gunstable by torcado

[raw]
made by torcado for Ludum Dare 49 (COMPO)

a computer virus is taking over everything, even your own weapon! every time you attack, it changes into something else.​

how far can you get with a malfunctioning weapon in a bug-ridden world?

aa3.gif

-- controls --
move - WASD | arrow keys
aim - mouse
shoot - left click

:mouse2:

Ratings

Overall 99th 3.866⭐ 58🧑‍⚖️
Fun 86th 3.83⭐ 58🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 285th 3.304⭐ 58🧑‍⚖️
Theme 264th 3.589⭐ 58🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 74th 4.009⭐ 58🧑‍⚖️
Audio 209th 3.333⭐ 56🧑‍⚖️
Humor 157th 3.153⭐ 51🧑‍⚖️
Mood 201th 3.396⭐ 55🧑‍⚖️
Given 8🗳️ 14🗨️

Feedback

3amsoda
03. Oct 2021 · 23:58 UTC
dope game! it really came together when I got the mega beam, for a lot of the guns your playstyle doesn't change but once the mega beam spawns in you have to scramble to find a good position to line up as many enemies at once its a lot of fun.
LDJam user 127637
04. Oct 2021 · 02:27 UTC
Great entry! A lot of variety on gameplay with cute graphics :paintbrush:
LDJam user 268906
04. Oct 2021 · 08:05 UTC
Very polished and fun to see what weapons you get! I would like a bit more aggresive enemies though!
ZwodahS
04. Oct 2021 · 12:45 UTC
Nice game, a classic bullet hell with a twist.

I didn't understand what I am choosing at the end of every level tho.
LDJam user 243193
04. Oct 2021 · 13:39 UTC
Nice game! almost same unstability as my game except that mine changes shooting pattern instead :).
bklolo
04. Oct 2021 · 14:54 UTC
Fav entry so far. Love the mouse!
HolyBlackCat
04. Oct 2021 · 15:09 UTC
Realy like the graphics, and how the game feels!

A but more difficulty would be nice.

Found a few minor problems: The cheese counter is not incremented on level 1. The cheese is preserved between runs, unsure if intentional. Also, when playing in browser, mouse wheel scrolls the whole page, and I didn't find any other way to scroll the weapon list.
Jonah_SRG
04. Oct 2021 · 16:41 UTC
Really lovely game. I love the wind-up mouse and cheese collectibles, very cute. The switching of the different types of fire is fun, and there's a lot of variety.
🎤 torcado
04. Oct 2021 · 18:53 UTC
@holyblackcat sorry about that! movement keys should now work on the loadout list, and cheese is now collectable on wave 1 :)
Shinyo
04. Oct 2021 · 20:42 UTC
Cute little game ! Too bad there were no ambient music :( but overall the game is cool to play and fun ! Well done !
jefvel
04. Oct 2021 · 21:41 UTC
Wow, very nice game! I liked the variety of guns, the sticky bomb and mega beam are cool. They all feel satisfying to shoot. Well polished too!

Also the loadout removal mechanic is neat, remove weaker weapons is essential once the difficulty increases. What a shootfest it becomes! Only thing I can think of that could be better is increasing the item pickup range a bit, but that's just nitpicking.

Great job!
6smith
04. Oct 2021 · 22:20 UTC
fun little arcade shooter! i really enjoyed this one. the removing weapons mechanic is pretty interesting.
publicidadeba
05. Oct 2021 · 00:21 UTC
Well done! Polish on point and bugless. Unique art and fun game. One thing I would love in this game would be to attach the points to the perks. Like they do in Ziguratt! Well done!!
butterfly
05. Oct 2021 · 01:48 UTC
Fun game! after playing a few rounds for 30 min. it sadly crashed at 1395 cheese.
datadazer
05. Oct 2021 · 01:56 UTC
So much fun! I played this for awhile. I love all of the different weapons, randomness, and the bug enemies. My favorite part of all was collecting all of that Cheeeeese. Nicely done! The only thing I wish was that there was music, but otherwise an outstanding and well polished game!
Earlybard
05. Oct 2021 · 02:02 UTC
I really enjoyed the weapon art and gameplay variety!

