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Surwave's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #70 | 3.321 | 3.321 |
| Audio | #75 | 3.357 | 3.357 |
| Overall | #80 | 3.393 | 3.393 |
| Graphics | #144 | 3.321 | 3.321 |
| Theme interpretation | #191 | 3.036 | 3.036 |
| Innovation | #256 | 2.500 | 2.500 |
Ranked from 28 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
GitHub repository URL
https://github.com/VerdantInteractive/Surwave
Game description
A top-down survival shooter game where you fight against a huge horde of aliens.
Can you survive for six minutes?
Stranded on a strange, desolate planet with thousands of aliens chasing you. They seem hungry. Odds are against you, but you see a beacon of light in the distance that might grant you powers to tip the scales in your favour...
Theme interpretation
You fire a shock wave every few seconds. Your gun fires projectiles that move in a wave-like trajectory. The enemies form a huge crowd that looks like a giant wave.
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Comments
This game feels very polished, love the visual and audio feedback on everything! The sound effects changing when upgrading abilities is a really nice subtle touch. I went back for multiple runs to focus on different upgrades and had a good time.
Some feedback from me: For my first run I didn't know there were upgrades, and this game is really difficult prior to your first upgrade. You do so little damage in such a small area at first living to 20 currency and getting to a corner is a gauntlet. Most of my runs I got down to 1 HP in this stage and after my first upgrade had to do a no-hit run. I think this game becomes a lot more fun after your first upgrade! For a jam, I think I would have made the easy difficulty the default, and potentially even start the player with a free upgrade at the start! If you give them an upgrade at the start you can teach them the mechanic exists, give them a goal to get to the corners, and start the game off with a fun choice of how to shape your run.
Awesome job!
Hi Matt, thanks for playing my game and sharing your feedback! It's especially good to hear that the more subtle aspects of the delivery being noticed and appreciated. Your analysis and recommendation are spot on.
I'm planning to add a UI element that pops up once the player has collected the first 20 gems that flashes "upgrade!" with an arrow pointing to the closest upgrade location, in a post-jam patch.
Your interpretation of the theme was very clear and understandable, congratulations! The sound, environment, and characters were also well done.
The game was enjoyable; I played it for a long time. The zigzagging of the bullets and the aliens' kicks when they took damage were great.
But I couldn't figure out the objective of the game. Maybe I missed something, but as far as I understand, the goal of the game is to collect as many precious stones as possible, right?
Thanks for playing :)
The goal is to simply survive until the timer at the top expires (6 minutes). To survive, upgrades are necessary, which you buy with gems from the 4 locations at the corners of the map - those are also shown as blue circles on the minimap.
You'll definitely notice the difference with the upgrades. The ones except the movement speed upgrade will make your attacks a lot stronger. The Gun Damage and the Shockwave upgrade will also change the sound to be more powerful, so your Shockwave will gradually change from a 'boom' into a 'BOOOM!' :)
Owww Coool
Insane polish and super smooth movement; best game of this genre I have seen this jam!
Thanks :)
Nice game! Good job.
Congratulations!
Now try it on hardcore difficulty ↻(𓄼 .̀ ̮.́)Ψ :)))
Playing this game made me realise that I need a vampire survivors like game that has only liquid dnb and maybe aesthetics from the y2k era :D It has been a fun run, I liked the placed upgrades. I think a bit of enemy or map variety would spice it even more up! It was fun to play.
Thanks for playing. Yep, the map is just a square but at least that allowed me to tune e.g. the placement of upgrades easily. FWIW, the map texture and all the 'foliage' is randomly generated each time, although I know it doesn't really add much. If I ever end up developing this game further I'll surely be adding more irregular terrain features and more varied map shapes.
Oh man this was difficult. Once I got upgrades rolling in it got a lot more manageable. The first time i realised that the corner upgrades only had 1 use i shat bricks lol. Great job, lots of fun!
Hahaha yep that's all intended - upgrades are a big part of the game. And the feeling of getting overwhelmed - at least until you get some upgrades - is deliberate. Thanks for playing, it was fun to read your feedback!
