Charge Arena by PurpleAlien

Enter the Arena and survive as long as possible! The more energy you have, the more powerful your spaceship is... but be careful! If you are the most charged player, when the Death Countdown reaches zero, you'll be destroyed!
Action time-trial game by Paco Juan (Twitter: @_thisIsPJ).
Controls: Move: direction keys || Shoot: space / A / RB Gamepad allowed.
| Windows | |
| Windows | https://thisispj.itch.io/charge-arena |
| Source code - Game Maker Studio | https://drive.google.com/open?id=182XbDaGNJKQUyHO3N3p2YRr_6yNuQpHd |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/charge-arena |
Ratings
| Overall | 346th | 3.368⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 230th | 3.5⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 361th | 3.105⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 387th | 3.342⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 16th | 4.333⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 424th | 2.361⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 481th | 2.763⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 15🗳️ | 6🗨️ |
Also it needs a trippy chiptune. You know, to get energized. :)
I especially like the graphics. They look quite good and polished. Too bad there's no sound (but I totally understand).
The game is a bit too chaotic for my taste. I think that's because of the controls: it's a bit uncomfortable to drive, and aim at the same time. Maybe if you could aim with the mouse and move with the keys?
Good luck!
Thank you!
It took me a while to realize that the left-right keys _rotate_ rather than send your buggy that way, once I got that, it became surprisingly fun, despite (or because?) the controls felt incredibly sensitive, especially when it comes to rotation. -- For a while I even thought that the connection to the theme was: 'The more energy you have, to more energetic and thus _difficult to control_ your craft is' :slight_smile:
The graphics are _very_ nice for a Compo-entry. Add some sound and fix the controls a little bit and you'd be very close to a 'full' game release.
But I think the gameplay needs a little tweaking. I found that simply spamming the shoot key whilst not even touching the movement controls was typically sufficient to win.