I was stuck on the "floor" of the arena for a round or two and could only move left or right - not sure if that was a bug or intentional.
Skyward4d
05. Oct 2021 · 02:18 UTC
Really cool concept and a lot of fun!
The wind-up key on the back of your player is such a nice touch. Looks great.
mike09123
05. Oct 2021 · 02:25 UTC
I like the laser the best! Enemy animations were great and like the chiptune sfx!
🎤 torcado
05. Oct 2021 · 03:04 UTC
@earlybard that happens if the game loses focus (e.g. from right-clicking) when holding a button, it will miss the button release event and will be "held" until you press and release the button again.
saucygames
05. Oct 2021 · 06:38 UTC
pretty sweet
randomphantom
05. Oct 2021 · 07:26 UTC
very well done! lots of fun exploring different gun modes.
LittleW00D
05. Oct 2021 · 09:15 UTC
A really nice polished LD entry. The graphics are cute and the character's controls feel nice. I would've like more variety in enemies and some music.

Perhaps for a future update you could make the world become more glitchy the longer the player is in a wave?
Rafael Garcez
05. Oct 2021 · 13:52 UTC
Cool Game. Nice job!
Ismael Rodriguez
05. Oct 2021 · 14:29 UTC
This is such a cool idea! Great job.

I wish the change/fire rate was a little quicker, especially to start out, because it doesn't feel great pulling the trigger and nothing happening.

I think it also would have been a cool idea if you could just continue even after death and just build up infinitely.

Still a great entry!
PetTurtle
05. Oct 2021 · 17:05 UTC
Really nice game, I like all the enemy and gun variety. I crashed once but other then that it was fun.
LDJam user 237945
05. Oct 2021 · 20:38 UTC
Visuals ware great, good impact effect and screen shake - loved it!
jefvel
05. Oct 2021 · 21:00 UTC
I tried getting a good score, got this:

![CCINuMr.png](///raw/f9d/1/z/4733c.png)

