Heroes on Wings of Steel and Fire by mattperrin

[raw]
made by mattperrin for LD30 (COMPO)
You are the last hope for the united core worlds against the insidious Sectai horde. Fly the latest prototype fighters against a brutal (and possibly endless) swarm of Sectai ships. WASD to move your ship, press slash to fire primary weapons, and right Shift to fire Specials.

The name's a homage to the crazy Japanese shmups of the 90s.

Also, (as part of the Connected Worlds theme) it was originally going to be an online coop multiplayer game but the server was having a fit managing all the entities. I re-purposed the theme into players having to choose their combination of weapons from the best of the core world's united R&D. Every time a player dies, the technology they were using is lost... :)

Ratings

Coolness 37% 1626
Overall 2.95 816
Audio 3.00 375
Fun 3.05 556
Graphics 3.10 562
Innovation 2.39 1049
Mood 3.19 385
Theme 2.21 1097

Feedback

ruthiepee
26. Aug 2014 路 02:05 UTC
Interesting little game, I like the concept and how you expanded on the genre. Nice sound and minimalist graphics too. I have to admit the controls were confusing at first. I didn't realize the fire button was the "/" key. Something about the way "? - Fire Primary" looks is confusing. Anyway, the rest of it is pretty straightforward and fun. Nice work!
sprawl
26. Aug 2014 路 02:26 UTC
Figuring out the buttons took a little too long. "? for fire" is strange and unintuitive.

That said, game worked well, i liked the idea of choosing from the remaining ships/weapons when losing a life. One weapon seemed like it didn't do any damage (The wave that gets bigger with time).

Good job !
Cad
26. Aug 2014 路 02:28 UTC
Very good entry, the controls were really responsive and it was overall fun to play, however lacked a bit of creativity
alvarop
26. Aug 2014 路 02:38 UTC
? FOR FIRE? I just couldn't figure it out. Luckily, I saw @sprawl's comment and ended up figuring it out. I like the variety of ships and weapons, but when you're actually in game, they all feel the same and the gameplay is easy / repetitive. It would be great if you could incorporate all the different weapons into a more robust game.
馃帳 mattperrin
26. Aug 2014 路 03:32 UTC
Yeah, sorry about the controls. Dropped the ball on that one. I just got so used to quick;y testing it while coding I didn't even think about it and then gaffed when I made the instructions. Oh well, thanks for playing! :)
Victory Garden
26. Aug 2014 路 05:22 UTC
Neat game! I liked the pixel-art outline look. Some transition between playing and the game-over/ship selection screens would have been welcome, though, and when you don't have any limitations on "special" weaponry, they no longer feel really special.

The MMO version of this sounds like it would have been really cool! No problems with the controls for me; unorthodox, but not hard to use.
vulpineblazeyt
26. Aug 2014 路 05:51 UTC
Controls weren't my favorite, and if I somehow lost window focus, I couldnt get it back... I love SHMUPs though, and the mix-and-match was very sweet.
plash
26. Aug 2014 路 19:15 UTC
The Linux build works. I was expecting this to be much faster-paced. The removal of ships & weapons when you die is interesting. It'd probably fit better if you had to plan out your approach based on the enemy types in the following levels. The music is alright. It fits the mood, and doesn't get annoying (the important part).

Nitpicks:

- Text before ship selection scrolls too fast for me to read, and doesn't stop moving at the end. On top of that, the background doesn't make for easy reading.
- '/' for fire, not '?'!
psychomonster
27. Aug 2014 路 19:01 UTC
cool idea choosing the ship components... it is challenging too. Was game over faster than i could look :D The particle fx feels like a stranger... but the game is, what it should be... a playable prototyp. Good job
Kate Kligman
01. Sep 2014 路 01:01 UTC
Liked the pixel art graphics. Had some difficulty with the controls at first, but once I got into playing it sort of worked out.
The Lag Pack
15. Sep 2014 路 20:45 UTC
Pretty fun, reminds me of old arcade shooters like galaga. Nice entry :D