Gladiator Monsters by BenBurgh
You are the penultimate gladiator, Jack "Guns for Hands" Killer. You get paid to kill monsters. However, your insatiable bloodlust, as well as your contract, require that you spend as much money as you can to help supply your enemies, because they can't possibly beat you without your help. How long can you last before your greed gets the better of you?!
Originally meant for the Compo, but didn't finish in time and I used illegal audio. I did make the song and art myself though!
Twitter: burghvr
Let me know if you beat my highscore on hard! 10 rounds, 2308 gold!

| Windows | https://kushamo.itch.io/gladiator-monsters |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/gladiator-monsters |
Ratings
| Overall | 734th | 3.272⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 573th | 3.315⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 207th | 3.644⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 325th | 3.733⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 994th | 2.544⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 346th | 3.393⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 61🗳️ | 47🗨️ |
Really nice game, keep up the good work
I did manage to beat your highscore on hard, and I'm sure a more dedicated effort could blow that score out of the water. The player's range felt awkwardly short at first, but I got used to it eventually. Still, I found the shotgun awkward to use and quickly settled on the rifle as my weapon of choice. The core mechanic is excellent and the range of available upgrades allows for a lot of different strategies. The strength of this mechanic is enough to overpower the relatively unimpressive core gameplay. Bonus points for the graphics option and the quit button.
My favorite part of this game was going into the options and turning the graphics off and then getting all confused and having to alt-f4 out of there. That gave me a good laugh
the concept was great, you could have a pretty good game if there was some visual feedback from hitting the enemies or knockback or something.
edit: Oh, and I try the options which only says "Graphics?" When I clicked No, the screen turned to white and I couldn't do anything.
Not that I'm exactly sold on the main mechanic. You see, in most entries of this genre the opposition gets tougher each wave automatically and you get better each wave by selecting upgrades. Here you have a mixture of the two, which is less work for you as a developer, but also more boring for me as a player. I get to play the whole thing though with nothing but the starting peashooter. Not very exciting.
If Jack “Guns for Hands” Killer, *what a name*, had a variety of abilities and weapons right from the get go, this would not be an issue. Alternatively you could force the player to choose one upgrade for Jack and one upgrade for the enemies each wave. I will repeat the notion for emphasis, the starter kit is *dreadfully boring!*
There are some very interesting ideas when it comes to the enemies. The mimes are nasty and the predictors quite neat. I think I'll have to give it to the doppelgängers though. What a bunch of ripoffs! The leprechauns are too similar to the predictors, in my opinion.
Shooting money doesn't really work as there is no way to see if an enemy is about to die. Shooting the coin right after it drops happens way too often. The graphics are sub-par, and the 5 second music loop would have driven me mad had I not muted everything. Lastly there is a dire lack of polish and juiciness, i.e. everything works, but it doesn't feel great to play.
In conclusion: cool ideas, bad execution.
Overall: *Average (3.0)*
Fun: *Bad (2.0)*
Innovation: *Great (4.5)*
Theme: *Above average (3.5)*
Graphics: *Bad (2.0)*
Humor: *Good (4.0)*