Surge by 8BitPimp

[raw]
made by 8BitPimp for LD36 (COMPO)
Surge is a single player Galagalike game, made in 48 hours.
| I made all of the artwork, music and game code from scratch.

Note:
| If anyone experiences any stability/technical issues at all when playing let me know and I will try to patch it ASAP.

Story:
| An ancient mechanical menace has awoken, and its hell bent on destroying earth. You are the last hope for humanity. One of the last remaining pilots, your mission is to fight through the hordes and reach 'the beacon', a device of unimaginable power. Its a suicide mission, but then... thats what you signed up for.

Controls:
| Press X to shoot
| Press Left/Right to move

Goals:
| Blast everything that moves
| Avoid being blasted
| Collect power-ups

Technical:
| Surge is written in C++, using the SDL2 and SDL_Mixer libraries.
| While all the game code was written from scratch, I used my small game framework to deal with some of the boiler plate.
| The executable provided is built for x86_64.
| If you want to build from source you will require:
| | CMake3.4+
| | VisualStudio2015
| | SDL2-devel
| | SDL2_Mixer-devel
| It should build and run on linux with next to no changes but I havent tried.

Tools Used:
| Ableton Live Intro
| Visual Studio 2015
| Aseprite
| Git
| Open Broadcast Software

Development Videos:
| I made development videos as I worked. (links in reverse order)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8vBquQa7WY
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMU82W0xgiQ
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1ELHVPiYKU
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5EQ8VfaRIM
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U_K0IJ-fDc

Feedback

freakoftheyear
29. Aug 2016 · 21:43 UTC
The soundtrack is really awesome, best I have heard in a while. But I had a problem with moving, the arrow keys didn't work for some reason.
SbstnC
29. Aug 2016 · 22:36 UTC
Awesome music and great graphics.
steph88
30. Aug 2016 · 08:06 UTC
Hi, nice game and congratulations ! Simple mechanics that still offered a decent amount of challenge.We're realizing a video with several games of the Ludum Dare #36. We made the same thing at the previous jam.

Can you add your game on indiexpo.net ? (it's free)
So we can include also your game in the video ;)
p.s. write #LDJAM in the game's description. (you can already find several games from the jam there)
WERT Studio
30. Aug 2016 · 21:15 UTC
neat game. game feeel, art, music, sound its all well done
Jupiter_Hadley
02. Sep 2016 · 16:46 UTC
Really solid shooter! I included it in my compilation video series of Ludum Dare 36, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/iJTT4Yba0N8
ohsqueezy
08. Sep 2016 · 06:07 UTC
It does build on Linux! The binary just has to be launched from inside the resources folder (bin/x64) or it won't find the files

This is a really fun and challenging game! The two bullet attack is so simple but difficult to avoid, and the movement of the boss taunts you
DDRKirby(ISQ)
11. Sep 2016 · 21:21 UTC
Innovation: Not too innovative, but doesn't really matter! Galaga is a classic :)
Fun: Despite being pretty simple this was actually one of the more fun LD games that I've played so far. I guess the only caveat is that there's not too much in terms of scoring, progression, etc. once you have the hang of the game. Getting maximum rapid-fire was actually super satisfying, but also made the game a walk in the park. Losing a life and having your powerups reset was disheartening, but that's sort of a facet of the genre...
Theme: Haha, the theme mostly just shows up in your description rather than the game itself, but that's fine.
Graphics: Pretty nice job! Relatively simple graphics, but they're all really clean and work well. The parallax scrolling stars were a nice touch, and it was nice that they were low in intensity as to not detract from the foreground elements. Nice job on the explosion effects too! The screen shake was also appreciated :)
Audio: Awesome sound! I'm no good with FM synths, so major props for having jammin FM synth music. The sound effects were fine too!
Humor: N/A
Mood: Definitely felt like I was playing an old-school game, in the best way.
Overall: Great job! Obviously the game is pretty "short" but that's to be expected from an LD. Probably my #1 critique (besides wishing there were more to it) is that when you have max rapid-fire the screen-shake becomes a little excessive. Also, the explosion effects sometimes obscured enemy shots making it a little harder to react to them. But overall, I liked this one a lot!

Congratulations on your successful LD! I'd really appreciate it if you could leave me some feedback for my game as well. You can find it at: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-36/?action=preview&uid=7285.