To idle or not to idle, that is the question! Actually, it was never my intent for this to be an idle game, but, based on feedback, it does seem like it gives a lot of folks that vibe. With that in mind, I'm considering a mode without aliens, but I haven't quite figured all of that out yet.
I agree with you 100% on your feedback related to difficulty scaling. I don't hate the difficulty at the beginning, because it incentivizes upgrades, however, once you get certain upgrades, it doesn't take long before it becomes an idle game, due to the sole fact that enemies can't touch you. I'm looking at you orbital speed!
Apart from balancing, I think adding more content will be a huge benefit to the gameplay experience. I'll definitely be pushing more content in the near future.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful post! I hope you'll stick around to see where this game goes. Cheers! : ]
P.S.
I've found that shooting blocks that you've already flown past is better than shooting blocks in front of you. This way, when the aliens spawn, you are moving away from them and not towards them. This gives you more time to blast them. : ]
Thanks for the help! I FINALLY got the game to export to the web. How? I figured that if I made a new project and slowly copied each piece of the existing project to it, exported for web, test, rinse, repeat, that I would eventually find the piece that was causing the issue. Ultimately, I didn't. I moved a script or a scene, tested, and it exported to web. I did this until I finally had moved every resources/script/scene/asset and I never once got the error. It just works!
I'm really glad that it's working now, but I am disappointed in the fact that I still don't know what caused the issue. Since I didn't change anything, I just moved it all to the new project, I guess I'm going to assume it was some sort of freak Godot bug, but who knows. It's probably more likely that I did something wrong, I just wish I knew what! : ]
Thanks again for your interest and for helping me get to a resolution. The game is finally playable on the web. I also tackled the bugs that you pointed out. Cheers, @thePalindrome!
Thank you! I'm still trying to replicate the error regarding the leaked MP3. I didn't even know you could launch an exported game via command line and view the output, so you taught me something new. : ]
Unfortunately, the debugger gives me nothing about the WebGL issue. I even started digging into the browser console, but couldn't make sense of it. I have spent many, many hours trying to figure it out (hours I needed to spend play-testing) and unfortunately, it's on of those errors that you Google and it says "not many search results found." Those are always scary!
Anyways, I'm going to fix it even if it means rebuilding the game in a new project. But, with the info you've given me, that might not be necessary.
Also, thanks for clarifying what you meant about the orbital aim. I just did a full playthrough and it worked fine for me, so I'm glad you mentioned the orbital speed part, as that's probably the key. I didn't have much speed in my run. Pretty sure speed is OP, except, as you've found it (unintentionally) has a negative impact on your aim. Thank you! : ]
Awesome feedback, thank you! That's super helpful. Were you playing the most recent version? I thought I had fixed the shop issue, but I'll go back and look at it. The moons issue is a new one for me, so I'll check that too. Yes, I agree that it peters off and it's because there just isn't enough content in the game. Now that I actually have time, I'll work on adding more to it and making the levels actually differ, instead of just making them larger.
I'm not sure I know what you mean by "orbital aim" doesn't work for very large distances? You just mean how it automatically resets the ship to look towards the center of the planet?
I'm wondering if that memory leak is the reason that it won't run in the web. I'm still very new to all of this, so I'm not sure that I know how to even look into the "ObjectDB" that you are referencing, but I'll do some digging and try to fix it.
Anyways, thank you again for the feedback, it's super valuable! And I'm glad you enjoyed the game. Take care! : ]
This is a great game, especially for your first game. I've really enjoyed it so far. Nice work!
FYI, I was getting some frame drops and stutters that seemed to be related to the larger enemy ships. A bit later, after buying the plasma laser upgrade, the frame drops got pretty bad.
Thanks Snufkin, yeah, it suffers from a lack of play-testing. There's a bug where the spaceship health doesn't reset properly, which definitely makes it harder than it should be. I'll upload the fix those once the game jam ends. Thanks a bunch for downloading it and checking it out! : ]
This was a lot of fun! Simple concept, but very entertaining. I did get stuck on the "how to play" screen right off the bat. I just refreshed the page and clicked play, so no big deal. Nice work!
