Mag by alexfalkenberg

[raw]
made by alexfalkenberg for LD26 (COMPO)
Mag. Because it was supposed to evoke magnetism in some interesting ways initially. Instead, mostly, I present to you a simple shooter. There is some difficulty progression that's playable, and a little more under the hood for future use.

Tried to stick to a simple LCD palette, but went off-palette a few times. Extremely simple. Nothing fancy. But done. First completion in time, yay!

CONTROLS: Arrows or analog stick move. A key or A button fire. (gamepad really is best for this game)

Gamepad has a couple debug controls: Y will clear all current bullets. Holding right trigger then pressing left trigger should restart the current level... Level restart is a bit buggy; use at your own risk. ;)

PLEASE TRY IT BEYOND THE FIRST COUPLE LEVELS! The first two are easy on purpose. It gets harder, fast. Please note there are only five levels in this version...but I challenge anyone to get through Level 5!

TONS of other weird issues remain. There's a bigger game hiding in this with time, I think. There's also a certain madness to the shooting/bulletry.

This submitted version has 5 levels. Can you get through them all? Level 5 is TOUGH!

Please give feedback, and VOTE/RATE!

All versions should now be available: Web, Windows, OSX, Linux32, and Linux64 versions. And source via GitHub, of course.

Linux64 version link is: http://alexfalkenberg.com/ld26/mag-linux64.zip

OSX and Linux versions are totally untested. Please resize/maximize the game window in at least the Win32 version; it defaults to a super-TINY window size.

Enjoy!

Ratings

Coolness 47% 1316
Overall 3.03 705
Audio 2.10 899
Fun 3.11 438
Graphics 3.29 381
Innovation 2.53 971
Mood 2.76 668
Theme 3.00 1022

Feedback

KunoNoOni
29. Apr 2013 路 03:26 UTC
Simple yet fun. Good use of the theme.
Split82
29. Apr 2013 路 03:26 UTC
Really psychotic experience! :)
roaet
29. Apr 2013 路 03:36 UTC
I really enjoy the camera effects.
Yezu
29. Apr 2013 路 05:10 UTC
Once figured out how to shoot it started being fun :P
馃帳 alexfalkenberg
29. Apr 2013 路 05:30 UTC
Yeah, I ran out of time trying to put some controls info in there. PRESS A, PEOPLE. ;)
馃帳 alexfalkenberg
29. Apr 2013 路 05:31 UTC
(and btw, thanks for all the kind words so far!)
Zathalos
29. Apr 2013 路 07:57 UTC
Interesting graphics. I like the swirling particles. The gameplay is kind of lacking and it's pretty easy to kill the turrets but overall good job.
Andrew
29. Apr 2013 路 09:37 UTC
That was certainly intense. Has a ton of trippy-bullet-game potential.
馃帳 alexfalkenberg
29. Apr 2013 路 13:48 UTC
Thanks again for the feedback!

Zathalos: I ran out of time adding enemy elements. I had two more specific types in mind, but time...

And there IS progressive difficulty and scoring, but I had no time to test how well it all ramped up. Turret range increases, damage increases, turning speed of the turrets increases, and I wanna say rate of fire actually increases. All of that likely needs better levels and tons of tweaking.

Did you (or anyone, heh) make it through level 5? It's turret hell. I can barely do it myself (I've done it...twice? in probably 100 plays).

Oh, and once you complete level 5, the game will just... not go anywhere (it's expecting a non-existent level 6 to transition to). So you're stuck just driving around playing with the firing until you restart (the hard way, no time for a menu or anything....yet).
onzephyr
29. Apr 2013 路 15:01 UTC
So much Destruction! I love it. It's extremely satisfying to be shooting and whirling around that many bullets. Controls using a gamepad felt really nice. Only made it to level 4 on my many ties. The difficulty does ramp up pretty quick
馃帳 alexfalkenberg
29. Apr 2013 路 19:21 UTC
onzephyr: Thanks! I definitely think it's best with a pad. I hope people realize they have some control over the bullets... it may really only feel right swirling things around with a pad, though, and not as much with the keyboard.

And the difficulty... yeah, it needs work. Level 5 is basically impossible. 4 isn't terribly easy, either. And it's not just the number of turrets that up the difficulty, although that is a pretty major factor in the levels I presented. ;)
vladimirdlc
29. Apr 2013 路 19:48 UTC
I love the effects on this one, and is fun, my speedrun of level 1 an 2 is hit A + forward key :P
馃帳 alexfalkenberg
29. Apr 2013 路 19:56 UTC
Totally tutorial levels, 1 and 2. ;)
ming_tea
30. Apr 2013 路 01:15 UTC
A really fun shooter!
multitude
30. Apr 2013 路 15:04 UTC
This has some nice potential, but i麓m not sure what i just played. ;)
Richard Matey
30. Apr 2013 路 15:06 UTC
Like the hectic nature, would like to see more colors to give new feedback results for the player.
Loren
30. Apr 2013 路 16:10 UTC
That was a great experience :D Great design too!
Puccini
30. Apr 2013 路 17:09 UTC
A great game! It's simple and fun.
I hate the shoot sound. But I like the mechanics and the use of the theme.
mortus
01. May 2013 路 11:21 UTC
Quite fun, though I couldn't see much happening on the screen, just was looking at where the new cannons are most of the time. Levels 1-4 are not too different from each other in means of difficulty, but level 5 is instantly much harder, couldn't beat it.
馃帳 alexfalkenberg
01. May 2013 路 14:54 UTC
Awesome feedback, thanks again everyone! I plan on updating this once judging is over, so every bit of criticism, good or bad, is definitely appreciated. :)
McFunkypants
02. May 2013 路 04:45 UTC
Pretty damn awesome! I had absolutely no idea where any enemy bullets were, though, so for me dying was completely random and unexpected. Somehow, I still loved it. GREAT WORK!
Myyyvothrr
02. May 2013 路 15:23 UTC
Cool game, liked it! Only got to level 5 once, the shooting felt great after a while (the shooting sound was a bit annoying though).
馃帳 alexfalkenberg
02. May 2013 路 18:09 UTC
The shooting sound IS annoying. The problem is I picked a decent-enough shooting sound, but then I decided not to throttle the player bullet fire at all; I was going for maximum mayhem, after all, heh.

Anyway, it's fixable, I think. :)

Turret bullets could be a bit more visible, too, I agree.

Thanks again!
sP0CkEr2
10. May 2013 路 01:49 UTC
lots of bullets, or whatever they were -- nice entry
nilstastic
10. May 2013 路 10:36 UTC
When figured out how to shoot it went from really hard to fun. :)
ataxkt
11. May 2013 路 14:26 UTC
Good fun on gamepad! Gets hard to see whats going on fast though.
馃帳 alexfalkenberg
12. May 2013 路 05:16 UTC
Thanks again for the plays, ratings, and comments, everyone!
foyosoft
12. May 2013 路 21:36 UTC
Who doesn't love a bullet-hell shooter?
mildmojo
17. May 2013 路 07:28 UTC
Nice animation, great palette.

I played the web version, but the input handler has a bug where it doesn't prevent keys from bubbling up to the browser and triggering built-in features. On the key event objects, the javascript needs to call .stopPropagation() and .preventDefault(). In my case, pressing 'a' popped open my typeahead find, taking focus away from the game and eating all further keystrokes.
馃帳 alexfalkenberg
17. May 2013 路 14:06 UTC
@foyosoft: Don't we all? :)

@mildmojo: Weird; and the first I've heard of that, but good to know. I probably could have done some input throttling as well (I didn't), which might help. Could also be a side effect of the engine itself. I appreciate you playing and letting me know!