Tunnel Bug by gamepopper

Travel through the tunnels before the bug's health reaches zero. Health will go down quicker each time the bug touches the walls but will go up when the bug collect orbs. Between each tunnel, the player can buy upgrades that can make the future tunnels easier temporarily at the cost of health, so spend wisely.
Only three buttons are needed:

(Pressing F goes to Fullscreen if you don't want to play in a window)
Built with Vigilante (C++ and SFML), with Piskell + Photoshop for Sprites and LMMS + ChipTone for the Audio.
| Source Code | https://github.com/gamepopper/Tunnel-Bug |
| Windows | https://gamepopper.itch.io/tunnel-bug |
| Linux | https://gamepopper.itch.io/tunnel-bug |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/tunnel-bug |
Ratings
| Given | 29🗳️ | 39🗨️ |
It does have some bugs though like how the timer starts at 18:00:00 and you can fly out of the world.
My favorite part is the excellent graphics effects, and the sound and music also really add to the atmosphere. There is a really a cohesive polished look and feel that's great. But the feel of curving around a tunnel just barely not touching is also pretty great.
In the beginning I thought of myself more like a car drifting on a track, and that did not go well. I died pretty quickly when I was jetting forward. I later started to think more like a spaceship that wants to make occasional quick puffs of the jets to adjust momentum, and that's when I started doing a lot better.
I thought I could cheap the game out by reverse-puffing myself down to a crazy slow crawl, and that does sort of work but you have a nice feature in the slow drain of my health that prevents too much stalling, nice touch.
If I could change one thing it would be to make sure the player isn't already crashing into the wall right at the start of the level. The better I got at the game, the more this became my main way of losing health. Testing a bit more, I think the main issue is that the player is always facing and moving straight to the right, whereas the tunnel doesn't necessarily start that way. Just aligning the player with the tunnel would probably solve it, or always starting the tunnel with a short run of straight-right. I only need a safe moment to get my bearings.
Really interesting entry, nice work!
Would have liked the game to be switched up from time to time. The gameplay gets a bit stale after a while. I also don't quite agree with the design of the power up room. If the players has to read text and also make a choice fast, the player will miss stuff.
Instead I think it would have been better with simple power ups that are self explanatory within it's graphics. Like a rocket for speed or whatever. And then the player can have a constant speed within the power-up-room to the right and also able to control the ship a bit. That way you have some challenge but at the same time stuff is clear without needing text.
I get an error that reads 'The Compressed folder is invalid"
I have only two comments: Most of the times after the "shop" I appear next to the wall and can't avoid hitting it. Shops sometimes have multiple of the same items (making them useless).
These are more of an improvements than criticism :)
I really enjoyed this game.
The music got a bit irritating after a while because of too hard/sharp beats, but if it was a bit softer, it'd be perfect.
Well done.
art looks great too!
Once the stream is finished you can find the video here: https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos
If you want to know when it was played you can find your game in the queue here: https://tinyurl.com/y5rdokvp
Gameplay is also fun, and controls worked well, but sometimes inertia was a bit annoying, so the best strategy is to go as slowly as possible. Also, some levels start on a turn with hardly any time to react, which felt unfair.
Apart from that, this is one of the best entries (compo and jam) I've played so far. Congrats!