Originally I was thinking to make a mix of a classic scrolling shooter (Life Force -esque, so such Gradius) with a classic beat 'em up (Double Dragon -ish) with a robot transforming between them, but in the end of the day I had too much fun designing the shooter.
The second boss is the most difficult part, and with so many people struggling I wish to make the easy mode a bit easier to discover (you can only see it if you lose at least two times on the same level). That is a very good lesson for me to learn!
I really like how this game focuses on one simple mechanic and gives an opportunity to explore it in different settings.
I would recommend limiting turrets from shooting almost straight up or down, since there is no way for player to move horizontally from an imminent game over.
Initially I was not aware that you can buy something with 0 cash, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how could I defeat anyone in this game.
But once I got that it was very fun turning a generic top-down shooter into a bullet hell for my enemies =3
Nice art, it was interesting to see how my comb "transforms" from level to level. Keep it up!
Interesting concept of a puzzle with physics and a lot of random!
It is only expected for player to fail 99% of times, but that's exactly what makes the remaining 1% worth it. I would only wish for some sort of mercy on me (maybe to allow placing a couple of my own platforms?).
I tried to keep it as close to a classic scrolling shooter formula as possible, just to experiment with the game mechanics I had never done before, so the version you've seen back then could have been not very far from the final version (since it conveyed pretty much everything I wanted initially). But having such a great composer on my side made me to put more effort into other aspects.
Hehe, the background, in fact, consisted of a colorful images. I just had to play some graphics tricks to restrict it into 1-bit, but it accidentally helped to make it look really cool.
That simple noisy shader effect was just a safety measure for me not to stray too far from the 1-bit constraint, but in the end it worked surprisingly well to define the game style.
Thanks for giving it a go (and for giving two reviews, lol)!
Re: music, I totally agree. Nicole's music had defined a lot of aspect of the final game. Initially I thought just to add some background ambient after the game is ready, but hearing the first level tune made me to build everything around it.
Interesting puzzle. Couldn't figure out how to get all the starts (only got 29), but I enjoyed solving your riddles and pushing myself for a better solution.
I can see how you put some effort to walk on the edge by using transparency to create different shades of gray though, but this is ultimately up to you to decide if that trick is worth all the stares from stuffy dudes.
An interesting take on a space security officer simulator. I really like the simplicity of the mechanics, I would only wish to see some progression of them.
Let me share my experience:
I got used to the assault-type ship, so could easily dodge forever, but still I got stuck on Sector 5 without knowing when will it end. After some time I remembered seeing some numbers on the right of the screen (still not sure what do they mean), but I was not able to take a look at them since that would mean I will not took at the dodge bar. In the end, I decided to switch to stealth and to activate the jammer to get some time, but accidentally pressed Space at the wrong time :'< Maybe having a second life could make it more fair (I only send 4 bullets every 10 seconds, but hundreds are getting back my way!)
F1 on keyboard and up on the d-pad if you're using controller will go fullscreen
Cool, didn't notice that! Unfortunately, the performance is not great in fullscreen, and it seems like the game is designed strictly for 60 FPS (having lower value makes blob jump much higher and fall through switchable platforms sometimes).
The part I was stuck on was a bit after that one, it was like a couple of slides where you need to fall through, and then turn the bottom slide into a jumper, than jump up through a tower with small jumper steps into a jumper balcony, where I was supposed to slide in the balcony, and quickly jump through the another slider just a pixel above my head, while deactivating it, and reactivate it in time to deactivate a moment later after the spikes at the end of the balcony slide.
Very unique retro-styled experience with a really fresh take on the mechanics of interacting with environment based on your actions in the vehicle (kinds resembles Faster Than Light and Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, but in a very unique way).
I couldn't succeed at my hunt, wyrm just does not leave me enough time between bombing his head and shooting the weak spot from the turret. Or maybe that is not the right strategy, quite hard to tell, but experimenting with different tools (harpooning or bombing) was fun.
Yeah, I was trying to add more different weapons, like in Project X or Contra, but at some point adding any new feature started to break half of the game ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I really like how you managed to explore every ability with a pretty amazingly balanced difficulty progression. Art style and music are great too, but the level design in just incredible and combines everything together (tried to make a pun about the final puzzle).
This game has very warm vibes, thanks to nice line-art with cleverly used palettes, and to melancholic background music. These transformations reminded my of the Little Nemo The Dream Master.
I would only wish for a more obvious difference between obstacles and background (sometimes you can't go through a tree, but sometimes you can), but fixing that may damage the art.
I can see that the difficulty is a part of design. With that in mind I would wish for a shorter reset animation (that allows you to move, but annoyingly does not allow to jump) and for a full-screen view rather than a tiny window.
I could not correctly time the sequence of "hold K, jump, release K, hold K, release K, hold J" in a split of a second, but that is exactly what you wanted, didn't you? Still proud of how far I could go.
Cool art (and animations, amazing attention to the details!) and music, perfect disguise for a Kaizo game!
Even after reading your comments about scrolling down I had troubles understanding what does that mean (there is no way to scroll anything in the game). But then I suddenly realized that my freewheel mouse just does not work right in the game, and only after locking the wheel it worked.
Not sure why did you add a sword to the game where no enemy would allow you to attack them with a sword.
The most challenging part was to gather all the artifacts (I had to go almost the entire level back both times).
Congrats on finishing the game, though, great job!
Nicely aligned and perfectly square pixels in pixel-art! It was a bit of a shame to see some aliasing and misalignmend on the fonts after such a great job (I guess, text has a sub-pixel offset). And very nice and moody music!
Stairs jumping remainded me of Banana Prince. The precision it requires does not allow me to pass through level 1-6, unfortunately. Different abilities were fun to play with though.
I would also recommend to take screen size into account. From your screenshots I can see how it supposed to look, but on my monitor I see the whole level zoomed out really far (maybe that contributed ability to see the distance).
Thank you for such a detailed review, I really appreciate that!
I tend to believe in people intelligence, so tutorial only explains two not-so-obvious yet fundamental mechanics. For me it's more fun to figure things out rather than get all the explanations.
But you have a good points that tutorial does not properly convey the importance of moving slowly, and that punishment is always much greater than any of the rewards. Sorry for making your experience that frustrating! Maybe it would be better to put "easy mode" option right in the main menu rather than on continue screen after the second game over.
Having a backward lance is a great idea! I never though of that, and that feature could nicely work together with auto-recharge, if balanced properly.
In my mind, Lance supposed to be a scarce resource that drives the risky exploration to get more of that stuff. Probably I should have done that exploration less punishing.
I would love to be able to run in this game (that Void guy wanted me to run a good mile!), but otherwise you nicely combined changing palettes with puzzles.
Very tricky to start with, but I see how it can grow.
Mapping arrow up to "MOVE UP" instead of "LAST" (and arrow down to "MOVE DOWN") makes it just a bit user friendly to beginners, but much less for your target audience (it's quite annoying to type "LAST" knowing the alternatives). And the UI is non-intuitive, there probably is a bug showing a "TOOL" before you ever crafted and equipped it (I only got that after eqiping a pickaxe).
I would recommend you to ditch the normies and completely remove all the UI/controls, or to fully make a normie UI and ditch the console.
Sorry to hear you couldn't complete the game! But let me be honest, I also could not complete it yet, so it is kinda incomplete. Check the game next week when I will complete it, and, hopefully, you will also be able to complete it!
Yeah, some HUD indication of the progress and goals would really improve the experience. Right now I have a dozen of invisible states that drive the game logic, and this is far from ideal.
