LudumData

Photonic by Justintime4u2bu

[raw]
made by Justintime4u2bu for LD 41 (COMPO)

Controls: [Mouse to aim, HOLD Left Mouse button to shoot, WASD to move]

Made Using: bfxr - paint - paint.net - Digipen's Zero Engine

Play As The last ship of a once great space faring Civilization, you're being hunted down by the federation authority because your kind are hated and shot on sight. Luckily for you your (now pretty much dead) civilization invested heavily in invisibility devices. Though you will be eventually overwhelmed, you can rest in comfort knowing that you have your "pea shooter" by your side, had your civilization invested more into weaponry maybe you'd survive!

gahg.PNG

[CONTROLS: MOUSE TO AIM, HOLD LEFT MOUSE BUTTON TO SHOOT, WASD TO MOVE]

Windows https://justintime4u2bu.itch.io/photonic
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/photonic

Ratings

Overall 656th 2.69⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Fun 591th 2.738⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 655th 2.548⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Theme 655th 2.65⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 586th 2.605⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Audio 461th 2.421⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 533th 1.941⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Mood 619th 2.25⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 20🗳️ 20🗨️

Feedback

🎤 Justintime4u2bu
23. Apr 2018 · 02:03 UTC
Better than my last one for sure, but I should really tweak a few things and test the released version.
I'll upload a version with music and updated stuff on the Itch page tomorrow, tonight I rest.

wasted too much time on some mechanics (trying to implement them "the proper way" but alas it's a ludum dare game)
fashionbatman
23. Apr 2018 · 23:47 UTC
This was a neat game, really hectic! My only issue was that the bullets went right towards the cursor and when they got there they stopped. It would feel better if the bullets just shot out in a strait line and didn't stop in a weird place. Good job though. I had fun.
OscarTrevejo
23. Apr 2018 · 23:51 UTC
Nice work lads! We also did a very original too, ye mid check it out?

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/hype-time
wsKilljoy
23. Apr 2018 · 23:54 UTC
Really cool!
🎤 Justintime4u2bu
24. Apr 2018 · 07:40 UTC
@fashionbatman the bullets going to the cursor was intentional, I thought it would add more depth to the shooting (instead of shooting straight), you can also swing the bullets around you if you move the cursor fast enough, though the bullets could probably use some graphical updates.
🎤 Justintime4u2bu
24. Apr 2018 · 07:42 UTC
thanks all for the Encouragement!
@OscarTrevejo I'll check out your game as soon as I'm able to!

Edit: turns out it was spam :(
Vrarr
25. Apr 2018 · 09:03 UTC
Nice work! Once you are detected you are pretty much dead... Those bastards shoot me down 6vs1...
I would suggest adding a game mechanic to retrieve your stealthness, (maybe an activation button coupled with an energy bar?), to use in emergency cases.
The amount of work you did on your own in 48h is huge!
Almax
25. Apr 2018 · 13:21 UTC
I agree with @Vrarr it would be nice to get stealth back after X seconds or Y kills. I would also suggest lowering the enemy bullet speeds to make dodging more about skill than luck :)

Otherwise a solid entry, didn't run into any bugs and the controls were responsive. Great work!
Desdemone
25. Apr 2018 · 14:20 UTC
I love the way bullets aim to the cursor.
Audio and graphics fit well together and the steath mechanic is a great adding to the shooter genre.

Maybe the difficulty curve increase a little bit too fast, or that's beacause I haven't completely recover from this jam and lost all my reflexes ;).
Edit : (Yes, that was my reflexes x), I've tried again and made a higher score ;))
![score.jpg](///raw/5a6/e/z/13ef5.jpg)


