Keep It Simple. by PixelMonkey

made by PixelMonkey for LD26 (COMPO)

A top-down shooter. Upgrades are freely available from the beginning, but using them will lower your score multiplier. You need to decide between being minimalistic with your upgrades or lasting longer. Also, potatoes.

The game took roughly 16 hours to make, in total. Graphics use Dawnbringer's 16 colour palette, though I ran out of time to make proper art with it.

I added leaderboards using Clay.io, but note that you don't have to make an account to post on the leaderboard! Just click the 'Guest' tab when it asks you to login/sign up and you can put your scores up without making any account.

Enjoy, and feel free to share your scores and what upgrades you used to get there in the comments!

Web (Clay.io)	http://keepitsimple.clay.io/
Web (Dropbox)	https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/86389468/LD48/KeepItSimple_1.0/index.html
Source	https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/86389468/LD48/Minimalism.capx
Original URL	https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=14203

Ratings

Coolness	32%	1689
Overall	3.42	316

Audio	2.68	574
Fun	3.33	261
Graphics	3.13	477
Innovation	2.38	1051
Theme	3.33	759

Feedback

SuperlevelSebastian

28. Apr 2013 · 14:00 UTC

Pretty nice idea!

Perry

29. Apr 2013 · 03:52 UTC

Really polished, looks, feels and plays fantastically. I keep coming back to this one to play again. Really difficult as it goes on. I love the ricochet potatoes.

omaromeir

29. Apr 2013 · 11:35 UTC

I loved it, the power-ups at the beginning are a nice touch. A bit difficult though :p.

JohnnySix

29. Apr 2013 · 22:15 UTC

Liked the style of the graphics and sound, though the options were maybe a little unnecessary and extraneous given the minimal premise. A hold and shoot would be good too, rapid fire clicking LMB got tiring after a while.

pansapiens

30. Apr 2013 · 06:50 UTC

This has a unique sort of feel for a dual-stick shooter. Love the explosion visual effects and the bigass score display. Nice idea allowing different ship features at the cost of multiplier - no idea if it's actually balanced (I seemed to do best with just shields+speed) but theoretically it could be a good way to allow players to adapt the game to their play style and compete on the same leaderboard.

dvdking

30. Apr 2013 · 10:45 UTC

I liked upgrade system. I wish there was music, it would be way more dynamic.

chowdy

01. May 2013 · 21:45 UTC

Fun game with a really great feel. I had to keep playing until I topped the high scores :)

Cheshyr

03. May 2013 · 05:05 UTC

I like the upgrade/score tradeoff idea.

Monxcleyr Productions

03. May 2013 · 05:15 UTC

Awesome game. Tying upgrades to a score multiplier was a great idea, although it could likely do with some balance tweaks. The visuals were simple but effective. The view distance could maybe be brought back a bit, and I imagine there's not much replay value after you try out the different upgrade combinations. But the core is solid, great job!

bvanschooten

04. May 2013 · 00:11 UTC

Nice game. I like the idea of choosing between upgrades and score. This would probably benefit from a more complex upgrade system. I preferred more bullets and shields.

BlennosoftGames

04. May 2013 · 04:05 UTC

Very retro, and very solid. The ship-improvements at the expense of score multipliers is a cool addition too. Nice work!

TurboDindon

20. May 2013 · 13:54 UTC

Mawaha! This is great great great, so fun!
Nice the hidden potato bullet.^^

- SEPHY (@sephyka)

- SEPHY (@sephyka)

SecondDimension

20. May 2013 · 15:03 UTC

Solid shooter mechanics, I like the risk/reward thing with the loadout affecting the multiplier