I’m working on a shmup so it’s interesting to see how assembling simple components the right way makes it feel like a shooter very fast.
I’ve arrived after the patch, but I’ve read the devlog so I know what you’ve fixed/improved already. My feedback from this point:
Bugs
- Cannot navigate in the menus with arrows nor WASD (WASD may even confirm a letter in the leaderboard Enter Your Name screen?). App doesn’t seem to take focus even after mouse click, so down arrow scrolls the itch.io page down. Is it a limitation of Phaser, or the template used?
Flow / UI
- Sequence between levels a bit long, as it’s always the same but nothing special happens, and it’s not skippable? Having a break is nice, but in this case:
- It would be nice to be able to pause with Escape, Enter or P. A small pause message not hiding the screen even better, so I can take a good screenshot (some games make it blink, so you can actually take a screenshot without the pause message at all).
- I see the arcade reference “insert a coin” for P2. Just like the old Continue screen you mentioned on the devlog (that I have never seen, just imagine), that may be interpreted as a potential second player mode by the player, while it’s really one-player. I don’t know if you intend to add one anyway, so you kept it in the screen. Either way, the metadata said single player so I didn’t hesitate too much on this one.
Player feedback
- Missiles lack launch SFX
- Last boss has no life gauge, no brightness change on hit, no phase change nor different animation played when reaching a certain threshold of life, and repeats the same evade sequence 3 or 4 times. So after some time it gets hard to know which point we’re at and if shooting it the standard way is really effective.
Gameplay
For the simplicity it’s aiming at I think it’s enough. However:
- 5 levels may be a lot for this amount of content. I still felt the progression, but 3-4 levels may be enough. Or shorter levels, depending on how you want to segment things.
- Missiles are not exactly weak, but they are spread all over the level, reducing their impact. Usually it’s enough to kill any unit, so why not. But in practice, some units are hidden behind asteroids, while others split on death (and there is only one wave of missile, so the split parts always survive). Targeted missiles (small cone) would be more efficient to fully destroy such units and damage things around. Spread missiles can be useful too, so at least having the choice between spread and targeted mode with a button would help (but I admit that would make more complex inputs)
That said, I see it’s a jam game. And it has a much better feel as a shmup than my current prototype I spent months on! Good job!