Claustrophobia (the walls are closing in) by CBdeVilla

The walls will slowly and persistently creep up on you, and bugs wander around the ever-shrinking space. Fight back against both and try to survive for as long as you can. You might not last forever, but you can certainly try.
(Note: Mac and Linux versions of the game are currently untested.)
Ratings
| Overall | 410th | 3.557⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 649th | 3.167⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 761th | 3.012⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 196th | 3.977⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 959th | 2.869⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 381th | 3.274⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 287th | 3.476⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 60🗳️ | 29🗨️ |
The speed of the projectiles, along with the limited fire rate, works well: requires you to anticipate enemy paths. The limited rate of fire particularly lends to mood of the game is it becomes clear that you simply can't keep up with the speed of the encroaching walls.
Couple of points for improvement:
- the static on the main menu is a bit too loud;
- the constant rate of fire means that once the level reaches a certain size it becomes almost impossible to get a shot off on a bug that suddenly appears and is coming straight at you. Might be better to allow the player to fire at will but, as before, limit the rate of fire.
The music and the sound effects set a threatening mood.
The gameplay itself is okey, you really hit the theme.
But hitting the bugs is really hard.
Thank you for the great submission!!
Great little game! Really conveys the claustrophobia aspect. Only negative note I can think of was already mentioned.... title screen static a bit loud. Music was fitting, graphics work, though I wouldn't mind some variation in the bugs (different bugs, different colors, sizes, movement speeds, etc). I *think* I like the previous suggestion of being able to fire at will, especially as the level gets really tight, but I'd have to play it that way to really know.
Have a great LD--and thanks for sharing your Godot game with me!
It became a game of "Don't hit the bugs unless it is a must" for me. It wasn't that effective. My highscore is 2280 this way. I don't remember but I think I did above 2500 earlier aiming at them (I've been playing with this game for 40 minutes by now)
I had to mute the audio because I couldn't concetrate on the bullets rythm, the heartbeat wasn't in the same tempo, wasn't in sync. Maybe that's helps the mood, but I was going for high scores.
Thank you for this game, I really enjoyed it.
@melmo @alexfalkenberg Sound levels shouldn't be too hard to tweak, I can include that if/when I update the game. As for changing the firing mode, I'm not sure how I feel about it, I would probably also have to playtest that method myself before I can formulate an opinion.
@zozol Fullscreen actually sounds like an interesting idea for a future version. Thank you for suggesting it.
I thought firing into corners would be an effective wall-shrinking strategy, but I found just switching up taking turns on each compass direction N S E W worked best for me.
One other minor aesthetic thing: Don't know if fixable, but it was bothering me that the beating heart and the "bullet" firing were not in sync. :) I know I mentioned the firing-at-will thing before; I may have changed my mind on that....
Still, though, I've come back to this game several times, left it on my desktop, so kudos. :)
I hope the mechanics could be more complex.
If you don't bother take a look at our game when we focused on Graphics and visuals and see the results that we got:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/spacelab-42
Nice mood, i liked the heart beat getting faster as long the walls are getting closer. (post jam version)
I manage to reach 1830 points !