Escape to the Stars by justinooncx
=============================================================================
HTML5: https://justinooncx.itch.io/escape-to-the-stars
Source: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B63CdohiSSN1UmFTc3IzVHJ1TXc
=============================================================================
=============================================================================
When you live on such a small planet, you'd want to leave to see what the universe has to offer. Repair your spacecraft and reach the stars!
=============================================================================
How to Play:
Movement Left and right arrow keys Tap on the bottom left and bottom right of the screen
Attack Up or down arrow keys Tap on the player
- Shooting takes up energy, but recharges slowly
- Kill enemies to pick up their loot!
- Items that you obtained can be used
- Slime cores heal 1 HP
- Lightning gems recover up to 3 energy
- Spore dust turns you invulnerable for 3 seconds
- Talk to NPCs and give them materials to craft better items!
- Red potions heal you to 7/5 health
- Batteries boost your energy to 10/3
- Blue potions turn you into a speedy ghost for 10 seconds
- Deposit your items at the ship to repair it and progress through the game!
=============================================================================
This game was made as an entry for Ludum Dare 38. The game was completed on time, but in a rather un-fun state. Updates soon to follow for polishing!
This game is mobile friendly!
Programs used: - Game Maker Studio - GraphicsGale - bfxr.net - GXSCC - Audacity - www.fakemusicgenerator.com
=============================================================================
Changelog:
Update 1
- Enemy animations updated to properly reflect which way they're facing
- Enemies given new AI
- Slimes now jump periodically
- Mush now dig underground and can be safely walked over.
- Robots now randomly patrol and change directions. Amazing.
- Added item functionality for the base materials (Slime cores, lightning gems, spore dust)
- Crafted items buffed
- Red potions heal you fully instead of only giving 1 HP
- Batteries now give 20 energy instead of refilling your energy to 10
- Blue potions also make you invulnerable in addition to making you fast
- Fixed timer not working
- You can now talk to NPCs while in your inventory menu
- NPCs now only require 3 materials instead of 5
- The ship now takes only what it needs, not clearing your inventory.
- The ship now only requires 10 of each material for the first phase, and 3 of each crafted item in the second phase.
- Map is now randomly generated
- Added missing sound effects
Update 2
- Enemy AI slightly altered
- Slimes jump at constant, shorter intervals
- Robots now move in one direction, and can go into a defensive mode. Bullets don't damage it, but you can walk through it. Will defend itself when shot.
- Max energy lowered to 3, but recharge rate increased
- Spore dust now makes you invulnerable for 3 seconds
- Crafted items changed
- Red potions heal you up to 7 HP
- Blue potions restores your energy to 10
- Enemy spawning rate increased
- Enemies will now spawn in a way to avoid hitting the player on spawn
- Enemy and player hitboxes lowered to make it easier to avoid getting hit
- Bullet is now faster
- NPCs now take enough materials from your inventory at one go to make a full item, if possible.
- Small graphical fixes
Update 3
- Added splash screen, starting menu, proper lose and win feedback, and a help screen
- Minor graphical fixes, like slimes jumping in front of the UI
=============================================================================
Ratings
| Overall | 203th | 3.476⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 334th | 3⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 301th | 3.048⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 306th | 3.286⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 64th | 4.136⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 85th | 3.6⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 316th | 2.333⭐ | 17🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 287th | 3.053⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 4🗳️ | 3🗨️ |
I completed the game in 837 seconds.
Made it to the second phase after several tries and wasn't really patient enough to try again after failing there. My biggest issue was the controls. Didn't quite work with a laptop with no actual mouse. Even having WASD as an alternative would help a lot being right handed and needing to play with touchpad. Switching the O and X button positions would have been better since you mainly just wanna dump your inventory to ship/npc to make some room and doing that now under constant pressure from enemies is hard enough. Maybe even pausing the action when chatting with npc or fiddling with the inventory considering all the inventory management that is needed.
Then the enemies. Slimes were no big deal. Dunno if the shrooms were on a timer or popped up randomly, either way could have used bit of a warning animation before popping up. Bots were a bit too tanky compared to other enemies. Every time had like only few of those items when others were already capped.
Will probably try again when on a computer with actual mouse and keyboard.
Just a bit frustrating that you can get hit when talking to NPCs.
From a gameplay perspective, I would have preferred to trade permanent skills, as the items felt pretty useless after I figured out that the raw materials do their job well enough, especially heal. I think having the traders upgrade speed, vitality and max shot count would have worked much in your favor. Grinding the traded items felt a bit like a grind in the end.
I didn't like the mixed mouse/keyboard controls. I guess this is primarily a mobile game, but still, keyboard only would probably have worked better, especially for a retro game. Navigating the menu would have been more relaxed if you paused the game.
Overall a beautiful game with a few gameplay flaws.
**Edit:** I'm sorry, but I have to take back my votes. You are not allowed to make significant changes to your game after the deadline and it looks like you changed quite a lot. Since you didn't mark your game as post-compo, I cannot tell which state the game was in when the Compo ended, so I cannot properly vote for you. Next time you want to make changes, please upload two versions of the game and mark them accordingly.
The gameplay did feel a bit clunky at times, it did not feel nice playing the game with mouse and keyboard, I died quite a few times because of the text box clicking while I was surrounded. Also I did get surrounded really early in the game, it felt a bit unbalanced.
I did love the characters and the sort of questlike feel, Id love to see where this game ends up!
You did edit the game quite a lot though, but I will vote anyways because of the amount of effort put into it. Please make a link to the older game though for fair reviews and votes!
Overall though I think you did a really good job!