I really like the fundamental gameplay along with the art! I think you did a good job with the different weapon abilities, but they need some tweaking to be more equal to each other. I won the game with 8 towers activated. My main strategy was to not have more than 2 enemies on me at once. While it would be expected to use the wide shot in situations like that, hitting them together 10 times with it is not ideal when I could just use 4 shots on each of them with the E ability, which also explodes and has a chance of hitting the 2nd enemy. I also noticed that the towers varied from 6-9 upon restarting, while the spawn (and assuming the rest of the map) stayed the same. I personally don't see a reason to change the amount of towers unless the map is different as well, to better balance them.
I like the music and SFX, but I think the hit sound can be more satisfying. It currently feels a bit dull, and hitting the enemies doesn't really provide feedback on how much damage they're taking. Having them limp or making it clear that they're hurt after taking some damage would benefit the player experience a lot. My only other real issue is not being able to see the enemies instantly. It sometimes took me a while to notice when the enemies were on screen, and sometimes I've only noticed them when I was shot at. I think having a colored outline for them would solve that issue. Valorant does that and it helps a lot to make it clear when you're looking at an enemy. I really did enjoy the gameplay, and would love to see it get more polished! The gameplay is all there, it mainly just needs some fine tuning. Great job with the submission!
Viewing post in Operation: Alien RIPley jam comments
Thanks! The map basically stays the same but towers, enemies and the decorative ships are placed randomly in certain spawn areas. You can read about that in the devlog: https://acurna.itch.io/operation-alien-ripley/devlog/958686/jamlytics-jam-1-part...
Originally I wanted to make a full map randomizer but had more important things to do first so it stayed at that fixed level. Some things being randomized is still better than everything being always exactly the same. I hate how most games have no randomness at all with NPCs walking on exactly given paths and such.
As already mentioned in other replies better hit indication for enemies and the player was planned and I also thought about making them more visible. I tried glowing eyes but that didn't really help and probably neither would have glowing weapons. I thought about giving them some kind of colorful space suit and even found a model which I maybe could have somehow merged with more time... I also thought about showing damage numbers but that would only make sense if you could influence them in more ways like in an RPG. I also thought about adding some kind of enemy radar or marker. In a previous game I had health bars over enemies but I wanted to keep it more realistic here. Enemies shooting at you surprisingly also didn't seem like such a big issue because you normally can dodge the bullets in time.