Note: I had to tweak some items in GameMaker Studio 1.0 to make sound and text work, making the html5 files slightly different (I will post the source for the tweaks to JohnNWFS.net). I had not set a font and I didn't realize the newest sound system was incompatable with HTML5. I switched to the legacy sound system and added a simple font for the HTML5 version. There were no other changes to the game and it still plays the same (albeit a little laggy) in HTML5 as with the gamemaker raw or windows executable version. Leave comments here and I'd love a DM on Twitter @JohnNWFS if you have time. -John

Neat. Good approach to the theme. The sound from your ship is a bit too loud compared to the other sounds.

Nice little game :) One thing: Moving diagonally is much faster than just left, right up or down ;)

Thank you. The audio is a bug I ran out of time to fix. I'm not sure if Compo rules would allow me to tweak, so when I realized there was an issue I decided to leave it and take my lumps. The diagonal increased speed was unintentional but I did see it had the effect of giving you a better chance at the stealer so intentionally left it in. I'd also wanted to add a backstory about being above ap planet that was puling you down and you have a broken down thruster, but I again just ran out of time :-( thanks for the comments!

Funny game:) The sky is moving a little bit weird in my opinion. And if I'm going down, it's not moving at all. Yes moving right is much faster, and so I'm usually getting the energy that's on the right, there is no way for me to gather those that are on the left. Good job!

Moving down, left, or right is very slow.

Nice little game, I got a score of 1550 which I think is pretty good. The controls took a little to get used to and the background moved a bit weird, but the theme was well incorporated, plus it was fun. Nice job!

Nice game, but really hard! Going diagonally up is fast, but descending is really slow. You have to wait for a bolt to come nearby and then hope that the UFO won't be there first. It would massively improve the game if the controls were a bit more responsive.
Well done!

Hi all. If you are experiencing poor control responsiveness in the HTML5 version, would you please include browser and OS for troubleshooting prepared? Much appreciated!

Pretty nice!


The success on this game is way too dependang on RNG placement of the energy bolts so that the scoring could be in any way considered skill based and competitive. The UFO has a huge advantage when you're going down and the player has the advantage when going up. Going left and right is just a guessing game since the UFO has zero second reaction time and the horizontal speeds of both are pretty much the same.

The scoring could be made more interesting by maybe adding some kind of multiplier system or sometimes spawning two energy pickups at the same time. The UFO running out of energy was kinda pointless since another one spawned in pretty much right after that. Maybe adding a bigger delay there could be an idea. Or maybe start spawning multiple of them the longer it goes. That way there would be an actual difficulty curve on the game and it'd be more interesting.

The sounds got monotonous pretty quickly. Too bad you didn't have time to do music, it always masks monotonous sounds quite well.

Did not have any control issues with the html5 version that others mentioned (osx/chrome).

@antti-haavikko Thank you. Great ideas for improvements. I really appreciate the feedback!
Good score, BTW.

Great! Tried the html5 version without issue. I agree with @antti-haavikko, it needs some way to prevent the IA to get the bolt, because if it is closer to it there is no way the player can get it first. Perhaps the game could announce where the bolt will spawn, or you have a boost that you could use but will consume your energy faster.

Scored 850 after 4 tries. Had a lot fun!

Man, it's been a really long time since I've hated a pixel art flying saucer as much as I hate Energy Stealer, lol.

I love the psedo-race setup. I also find it really interesting the you have two competitors with different forms of locomotion that both feel balanced. Might have been a nice feature to be able to choose which ship to pilot.

Maybe a little 'dropping dead' animation for that frigging UFO SoB so I'd have more time to gloat over his well deserved death :wink:

Like others have stated.. the movements seems a bit strange and it's really hard to get anything if going down.. and left or right is sheer luck. Still.. it was interesting to play and the enemy losing energy and having to respawn was a nice touch.

@elmismopancho, @ryte2byte, @cornelia-xaos, thank you so much for the feedback and advice. Yours and the previous comments make me want to expand the game now. Fix the background movement, add a 'power comming in the general area' concept (maybe two or three little clouds kinda slowly forming with one popping up before the others?)... I really had wanted to do death animation on the stealer and make you able to bump it out of the way or otherwise slow it down... While perhaps not the best decision, the lack of ability to downthrust was a conscious one. I hadn't thought about giving option to become the stealer -cool idea. I'll stop there - all comments are VERY much appreciated. Thanks also for the specific browser/OS info. I need to t-shoot since GameMaker Studio 1.0 HTML5 output (I'm assuming now) simply doesn't respond the same in different configs - but probably code can be tweaked if I can figure out what is triggering the inconsistencies. I'm Win 10 and on Chrome, FF and IE 11 I'm not experiencing the issue. May be time to break out some VirtualBoxes or VM's.

Damn, that Energy Stealer is quick! There were several times when I would have just liked to have shot him, or at least bumped him out of the way. This has quite an old-school feel, which is fine by me!

