Beneath the Surface by clearlyspam23

[raw]
made by clearlyspam23 for LD29 (COMPO)
A side scrolling rogue-like where you pick up weapons as you descend below the surface of the world to fight various monsters. Might be a little buggy as I rushed to finish up at the end there.

WASD to move, mouse to shoot and change facing.



I was trying to go for a rogue-like shooter thingy, in the style of risk of rain and the binding of isaac, however, I didn't really get to spend as much time as I would have liked balancing the things that make those games fun (items, bosses).

And being able to walk through the slimes is intentional, they only deal damage when they stop flashing.

Ratings

Coolness 59% 3
Overall 2.47 1152
Audio 1.94 916
Fun 2.30 1108
Graphics 2.36 1061
Humor 1.75 1001
Innovation 1.72 1251
Mood 2.40 1041
Theme 2.58 1009

Feedback

Lolninjacatz
28. Apr 2014 · 03:37 UTC
Hi John :). Great job; especially since you got this running off your own physics. You probably should add that in your comment, I think; getting an idea of what the maker did frames the grading I think. Like the wall jumping a lot. Kinda hard to tell what the power ups do. Graphics are great for a programmer, and audio is pretty fitting. The jump is a little too high pitched for my liking though. I think some background music/sound effects of a cave of something would have improved the mood a bit, but I'm not blaming you for that. Great job John! Thanks for encouraging me to participate too!
microapple
28. Apr 2014 · 04:30 UTC
Fun 8bit game. Nice sound effects, enjoyable gameplay.
Daniel X. Moore
28. Apr 2014 · 04:37 UTC
I just kept running though the same halls with more and more enemies each time but never found anything else.
deathray
28. Apr 2014 · 04:58 UTC
I like that you can upgrade your gun. I found myself just running and jumping and shooting through each level to just try and get to the end as fast as possible. That got me far, but not far enough. The jump sound needs to be changed!
rincewind_cz
28. Apr 2014 · 09:09 UTC
Nice, but seems too easy.. Maybe it should be little bit faster imo :) Good job.
tanner101010
28. Apr 2014 · 18:04 UTC
The jump control needs a little more tuning. I like the idea of running in the same room over and over again and the game seems to be endless.
matthias_zarzecki
28. Apr 2014 · 19:09 UTC
Solid platformer!
friken
28. Apr 2014 · 21:30 UTC
I like the blobbies
udvaritibor
28. Apr 2014 · 21:35 UTC
"I just kept running though the same halls with more and more enemies each time but never found anything else." Same over here. I think it was a little bit to easy, I was just running and not shooting anything after a while and I still made it more than 5 levels. I like the character, it reminds me of the movie Alien, I don't know exactly why. But overall I like it, with a little tweaking it could be more fun.
PapyGaragos
29. Apr 2014 · 15:18 UTC
Took me a while to realise you could wall jump (even with the flying eyes). More variety to the level might make it usefull as a mechanic. As it is, I don't really see the appeal.
MunkeeBacon
30. Apr 2014 · 21:12 UTC
Game was alright but the controls were way too floaty. The ground sprites were nice though!
SlamBlasta
30. Apr 2014 · 21:13 UTC
I liked the game. I don't know what the red arrows do though...
eteeski
30. Apr 2014 · 21:16 UTC
Not bad :)
xdegtyarev
02. May 2014 · 18:45 UTC
Hehe, funny!
Thorig
02. May 2014 · 21:55 UTC
Nice platformer, it does get a bit hard over the second gun. Still I liked it.
Blanky
07. May 2014 · 07:47 UTC
Nice game. I liked the audio together with the art style.
Some ideas I thought would be cool:
It would have been cool if you displayed the current depth level. And perhaps only enable the player to advance to the next level if all the creatures is dead. That would be a nice and fast way to give a cool purpose to the game. It would make it quite a bit more addictive for me.
arrogant.gamer
07. May 2014 · 20:02 UTC
Good job!

I think it would have been cool to have a few more distinct level layouts. That's probably the least work you could spend to make the most difference in fun. Also, maybe lower the roof and raise the floor a little, to give it more of a claustrophobic feel.

The rate of fire of the gun was also kind of slow for my taste, and it meant that I had to click a lot to get anything done.
vilya
13. May 2014 · 23:42 UTC
There's more depth to this than I thought at first. Some nice designs on the monsters and the wall jumping actually added quite a lot. Nice!

On the downside, I found the controls were a bit difficult to get used to & I think the pacing was a bit off.