Ballistic Skylines by invader

[raw]
made by invader for LD 41 (JAM)

Construct futuristic cities in this cross-genre city-building artillery game!

You control an advanced gun that can shoot cryo-dust capsules for building construction. Use it to build your cyberpunk city.

The gun is capable to teleport to other places with teleport capsule (it costs 5 ore to do so - use Up and Down to select the capsule type).

The city is periodically got hit by meteors, that create rubbish and destroy buildings (they can hit the gun as well, leaving you without some of your ore!). You can't build a new building on rubish! Use destroy capsule to get rid of those.

You start the game with a single Scoop that collects ore from meteors when they hit it. You can build additional scoops, but it costs 50 ore and require a lot of free space.

scenery-3.gif

scenery-2.gif

skyline-52.png

Post-Jam version contains little-bit tuned gameplay, updated visuals, and atmospheric effects to provide more of cyberpunk mood.

Controls:

Left-Right Arrows - aim the gun

Up-Down Arrows - change type of capsule to shoot

Hold Space to charge and release it to shoot

Shift - shoot automatically with the force of the last charge (to place the shell in the same place as before)

< > - move camera

Tools: JavaScript, Vim, Aseprite

Ratings

Overall 939th 3.063⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1094th 2.583⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 701th 3.217⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Theme 406th 3.826⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 609th 3.438⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Audio 656th 2.729⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Humor 861th 2.4⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Mood 782th 3.045⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Given 23🗳️ 23🗨️

Feedback

Nash
25. Apr 2018 · 15:08 UTC
That a pretty interesting mash up of those genres! I was certainly surprised about the mechanic - which is always a good thing in a marathon.

The only nitpick I have is that it almost felt that I should not shoot my buildings to the sky - rather just shoot them as low as possible. I guess if there had been some terrain or obstacles blocking the way I would have thought otherwise.

But overall, nice game with clear thought put into the idea!
Gaming Night
25. Apr 2018 · 15:27 UTC
interresting combination. The mechanics are maybe a bit slow but its still fun to play. Good job.
Darkphnx
30. Apr 2018 · 20:31 UTC
Props on implementing a hot key to perform the same velocity shot as the previous, I thought that was a very smart mechanic to add to your game! The speed at which your bullets moved were a bit sluggish, but overall good submission!
patrickgh3
30. Apr 2018 · 20:32 UTC
Nice concept and graphics. It plays very slow though. I couldn't figure out any real strategy. The concept is cool though and has potential. The stars are nice-looking in fullscreen.
alferbayter
30. Apr 2018 · 20:35 UTC
Nice concept, I would have liked it to have been a bit faster though as I found myself waiting a lot for the capsules to land.
Arch
01. May 2018 · 02:26 UTC
Excellent retro graphics and sound. I felt that the projectiles moved a bit slowly. I also had a problem where I could not teleport my gun anywhere or place a second scoop sometimes. Good job though.
🎤 invader
01. May 2018 · 08:52 UTC
@Arch tnx for the review. I've speed up projectiles and increased gravity in post-jam version. Maybe It needs more tuning. The scoop/building placement and teleport works only when territory is free of asteroid rubbish - so the idea is that you need to clear up the ground first with 'destroy' shots and teleport there later.
guckstift
01. May 2018 · 11:31 UTC
Really like the pixel graphics style, the moving star background. But I find it somewhat difficult to use the canon and a bit to slow, maybe a visualization hint for the ballistic curve could help. If you're afraid it would make it too easy, let the curve fade out from its start to end position!
But all in all its a cool idea. What did you use? Plain Javascript?
Yashpal
01. May 2018 · 12:06 UTC
Great Graphics, nice feedback sounds when no ore remains & astroid hit the ground it play different sound.
but I don't understand benefit buildings, I think it's only for high score.(or might be i didn't read proper instructions)
if big buildings gives some more ore or some other functionality than it's good(This is just suggestion :smile: )
larzan
01. May 2018 · 14:19 UTC
Innovative idea, well implemented.
It would be nice to have a map or a type of overview where you can see you skyline grow.
Strega
03. May 2018 · 06:55 UTC
Interesting endless building game. I art is really consistent and really fits the mood. The shots felt a bit slow at first though. Maybe a way to shoot the meteors to collect ore could be interesting.
DiFFtY
03. May 2018 · 22:45 UTC
Nice combination! But it reaaaaally plays sloowwwwwly. Way to slowly. It killed my envy to go further :(

But the pixel art is clean and the mechanics are good! (the lack of money can make things quite difficult tho)

Nice job thus said. (;
csanyk
06. May 2018 · 15:59 UTC
I liked the building sprites.

