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SPARSE//GameDev
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I did notice that yeah! I wasn't sure if it was a shot limit or something else, the fact it's based on height on the screen explains it, as it didn't seem like I was shooting faster just from getting close to enemies.
I played through with the new changes -- the new bullet sprites feel really nice, good work! Definitely feels like more of a power upgrade even though it's just an aesthetic change, very satisfying.
I also like the new coin design, they're a lot easier to distinguish from the enemy bullets.
One thing I noticed is I don't seem to be able to collect the powerups as they're leaving the screen -- sometimes I miss the one I want in the rotation so I wait for it to come around again, but the powerup is too low to collect even though it's still visible.
Very cool game! At first I thought it was infinite until I hit the boss (who died very quickly lol)
My one bit of feedback is that it would be nice if the "weapon" upgrade made the shot visually look stronger instead of just upping the damage. You could do this either by having chunkier/wider bullet sprites, or simply by upping the fire rate instead of damage. Consider increasing bullet speed a bit as you upgrade too -- it's not really much of an advantage but it will look/feel stronger to the player.
Since the game is made in PICO-8 I don't have much control over this -- it only supports 2 buttons. Theoretically they could be swapped, but there's not really room in the cart to add more options to the in-game menu.
If your device runs PICO-8 natively you may be able to change the bindings in a config file (see https://pico-8.fandom.com/wiki/Controllers#Configuring_controllers)
There's also an option in the game's pause menu to change the autofire mode so the main fire button doesn't need to be held down, if that helps.
I don't currently have any plans for an Android app (if pico-8 ever gets native Android support that would make it easier)
For now, the web version does work pretty well on Android. The latest patch improved the controls somewhat by eliminating accidental diagonals on the d-pad and double button presses. If you make the game full screen then it will work in landscape mode as well.
Thanks for the kind words. I've added a note to the github gist releasing the code under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Might not be a typical license for software, but the minified cart is already under that license on the Lexaloffle BBS so I think it makes sense.
Thanks, I would have loved to add sound but since this was made for a jam with 1kb code limit and no pre-made assets, it would have meant cutting features and the sound would have ended up pretty basic anyway. If I ever make a more full-featured version it would definitely have sound. Thanks for checking it out!
I will add to this that even though I read that it said to click "resources" to build an exit, I was still confused by the tutorial because I thought "empty cell" meant a grid cell that didn't have anything in it yet (the green ones with white outline), and clicking on those there was no resources option, just "cell". I think the language used could be reworked to be less ambiguous.