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A jam submission

AstroWindView game page

A chaotic fast-paced space shooter with fully destructible environment, challenging controls and 8-bit synthesized sound
Submitted by lisyarus (@lisyarus) — 1 day, 34 minutes before the deadline
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AstroWind's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Fun#3793.3953.395
Game Design#3923.4423.442
Graphics#8192.9532.953
Overall#8392.8572.857
Innovation#8462.7672.767
Theme#9272.7672.767
Audio#12991.8141.814

Ranked from 43 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

In what way does your game fit the theme?
1) It has a REWIND feature enabling you to teleport back in time (hold the [R] key for that)
2) It has "wind" in the name (if we reinterpret the REWIND theme to mean "re-wind")

Did you write most of the code yourself and made all the assets from scratch?
Yes.

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Comments

Viewing comments 37 to 18 of 37 · Next page · Last page
Submitted(+1)

The game is very polished, and you did it without an engine. Awesome code skills here, Congrats!

I really enjoy the gameplay, especially the destructible environment. Nice job!

Submitted(+1)

I really liked the added fire power as the game progressed. The number of rockets and bullets gets insane ===== FUN! Please also rate my game, thank you!

Developer

Thank you! Unfortunately I don’t possess a VR headset, so I cannot rate your game fairly. I tried playing it on PC, but it doesn’t respond to the controls.

Submitted

For those without a headset, I have added a playthrough video for you to see the experience (7 minutes viewing in total). Please take a look at the video if you aren't able to play the game and provide your insights/feedback.

Play-through video HERE: https://youtu.be/UFikjzM1XMc

Submitted(+1)

Really fun game! the rewind mechanic was useful for dodged the enemies. The control is a bit slippery for me. Overall I enjoyed the game :D

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Cool game. Loved the destructable terrain. Pretty simple, but definitely lacks audio.

Played the game here: 

Developer(+1)

Ha-ha, thank you! Enjoyed watching you play, thanks for feedback.

Submitted(+1)

I like it! Fun, fast paced and challenging!

Things I particularly enjoyed:

  • The fast pace and freedom of movement (being able to shoot through the ground to escape the rockets was a great touch! I enjoyed moving around in the free space, then also enjoyed enclosing myself in a walled area and shooting at incoming enemies before burrowing away!)
  • The procedural level generation; being able to go as far as I wanted was nice I think. I think if it was a smaller space I would have felt less freedom with tactics (and the ground would eventually run out haha), so this combined with the destructible environment was very cool.
  • Once leveled up I felt more like a badass (admittedly I only have gotten to level 5 thus far; but its been fun trying different tactics); was much harder on level 1 trying to aim the single shot though haha. Once I was able to spray my projectiles it was a cool feeling moving around at speed blasting away everything in my path and chewing through the ground with ease to escape rockets.

Things to improve:

  • Audio: From what I could tell there was no sound at all? Even if you can't hear sound in space I think pew-pew sound effects for firing, explosions for killing the bases, a crunchy sound as you break through ground and action-themed background music (heavy war drums, wailing guitar, or perhaps electronic high BPM) would have amped this game up to 11 :)
  • Rewinding mechanic was underutilised: It felt like it was added on as an afterthought rather than basing the game around it/a core feature of the game (which it probs should be for a Rewind themed game). I was very disapointed when I found out my health didn't revert back to pre-hit at very least when I rewound, that would have made it a useful gameplay mechanic at least (e.g. risking warping back into rocket-traffic to get health back) and after that I didn't really use it ever again cause it often confused me more than helped me. I'm not sure what you developed the game in, but if it was Unity check out Chronos from the asset store; I think you could do some cool stuff with it in this game (e.g. rewinding only the player to regain health; firing a bomb/wide-beam which tags rockets and rewinds them to clear a path; having a special rare bomb which pauses/rewinds all rockets for a few seconds to give you a breather when overwhelmed etc.)
  • Controls: I'm split on this; on the one hand I felt it was maybe part of the charm of the game to struggle with the controls a bit (a bit like a successor to Asteroids); on the other hand, players always feel better when they feel they are in control of their character. It's just a bit hard to aim precisely and it does get confusing whether to push left or right (which sounds like i'm dumb, but in the heat of the moment when you're upside down going in a particular direction it can be hard to figure out in a split second). Perhaps having mouse for aiming and a button for thruster would have been easier. Controller support would have been great too (being able to just point the analog stick in the direction you wanted to go/aim and then having right trigger for thruster would have made control 10x easier). If you use Unity check out the new input system, it lets you map functions to keyboard and controller quite easily.