Great one! I love the calm pacing. Music really helps with the right vibes, haha =)
So, someone here told it's kinda hard to get upgrades. You know what? I've played like 6 times with the best result being 30 seconds until end... WITHOUT KNOWING THAT THERE ARE UPGRADES IN THIS GAME. I mean, you hid them not bad lol XD
And it still was fun! The game into a really dicy bullet hell + line patterns recognition challenge.
And after getting my master degree in that mode completing the game with upgrades was just a breeze. Really wanted to play more than 6 minutes. Why only 6 minutes??
You definitely want the upgrades. I don't think it's even possible to survive without one but I'm happy to be proven otherwise. After a couple of upgrades you should find yourself blasting through heaps of bad guys with ease.
I set the game's timer to 6 minutes for two reasons; I wanted to emphasize that the game in its current jam entry form is meant to be played in a quick run without getting too involved, but also because the music track was 6 minutes :))) I'll take the fact that you wanted to play more as a compliment, though :)
Thanks for playing and the feedback.
Thanks for playing!
Yep, that initial brief stutter is something I'll patch once the jam voting ends.
The game is really well done, the number of enemies is really impressive, and I really liked the music.
I think I'm missing something, as the number of enemies get really massive real soon, and the rate of gem collection is too slow to get the upgrades. I did understand that the minimap can be used to see were the enemies were thinner, but I found that I was quickly overwhelmed
Great polish on this one, well done
Thank you for the kind words.
To get the gems, you must kind of 'get inside' the crowd a bit and get surrounded, rather than trying to avoid the crowd and stay outside. You can blow a path forward through the enemies with the gun and the Shockwave will be a big help in not getting completely overwhelmed.
The game rewards risk taking by being close to the enemies and thus being close to the gems to collect them as they drop before they expire. I guarantee you that you will have more than enough gems for 4 upgrades - including two tier 2 upgrades if you want, but this is a bit harder.
There's also an easy difficulty setting in the Options that you can set before starting your run , which will get you started with 10 gems and more hit points.
Cheers :)
Solid game! keep up the good work!
Thanks for playing my first game! It won't be the last :)
I'm a big fan of the upgrading system, the enemy waves get a bit overwhelming but I feel like that adds to the game! Only thing is that it took me a minute to realize I should go to the edges of the map to find upgrades so I feel like placing them closer to the middle would make them more of a focal point. Great job overall
Glad to hear that you liked it.
I intended to make the upgrade spots at the corners clear with the minimap where they are marked with bright blue, and also mentioned them in the game description under "Tips". Still, feedback taken. I think I could've done something like popping up a notification that points to the nearest corner once the player had enough gems for an upgrade.
Thanks for your time playing and sharing your feedback :)
A minute to realise where those upgrades are, huh?
It took me 6 attempts almost beating the game and coming to this page to leave my rating. And then I saw a random screenshot and be like "Wait, there are upgrades waaaa..." XDXDXD
Very nice job! A bit too simple but it ok.
Thanks for playing :)
Loved it! It's fun to see a vampire-survivor-like where there's a purpose for navigation. I play the heck out of these kinds of games and I've never seen one that makes you earn your upgrades. Having the same options every time (albeit more expensive) really makes you consider what you buy and what you're good at. My only (tiny) gripes were that it was easy to get the little guy lost in the timer and map when the gameplay rewards being near the edges. Overall, amazing!
It's great to read feedback from an astute player. Indeed, one of the aims was to give the player more agency and control over their progression.
I hear you regarding the possibility of the hero getting 'lost'. I stuck to whole number scaling since the assets were pixel art. So if I were to double the player sprite size, it would get too big. If I were to halve the size of the UI elements like the countdown timer, it would've gotten too small given its importance. Still, it's a good point and I will probably be less strict about integer scaling of sprites if/when I make my second game.
Thanks for your time playing, reviewing and sharing your feedback :)
You could always have two copies of of the UI, one above, one below and fade between them when the player is at the top or bottom of the screen. Or have the gameplay shrunk so there's a boarder at the top and bottom of the screen where the UI rests.