This is a long overdue update to the archived post here: https://itch.io/t/895968/magician-defends-the-foundation
This was the first game I ever made. It wasn't very good. A neat concept, but poorly executed. After having a couple months of learning, I decided to do an update.
I gotta say, I'm not really sure what to think about the state of things. The game was really terribly bugged. I don't know how I didn't notice before. What bothers me is that out of 58 browser plays no one even bothered to let me know. Maybe they figured it was so terrible that it was pointless to report anything. That would be fair. I can own that.
Anyways, I spent just about the whole day today giving the game a big rework. At first glance, you won't see that much has changed. But...
- I've fixed innumerable bugs (there's probably more)
- simplified on screen controls
- added a cute little high score coupled with a save feature
- adjusted the difficulty to a more gradual curve
- added a boss at the end of the level
So basically, it's an old fashioned space shooter. It's made entirely out of public domain assets. If you're on pc, you can use the arrows to move around the screen. Mobile players can touch above or below the player object to move up or down. My favorite thing about it is the classical music (Holst, Mars) coupled with a few Nasa images from the Hubble telescope moving almost imperceptibly in the background. It makes the experience seem very immersive (at least to me) Instead of having to click/hold the firing buttons, now you press them once and you fire continuously, and you can focus on dodging obstacles. Certain types of ammo work better/worse against certain adversaries. It's a good solid 5-10 minute mini game in all its glorly.
I'm curious, how often do these posts have to be updated before they are archived? I might need to set a reminder to keep up with em, if I can't elicit some feedback.
Here's a picture of the new boss. I died trying to take this picture.
You can play it online here: https://dancewiththedevil.itch.io/magician-defends-foundation
On the list for future updates:
- choice of where to dock the firing controls
- additional inputs for pc players to change firing ammo with keyboard and lefty controls (wasd)
- option to hide on screen controls
- increase range of movement for mobile players (multi directional rather than lateral)
- rework background elements (audio, video) to reduce file size
- level 2
- any good suggestions I get below