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I challenge you to beat my high score; challenge me back! šŸ˜‰

A topic by SiƓn le Roux created Dec 05, 2020 Views: 274 Replies: 6
Viewing posts 1 to 4
Submitted (3 edits)

For this jam I made an arcade-style shooter; the game itself is simple to play but takes some practice to get a good score. This is in contrast with games that have a story mode or an ending etc. that you play through. Iā€™m looking for similar challenging games where we can share high scores! See my challenge below.

The reason Iā€™m doing this is because I tested my own game to try to get a good balance between easy enough to be fun/rewarding while at the same time hard enough to not be boring. I tweaked a lot of different mechanics which affect difficulty, and I thought not just myself, but also others with similar style games, could benefit from some ā€œcrowdsourcedā€ testing to see how hard the levels are to beat.

Participate and challenge me back!

Have you made a game thatā€™s similarly arcade-style, focused on getting high scores in short rounds that last only a few seconds or a few minutes? Challenge me back with a link to your game and your high score and Iā€™ll see if I can beat it!

Letā€™s do a challenge thread, Iā€™ll start! šŸ’ŖšŸ˜ŽšŸŽ®

Expected format

Challenges

For challenges, include a short description of your game with a screenshot or cover image (market it a bit) and optionally anything affecting difficulty. You should also make it clear what you expect as score; does your game have a ā€œscoreā€ count, infinitely harder levels, waves of enemies, what do you want as a sign of progress in the challenge?

Responses

For responses to a challenge, respond in a comment to the challenge, including your score and some proof, e.g. a screenshot or a play-through video. Optionally include any comments on the difficulty and its factors.

Submitted

I wrote Lunar Defence, a simple game with the aim of shooting down asteroids in increasingly bigger waves:

Lunar Defence cover image

Things I tweaked in my game to try to find the sweet-spot in difficulty include:

  • asteroid speed
  • moon orbit distance
  • target size
  • cool down time
  • asteroid distribution/clustering
  • lots moreā€¦

Did I get the difficulty right? As Iā€™ve played it quite a lot, I can reach level 7, thatā€™s the high score to beat. I know one person so far whoā€™s managed to reach level 9, which I think is insane, Iā€™m curious if anyone else can get that far.

tl;dr: I need to know if my game is too hard/easy, try to beat my high score (wave 7) and comment whatā€™s the highest level you could reach! šŸ™

Submitted(+1)

I'm down to do this challenge! Right now I'm making a funny devlog video for my game but I can do this after wards! 


I made a wave based 3rd person shooter thats perfect for this challenge https://avatar-nick.itch.io/

Submitted

Great, so I finally got to try out your Moon Blob game itā€™s hectic! I finished the easy mode and on normal I got as far as wave 38, I maybe couldā€™ve passed it but at this point I was dying basically every level and having to continue from there, which I felt was kinda cheating. Even at wave 38 I still donā€™t really understand how the aiming works, so it took me about an hour to get there šŸ™ˆ

screenshot at level 38 of Moon Blob

Hereā€™s a screenshot for proof šŸ˜„ itā€™s a still frame from me playing through soon before I died for the millionth time haha. The hardest blobs were definitely the yellow ones by far, theyā€™re so aggressive!

Submitted(+1)

Not meaning to boast, but this was my first play-through:


Thoughts while playing:

  • Do I have to be on the right side of the Earth before I can shoot that meteor? No? Okay, good. Iā€™d hate to wipe Buenos Aires off the map with this laser.
  • What was that message? ā€œMissionā€ something? Is mission control trying to talk to me? Iā€™m a little busy here!
  • Oh, it said ā€œmissedā€. Thereā€™s a cooldown when I miss. Wait, why is there a cooldown when I miss but not when I hit?
  • Never mind. New strategy: donā€™t miss.
  • I like that I can hit multiple meteors with one shot.
  • Whatā€™s that number in the top right? Is that lives? Can I let two meteors through before itā€™s game over? …Iā€™m not going to test that.
  • Nope, itā€™s a wave counter. Good thing I didnā€™t test it.
  • Wow, the meteors-per-wave count goes up very fast. I donā€™t remember how many it was before, but now itā€™s in the hundreds?!
  • I really like that I can hit multiple meteors with one shot. But sometimes Iā€™m not expecting it, so I click to shoot one thatā€™s no longer there and have to wait for the cooldown!
  • Wave 7, wave 7, cā€™mon, I can beat wave 7… yes!
  • Wave 8, wave 8, cā€™mon, I— okay no I canā€™t. Oh well.

So yeah. Great game, heaps of fun. The controls are smooth, and the difficulty felt about right.

I feel like more, shorter waves—ramping up in number more slowly—would give more of a feeling of hitting milestones without affecting the difficulty, but I could be wrong. Also I still donā€™t understand the missed-shot cooldown. If itā€™s to prevent spam-clicking, surely a cooldown on every shot would achieve that? (Or maybe there is one?) But, itā€™s only brief and didnā€™t seem to matter much.

Since you asked, my gameā€™s also an arcadey shooter, but games take exactly five minutes, putting it outside the limits of your request. Itā€™s also buggy as hell… but here it is if youā€™re interested: https://perey.itch.io/full-moon

Submitted

Wow, you must have really good aim, very well done and congratulations!

Thanks for the detailed write-up, it was amusing to read through a playerā€™s perspective and itā€™s really useful feedback for me!

Whatā€™s that number in the top right? Is that lives?

Yeah I know these numbers arenā€™t obvious at all, unless you pay attention to them for a few rounds. Iā€™m thinking of some kind of UI design with an icon that would clarify what they mean.

more, shorter wavesā€”ramping up in number more slowly

Right now they double every round, which is okay for the first few, but youā€™re right, it turns into a swarm pretty fast. Iā€™ve balanced it out a bit by making them start out spread further apart / further away when thereā€™s more of them, otherwise they all arrive at once and you have no chance. Iā€™ll still tweak the difficulty factors in future iterations, so if you have suggestions for how it should increase thatā€™d be nice. Currently itā€™s exponential, each wave has 5*2^(n-1) meteors, where n is the wave number youā€™re at.

Also I still donā€™t understand the missed-shot cooldown.

Itā€™s kind of against spam clicking. Itā€™s a penalty for missing a shot, so your ā€œNew strategy: donā€™t miss.ā€ was spot on, you must not miss a shot in this game. I canā€™t put a cooldown on every shot you take because sometimes thereā€™s just a lot of meteors and you have to click fast. But if you miss one because you didnā€™t take time to aim properly then thereā€™s a 1 second cooldown. I tried to visualise it in the game such that when you miss a shot then the explosion happens on the turret on the moon instead of where the crosshair is, as if the miss caused the laser to backfire. In future iterations Iā€™ll add a visual cooldown like a progress bar or something to make it easier for players than trying to read the text during the action.

Thanks for taking the time to play so far through and thanks for the detailed feedback! šŸ˜Š

Submitted

I tried your game too by the way, Iā€™m not sure if Iā€™m doing something wrong but no mobs appeared at all in the first wave, sometimes it said 10, sometimes it said 0. šŸ˜