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VimJam 2: Boss [8 Bits to Infinity]

Hosted by 8 Bits to Infinity, Retro Indie Josh, Vimlark · #8bitstoinfinity
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A jam submission

Space AttackView game page

Submission for VimJam 2!
Submitted by spherous — 5 hours, 4 minutes before the deadline
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Space Attack's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Technical Implementation#813.3474.000
Overall#1443.0123.600
Graphics/Animation#1563.1083.714
Music/Sound#1602.8693.429
Fun/Design#1662.9883.571
Theme/Limitation#1982.7493.286

Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game apply the limitation (and optionally, the theme)?
Restriction: The boss is on wave 50. Theme: the edge of the game is used a lot, as with screen wrapping, the enemies coming form there, the boss is always on the edge, never fully revealed, the edges lock and prevent screen wrapping. Furthermore, when you drink too much caffeine, you're on edge, because you have pent up energy. The entire energy balancing mechanic fits in to that. If you have too much of it, you get hurt, you need to spend it so you're not on edge anymore.

Team Size

Solo (1)

What main engine/tool/language did you use to construct the game?
Unity, C#, Krita, Aseprite, Visual Studio Code

Which diversifiers did you use, if any?
Shapely

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Comments

TorchFire GamesSubmitted3 years ago(+1)

Clever mechanic, splitting the movement and attack into the blue/red bars.  I had fun blasting through the waves and seeing what all the different weapons do.  UI is nice and clean too, especially the warp indicators.  I didn't make it to wave 50 to fight the boss (the difficulty seemed to ramp way up around wave 10) but got a score a little above 1,000 so not half bad.  Great job on this!

Submitted
Railway to the Moon
Reply
kubo-samaSubmitted3 years ago

It's hard to control and it gets chaotic for the same reason, but it gets interesting after a few minutes.
Submitted
PERIMPETUM DIABOLUS
Reply
spherousDeveloper3 years ago(+1)

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "hard to control"? You have complete control over how fast you move (from completely stopped to 3x base speed), and it's basic WASD movement with very little floatiness, so I'm surprised to hear that it's difficult to control.

If you push the blue bar to the right, you'll move faster. You can counter this by shooting more often. Try to balance movespeed and attack rate to not push your blue bar too far thus making things difficult to control (and nerfing your damage)

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kubo-samaSubmitted3 years ago

Excuse me, I don't know how to express myself well in English
Reply
festmesterSubmitted3 years ago

I found myself playing longer than first expected. The weapons are varied and the dual energy systems allow you to explore different playstyles, even though it seems like certain weapons work better in certain sweet spots (high/low red, or low blue etc). Tons of fun just exploring how each weapon react with different upgrades.  It's cool there are actual choices between weapon upgrades and healing up - so if I play better I also can afford to become stronger. If I need it but don't pick health, it's a gamble on my life. Very tense!

Sadly I never made it past the boss, but this is very well done, and feels like a strong prototype for even a commercial game. Excellent use of simplistic shapes and effects, and great fitting music. Well done!

Submitted
CEO of bad games
Reply
spherousDeveloper3 years ago

Thanks so much for playing! I'm glad you liked it!

I've done a few twinsticks in the past, so I was mainly focusing on improving my understanding on the genre, while playing with some new mechanical ideas to force some resource engagement on to the players. I think it did okay, maybe rockets are too obviously good compared to the other weapons though, as the only 2 people who have beaten the boss (that I know of) employed the same rocket tactic.

What highscore did you manage to achieve? :)

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RainbowHellSubmitted3 years ago

This game is well polished, giving us an addition to aim for the breaking the high score. I was wondering what benefits does the blue bar provides? I know that letting either bar full will damage you while shoot, as well as the red bar gives you more firepower & decrease movement speed.

Submitted
Warbringer
Reply
spherousDeveloper3 years ago

The blue bar is the opposite of the red bar, so it hampers damage and provides a movespeed boost, while red hampers movespeed and provides an offensive boost. The spacebar active debuffs the enemies as well, red reduces their attackspeed/damage, while blue reduces their movespeed and can even stop them in place.

Thanks for playing! :D What score did you get up to? Did you manage to fight and/or beat the boss?

Reply
cheesemcpuffSubmitted3 years ago (2 edits)

Controls were easy to understand and I enjoyed the base game play, dodge and shoot, only managed a score of 765 with around a minute left on the timer. The music and sfx fit the game. Enjoyed it overall.

So it took me a while to figure out shooting too much killed me lmao, alongside that I never figured out what the blue bar was for nor what spacebar did, was it to cooldown your weapon? Alongside this moving to the opposite side of the screen was a little jarring, not sure if it's just a case of 'mad cus bad' though.  My final comment would be could the ammo types have a description? maybe a on mouse hover kind of thing, other than health I wasn't sure what my buffs were.

Edit: Figured out blue bar is movement, figured out you get both a buff/debuf when you press space depending on what bar you filled, also would have loved to have the bullets to move screens like the player can, could have done some cool skill shots

Submitted
Blossom; Escape From Muzag
Reply
spherousDeveloper3 years ago

Thanks for playing! :D

I really struggled with communicating what the red/blue provided, but I think most people are figuring it out well enough with some experimentation. Blue bar gives movement speed while hampering proj speed, damage, attack speed, activating it with spacebar gives another speed buff and reduces the speed of nearby enemies. A full blue bar when pressing space will stop all nearby enemies, while a full red bar will stop you in place.

I wanted to add a powerup for making projectiles screenwrap, but time D:

I'd challenge you to push yourself to the boss! 765 is pretty early on still :)

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