It is easy to understand and the highscores give a nice incentive to keep replaying. Unfortunately there's only a top 3 though.

A pretty fun game if you ask me but I was able to skip the whole battle just by going on the rooftops. Also I don't really see this game fitting the theme but it was fun nonetheless

@manio Thanks! In fact it shows all the scores, but only three people have played it through so far :sweat_smile:

(Tell me if your score did not post! If that is the case then it's a bug and we'll fix it)

@giordas There are different tactics to go about, nice that you found one with minimum violence :)

About the theme: After first level we go deeper into the facility...

And after the second level, still deeper into... Well, I'm not going to spoil it for everyone! :wink:

This is very fun to play. Props to the team!!!

Great game and fun to play, its fun to try and beat the highscores too!

It's a nice game but I think you die too fast. The enemies (especially the planes) can deplete your health very quickly

@gargantus It was planned to make difficulty levels but in the end it didn't make it in time, so now there is only current difficulty that could be described as 'hard'.

It's just that there would have to be separate high scores for separate difficulty modes, or alternatively you wouldn't get your score to the list on easy mode.

We're making an advanced edition later though. I can tag you when it's done.

Pretty fun game.

Nice Game!

Simple art but its work, good job

Fun shooter and the first game i've ran into with a high score board. Great idea to encourage replayability

Really cute game! I especially like the FINLANDO opening intro aahhaha gave me a chuckle! Overall just a decently executed experience, thank you for it :)

Great game, planes did annoy me though. I cant take em down and kind of ruins my runs. Good job!

@nacholr Planes may have been a bit badly balanced according to the feedback. They should maybe have less health and damage, as their planned function was more of making the feeling of pressure, than actually causing players to die.

On my own runs I easily took the plains down or eveaded them though, but I've coded the game and played it at least a hundred times, so I'm not validated to do balance testing anymore :sweat_smile:

Very fun game!.

The wasps were especially painful !
Nice credits though ;)

@kulfy I've always had kind of mutual hate-hate relationship with wasps irl, so I coded them to be similar pain in the... game :laughing:

Nice to see that you completed the game!

We made some effort for the credits screen and had even a local rap group Taival to make a song "Shrinking" for it during the weekend. I was first afraid, our game was too hard and no one would get so far to see it... looking at the scoreboards, at least couple of people (in addition to our team members) made it :slight_smile:

This was a lot of silly fun, I like it. The graphics were simple but worked really well for how it played. Nice work!

loved the voice acting

I was pretty surprised by the amount of content in this game.
The change in perspective with each level is well executed and funny, each level felt unique and really different than the one before
.

The game is pretty tough and I would have liked to have checkpoints at each level.

Audio is nice, all the voice over are really funny and it gives great vibes. (please tell me you made the rap song at the credits? it was so good!)

Gameplay works well too, It took me some times to understand the last weapon but once I got it it was very pleasing to use. I would also liked being able to shoot at bigger angle range.
I had a lot of troubles with the wasp, they may need clearer feedback when they are hit?


I couldn't always understand what was a platform and what was just the background. The game became much more interesting when I realized I could jump on roof and use them as cover, I feel like this could be more explicit.


I would have liked being able to eliminate multiple enemies with the grenade launcher (but maybe it would have been to OP?).

Overall it's a very nice game, I had fun tryharding and completing it! Thank you and well done to the whole team!

This is fun! I actually quite like the music.

"Heeeell Yeeah!" I enjoyed playing the game. I was very satisfied when I first shot down the planes XD And 5/5 for the voice acting :D

Really fun game!!!
The "sound effects" Killed me!!! LOL
The controls feel a bit clunki, specially when you fall inside the cups, but a really fun game!!!
Great work!!!

Special mention for the voice acting ! The jump feels a little bit weird but very cool by the way. Well done !

@tombuston Thanks for the thorough review!

Nice that you noticed the difference of atmosphere and feel on different levels. We really put some thought to it graphics-wise and with music too. We had three different artists and each of them had single level to make all the graphics for.

The credits song was made by us, we had a local rap group Taival in our team and they specifically made an english song for this game. You can find more of their music in spotify (although they have so far published only songs in finnish). Also, nice to hear you enjoyed voice acting. We wanted to try it for the first time and it became unintentionally comical :laughing:

We made the decision to limit the angle the head (and so the guns) can rotate as full 360 rotation looked retarded, is unrealistic and also the limitation causes you to strategise your movements more e.g. where you should position yourself if you wanted to take out the aeroplanes.

About the weapons, the laser probably would need more pointers that it was rechargeable. The rockets/grenades actually can take out multiple enemies, but the range of explosion is quite small.

