Abstraction Blaster by antagonist
Competitive co-op bullet hell. The objective is to have a higher score than your teammate at the end of the game. Kill more than your friends and try to survive. "The more players you have, the worst it is." Only supports two players, unfortunately.
Press enter to toggle 2-player, press M to toggle my terrible music, press escape to pause.
Player one controls: Arrow keys, >, and ?.
Player two controls: WASD, F, and G.
Score is increased by damaging and killing enemies. Lives are not limited, but death will hurt your score.
Get close to bullets to form a bomb (a little circle below your ship). When it's ready, use the bomb with >/F to become invincible and launch bullets that can damage the other player. You'll lose the bomb anyway if you take a hit, so use it if you're in a tight spot.
Note: The controls have been changed to fix a game-breaking issue with the web version: player 1 pressing control and player 2 pressing W would trigger a common keyboard shortcut, immediately closing the tab. See the rules, under "Additional Notes"
I added links to my work in progress updated version. Try not to play it if you haven't rated the entry yet, but if you just want to have fun, it's the better version.
| HTML5 (web) | http://lucidagonist.bitballoon.com/ld40b/ |
| Source code and Windows version | https://syre.itch.io/ld40 |
| HTML5 (web) | http://lucidagonist.bitballoon.com/ld40bpc/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/abstraction-blaster |
Ratings
| Overall | 491th | 3.091⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 430th | 3.095⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 528th | 2.75⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 656th | 2.295⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 464th | 2.977⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 365th | 2.833⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 518th | 1.944⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 516th | 2.667⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 28🗳️ | 1🗨️ |
Specifically, it's hard to tell when the bomb is charging up; games with "bullet grinding" mechanics usually use particle effects or something to make it really obvious when you're in range.
I'd suggest doing more to show when enemies are taking damage too (particles, flashing, etc).
The enemy designs are fun, the umbrella that causes rain-bullets made me laugh!
Mini Post-Mortem: I lost a large amount of time on the first day, and then spent another large part of the last day working on a boss fight that I never really finished, and which ended up being unreachable anyway due to a bug. I would have preferred to get the actual game finished 50-75% of the way through, and then spend the rest of the time on menus and options / game balance / particles and sounds and special effects, but, well, that's not how it went. I hope to manage my time better in April.
I added particle effects, a start menu, and a couple bosses (one of which was already created but was inaccessible). Can't remember what else.
I optimized the bullet stuff so it should run faster, but that's offset by the particles which are as inefficient as is possible. If it runs slowly, try setting particles to "low."
It still needs: gamepad support, better default controls, custom control schemes, three-player, sound effects, better music, more balancing, more bug fixes.
And also: netplay, more content.
There are a few things that I would suggest to improve the game:
- Offer higher resolution. In Gamemaker this is a one-liner (unless you want to be able to switch between resolutions, then it's a little more effort, but nothing serious). Full screen would have been nice
- In a bullet hell shmup, visual effects are king. Especially when it comes to registering enemy hits, which is completely missing in your game. Often I didn't realize whether I was damaging an enemy or not.
- I always recommend this presentation about game feel, a lot of the points discussed there would improve the fun factor of your game a lot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkgkIXZ_13Y