Overall: Really nice fun game which perhaps underutilised the theme a bit and would be enhanced greatly by audio. 

Hope you found this feedback helpful. Well done! 

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for a detailed feedback! Answering in no particular order:

  • You are right that there’s no audio. I an not using any engines, so I’d have to implement it on my own, and decided that I better concentrate on stuff that I definitely can do. In fact I’ve already started adding sounds now and a post-jam updated version will definitely have sound & music :)
  • You are absolutely right about the rewind mechanics - I added it very early but later concentrated on polishing other stuff. I’m now working on making it much more useful. Thanks for the suggestion - indeed the health should probably be restored on rewinding.
  • Many say about the controls but really they are the interesting part here. If you were able to e.g. move directly with WASD/arrows (as opposed to controlling rotation & acceleration) and aim & shoot using a mouse then the game would be ridiculously simple. Certainly I could then add more enemies & make the rockets smarter & etc, but that would just be a different game then.

Thanks for your feedback again, it is really helpful!

Submitted(+1)

Sounds like you're already on top of it! Cool! 

Yeah, with the controls, as I said, I was in two minds myself as to whether they should change or not. I think perhaps people in the comments are finding the first level frustrating where you have to aim quite precisely with your 1 laser? Not sure what to do about that to be honest, because getting more lazers as you level up is cool.

Submitted(+1)

Nice game, I thin you need to improve the controls...

Developer

Thank you for feedback! Could you please elaborate in what way exactly are the controls bad?

Submitted

I think the controls could use some improvement, sometimes I feel like I rotate way too fast, and other times they feel a little unresponsive. My favorite part of this game was shooting everything - destroying terrain and enemies is really fun, and I love that you get more bullets as you level up. I didn't really use the rewind mechanic that often though, I feel like leaving that out wouldn't really change the game much.

Developer

Thanks for your feedback! Glad you liked the shooting. I agree that the rewind turned out to be somewhat useless, I’m already working on improving it.

Submitted

Quite confused what im supposed to do...

Developer

I am sorry if that wasn’t clear. The objective is to shoot bullets to destroy the incoming rockets & hexagonal stations that fire those rockets while trying to avoid the rockets hitting you.

Submitted(+1)

I thought your idea an execution was really well done. The ability to destroy the environment was my favorite part. If I had to add something I would say maybe having powerups or something spawn throughout the world so you have different places to go to instead of just flying around avoiding enemies. It was very challenging to get used to the controls, but I had a lot of fun with it, nice job!

Submitted

Nice game. Some feedbacks:

  • I really like that it has procedural generated layouts (I think?)
  • Gameplay:
    • Enjoyed the level up system, it gets more fun as I get more bullets
    • nice touch that I can shoot & break down walls
    • I don't really like the controls though, it feels really slippery for me.
  • Nice ability on the rewind, but I don't find myself using it very often unless I get a bunch of rocket coming towards me & use it as a tool for escape. 

Overall it was a good fun game, thanks for letting me play!

Developer

Thank you for a detailed review! Yep, the terrain is fully procedural - randomness is a much better artist than me :D I know the controls are hard: this is partially intended (to make the game challenging) and partially a result of insufficient testing. True that the rewind is kinda useless, I don’t use it either when I play & I am currently working on improving it. Thank you again!

Submitted

Nice submission. Such a small download size too. How did you do that? lol.

Rewind didn't work for me, but it could have been just me.

Great job.

Could you please play and rate my game?

https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/723414

Developer(+1)

Thank you! 1MB is due to not using any engines, just C++ and a tiny library for platform-dependent stuff. I bet the rewind does work, it’s just that I failed to explain how to use it properly, my fault.

Sure, I’ll check yours!

Submitted(+1)

Well congrats to you then! Amazing what you have done with limited resources IE and engine

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Holy... I could have really done with a rotational sensitivity option or a closer view as I could not aim for shit! haha 

As I started to play I thought to myself 'it would be pretty awesome if terrain was destructible so I could make my own shortcuts and then 1 minute later I was like 'wait, I can do that!' so I really like that feature

The instructions said to press 'R' for rewind but this didn't actually do anything for me, was I meant to collect something in order to use it or 'charge up' in some way? everytime I pressed it I just got a little 'twitch' and that was it whether I pressed or held.