have you tried getting a highscore?
korfi
05. Oct 2021 · 23:25 UTC
I liked the game, liked the aesthetics! The idea of changing weapons every time you use it is great! Kind of feels like playing a rouge like in a way!
🎤 torcado
05. Oct 2021 · 23:28 UTC
@jefvel oh damn! i wanted to add the wave number on the end screen but never got around to it. but that's a pretty crazy number! definitely highest i've seen. i only ever got high numbers from cheating, i'll have to see how far i can get haha
MonkeyFox
06. Oct 2021 · 00:53 UTC
Great controls and good graphics for the enemies and player
Wendel Scardua
06. Oct 2021 · 01:31 UTC
Found your game from someone commenting on mine about both having unstable shooting abilities, and... I really loved yours! Currently my high score is just around 1k points but I'll keep playing it. The only thing I'd nitpick is that it's not clear that the loadout menu navigation is by WASD, since we use the mouse for everything else in the UI (maybe there could be arrow buttons for scrolling, or something).
🎤 torcado
06. Oct 2021 · 04:02 UTC
@wendel-scardua you can navigate the loadout menu with the mouse by scrolling (but it also scrolls the page, so wasd is added as an alternative). arrows would've worked fine, if i had time!
Plutonium Powered
06. Oct 2021 · 06:02 UTC
Fun game. Nice job!
BadPiggy
06. Oct 2021 · 06:07 UTC
The weapon types were cool and having them switch every time you attacked created a nice layer of strategy and improvisation on the fly. The character designs were also cool though I felt that the background was very out of place and was inconsistent visually. The core concept is nice though and the gameplay is fun so it's still a rather nice entry.
aeveis
06. Oct 2021 · 06:55 UTC
pretty fun! I think my highest score was 3640. It was nice to see the different weapon variations and how they could stack. I tended to run to the edges, but that felt pretty risky as I wasn't sure if a bug would come in from there. I think my favorite weapon was the laser, it tended to pierce through everything and get the most enemies. Nice job!
jefvel
06. Oct 2021 · 13:47 UTC
@torcado I managed to find a very cheesy tactic/exploit to get that score, felt like cheating! It seems like the continuous laser deals damage when you move the mouse (I think?), so if you wiggle it around it'll deal crazy amounts of damage, and since it has unlimited range you can just sweep the floor with it
🎤 torcado
06. Oct 2021 · 15:23 UTC
@jefvel haha, you're close! the damage tick timer is per-enemy rather than global, so you can theoretically do constant damage by hitting a different enemy every frame. (also it's not unlimited range, its just a bit longer than the diagonal of the screen) but yeah I don't think there's much to counter that, enemies get faster as the stages progress but I still think that technique could win out
Sheepolution
06. Oct 2021 · 20:17 UTC
Very nice game! The movement and shooting feels good, and the monster are different enough that it doesn't feel stale. I think it's a very clever mechanic where you have to spend money to remove a weapon you don't like. Great job!
jeremyfa
07. Oct 2021 · 12:47 UTC
Cool game!
The idea of having an unstable weapon is great! The game also looks good with a variety of graphics.
If I had to make a suggestion, it would be to show more clearly that the weapon is unstable, like showing "weapon malfunction - changing mode" in the hud when it changes behaviour for example, but overall it's a great compo entry, well done!
Gus Goucher
07. Oct 2021 · 14:50 UTC
A nice little game, finely polished for sure! The progression felt fair (if a little on the harder side but that's to be expected for a jam game), and the weapons were nicely juiced. Great game!
kumber
07. Oct 2021 · 20:59 UTC
Very fun game! The unstability of the weapon is cool, although the first times I didn't understand why it was not firing sometimes - then I could see that the weapon becomes semi-transparent when glitching so I got the hang of it. Nice work!
ZacharyPinkham
07. Oct 2021 · 21:19 UTC
Cool stuff! I like the mechanic and the game controlled well, it's a nice time! I do have to echo some of the other critiques that I think it suffers for not having music--the SFX get the job done, but I would have taken something running in the background over that any day.
Chris Hay
07. Oct 2021 · 23:58 UTC
This was a fun game. I enjoyed the wacky variety of characters and guns. Took me a minute to realize I was collecting cheese, not gold, I think! Definitely a little tricky to manage the changing weapons, but that's the challenge, and it's a neat idea given the theme.
Muros
08. Oct 2021 · 01:43 UTC
I liked the game very much. It's very simple but with an interesting idea. Sounds good, but a bit lacking in music. The mouse is very cute. and overall the graphics and animation are good.
exilegl
08. Oct 2021 · 18:14 UTC
Between the art, sfx and general polish, the game is very cohesive and well built (I especially love the effects from the weapons - the variety of which is great too. And the particles :ok_hand: ).

Here's the best score I got across my tries:

![Screenshot from 2021-10-08.png](///raw/3f2/z/47d95.png)

(side note, showing a high score across all your tries would be cool)
Jezzamon
11. Oct 2021 · 06:30 UTC
Pretty fun! I think I'd love a life system -- maybe you get x amount of attempts for a level, or a running set of lives that you can regain over time.

Only other suggestion was if there was a way to become more overpowered quickly, that'd be fun :P Maybe a bonus mode?
FabDynamic
12. Oct 2021 · 01:15 UTC
This is one of my favorite games of the jam I love the aesthetic and the art and the gameplay and the unstable mechanic is really sharp. This is rad. Nice work!
Swoopie
14. Oct 2021 · 20:10 UTC
Very cool game, as you could see in the itch.io rating I gave you ;) Got a question though, what does 'rarity' mean? Is that an indication of how rare (good quality) the weapon is or is it an indication how often your gun will switch to that weapon?
🎤 torcado
14. Oct 2021 · 20:46 UTC
@swoopie the latter! so if each of your guns has 100% rarity, then each one has an equal chance to appear next. a gun with 50% rarity will show up half as often as any of the other individual guns at 100% rarity.
admittedly it's not a great name, but also it's hard to find a fitting+succinct name for the mechanic
Yorsh
14. Oct 2021 · 21:31 UTC
Very sweet and complete game. The graphics and sounds are quite good !
Swoopie
16. Oct 2021 · 18:42 UTC
@torcado, thanks for the reply! Rarity definitely got me on the wrong foot, in games this usually means 'uniqueness' of a weapon or an artifact. I can imagine "relative frequency" is a bit too long in this case. Perhaps the word 'chance' would be better?