A fun, highly replayable and very addicting experience!
Once the player understands how the explosions tie into the health bar and blast radius, the game becomes a sort of tactical chess where you need to time your explosions to where enemies will end up being (instead of detonating where they currently are, which will just cause the explosion to miss and waste a life).
The powerups are also interesting, although I feel that they can make movement a lot more difficult/tedious since:
- The "speed boost" forces the player to move two spaces instead of one, which can make navigating through tight spaces difficult (and could cause the player to step out of line with enemy movements).
- The "invincibility boost" forces an explosion every space of movement, which sounds great at first but becomes less useful/more bothersome once the room has been cleared out (slowing down movement significantly until the powerup expires).
- The "fuse reset" is best saved when the fuse starts running low, but the randomness of its appearance means that the player can't easily predict when's the best time to get it (i.e. they'll usually just get it when their fuse is still nearly at full).
The leaderboard however is a great touch since it makes players want to replay the game in order to overturn each other's high scores. I'll probably go back to this game after the Game Jam just to see if I can place even higher!