Choose Them up by Larnin

What it’s about:
Choose Them Up is a small Shoot 'em up where you need to reach the highest stage and deafeat the boss.
To improve your spaceship, you can loot upgrades on enemies, but be careful, if your inventory is full, to equipe one, you need to destroy two already equiped.
In normal mode, you gain one more slot for upgrade per stage. Not in hardcore.
How to play:
The jam version only work with controler - Left stick or zqd/wasd/arrows to move and navigate on menus - Right stick or mouse to fire - A and B or enter and escape to validate and cancel options
Who has made it:
- Nicolas Laurent - Code / Graphism
- Antoine “Taldius” Semblat - Title / Gifs
- Aurélien Montero - Sounds / Music
Post jam and webgl changelog
- Better feedback when the player is hit
- Fix bug on victory menu
- Balancing
- Final boss come back every 10 stages
- Mouse and keyboard support
| Windows | https://larnin.itch.io/choose-them-up |
| Source code | https://github.com/larnin/LD42 |
| HTML5 (web) | https://larnin.itch.io/choose-them-up |
| Windows | https://larnin.itch.io/choose-them-up |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/choose-them-up |
Ratings
| Overall | 512th | 3.457⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 512th | 3.309⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1039th | 2.686⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 953th | 3⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 295th | 3.889⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 201th | 3.6⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 878th | 1.864⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 567th | 3.161⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 34🗳️ | 21🗨️ |
It lacks a little dynamism I think, can be added a little screen shake, and the ability to play the keyboard mouse!
BUT it crashed my computer twice! And by crashed I mean straight-up turned it off without the slightest warning! Once just when I pressed play, once while loading level 3. I feel like this is a good game and I would want to play it a bit more but it seems there is a big problem between my computer and it.
It's an unity game, without weird tricks.
It don't use a lot CPU and GPU power (around 5% CPU on my potato computer).
What are your spec and do you have installed something that can be not compatible with the game ?
That's realy weird.
@iokin I'm going to make a webgl build before the end of the week with some small fixs. Come back when it's done :)
Well, I had what it took to test. However, the only advice I could give, would be to increase your chances of testing by offering the keyboard and even by proposing multiplatform (windows, linux) see web if possible. Although I know that some libs are not compatible.
Nice work anyway !!
@theludovyc @andrey-ugolnik It's possible for you to play it now :)
@iokin I think webgl works on linux
I find a little annoying the acceleration of the ship,but maybe it's only me.
- The music fit well and the sound effects were pretty good overall.
- The WASD controls felt a little strange since the ship can go directions it isn't pointing, but I kind of liked it as I played it more.
- The pacing of the game may be a little too slow. Even if you ramp a game up by the 5 minute mark, you may have lost most of your audience who was looking to get hooked in the first 30-60 seconds.
- I would have felt better playing this if I could simply point and click at the enemies while I maneuvered. Was the position locking of the reticle intentionally done to make the aiming harder?
Great job on the game!
The glowey arcade aesthetic is real cool, and the techno music and laser sounds fit right in.
Overall, I'm really impressed by how polished this game is. The gameplay is solid, and aesthetic sets it apart. Great job!
I think the game is solid but I have some gripes with it. I think that is progress too slowly. Low fire rate and low projectile speed makes it kinda boring in the beginning but picks up at later stages. I think just a bump in those areas would make the earlier stages much more fun. Another small thing is the fire spread, its get kinda annoying when the bullets don't really goes where you want them to.
It is really fun after a while, it just takes too much time to get there before it gets fun.
Yeah, the speed of the ship and his bullet is a little low at the beginning. I wanted to have a real progression between the start, and when you encounter the boss. Maybe i have pushed a little too much.
@andy-garcia : For the controles you have a ship, it's normal that you can't turn instantaly. It work a little like an hovercraft :)
@sh1rogane and others before : For the fire spread of the first weapon, it's a little complexe. If you have more than one weapon of the same type, you have a synergy that increase the power of this type.
For the first weapon, the spread grow a little, but the global fire rate of this weapon is increased too.
For the triple shoot, each bullet are duplicated if you have 2, 3 of this type.
I must have used this synergy a little more (between different weapon type, or upgrade), but the game were going to be too complexe for a jam game .... and the balancing an horror movie.
There are a couple of areas that could be better balanced as well - the ships that dash at you are just crazy and unfair sometimes - you start the level and the next moment you're attacked. This is also tied into the screen feeling a little too zoomed in, as I was often hit by these offscreen ships that dashed right into me. The vertical part of the screen is generally smaller, so there's less ability to dodge whatever's incoming from the top and bottom of the screen.
Also at the end my ship was moving crazy fast and it was super sensitive to any movement. The shot effective distances travel very far and I was often shooting enemies offscreen guided by the reticle which is probably not the type of gameplay you want to encourage. The powerups did make it feel really fun but went a little too overpowered.
Another thing as mentioned above, the start shooting speed is really slow although it picks up from there, would feel much more arcadey and actionlike if that could be faster from the get go.
Finally, a minor gripe would be that enemy shots are a little hard to distinguish from the multicolored shots strewn about.
Otherwise, I had great fun after understanding it better, loved the arcadey graphics and particle effects, nice soundtrack and especially loved that you worked in a boss fight at the end!