You've done an incredible work ! Congrats !
🎤 Justintime4u2bu
25. Apr 2018 · 18:33 UTC
yeah, I agree the difficulty ramps to high to fast, When I was testing it during the jam the spawn rate would go so high that it spawned an enemy every frame, resulting in low framerate and a giant mass of enemies.
and after it ramps up the gameplay gets kinda samey.
I'll lower enemy bullet speeds in the next update tonight.
I've been thinking of adding a bit of a safety net like an active powerup, I'm not too sure how to go about adding it though.
morrilet
26. Apr 2018 · 00:58 UTC
Wow, this was shockingly fun. It's hard as hell, but the concept was really interesting. Being discovered for the first time put a smile on my face, and the second time I was discovered I was almost instantly killed. This was a really cool mashup, and I like how you tied the story in to the mechanics by explaining that that you have terrible weapons. It definitely would've been too easy if you could one-shot your enemies ;) Nice work!
Hilvon
27. Apr 2018 · 22:17 UTC
Well... Sometimes RNG just doesn't love you and throuw a duette of sensor boats with no change to avoid them... But the idea of re-cloacking by picking up a blue dot is interesting... Though it looks like those dots only drop from enemies, and if if a ship saw you previously it will continue shooting even if you get cloacked.

Also declacking on being hit by enemy debris is... making the strategy of moving in the upper half of screen more viable than moving on the bottom.
mrwillowb
28. Apr 2018 · 01:06 UTC
So much fun had a blast
🎤 Justintime4u2bu
28. Apr 2018 · 01:27 UTC
glad to hear @mrwillowb! :)
EddyNeave
28. Apr 2018 · 19:42 UTC
Hmm. Couldn't shoot at all, i went a while without being detected then i got detected (due to no way to get through) the sound effects scared the hell outa me. (didn't realise the game had sound effects till then) and the score stayed on 0 the whole way through so i didn't know what i was supposed to be doing.

Good concept though and use of the theme, would of liked to of been able to play it.
🎤 Justintime4u2bu
28. Apr 2018 · 20:56 UTC
@EddyNeave yeah sorry the control description in the compo version is quite misleading, you have to hold left mouse button to shoot (shooting ships down gives you a score, after all it is a shootemup) I tried to put it up as much as possible in the itch and LD descriptions that you have to hold down LMB but i guess that's not enough. Unfortunately it is a LD compo game so I'm hesitant to update the compo version on itch at all.

I changed the LD description snapshot to a snapshot from the updated version, so hopefully that will quell a bit of future confusion.

thanks for playing though!
EddyNeave
28. Apr 2018 · 21:31 UTC
@Justintime4u2bu Thanks for the clarification, i understand the hesitation i would be the same maybe on the bottom of your LD page you should add in heading (using 2 Hashtags before the text something along the lines of

""#IMPORTANT INFORMATION: Hold LMB to shoot, pressing does not work."

I would place it directly above the download link (the very bottom of the description) May look tacky but if it helps people understand then it should be good.
🎤 Justintime4u2bu
28. Apr 2018 · 21:34 UTC
@EddyNeave Will do! thanks for the input!
DeepTerror
29. Apr 2018 · 18:32 UTC
Nice concept. Needs some tweaking but all-in-all it's great realization - good work !
tifu
29. Apr 2018 · 21:54 UTC
16,500 high score =D

Others have already pointed out the biggest problem being that if you get spotted, unless you already have a blue orb spawned on screen, you're basically insta-killed at that point unless it is by one of the first enemies before things get hectic. Not sure what would be a solution though, re-activating after a few seconds probably? One re-activation when you reach 50% health so you basically get at least two chances?
🎤 Justintime4u2bu
30. Apr 2018 · 02:17 UTC
@DeepTerror Glad you liked it!

@tifu yeah I've been trying to decide what the best way to do it would be, right now its kinda like those aggravating stealth missions in AAA games where if you get seen you insta-fail.

Thanks for playing! :D
lautregars
01. May 2018 · 20:20 UTC
12 500 highscore. Neat little game, maybe shortening the scope to add more feedback and balancing coulda have made it better tho, but it's a Compo game, and gosh hard it is. Good job overall !
CG_Fred
05. May 2018 · 21:15 UTC
Nice effort, took me a while to figure out that you needed to hold down the mouse button to fire. Not sure what generes you were mixing. The game became repetitive quite fast. Keep working on your games mate!
🎤 Justintime4u2bu
07. May 2018 · 15:13 UTC
@CG_Fred thanks for playing the genres I mashed together were stealth/shootemup, yeah, it does become quite repetitive, I'm hoping to eventually fix that with updates though!