I'll Cut You Down

Thanks to everyone who gave us votes and feedback during the jam! A polished, revamped post-jam version (with more content and features) is on its way. UPDATE: This is on hiatus while we work on our entry for the DOS Game Jam!

The Order sacrificed you under the gaze of their blasphemous god. But your fury overcame death... so go make those cultists bleed!

You are the Banshee, a haunted hellion with a grudge, in this slice-em-up made in ten days for the Bullet Hell Game Jam 2023. In keeping with the theme, "LIMITED", you are capable only of moving. No projectiles, no defensive abilities, no special attacks. Move with WASD or the arrow keys (no rebinding or controller support just yet.) ESC quits. M toggles game audio off/on.

Rush into your enemies to cut them down. Avoid magic projectiles. For the best score, leave nothing standing and keep your combo counter high. (That's the green number.) You can absorb up to two hits before needing to restart the current phase.

Some tips: your knife has a hitbox that extends further than your own soft, ghostly centre. Poke 'em dead! Enemy locations are fixed, and there are almost no random projectiles, so if you find a route that works once, it will work again. Remember you don't have to kill everything, although your spooky spirit will never rest unless you do!

(If you're really frustrated, you can press 0 to skip the current level, or 9 to toggle invulnerability. Just don't tell anyone we spilled these cult secrets.)

As you'd expect from an engine created in a week, there's a certain amount of jank. Unusual resolutions and screen resizes may cause minor visual glitches. For simplicity, the game tries to free you at all costs from collisions, which can cause you to fly through things if you wedge yourself into them. Creepy, right?

Technical notes and disclaimers: the game is a custom engine coded entirely in C. It was developed on Linux, but the Windows port seems to work. We didn't have time to get a web port running by deadline. Sorry we didn't get to curse your browser as well.

The main system requirement is a video card that can support OpenGL 3.0. The game runs well on a twelve-year-old Thinkpad, so should hopefully work on most modern hardware. It's possible things will explode. Please let us know.

All code, writing, and art assets are entirely original and were created within the game-jam period. In-game music is courtesy of Karl Casey aka White Bat Audio. Sounds effects are from the public domain except where credited in ATTRIB.TXT. No AI was used in any part of the development.

CONTENT WARNING: this game contains cartoon depictions of bloody knife violence delivered by a vengeful wraith.

DIABLERIE IS

wrnyfyr (ART, SOUND EDITING)

 mothgram (CODE, DESIGN, WORDS)