I found the game to be kindof slow-paced. Meteors would hit, at first pretty frequently, but then it seemed to taper off, and the game got really slow at that point. Collecting more resources was (literally) hit or miss, and mostly miss. I managed to build a couple of buildings, and once I managed to clear debris with a destroy capsule, but it sure wasn't easy to get on target. I wasn't sure what to do with the other types of shot. What is Teleport for?

I think if the shots moved more quickly, it would help the pacing and make the game more fun. Also, if the shot power level remained what it was for the previous shot, it would be easier to correct and get on target with fewer wasted shots.

Lastly, when space ships flew by, I thought at first that I was supposed to shoot them, but they don't seem to have any collision actions, so I guess not. Oh well, that could have made the game more interesting, if there were friend and foes flying above, and maybe the friendlies dropped supplies to you or helped in some other way, and the enemies would steal from you or do damage unless you shot them down...
🎤 invader
07. May 2018 · 07:43 UTC
@csanyk tnx for the review. Slow-paced gameplay is something everybody complained about. I wish I've managed to playtests the game little more before the jam release. However, in the post-jam version I've increased the gravity and initial speed of the shell - that should make it more dynamic.

Sure, the resources are collected randomly - that is the whole point of a weird situation when meteors are destroying your city and creating rubbish, but at the same time when hitting the Scoop providing you with resources. You can get more resources by placing additional Scoops.

Teleport is to teleport your gun to a different location.

You can use Shift instead of Space to shoot with previous charge, so you actually could place many shots in one place (e.g. build a single building).

As for the flying cars, it is just a visual prop like cars in SimCity - the traffic just reflects the population your city has.
Richard N Silva
07. May 2018 · 13:02 UTC
Nice concept! I've played the post-jam version and I can say that the game pace didn't bother me at all. I think it lets the player to explore and understand what is going on, so there is a lot of space (no puns intended) to try new things and to explore.

I used Shift a lot, it makes things waaaay easier, really nice touch by adding this command in the game!

Lastly, I liked the visual feedbacks the players receives as the city starts growing, like more cars flying over. It's subtle, but adds up to the atmosphere.

Congratulations on the entry, you have managed to create a fun game, with a good scope and a nice level of polish!
Darkwing00Duck
07. May 2018 · 18:38 UTC
Interesting game, reached a population of 2 thousand. Like graphics and music. It would be nice to add time controls so that you can speed up the process and different types of buildings

Anyway, the game is cool, good work :v:
Rs11s21n
08. May 2018 · 21:55 UTC
interesting thing did you plan to continue? if yes: good luck XD
chainedlupine
14. May 2018 · 20:07 UTC
Okay that's a pretty dang cool concept.

It's kind of relaxing to play it; Sort of like a builder game, but with the obvious set backs to keep it interesting.

Imagine my horror when I launched my first scoop and shot it too far -- right off the screen. :grin:
HuvaaKoodia
16. May 2018 · 22:01 UTC
At first it is difficult to figure out why the build and scoop capsules do nothing even when hitting an empty area. Apparently they both need an arbitrary amount of free space around the hit location, which is not visualized in any way, resulting in ample lost ore. Missing a scoop is especially annoying.

Building vertically isn’t very exciting. How about pressing space when the capsule is in mid air to deploy the construction element which then falls down gripped by gravity? The elements could also attach to other elements allowing for horizontal construction.

The last interactivity issue is running out of ore. The only way to get more, via scoops, is completely luck based. I would prefer the destroy capsule to collect ore when removing rubbish. It would either need to be free to use, resulting in spam, or the penalty for running out of ore increased from nothing to utter destruction. Alternatively a little bit of ore could be added to the bank every 10 odd seconds or so...

The promo screenshot with a vast cyberpunk’ish city and smog evokes nice retro Blade Runner-ish feelies and looks much better than the actual visuals in motion. This is mostly caused by having to start building the city from scratch. The empty triangleoid (I found the zoom keys!) looks very plain and due to the lack of challenge and general sluggishness of the build progress I never got to the mega city stage. Shame (on me too)

Not a fan of the beeps and boops. Ambient music alone, or style relevant music, would have been a better fit.

City building and artillery is a near incompatible combination, inconvenient at least, so points there!

Overall: *3 (Average)*
Fun: *1.5 (Terrible)*
Innovation: *4 (Good)*
Theme: *4.5 (Great)*
Graphics: *3.5 (Above average)*
Audio: *1.5 (Terrible)*
Humor: *2 (Bad)*
Mood: *3 (Average)*