There was no sound so can't really comment on that.

I can't say for certain without testing but I think with a bit of sound, lower rotation sensitivity & speed and a more zoomed in view, this game would be even better. I think the controls let it down as it felt really uncontrollable but that's just my personal preference and maybe others disagree.

Developer

Thank you, I really appreciate such a detailed and honest feedback! Glad you liked the destructible terrain. The [R] button is meant to be hold down, actually, - this shows a ghost of yours from a few seconds before, and this is where you’ll be teleported when you release [R]. Didn’t make this clear and many players have commented on that, my fault.

I’m sorry but could I ask you a few specific questions? First of all, when you say about rotational sensitivity - how many turns does it make per second? I’ve heard a few times about this issue and still don’t know whether there’s an actual bug or it is just a personal perception issue. Secondly, what screen resolution did you play the game? The scale is resolution-independent which seems to make the game hard to play at low resolutions.

Thanks again for your feedback!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Sorry, what I mean when I say resolution is I would like the game to be less distant, like if I were playing it in 960x540 

The rewind feature definitely doesnt work for me, doesn't matter whether I press or hold, the 'ghost' is always on top of me which explains why it 'twitches'

As for turns per second, I don't really know how to accurately measure that and its more about the 'feel' of it, I'm this little thing on the screen yet the amount of turning is massive combined with glide which make controlling and aiming difficult.

Developer

I see. Combining the rotation & rewind issues, I guess this is a bug in the controls. I’ll try to investigate it, thank you a lot for your input!

Submitted(+1)

That was a great experience! I had much fun playing your game.
A bit challenging too but that is great ;)

Developer

Thank you! Glad you liked it!

Submitted(+1)

Nice idea! Would love to see a more polished and prominent rewind mechanic.

Developer

Thank you! Already working on that :)

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Good and fun game!! Very addictive lol.

It would be nice to have some way of healing... maybe give small heals when you level up, or make hp items spawn randomly. It may help balance the difficulty a lot, and enocurage players to keep trying for a higher score!

Also, I didn't fin the rewind mechanic very helpful. Being teleported to a random position kinda confused me.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for your feedback! I’m planning to make the ship get automatically healed over time so that you can dig into the terrain and wait for a bit. The rewind actually teleports the player to his own position about a second and a half ago; I agree that it isn’t as clear as it could be, and I’m currently working on improving this mechanic.

Submitted(+1)

You're breathtaking!. I'm always dying after reaching level 4 and a half . 

At first I didn't like the controls too much (was expecting mouse for aiming), but after some tries a realized its part of the maneuverability of the ship, offering something not so generic as aiming with the mouse, and leaving room for the players to improve. 

The destructible terrain is nice (marching squares? :D), one important thing the game is missing and you're probably aware of due to lack of time is some type of feedback when things happen, be it particles, sounds, etc. After this is added it will improve a lot.

Perhaps could be cool to indicate the position where you're going to rewind every moment. It would give it some more utility.

Overall , I enjoyed the time I was playing, great job!

Developer

Ha-ha, I’ve only managed to reach level 9, given that I’ve obviously practiced a lot :) The game is meant to be somewhat challenging, and controls are part of that.

Yep, the terrain is basically a variation of marching squares. There is indication of certain events - usually just with a little explosion ball, - but you are right that it isn’t enough. I am currently working on sound & other effects, as well as improving the rewind mechanic.

Thank you a lot for your feedback!

Submitted(+1)

hey nice game here, i loved the controls, its a like asteroids on esteroids hahahah, didnt understand the rewind feature but didnt needed to have fun, really loved it. There is no audio right?

Developer

Thank you! Yep, no audio, planning to add some after the jam.

Submitted

awesome

Submitted(+1)

Loved the funny way you implemented the theme xD... Good game!

Submitted

Loved the funny way you implemented the theme xD... Good game!

(+1)

I really like how the ship can terraform the land around it! I didn't end up using the rewind mechanic too much, which proves how good the controls were! (once you get used to them)

Developer

Thank you! I agree that the rewind mechanic is somewhat questionable. I’m working on making it more beneficial & easier to use, will update after the jam.

Viewing comments 37 to 18 of 37 · Next page · Last page