We actually ran a bit out of time and that's why some platforms in level 2 were left basically invisible. We also had planned more sfx, more enemies with better signaling for damage and aggro, proper bossfights (now there are only images of bosses shooting missiles as placeholder), different gamemodes where speedrun mode you would have to go through the whole thing in one sitting and other modes you could restart each level.

I'm doing an enhanced edition at the moment where I'll include all those things. The graphics and sounds and plans all existed already. We just didn't have time to include them to jam version.

@6smith @firas-mourad @lysenti

Nice that you noticed and enjoyed voice overs! This was the first time any of us did that kind of thing and even if (and probably much because of) they came out so amateurish, we had loads of fun and giggles doing them!

I'm actually proud that we managed to do a better and more complete story for this game than anything I've ever made :sunglasses:

Checkpoints, please. I just can't handle the bees. They seem to be next to invulnerable and deal too much damage. I figure hiding in cups should help, but there must be something else I haven't figured out. If the game has any difficulty, it would be a good idea to either implement checkpoints or give multiple lives at least. I tried about 5-6 times, but being set back to level 1 is just too cruel, most people on LD can't give that much time to a game.

All in all it is enjoyable, I wish I could see more of it. Simplistic graphics are charismatic and give it nice mood, reminds me of when I was a kid and didn't know how to program but wanted to make games, I'd draw static images of levels and sprites that would look something like that.

Fun game! I couldn't figure what the laser was until I read the instructions but everything else was really intuitive. I also didn't realize I had limited ammo at first since that text was super small.

Those are minor complaints though and overall this is a solid entry!

@kr4ft3r Thanks for the review! A tip for the wasp level (and overall every level): you don't have to actually kill everything.

We accidentally put too much health for them and also too many wasps, and didn't have time to fix that balance. You can aggro the wasps with machinegun, and evade the attack and move on... Or stun them with the rockets for a while. Or at a slim space fully charge the laser and release, killing it at once. I hope this helps.

Hey, hiding in the cups sounds like a great mechanic to implement to the game! It sounds intuitive and we could add it to advanced version of the game. Thanks for that idea!

...and yes, we are doing an advanced edition where we put all the missing content that we had no time to put in the game. Bossfights and checkpoints and all :slight_smile:

Really nice entry, I very much enjoyed the inclusion of background music and sound effects. My only gripe with tose is that the death ray didn't really sound that powerful :D But the simple sounds made me enjoy the game much more and I actually had fun with this and finished it :)

I liked the different types of enemies in the first level and only wish, there were at least 3 different enemies in every one of the levels, I can only assume, you didn't have time to implement them :) what pleasantly surprised me, was that the enemies in every level felt unique in their attack patterns which made up for the lack of variety :)

I think the game was a little bit on the difficult side. I really wish there were more defensive/movement options to help deal with enemy bullets.

A funny game, reminiscent of one of the very old games and it's great.

Its amazing how much content you guys manage to put in this game, music and SFX are nice but the graphics overall failed a bit, but that doesn't matter that much since this is a jam and the focus is the gameplay. So overall GOOD job!

Nice game, with good varity with different levels and "interesting" sound :) Too bad you ran out of time, you really have something good going.

Really fun and cool game. Nice sounds and cool gameplay. Don't understand where it fits on theme, but is a nice game indeed. Great work!

like the vibe, but I went through the second and third level only by killing the bosses. But the mechanics were actually pretty solid

@substain Nice! I see there is a large variety of player skill, as many people have said the game is too hard and some people have speedrunned mad times that even I cannot beat :sweat_smile:

We didn't have time to implement the 'real' bosses so I just put same placeholder boss with the one of the planned boss image, to every level.

Advanced edition is well on the way and it will have different modes for casual players, hardcore players and speedrunners, larger variety of enemies and actual bossfights :sunglasses:

Nice game!

The controls are nice and simple enough if you know games like that.
The movement feels good and shooting is ok on most weapon (I had a bit of trouble understanding missiles at first).
The diversity (of weapons, enemies, graphics, movement) is super great, each level is short enough to keep its fun all the way and the simple voiced story keep it together nicely.
I loved the first level, I felt the second and third one were not as good, maybe a bit rushed due to time constraints?

Good job all the way and thanks for the game!

@doot Thanks for the great review!

Nice that you took time to play the game all the way through.

You are exactly right about other levels and time limit. We were too ambitious and had to cut lots of content, mostly enemies and bosses. When the time was running out, we decided to prioritize the story elements, basic game mechanics and at least make one complete level (apart from the boss).

However, advanced version is on the way! It will include (among other things): Gamemodes, more variety in enemies and proper bossfights.

To this music, I felt my roboquack was dancing! And I danced along, singing some impossible tunes. Maybe if this game was more crush-kill-destroy, with unlimited ammo or something, it would be much cooler to shoot the night through)). Didn't get the shrinking, but shall try later. Thanks for the fun!