Is difficulty increasing between one ship and another? At first I didn't like that much that you couldn't speed up when going doing, but at the end it became part of the strategy, trying to be on the minimal height possible in order to guarantee a maximum of bolts. It is true that you depend on the random appearances of the bolts. The movement of the background is a bit dizzy when you move to the sides. I did 2650 points after a couple of plays. Nice sound design, weird ship, good job.

That's a great game for the compo. I liked the concept and the rng spawn mechanic makes you think about where to position against the CPU, to have better chances than the machine on the next wave.

Oh, one thing, to shake things up: the game could have increasing speed, which would lead to increased difficulty.

There's not much negative to say about the game. It was really competent and working from start to end.

Thanks @badly-drawn-rod and @le-slo. @le-slo, you hit the same strategy I did when I was playtesting to try and maximize points. Thank you both so much for the feedback!

I so agree with the above comments. Like your enthusiasm. Game on!

Thank you for commenting @mestrerothld and @thecodefactory! I appreciate the advice and kudos for enthusiasm :grin:

I liked the weird movement system, once you figured it out it let you think critically about which powerups you could go for and which you should give up on to put yourself in a better situation. I wish you used more power moving than standing still, to put more emphasis on critical thinking.

Feels very arcade-y and is fun for a while even if it's very simple. I like that you and the energy stealer have different strengths and weaknesses and they balance pretty well.

Only was able to get 300 points. The game is good compo entry and feels quite polished.

Of course there would be tons of things to improve (graphics and art can always be improved), but as for gameplay it tends to be extremely hard to beat the enemy (as it reacts immediately and unless power is spawned in good position you have no chance).

Congratulations!

@will-walters, @silkworm-sweatshop and @zgragselus, thank you so much. The feedback is awesome!

Very cool! The movement was interesting and made it challenging, and I liked competing with the energy stealer.

I like where you're going with this, and I really like the audio/visual aspects (the star field moving slightly in the background as you move around feels nice).

I feel like it needs more features though, as it's quite simple and luck based at the moment.

Despite that though, it's still a fun game :).

This was quite fun, really needs strategizing to win. I like the sound effects, makes you feel like you're genuinely in space. I thought the loudness of your ship was purposeful. If not, my advice is to make the sfx of your and the energy stealer's ships different when you get the bolt, because I'd like to intuit whether or not I got it. I think this was great for Compo, and your attitude towards feedback is admirable.

PS I got 700 points :D

@celia14, @wh05herlock and @angela-he, thank you! I made some adjustments based on feedback, and updated the HTML5 version [here](http://johnnwfs.net/LudumDare39-RunningOutofPower_postdare/index.html).
Fixes in the newest version:
Audio - 1) everything less loud (sorry @angela-he, I got your point about being loud - I may bump the volume back up again).
2) Music! I composed a simple song tonight and added it as background. It's a little less than a minute and you can last for at least 2 and probably more, so I'll look at adding another so things aren't as repetitive.
Background: The odd movement was a stray x+ instead of x-, background doing what I wanted now
Visual: I made both thrusters appear to aid / help explain the faster diagonal movement
Stealer: 1) It now drops out of the sky when out of energy (personally made me laugh 1st time it happened)
2) stealer respawns in between 2 and 4 seconds, not just 2 as was set before
3) there's a quarter second pause when new energy appears before the stealer goes for the energy. Too much longer and you'll always beat it to the energy
Aside: At some point I'll make energy appear differently (not just random)

Nice job, but I think it's too slow, maybe because I suck :D

Some good ideas here. Sounds were good, though a more constant noise for moving your ship probably would have been a bit better suited for the task. Gameplay was very simple but with a room for simple little improvements. I think it could work better if your ship was a bit faster than the energy stealer but that more energy stealers showed up over time. It could also be nice if there were some obstacles spawned that you had to avoid. I also found it a bit weird that I couldn't move down. I could only let ?gravity? carry me down.

Overall fun little game and I like that you are already working to implement some of the common suggestions!

Man that is brutal, those energy stealers are everywhere and move way too fast compared to me. It's basically impossible without some sort of skill related element (e.g having a gun which can blast them but drains your own energy)

Really interesting gameplay that makes me balance risk/reward of getting to the energy first, vs. falling back to a central position to try to grab the next one. Didn't realize the bottom of the screen meant game over. :( Well done!

Nice little game :) I enjoyed how I had the advantage going up, but my opponent was better at going downwards (although not being able to actively speed up my descent was a bit frustrating at times). The movement of the star field in the background could probably use a little tweaking as it seemed sometimes a bit disconcerting for no real reason. Neat concept anyway, and weirdly compelling to keep playing. Good job!

@pandakipu, @phlip45,@morphine, @baby-dino-herd and @mhaton. Thank you for playing and for the feedback!