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A jam submission

Break The SkyView game page

Fleet command shoot-em-up. Hold out against the Martians. AI and Games Jam 2021.
Submitted by Sam Bigos (@Calneon) — 9 hours, 48 minutes before the deadline
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Break The Sky's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Fun#14.5534.553
Presentation#54.4044.404
Overall#54.2344.234
Originality#163.7453.745

Ranked from 47 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

(+1)

So fun, right up my alley! I really felt the spirit of AI and games with this one. I didn't really break the rules but I broke alot of other stuff, lol. Very GG!!

Submitted

Scored 29028, pretty fun and addicting game !

The only thing I have to say is I felt like the camera shakes were a bit too much when you fight the big wheel cannon things, and it kind of makes the game lag a bit (maybe it is just because I was on the web version), and you loose understanding of what you are doing and what is happenning (since there are so many things on screen, if you add a lot of shaking it makes it hard to see stuff).

But overall it is the best game I have seen so far on this jam, well done.

Submitted

This game was a lot of fun, great job!!

Submitted

This is pretty sweet.

It's so cool how the drones as health interacts with everything in the game. Like you want to get more drones because it means more health and firepower, but then the enemy attacks become more devastating. The laser beam can take out half your drones if you're not careful because you just have so many drones to get out of the line of fire. And with the bullet hell circle guys, it's pretty hard to weave between their shots when you get too big. The shotgun mode it kinda handy, but it was still pretty tricky to use to dodge stuff. More often than not, I just ended up swinging my 'wings' into danger more than safety. I found rapidly spinning the mouse around in circles grouped up all of my drones in a small ball, but was pretty annoying with how much the screen moved around so I didn't do it much.

For an entity composed of a bunch of tiny drones, you don't feel especially maneuverable. I think I would have liked it if the player had a bit more momentum when moving and maybe a bit of gravity. But on the other hand, maybe the drones wouldn't really keep up with you as well as they do. And it is nice to see them in a tidy grid. Maybe I'm just equating it too much to Luftrausers which emphasizes zooming around and momentum so much. Maybe it wouldn't fit as well with the drone swarm.

The colour scheme was great. Pretty to look at and easy to read. The enemy shapes were interesting. and told you what you needed to know about them. You just know immediately the arrow-shaped planes are trying to ram straight into you. The laser beam charge up scared you every time it happened. It always elicited an 'oh shit, I had better be somewhere else' reaction. The art is pretty simple (I mean that in a good way), but adding them all together creates a lot of polish. Like the little trails behind your drones to really sell their movement, and how they puff up slightly when they shoot, and enemies flashing white and having smoke particles so you can tell when you hit them. I could probably go on and on about each little detail.

Man, I wish I made this game. The level of polish on everything is just crazy.

Developer

Thanks so much for the in depth feedback! Yeah, I agree with the drones as health, I was really pleased with how that mechanic works. You described it perfectly, you want more drones for more damage, but the more you have the easier it is to lose them. It's a nice self-correcting cycle.

I spent a lot of time on game feel, so it's lovely to hear it worked out :D thanks so much!

Submitted

Great gameplay, the most fun game I played so far on this game jam ;p

Submitted

AMAZING. Nuff said! 

Submitted

Awesome game. Amazing controls and great art style.  The only critical point I would have is that the screen shake gets a bit to strong a some point.

Submitted

I really liked this game! Easy controls, loved the grouping animations, and also really enjoyed the complexity the clouds added! I liked the upgrades and how some of them (eg speed) caused you to have issues with grouping (harder for your drones to keep up).

Submitted(+1)

Fantastic game all around! I managed to get a score of 24,403 and only died because my keyboard messed up and forced me into a corner where I couldn't move. The story was a nice touch and really underlined the desperation of trying to survive. The "swarm" the player controlled felt great and the upgrades kept me engaged throughout. 

Easily in my top 3 favorite games of the jam so far!

Loved this one, great mechanics, well polished and variety of enemies and upgrades keeps it fresh.
The lazer beam enemies were a bit op as they can target you before they're within sight, that and the upgrades outside of micro rockets and speed didn't seem to make that much of a noticable difference. Also seemed like the big boys could only be damaged by hitting their wheels.

Submitted

It seemed to me that damage made a pretty big difference. In the beginning, killing the little dudes was difficult unless I aimed perfectly... later on, I could kill them in large amounts with a small burst of fire even after losing a lot of my fleet to those darn lasers.

Developer

You get upgrades quite frequently, so while a single upgrade might not make a big difference, once you get 2-3 upgrades of the same type it definitely makes a big difference.

The big guy's hull is immune, yeah, so you have to go around and target the 'wheels'. I did that to try and avoid every enemy being killed just by bullet spam :P.

Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

I would love to see this as a mobile game, it has so much potential :D Great Job.

Submitted(+1)

Epic game! Don't know how it fits the theme tho. Love the swarm controls. Great work!

Developer(+1)

You could say I....

(•_•)
( •_•)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)

Broke the rules.

Cheers for playing :D

Submitted(+1)

There's a lot to like about this game. It looks great, it feels great, the soundtrack is good and the core concept of using a swarm of one-shot drones as a reload mechanic is ingenious. I only stopped playing at 114k because by then I had 100 drones and a reload speed so low that my firepower was only limited by the amount of screenshake and overlapping sfx I could endure. So my only critique would be to add some exponential game-ending mechanic after wave 25. The raygun enemies were my favorite!

Developer

Thanks! Yeah, there is some exponential difficulty increase but not enough to outscale the power from endless upgrades.

Submitted(+1)

God damn, this slaps hard. The music, style and controls. Everything is super cool!

You really captured that LUFTRAUSERS feeling. Great job.

One of the best in the jams. All around 5 stars from me!

Submitted(+1)

The game is pretty fun, but once you have more (turrets?) following you it gets hard to see which one you control, which makes it difficult to collect more of them. Maybe you could add a bit of contrast between the player and the companions.

Submitted(+1)

The best game I played on here. Its soooo much fun!!!

Submitted(+1)

Beautiful and well put together!

Submitted(+1)

Really fun!!! Loved the swarming -and the upgrades made it very fun!  Lovely art and palette too!  Excellent work!! :D

Submitted(+1)

Awesome entry. I love the amount of juice the game has, the whole thing's visual style feels very Vlambeer inspired. I also really enjoyed the small detail of drones that just fired moving to the back of the flock.


I guess my only "real" criticism (more of a nitpick, really) is that I would've liked to be able to visually distinguish the player from everything else more easily. I found that when the camera really started to shake around and there was stuff flying everything, I had no idea where the main character was, aside from inside of this mass of drones, just so there was some visual center my eyes could come back to more quickly. Not really a huge deal though.


But yeah, great art, great game-feel, good audio, and nice simple gameplay with a neat visual catch with the flocking behavior. Just a really good entry.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! I couldn't really decide what to do with the player's avatar. On the one hand I didn't want it to get in the way because the fleet should be the focus, but on the other it would be good to have had a focal point like you say. Perhaps simply making the player a different colour would have been enough. Cheers for playing!

Submitted(+2)

This game is so cool!  It's beautiful.  The sound is great.  The animations are great.  Everything is just great.  Easily my favorite game of the jam so far.