I posted this on your main page on accident, so I'll just copy/paste it here...
I got a measly 112! Loved the theme! It brought me back. I only wish that I was given the option to "caulk the wagons and float" when I got to the milky river. : ]
I got a measly 112! Loved the theme! It brought me back. I only wish that I was given the option to "caulk the wagons and float" when I got to the milky river. : ]
Nice work! I wonder how the gameplay would change if you didn't stick to the floating objects. I feel like every time that happened, it made me feel like the controls were reversed.
I really enjoyed this. The art-style was amazing and I loved the decision to use the arrow keys to move the cursor. Really added to that retro vibe. Looking forward to more of this!
This was definitely impressive! Nice work! A few things: I did see a completely purple object that looks like it just didn't load a texture in. Other than that, several times I had enemies stuck on top of my head or vice versa. Finally, it took me a bit to realize that you had to hold the mouse button to combo. Yes, I know you wrote "HOLD" in all caps in the description, but I guess it just didn't feel that intuitive to me.
This was definitely impressive! Nice work! A few things: I did see a completely purple object that looks like it just didn't load a texture in. Other than that, several times I had enemies stuck on top of my head or vice versa. Finally, it took me a bit to realize that you had to hold the mouse button to combo. Yes, I know you wrote "HOLD" in all caps in the description, but I guess it just didn't feel that intuitive to me.
Unfortunately, I'm just terrible at these games. I did make it to the end, but I got rekt every single time I tried. I did want to point out that the audio was very quite the entire time. I could tell that someone was talking, but have no idea what was being said. Also, having to mouse-over to interact with items felt strange. I think just being able to press 'E' when you're nearby the item would be more intuitive. Nice work!
This is my favorite game so far. It did take me a bit to figure it out. I sat there being unable to shoot and just dying before I finally realized I was out of ammo. With that being said, once I figure it out, I had a blast. I'll be favoriting this and coming back to it again in the future. Nicely done!
As far as aiming, the perspective didn't bug me much, like many of the comments have said. I think it was just lacking some sort of indicator that let you know you are actually hitting something. Maybe a simple blink or slight color change when you damage the enemy would do the trick. Nice clean game!
Thanks for pointing that out! Actually, in most cases the enemies are one-shotting you because in this version there is a bug where player health doesn't reset properly after you click "try again", meaning you'll die immediately after taking damage, unless you haven't died before. This has already been resolved in the new version, but that version can't be uploaded until the game jam ends. I'm also aware of the issue with the resources and that has been resolved in the new release as well.
The fixes will be uploaded soon! If you get stuck, press "Ctrl + D" ;)
Thanks, Alvin! Let me tell you, I tried for hours (at the cost of play-testing) to get this to run in the web. I got some weird error and still haven't figure it out. I'm going to keep trying though.
The upgrade issue that you are experiencing is a bug. I've already fixed it on my end, but will have to wait for the game jam to end before I can upload the changes. In my testing, you actually DO keep all of your upgrades, the prices just drop and the buttons re-appear in the shop as if they have never been purchased. Some of the upgrades are so incremental that you don't realize you've kept them, but they should be there. For example, if you buy the auto-shoot, then die and "try again", you'll still have the auto-shooter, but you'll also be able to "buy it again" at the original price. Buying it again just takes your money, but nothing actually happens. However, buying something like blaster damage, will carry over and buying it again will continue to increase the damage value.
What should happen (at least until I get a save system) is that when you die, all upgrades carry over, but the prices in the shop DO NOT reset, they remain at the price they were before you died.
Anyways, thanks again for playing and for the great feedback. I really do appreciate it! I do plan on continuing development because there's just so much more that I want to do. I just didn't have the time.
Oh! Have you experienced the issue where you get stuck after destroying a planet? The blocks will be gone, but the game won't move you back to the planetary map. If so, press "Ctrl + D" to open the debug menu then click "complete level". I originally was going to keep the debug menu a secret, but this is a pretty bad bug, so I figured I'd tell everyone the cheat codes, at least until I can upload the fixed version. :D
