LudumData

Shoobeat - Control a spaceship using a programmable loop of actions by MTabasco

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made by MTabasco for Ludum Dare 47 (JAM)

Shoobeat is a shoot'em up in which actions are performed in a programmable loop. In each level, there is a goal score that you must reach in order to beat it. Try to optimize the spaceship's actions to get the highest score!

ezgif.com-gif-maker (1).gif

How To Play:

First, choose the actions that the spaceship will perform by clicking on either an action (the panel at the bottom of the screen) or an action slot (the screen in the middle), and then a slot or an action, respectively.

When you are ready to go, click the big play button and watch how the spaceship goes through each of the actions in an infinite loop.

You will probably be killed in a few iterations, but don't worry! Try a different action-loop and see if you can improve your score until you reach the goal of the level.

Game made by Mario Tabasco Vargas and Laura González Pascual.

Youtube https://mariotabasco.itch.io/shoobeat
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/shoobeat-control-a-spaceship-using-a-programmable-loop-of-actions

Ratings

Overall 615th 3.625⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Fun 726th 3.4⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 272th 3.825⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 323th 4.025⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 516th 3.875⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Audio 554th 3.45⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Mood 913th 3.278⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 17🗳️ 11🗨️

Feedback

snowinn
06. Oct 2020 · 01:12 UTC
Porting to webgl with unity isn’t too hard so if you do let me know!
Azemut
06. Oct 2020 · 01:56 UTC
The idea is good, but the player should receive some information about where the ships are coming from, so he can prepare for the round. The way it is right now, you have to either guess the position of the ships, or play 10x the same level and take notes. Great graphics and sound design though, loved the sound effects going together with the beats.
nandelind
06. Oct 2020 · 02:18 UTC
This looks amazing, and should be a really fun game. It's telling me "Score: 550" every time regardless of my actual score, but I'm guessing I died rather than passed the level; it's hard to play when that's unclear.
Geist
06. Oct 2020 · 02:38 UTC
this is a bop
🎤 MTabasco
06. Oct 2020 · 10:51 UTC
@snowinn Thanks for the idea! I updated the itch.io page with a webgl version (I hope it isn't against the rules of the jam hehe).
It has a few sound issues, but I will work on that after the jam ends :smiley:
🎤 MTabasco
06. Oct 2020 · 10:55 UTC
@azemut Thank you so much for the interesting feedback, I think you might be right, our initial idea was to make the player enter a try and failure loop until they get the goal score, but I understand that it can be frustrating. I take note of that.
🎤 MTabasco
06. Oct 2020 · 10:58 UTC
@nandelind I think you probably hit the bomb on the first level, which destroys all other ships and earns you enough points to complete the level. "Score" shows your highest score on that level, so it shouldn't change unless you achieve a better score :smile:
I guess that the game fails at explaining clearly the goal and meaning of the actions to the player, that's something we'll try to improve for future projects.
Thank you for your feedback!
🎤 MTabasco
06. Oct 2020 · 11:00 UTC
@geist Thanks, we are glad you liked it!
nandelind
06. Oct 2020 · 16:08 UTC
I tried again and understood the game better. I didn't realize before that I can choose the level with the arrows; I'd wondered why I wasn't going to the next level if I had enough points. Now I tried the other levels, but it appears to take away one of my lives whenever I shoot an enemy ship. Is it supposed to do that? Because of that it looks like bombs are the only way to get enough points before I die after three hits.
paulhocker
08. Oct 2020 · 02:15 UTC
so that was interesting. it was too bad that i could not change anything after each wave or been able to add more steps, but i guess that was the point. i can see there was a lot of polish in the game which was appreciated. nice job on the game.
Ruling Spear
10. Oct 2020 · 13:51 UTC
Love the use of the beat to perform the actions. Would be nice to kind of know what you will face when to kind of plan, but I still had fun.
Guilloteam
11. Oct 2020 · 08:16 UTC
Hey! Really good take on the theme, in fact my team and myself did something with a similar approach but with music! There are some bugs tho, but it's sill really enjoyable! Bravo!
Guilloteam
11. Oct 2020 · 08:16 UTC
Hey! Really good take on the theme, in fact my team and myself did something with a similar approach but with music! There are some bugs tho, but it's sill really enjoyable! Bravo!
Guilloteam
11. Oct 2020 · 08:17 UTC
Hey! Really good take on the theme, in fact my team and myself did something with a similar approach but with music! There are some bugs tho, but it's sill really enjoyable! Bravo!
Balance686
18. Oct 2020 · 23:46 UTC
Great use of the theme! I dig the aesthetic/color choice and the explosions look great. The sound is nice as well. It took a bit for me to beat the first level but I lucked out and nailed the second and third on the first try.

When I tried the WebGL build the action buttons were all on top of each other.

![buttons.png](///raw/9dd/11/z/3a450.png)

They were fine in the standalone but it'd be nice if you could play fullscreen because the window is really tiny in 4K.

Nice job on this I had fun playing!

[edit]
I tried the WebGL build again and I found the buttons are fine if you go fullscreen while in game, but the issue above occurs when going fullscreen during the title screen before the level is loaded.
[/edit]
MiltonNH25
19. Oct 2020 · 03:54 UTC
Good job with the game. The concept was cool and fit the theme well. I also thought it would benefit from having some sort of preview for where the ships will appear and when they will shoot so you can plan rather than guess and check. Overall, well done.
Recher
19. Oct 2020 · 20:54 UTC
I like these kind of "programmation" games.
That would have been even more fun with more instructions : "loop-while", variables, "if-then", etc.

I confirm the bug concerning the buttons and quantity of authorized symbols. It totally confused me because I saw only the quantity of shields, but after some retries I could build a suitable program.

I am not sure, but there may be another bug. The ship does not move exactly the same distance each time the program is on an arrow. After some loops, there was a little offset to the left, and I missed an enemy ship which I hit the previous times.

Really beautiful and "ambiant" graphics. And nice music too.
svntax
20. Oct 2020 · 03:55 UTC
This is a really interesting take on the theme. I think the idea has a lot of potential with more polish. The trial-and-error gameplay feels a bit too time consuming, but if there was a way to speed up a playthrough, I think that would help a lot.