Nice little 48h game. Classic Newgrounds-type gameplay. My wish list:

* Energy recharge bar to help decide when to fire
* Clearer hitbox; looks like the beam is wider near the edges of the screen?
* Planet HP bar
* Ability to move my guy around the planet. There is no reason to do this but I still want it.

@steve-johnson
Those were the last features to be cut from the game, unfortunately! They are on the top of my wish list as well. :)

Nice little game.
Started off easy but ramped up the difficulty nicely. Simple but effective graphics that get the point across. Love the fact that this project was helpful to you to learn javascript and learn a few concepts as well! Those for me are the best kind of projects.

Constructive feedback - more useful info on the UI to inform me on charge level, health of the planet etc. However time is limited in these things and it's understandable that they didn't make it in due to time.

Well done, and thanks for sharing! :D

For your first take on JS, very nice! :) I missed exactly the features Steve Johnson listed.

Neat little game. Replayability is a very good feature for a ludum dare game because it lasts a lot longer.

Collision detection does seem to be a bit finicky at times. But, otherwise is pretty neat.

Would also be cool to see how upgraded my weapon is on a hud of some sort.

Pretty decent game, considering you learned the tools you were using during the compo. Despite needing time to simply learn how to make the game, your game still feels more complete than a lot of other entries I've tried that don't have the luxury of claiming they had that handicap.

All things considered, it works quite alright. The UI is a little bit ugly and feels like it's part of the background rather than an overlay on the screen, but otherwise the game feels just fine both graphically and soundwise.

I enjoyed the upgrade system, but I found myself just going for recharge rate all the time, because at first glance I couldn't find any indicator to the planets health, and all enemies died in one shot. I found that planet HP and Damage never enticed me as upgrades, because they didn't have the immedate feedback of "things are going better for you now" that the recharge rate did. That is, if I chose either of them, I couldn't really tell any difference.

Even so though, the game concept is based on a pretty addictive wave-based format, and it succeeds fairly well at living up to that. Dying only made me want to try again. So the gameplay worked, even though at times the hitboxes felt a little bit off as I could see my beam going through the enemies but not killing them.

Given your constraints, the bottom line is that I think you should be happy with what you accomplished. It's a good compo entry in my book.

I liked the music a lot. What program did you use? It's definately an aspect I have to improve in mine.
Congrats on your first game!

A fun game, I things some cool things should have been added like a score or the level number, or just the planet hitpoints as steve johnson told you. I enjoyed kill the assailants and I like the athmosphere created with the rotating background whitch is very nice and the thrilling music. Perhaps I would have liked some small animations of the attackants, or explosions when they hit the planet but nice little game for 48 hours developpement! :thumbsup:

@gris

Thank you! I used the music creation program Reason on a Mac lent to me by a semi-professional producer. This was my first time composing, but having his advice and a bit of a piano background definitely helped. However, in my opinion any music software could be used to create better sounding tunes (with some practice).

Others:

Many of the requested features are already supported by the engine and available in the form of debug messages. The next step of development I am planning to take with this project is to visualize those messages into something that doesn't require using the browser console to see. :)

Thank you all for the great comments!

Congratulations on completing your first ludum dare game! You created an addictive game with solid gameplay! The sound effects and music worked great and helped me focus on the game. As others have said it would have been great to display the planet HP to know if I need to upgrade the planet hp next stage.

The game could be improved with more upgrades and better graphics and it may turn out to be the next cookie clicker :p

Javascript power! The music is amazing, nice job! My complains would be the same as everyone else, so other than that... nice first entry!

An addicting little game. I had fun picking energy recharge rate every time and making myself a little laser machine gun.

I guess this may have been a mistake because my planet kept dying but I had fun letting the world end!

I noticed your collision issues a little bit but they weren't that bad, I never felt cheated because my direct hits never seemed to be affected.

nice game!

I like the game. I like the round intermission power ups - I strongly favored recharge rate mainly because I was missing indication on when the weapon was ready to fire =) I felt my stress level going up each round too, haha. Scoring would be nice as well for "replayability" as I always want to do better each time I play. Nice work!

Really nice music and a solid first entry! Had fun!

Very good first entry. It would have been nice to see how much health the planet had and maybe a visual indicator of when the laser gun had recharged. Also, it might just be me, but there didn't seem to be much point in the damage upgrade as everything seemed to die in one shot. But I did enjoy playing this, especially later on in a game.

Very impressive that this was your first JS game.

Solid game and quite addicting. The music and artwork complimented the gameplay well and made for a good atmosphere. Awesome work!

A pretty good game, particularly since you weren't sure about JavaScript beforehand! One thing I note is that I didn't really find a need to ever choose anything other than energy recharge.

Congratulations on finishing! Good work!

Congrats on doing a Compo in JS!

The only upgrade I used was recharge speed, the other ones seemed unnecessary, maybe more planet health in the later levels. But I never needed more than one shot to kill a baddie. Maybe I didn't get far enough.

:zap:

That little guy is adorable :)

Good job! Upgrade speed was the way to go, I was shooting super fast.

I think that the player gets zero feedback from the game, because you dont know your damage, cooldown time, enemies life etc. I only upgraded the cooldown time and I was still able to kill the enemies, so I don't know why would I increase damage, for example.

I concur with the above comment, I couldn't find a reason to upgrade damage. Perhaps you planned for more enemies with different healths but couldn't get it all done for the compo DL?

WASD/arrows didnt work and I though I could move the player around, because there is an actual player character on the surface.

I liked the progression though, at first it was just a tiny bit too slow, but it picked up after that. Quite solid small game. I saw the good old missile control idea behind this :)

Shooting feels rewarding, so good job!

I couldn't get many enemy types before compo DL, so I changed damage to affect attack radius instead. In other words, upgrading damage helps nailing those crucial double and triple hits!

I was planning to change the levelup graphic to be clearer on that, but didn't quite have the time. I could change it now in a heartbeat, but I don't think it could be called the compo submission anymore.

Solid entry, impressive for a first time using Javascript to build a game! I like the progressive upgrade system, though I wasn't sure why I'd ever do anything but increase the fire rate. The game is a little frustrating the in the beginning due to the slow fire rate of the weapon, but it starts to hit its stride when you've got a decent fire rate and enemies start coming faster, nice reflex challenge.

I like the music, too. I've never been willing to try and put music into my LD48 games, but you've got a solid little track in here that adds a lot to the ambience!

What a fun game - love that you get rewards for completing levels.

Simple game, but the actual mechanic is quite fun, and as others have said the upgrades are a nice feature. Well made, some more polish might make it even better!

I think a health bar should be added to the planet, as I had no clue when I was going to die. Also, another thing is that there should be some explanation of what the powerups do, as I had some slight confusion (what did damage do if all your hits were one hit kills and what is energy charge rate?). I did however like that the core mechanic of the game was focused on and that the game was simple but elegant and polished. I also loved the art of the game(especially the background) and how this affected the mood. Also, the music was very nice sounding and gave the mood a creepy feeling.

Positives:

1. Nice concept. Simple to grasp.

2. The minimalist controls and design makes for a nice contender for a mobile game.

3. I simply love how the fire rate turned my plays into some kind of rythim game, since I had to time my aiming when holding the mouse button.

4. BTW, great interface choice with the option of holding the button. It would be VERY annoying to click for every shot.

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Negatives:

1. I agree a health bar is missed.

2. I have no idea if there is any use for the damage upgrade.

3. Some stats would be nice too (how much damage/fire rate/health is the upgrade giving me?).

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Congrats and welcome. ;)

Wow, I'm impressed you learned JavaScript, figured out music creation, and ended up with a playable game in just 48 hours. Great choice of a mechanic. A more complicated concept would be difficult to finish in such a small time window, given how much you were learning. I also really like the upgrade system between levels, it changes a very basic premise into something with an interesting meta. I'll join others in saying a lack of other enemy types was missed, given that upgraded damage was an option.

That hard mode though. What level can you get to on it?

Overall it looks like you had a marvelously productive weekend.

Thank you all for the comments! I really appreciate taking the time to give this a shot. :)

@rygyudavis: I tried Hard Mode out for the first time in around two weeks, and here's how it went:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJQ-PZPIhAI

.

Looks like I'm able to quite consistently clear wave 9, but it gets really fast from the tenth onwards! Here's my second attempt, this time with the mouse cursor also captured. It shows the technique of waiting for enemies to line up pretty well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWDMYJCNJFw

Not bad! I like that it's simple. I agree that a health indicator of sorts on the planet will be helpful. :)