MoonStar by Caliber_Project

[raw]
made by Caliber_Project for LD31 (JAM)
[Story]
A young-centric alien being, venturing onto the next intergalactic setting as a humanoid high school student, has suddenly crashed in a mysterious planet, rendering her off course. Needing repairs for her damaged spacecraft, the MoonStar Nova, she must journey through the planet’s creatures and hazards while encountering pursuers.

[Controls]
• A, D letter keys = moving left/right. Indicates the direction of projectiles shot.
• Left, Right arrow keys = moving left/right. Indicates the direction of projectiles shot.
• W letter key/Up arrow key = jump. Press again to perform a double-jump.
• Spacebar = shoots projectiles.
• R letter key = restarts the game. For use when all enemies are cleared.

[Gameplay]
• Only one level is made.
• There are two enemy variations.
• Enemies will have random HP upon average.
• Meteors appear in the level at random. Some will drop an item called the SolStar. Collect them to recover HP or increase the Attack. It disappears within a couple of seconds.

[Notes]
• There are apparent bugs, such as when damaged while moving. The direction of shooting might change. Simply pressing the keys to move will “fix” the issue. Although the feature may come in handy to use.
• Collisions on platforms are not at best but substantial to enjoy the game at the least.
• Made by using GameMaker: Studio. Apparently the software now creates the exe. files now as installers. Audio is made by using Beepbox. If it’s not too much of a trouble to simply install the game, you have my thanks.
• There are no additional objectives other than to avoid damage by enemies/meteors, and to defeat the enemies in the game.
• While my art/audio composition was to meet the deadline and theme of the game jam, criticism of the game overall is greatly appreciated!


[Announcements/Notices]
• Check out the 3rd screenshot added for brief gameplay information.
• Current build seems to work fine with Windows 8. It runs in desktop mode (not the app version). Thanks and h/t BarrensZeppelin!
• If build is downloaded from Chrome and mentions if its malicious, it is not. I currently use Mozilla Firefox as my web browser (its becoming decadent over the years, so I may use a different browser at some point). I don't know how to make my namesake as a "publisher" for the build details with GameMaker: Studio, thus I tried to input relevant build information as best I could. Thanks for the notice and h/t Insederec.
• The only win objectives is to defeat the enemies on the screen. I do not want to polish the game anew that may conflict with the voting scores for this build if this makes sense. Those voted on this game I feel they've place great criticism to the current build as is, so I will leave it as is. However, I've brewed further gameplay ideas since its inception. Plus, as my 2nd entry, I did not know you can upload your polished entry. I might do that someday...

Ratings

Coolness 41% 1659
Overall(Jam) 2.69 899
Audio(Jam) 2.48 572
Fun(Jam) 2.42 909
Graphics(Jam) 2.65 785
Innovation(Jam) 2.04 960
Mood(Jam) 2.62 791
Theme(Jam) 3.15 813

Feedback

Andy Gainey
10. Dec 2014 · 02:06 UTC
Wasn't sure at first when I was actually doing damage to enemies, or which objects were actually capable of being damaged. Maybe a sound effect or some visual representation could have helped, such as a small flicker on the enemy when it gets damaged.
AsixJin
10. Dec 2014 · 02:18 UTC
I wasn't to sure what was going on in this game. I think I killed everything on screen...Was that the win condition.
asobitech
11. Dec 2014 · 12:16 UTC
Not too bad, good start to a single screen platform shooter.
Hopefully you'll carry on working on it and make it even better.
monkeedude1212
11. Dec 2014 · 23:33 UTC
Needs a win condition to let you know you're done. The greyscale graphics are also harder to make out when you're using sprite graphics of different scales (background and player and level).

Audio good, music good, enemies and ai and random events, all make for decent gameplay. I had fun, but this just needs a bit of polish.
ciaodavinci
12. Dec 2014 · 01:31 UTC
Hey great job getting this together! I enjoyed the enemies and their animations. It was sometimes hard to differentiate between foreground and background elements which became a problem when you need to avoid enemies. If the background was lighter it may improve the problem.
cxsquared
12. Dec 2014 · 01:34 UTC
Solid game. The music was really good.
Insederec
12. Dec 2014 · 04:15 UTC
Chrome says it's malicious and won't download it.
AinaSG
13. Dec 2014 · 09:09 UTC
I'm not sure of what was happening on the screen. I killed it all... Is it?

Loved the name. nice word game ;)
BarrensZeppelin
14. Dec 2014 · 12:34 UTC
Definitely works in Win8 Desktop.
Liked the graphics :)
schnerble
15. Dec 2014 · 06:31 UTC
I like the style - the graphics and sound work well in a retro way. There's not too much to do, but it's fun for a few minutes of messing around :)
becker929
15. Dec 2014 · 07:13 UTC
I played until all the enemies were killed. It took me three tries! I kept dying mostly because the meteors exploded everywhere and toward the end there were a lot of them.

I think you did a pretty good job on this. The music could have used more work. Also the jumping mechanism didn't make much sense (although it did allow me to jump high which I like), and I didn't like that I would randomly being aiming upward.

I liked the enemy design, particularly of the blobs. They had cute faces. I also for some reason always like baddie spawners.

Good job overall!
eforen
15. Dec 2014 · 10:30 UTC
Not sure what was going on but yeah... Installer was a big drawback for me when I saw that install screen I almost did not continue but I did play the game had some weird colision box problems and did not know what I was hitting or what I was just shooting at in vane like the other users good start but needs work
freaknarf
15. Dec 2014 · 10:58 UTC
Haha cool game boy style... I killed everyone :) done.
MrBadIvan
15. Dec 2014 · 17:50 UTC
Nice looking graphics style and overall the game is very stylish=)
maxmetallica
29. Dec 2014 · 21:57 UTC
nice work