@ardorugus I'm glad you loved the music, our composer is - in my opinion - a musical genius and I'm sad that the first level came out too difficult that many people won't be able to hear rest of his soundtrack.

You'll get to the shrinking part when you get through the first level. Also you'll get more of the story and the whole different atmosphere in every level.

About the ammo, we were on the fence whether to make the first level a pure power fantasy and we even ordered the music with that in mind. However, when we made the speedrun scoreboard, we decided it has to be a challenge. We planned an easier mode in which you wouldn't get scored, but it was left out when time was running out (as was half of the enemies and planned bossfights)

The good news is, we're making an advanced version with several gamemodes and all the missing features. I've already coded all but one enemy and will soon move to other features.

I'll tag you when the advanced edition is available, but I also recommend giving this version a playthrough (or at least another chance) :)

This was a super fun little game. The story was easy enough to understand and pick-up-and-play, and then the variety of levels plus the shrink ray idea was just a really fun idea. I especially enjoyed the voice-over cutscenes with the rest of the game.

I do think that the invincibility of all the enemies in the second and third levels is a little weird. It makes the shooting mechanics pretty much meaningless in those two levels, which seems like a shame as it's fun to run through and shoot everything.

It was fun to go back through and try speedrunning the game. I think the leaderboard is a pretty cool mechanic for a Ludum Dare game.

I think the graphics are on some level a bit inconsistent in terms of style, etc, but I am quite fond of them. I enjoyed the music a lot.

Overall this game is I think the most fun game I've played so far. Everything else sort of just complements the basic fun gameplay of running around and shooting stuff inside the framing of a silly story.

@honey-pony Thanks for the complete review! Awesome that you enjoyed our game so much and appreciated different aspects of it :blush:

Wasps and whitecells aren't actually invincible, they just have loads of HP. They still die from a single zap of fully charged laser, or a couple of missiles... Well the whitecells in the last level are mostly not actually meant to be killed, but rather avoided or baited away.

The big variance in graphics styles is because we had three artists and each one did graphics for their own level. It worked well (along with the music) to achieve totally different mood for each level - for the cost of consistency :sweat_smile:

We're actually making advanced edition - as I speak - where enemies are better balanced, levels have greater variety of enemies & proper bosses and also separate gamemodes for casual players, hardcore players and speedrunners.

Pleasant dynamics! Nice voce acting. Speedrun mode and highscores make the game more catchy.

Some remarks:
1. Game lags pretty frequently. 4K display here.
2. Enemies on 2nd and 3rd levels feels invincible but much easier than on 1st level.

Nice entry!

@retrome Great that you enjoyed our game! I see you also made a speedrun time like a pro :sunglasses:


1. Thank you for telling. We haven't got 4K displays and haven't got any lag at all... Except on a laptop when it was connected to a different resolution display and "clone screen" setting. I don't know if I can fix that problem when can't test it :frowning2: ...but I'll ask around in Clickteam Fusion discord if someone has had similar problems.

2. Enemies were left unbalanced as time ran out, but I've already rebalanced them and added more types for the upcoming advanced edition :slight_smile:

Thanks for the praise! :blush:

@retrome @honey-pony @ardorugus @doot @substain @eeperdeheap @kr4ft3r @firas-mourad @craplex @gargantus @tyler-roberts @keppersnapper @mortalslayer24

Advanced edition BETA available for [download](https://www.blackenter.com/files/shrinkBETA.zip)! It's only missing the final boss.


**Advanced BETA Features:**
- Game Modes
- Story mode with checkpoints
- Arcade mode for single run
- Speedrun mode skips cutscenes


- Difficulty modes
* Casual - Shoot the night away!
* Challenging - The original mode... now a bit more balanced
* Hardcore - When you want it the hard way >:)


- Bugfixes: no more getting stuck in walls and cups


- [Different scoreboards for different difficulties](https://www.blackenter.com/ludumdare) (not for casual or story though)


- Balancing:
- No more immortal wasps
- planes do less damage and do lots of collateral damage when falling
- Lot of other balancing


- New Enemies: Yes! And lots of them with all new mechanics!


- **Actual bosses!**
- Bosses 1 and 2 complete
- Have different patterns
- Are no push-overs this time
- Will make you cry on hardcore mode... and some of you on challenge mode
- Boss 3 still under construction.


- Sounds
- Loads of new audio implemented
- Old audio balanced to prevent earr-ape


**Full advanced version coming soon with:**
- Even more audio
- Some new graphics to better link the story
- Final boss
- Scoreboard names without _BETA -prefix
- Easter Eggs


Comments about the BETA are very much appreciated :slight_smile: