Woo, took a couple dozen tries but I managed to beat it. Real fun, and the synthwav-y music and cute graphics help a lot with that. Also really liked the movement, felt good and in control. The only real nitpick I have is that the enemy hitboxes feel a little bit too large, but maybe that's just because I'm bad :)

Good work!

Good entry - seems ok polished :)

Haha, very fun and hard game!

Really nice and a fun idea but the gameplay is bit hard.
You can check my game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/$145299

After getting through the first level I think if I hear somebody say 3,2,1 I might snap, despite that the game is an interesting concept it feels like one of those ideas, that in the right hands turns into a million possibilities :D

Lots of fun! Even though my poor Mac laptop is on its knees trying to run it.

Good graphics and sound. It's really a big challenge...maybe a bit to much. I've lost count of the times I've died lol.

Graphics are great and music is really catchy. Gameplay is good too, but it's kinda hard, because you have so little time and shooting is really adverse. Although game is nice. Good job!

Wow, I really dig the music. The game feel right, with music and all the juice you had managed to squeeze in it's very enjoyable experience. Game has great mood..

As for some tips for improvements - until I saw the video I thought killing enemies doesn't worth spent time - you need 3 shots (5s each) and get only one life capsules (max +10s - at least those I've picked from a ground). Only when I saw the video I realized that the life capsule from enemy gives you more time than that I've picked before. If this observation is correct, it may be confusing. I'd use for example different colors for different life capsules.

Anyway, I really enjoyed your game!

Pretty fun! I like the music, reminds me of Amiga MODs. Kudos for managing to include such a nice track, especially in 48 hours, I sure couldn't have done it myself :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
As for the game itself it plays pretty well though I did notice cases where I swear the hits should've registered, but it's been a rare occurence. Had genuine fun with this, great game

Great pixel art and nice music. Reminds me of original Metroid. Solid game, nice work.

This is a nice entry, but you should really make it clear that you've adapted graphics from [Downwell](http://downwellgame.com/) and opt out of the graphics category!

@Anonymous The art style is inspired by Downwell, but I’ve pixeled everything with my very own hands :)

The game is quite hard, I think the first level could be made easier by giving more time to the player, now you just automatically die if you try to attack enemies directly, but maybe you were going for that "in your face" difficulty. The artwork and music are on point, this feels like a legit complete game you can sell somewhere! Everything is so well polished and executed (aside from the immediate difficulty spike in my opinion), it feels nice to shoot, jumps have a good sense of control/weight and the level design is nice. Well done!

This one is too addictive! I've spent 20 minutes trying to beat the first level and didn't even noticed that time has pass :D

Be careful with "art style inspired by downwell", even if you re-draw the assets, you still don't have the rights to it ;) (check the compo rule to view what is re-creating assets).
I liked the concept and the feel of the game, but please make a tutoriel level or at least an easy first level, because it is quite hard to grasp the concept when even the first level is so hard !
But for the rest, nice game and good job !

OH YEAH that music! B) B) B) So: that was intense! But everything in this game works, the art, music, gameplay, controls, particles. Great job!

By far the best LD44 game I've played so far. really intense!

Relatively fun game and good use of the theme. But as others have said the art style is more than "inspired" by downwell, it's a straight pixel for pixel copy. This should not be in the compo category.

I couldn't get very far! But the energetic music and fast pace sure made it easy to think "Okay, okay, one more try!" It might have been nice to start with just a little more time so that you can get some practice with the combat before the difficulty ramped up!

This game is a good example for "hardcore". You need to shoot and jump accurately within the time limit.This is quite challenging in some condition.

Really solid entry! The mechanic is engaging and the levels are really well put-together. Difficult but not punishing.

It was lagging really bad on my laptop (Ubuntu, Firefox), but I tried it on my roommate's same-model laptop (Windows, Chrome) and it ran super smoothly.

Music is nice.

I really like the timer mechanic. Having to race against the clock while conserving ammo made this game really exciting. The audio was also on point, especially with the countdown at the start of each level. The monochrome aesthetic was also nice, however, as several people have already pointed out, copying the player sprite from Downwell is not okay for a compo entry. Even if you redrew each frame, they still look nearly identical. That issue aside, I really did enjoy the game.

Awesome! I loved everything about it, and you smashed the theme as well!

I couldn't get past the first level but I cannot deny how good the mechanic is and how well it fits in with the theme. The pixel art is also very crisp and the music is catchy and fun. Controls are very solid too, I think the time you start off with is a bit unfair for that first level, especially since it takes three shots to kill a single enemy but you only have enough life for two.

3...2...1: As I said over at itch.io: This looks like a Downwell Homage! And a nice one. Super hard but fun gameplay.

