completes the level. Took me a few try to understand what was happenning, and I wasn't always sure of how far I could go. I did miss a couple time because I thought I was still safe before collecting the last thing. And finally, I like that the square things act as an objective and as your life, but my issue is that sometimes if you get hit once you might as well be dead, because they aren't enough square left for you to complete the level. Some of them seem to disappear quite quickly, but I don't think any more can appear? So yeah, it's a balancing issue, which isn't rare in game jams, but I think just being killed in one shot would have been less frustrating in the end?

    Anyway that a lot of words for some balance nuance, the game overall is pretty cool, and the art, gameplay and sounds make for a surprisingly coherent game for a jam!

    • illdie
      Lv. 12
      illdie Developer of Dodger: Swirl

      1yr ago

      I 100% agree (though I'd want to do something more forgiving than a one-shot kill, haha. my games tend to be a bit too hard as it is)

      I was thinking about showing the limit at the end of the level, I just didn't end up getting around to it unfortunately.

      On the squares, they actually just disappear whenever you've passed them and can't reach them anymore. I did that to avoid tricking the player into trying to grab unreachable squares.

      I definitely felt the frustration of realizing that there aren't enough squares remaining to progress while I was developing, I started working on the jam a little later so maybe if I had more time I would have been able to figure out a way to make that less frustrating (Thinking about it now I do have a couple ideas)

      Thank you for playing!

  • Allison James
    Patron

    This was a fantastically trippy lil experience, very unique gameplay! I'm terrible at bullet hells but this did feel approachable... well enough to get to 0/4 as a requirement before I got shot to bits again 😆

    The game was well presented and bookended, it felt finished which is always a plus for a gm48 entry. The graphics were nice and mostly clear (although I didn't initially find it intuitive where the boundaries of the eye were, I sorta got it in the end), and well drawn.

    Loved the music as well. Good, fitting music and SFX that were simple but completely fine. On the whole, yeah, my favourite thing about this is simply how complete and well-realised it is, nice work!

    • illdie
      Lv. 12
      illdie Developer of Dodger: Swirl

      1yr ago

      Thank you so much! I think my games usually end up leaning a bit too difficult, but I'm glad for a few levels it felt accessible for you lol. I agree on the eye boundary as well, I was thinking of putting a subtle visual for that in but it ended up not getting done.

      All your praise for the presentation is great to hear as well, thanks for playing!

  • Yosi
    Lv. 46

    Cool game! I got a bit confused at first because I thought the shapes in the background were walls or something ahaha.

    epic game
    Submitted

    epic game

  • singleshot
    Lv. 43

    Pretty intresting game illdie, I liked the shooter twist of falling in to the center vs defeending the center.

    also seemed a little violent if you know what I mean.

    Lost Child
    Submitted

    Lost Child

  • Tydecon Games
    Patron

    I like the unique concept of this one and the retro style! I wasn't especially good at it, maybe I needed more practice or there needs to be more blocks, but it definitely made me come back for more when I realised I was just one block short - good entry with a decent replay value to it!

    • illdie
      Lv. 12
      illdie Developer of Dodger: Swirl

      1yr ago

      Looking back, I do think I should have made there be some more blocks. I think the farthest I've gotten on the release version is level 13, though I usually fail at level 9.

      Thank you for playing, it's good to hear the experience of missing one block was compelling for you instead of frustrating, haha.

  • HOPL
    Lv. 2

    This was a really interesting game and would have been a great entry into something like the Ludem Dare game jam last year "Stuck in a loop". Great job on everything in this game, it plays really well. I kept holding down to move away even though I knew I couldn't Best high-score so far is level 6. This is a wonderful entry into the game jam

  • Jaspo
    Lv. 16

    If the game is nonviolent, why do I explode like megaman when I fail? Anyway, this one has nice art and music that fits the art well, but seems a bit difficult, and it felt a bit strange being hardly able to move inward and outward to get the pickups.

    • illdie
      Lv. 12
      illdie Developer of Dodger: Swirl

      1yr ago

      The concept I had in mind was that you're constantly getting pulled in, so collecting squares is a race against time. Now that you mention it I didn't really signpost that anywhere so it makes sense that it would just feel like a strange choice. I do think I should have made the difficulty a little lighter, it was one of those situations where it flip-flopped from being too easy to too hard a lot leading up to the end from slight tweaks. I worry about my games being so easy people get bored, but I definitely lean too difficult most of the time. Thank you for playing!