Mercs by fazz

made by fazz for LD 44 (COMPO)

DESCRIPTION

A not-so infinite shooter, in which you can hire, or be hired, by crews of mercenaries to clear levels of alien bugs. The talent pool isn’t that deep but you might find an elite or a weapon upgrade worth the investment.

It’s not overly clear but there are two types of missions on the job board, MERCENARY and CONTRACT. With the former, you hire yourself out to an existing crew, but you only get a small cut of the winnings. With the latter, you and your crew take on the whole contract and all the spoils are yours. The contract missions are more difficult though, make sure you hire some fodder to distract the bugs.

THEME

As the leader of a band of mercenaries you risk, exchange even, the lives of you and your crew for monetary reward. Your life and theirs are currency in a never ending bug hunt.

Another interpretation of the theme; money is more important to you than anything in your life.

I'm sure there'll be lots of entries where the theme has been taken quite literally; life force used as a form of currency. I have not.

DEVELOPMENT

There’s quite a bit of stuff I had to strip out of the game, massively over scoped, as always. No music, the force-field upgrade is never available. No terrain or enemy variation unfortunately, but there are three weapons and two different merc characters.

The game desperately needs some balancing, I didn’t have time before submission, so apologies if it’s too easy or too hard. Let me know!

I’ve stuck comments on anonymous so you can trash me all your want, but if you do leave your name I will be happy to play/rate your game in return.

I hope you enjoy the game!

UPDATE 2019-04-29: I fixed a spelling mistake 😬 and a bug where your could walk out of the teleport beam at the end of a mission.

Source Code	https://fazz.itch.io/mercs
HTML5 (web)	https://fazz.itch.io/mercs
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/mercs

Ratings

Given

22🗳️

13🗨️

Feedback

J0ye

29. Apr 2019 · 01:14 UTC

Your game looks and feels great. Everything works like expected, you have great sprites and good sound effects. But i dont really see the theme in this game...

🎤 fazz

29. Apr 2019 · 13:50 UTC

Hi @j0ye - thanks! I'll be sure to check out your game. Re theme- I've added some justification above. I think the theme is quite an open one this LD. I don't believe I've been particularly loose with my interpretation but we all see things differently. Always appreciate the feedback though!

BlackAtlas

29. Apr 2019 · 18:25 UTC

Hey @fazz, I just got done with playing your game and I loved it!

Pros:

- Perfectly scoped. You managed to design and build the game in its entirety, and that is a pro in of itself.
- Difficulty was properly scaled. I tried to game the system and advance faster than I should and I couldn't do it. I had to progress properly to get there.

Cons:

- Small nitpick but the phaser gun noise would layer up when you has a larger squad of mercs and was a bit rough on the ears. Some slight pitch shifting of the phaser would go a long way.

That's all I've got to say. Great work!

SuperGamersGames

29. Apr 2019 · 18:26 UTC

The game itself is really good! But like @j0ye said, the theme doesn't seem to be caught here or perhaps I'm missing something.

jf1989

29. Apr 2019 · 18:27 UTC

The game looks great - really nice artwork! I agree that I don't really see the theme so much in this one...

Dvlv

29. Apr 2019 · 18:28 UTC

Neat game, very cute pixel art!

It might just be my screen but I find the green arrows in the menu very difficult to see.

Youpeoples

29. Apr 2019 · 18:29 UTC

Looks so good. It was very easy to first do the 2500 creds job. I then hired a 2500creds merc and he can clear that job solo.. easy farm! If the mobs weren't so easy to kite this game would be real great. Its too easy to cheese.

ALourenco

29. Apr 2019 · 18:36 UTC

Pretty cool. A little tweak in the difficulty progression though! Good Job.

Steambot

29. Apr 2019 · 18:39 UTC

I love the art and sound effects in your game. I think it would benefit from some mechanic that requires you to move around more or something along those lines. The gameplay gets a bit repetetive, but overall it is a very solid entry.

erikkire

29. Apr 2019 · 18:43 UTC

Superb pixel art! Excellent gameplay, this is fun to play for long and I want more. Movement, graphics, sound are all great. This is the best submission I have seen so far. Here are a few things that could make your game better. The missions are very similar and I would really like to take the team out on missions, meaning that they follow you around and you have to fetch an item or kill a special enemy for example. Another thing that would be great is some music. Great game! I hope you continue post-jamming this one!

Vinay Rao

29. Apr 2019 · 18:53 UTC

The mercenary and enemy characters are well animated. The sound effects for all the laser guns are good. Shooting mechanics are spot on and feel satisfying. Really all this game needs is more content and balance tweaks. I never really felt like my crew was in danger. But that's nothing a little more time in development couldn't fix. Maybe the companion characters aim a little too well. It is a bit easy in that sense. Perhaps there just aren't hard enough missions or destabilizing elements to get the adrenaline pumping. Once you get a few crew members stacked on top of each other, you can clear the hardest mission without firing a shot. A few bullet sponges, tunneling enemies, or enemies that require positioning changes would be awesome in a game like this.

For 48 hours, this is a pretty darn solid game. There isn't much to add that you haven't already mentioned in your own development section on this page.

Fantastic foundation for a top down shooter with campaign elements. Kudos!

fibonacci1321

29. Apr 2019 · 20:40 UTC

Very enjoyable to play! Lovely color scheme. AI works well. Don't stop working on this one it's going places! :)

ilPrinny

29. Apr 2019 · 23:07 UTC

Very fun, I wanted to keep playing but there is not much hard missions, music would be good too

killscreen

30. Apr 2019 · 03:55 UTC

Beautiful pixel art! I love the detail in the turning animations. Only thing I found myself wanting was a bit more depth in the missions themselves; the menuing made it seem like there was more to the game than there really was (which is both a pro and a con)

Sharks

01. May 2019 · 22:42 UTC

Once you get a larger crew the shooting sound gets extremely loud and anoyying.

Supernapie

02. May 2019 · 18:21 UTC

I liked the color palette and the graphics. Wish there was more space in the levels to explore, but that is not really the point of the game and that's fine.

🎤 fazz

03. May 2019 · 07:33 UTC

@supernapie thanks for the feedback! Yes, it does definitely need more levels and some stuff to explore. I had hoped to get some more variation in but ran out of time. If I dev this further I'll make it less repetitive.

Supernapie

03. May 2019 · 15:50 UTC

I don't think it is to repetitive. What i am trying to say is that i just felt an urge to go explore :)

stevenjmiller

04. May 2019 · 04:19 UTC

Good game, the art is great and I love the way the environment looks. In response to the description, I think it was on the easier side, but I think that could easily change with more enemy variety and some stronger enemies that take several bullets to kill.