Thanks for the thoughtful replay and the positive feedback! I was unsure about which metric to choose as a score, since there are many things you could theoretically keep track of: The upgrade level of the batteries, the time multiplier reached, the time you survived (as you suggested)... so I left it open for interpretation. I think if I had got more time I would have come up with some scoring system, but now I will definitely add one when the jam's over! I would have also liked to add a difficulty slider, since right now the difficulty is changed by altering the game speed, which would make it very unfair when comparing scores based on the time you survived, since you could literally just slow the game down
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I think it might be worth adding them all to a final score.
You can treat The upgrade level as a multiplier of your final score. Then the time multiplier could have something like 1.5x its weight on the final score. The time you survived, too. And so by the time you get to the end, the final score could just be a combination of those things where each one has a separate weight it adds to the final score.
Something that I'd also suggest is adding "juice" to the game. If you lean into the scoring being more important, you could add a bunch of numbers to the screen that give the player feedback and also just gets the dopamine going. If you haven't seen it, this is a good video on the topic:
One last thing! Sometimes when I hit the batteries, I feel like I'm being cheated because I realize that the negative charge is up but I could have sworn I clicked when the positive charge was up. Even though technically I'm sure I actually clicked just as the charges were changing. But that's hard to tell, because that's probably frame synced and I can't see/react frame by frame.
I'd suggest 2 things here.
- Apply the same logic as coyote time here. Have it so that even though the battery has visually swapped orientation, allow it to be treated like the charge is still positive up top for a a few frames. It could be 3 frames or 15 frames. Play with the number and see if it changes how the game feels. Play around with doing that when positives up top change to negatives, or even when negatives up top change to positives as well for consistency.
- Have some visual indicator that a battery is about to change orientation. It could be as small as making the battery wiggle a little bit or pulse in size. It's just important to have some sort of telegraph that the state is about to change.
One or both of those, I think, will add immediate value and improve the game feel in a surprising way.