Great music, gameplay is a bit frustrating with the fairly long time between attempts and the way enemies move and dont always get hit

Great little game! It's hard. Maybe a bit too hard, but that's fine. My only small niggle would be the use a different key for jump than up. Maybe it's because I'm left handed, but movement with arrow keys felt fine, but jumping was more difficult. Like a said, a small issue.

Great game, but a bit hard for me. Maybe there can be some green crystal scattered across the level, to make it a bit easier.

This is an absolutely incredible game! I just wish I could've been able to play it through to the end. I think I can confidently say I'm a pretty solid platformer, but god DAMN, this game kicked my ass. By biggest criticism (and what consistently messed me up the most) is that the distance enemies get knocked back when getting hit felt extremely inconsistent. Sometimes, they'd fly halfway across the screen, other times they barely moved at all. It was very frustrating when I killed a mob 3 or 4 times the same way but each time they had a different reaction. It made it super hard to improve from attempt to attempt when each time it felt like a coin flip of getting the knockback I wanted. Otherwise, overall, amazing job, I definitely plan on coming back and giving it another run, haha.

Really cool graphics and audio. Love the synthwave music - it really adds to the countdown aspect of this game. Gameplay is smooth and fun, although shooting felt like it took a lot of time away from the clock. The only real issue I had was that the game took a performance hit the more I played, and it eventually made it tough to jump over enemies.
Great entry! Thanks for submitting!

Very polished and fun to play. The art and feel gives me a downwell vibe and the bgm is lovely. But the game is too hard. I think that the actual difficulty is fine. But it is impossible to kill the first two enmeies if you don't get the item first. I think that is a flaw with the level design. Once you get into the flow, it gets much easier though.

Holy moly, this game feels great!!!
I kept retrying and retrying to get the hang of it, who to kill, who to spare...
What a great game!!

Interesting entry, I think I need to reconsider my strategy if I want to progress in the game haha :cold_sweat:

A really good entry overall !

I have to say i enjoyed the game quite a lot.
The concept is simple but it works.
The first level could be a bit tad easier just to make it easier to get into.

Nice one, good job! The graphics kind of reminds me of Downwell (which is always good). The idea is great and it is a good example of an "easy to learn but difficult to master" game. Maybe the first minutes could be easier to get easily the hang of it.

Quite a challenge. Straight forward, fits with the theme and plays well. I liked the "THREE TWO ONE" intro voiceover too. Would've liked WASD option for controls. Also liked the parallax background and the explosion effect when you die.

This was lots of fun. Took a long time to figure out how to get very far into the game. I wish you started off with more time so that you can play with the blaster a bit.

Really loving the game. The flow and the looks are so well done! Great job.

It is hard and unforgiving - real old-style arcade platformer ))) I love the spectrum-styled visuals and minimalistic approach in gameplay. The mechanics are introduced really smoothly, so it is easy to figure out how to get more life, how to shoot and the consequences of shooting.

Fun to play! It would be nice to have some kind of indication of how much of the level still left - it will lose some hardcore after that, but will add some motivation to pass through.

Wow really nice game, graphics, audio, its fun, amazing work, but here is few bugs, like if you standing really near enemy and shooting he will not take dmg.

rly good game but too hard imo! Way better movement controller than in our game! Check out our pixelArt game as well!;)
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/plunderlings

Great music and neat Downwell-like graphics, the gameplay is pretty tight but too hard for me as enemies take a few hits somehow to die. Didn't really feel the theme coming through.

Super intense and fun. Congrats!

Really good game and well polished. One thing though. It is WAAY too unforgiving. I couldn't get past the first level in 10 minutes! The music got pretty repetitive too. Somehow though, I just kept playing and playing and actually ended up enjoying myself! Pretty fun game actually but not very balanced.

I'm kinda torn on this one - the game is juicy and the main loop is great and the shooting feels so nice, but it's such a shame I don't really get to do that much of it.
The highly Downwell-esque visuals are great and though the track is short, it's pretty great.

Now for the nitpicky stuff:
* the get-hit behaviour of the enemies would is hghly unpredictable - sometimes I'd run into enemies 'cause I'd expecting knockback, sometimes they would fly off super far - this made getting down the patterns a bit frustrating
* the enemy colliders could be a bit more lenient (sometimes I'd jump just up from 1 block below the alien, but it still be counted as a collision)
* where's grace-jummping? I wanna see that in every platformer :laughing:

I got to the 3rd level, but am unsure about how to pass the very start of the level.

Anyway, that should be enough of me complaining - the game is great. So much juice, especially for a compo entry.

Super tight controls and great sound design & aesthetic. A very hard game! I managed to beat it but it took me way too long.