Super Space Invader by BlackBulletIV
An explosive arcade game combining space invaders, bullet hell, some Vlambeer, and other influences. Plough through 13 waves and choose from 13 ship upgrades along the way.
If there's one thing you do, make sure to jump into sandbox mode. It's a great way to get a taste for what the game offers and/or get to blowing stuff up quickly, especially if you're finding the normal waves too hard. Sandbox mode to puts you straight into the last (infinite) wave with a fully upgraded ship.
There are only two controls (in theory), left and right (or A/D, LMB/RMB). Hold both to confirm your selection of menu item. Tap both to activate and deactivate the ship's shield (available after a couple waves).
Auxiliary controls:
* Q to quit
* P to pause/unpause
* Enter/space to select menu item if holding down left and right is too much trouble
Other notes:
* For theme, I obviously majored on the "two-button controls" theme, but did include ship upgrades to allude to the "growth" theme.
* The .love file requires LÖVE 0.9.2
Let me know what you think, especially if it's too hard or too easy.
If there's one thing you do, make sure to jump into sandbox mode. It's a great way to get a taste for what the game offers and/or get to blowing stuff up quickly, especially if you're finding the normal waves too hard. Sandbox mode to puts you straight into the last (infinite) wave with a fully upgraded ship.
There are only two controls (in theory), left and right (or A/D, LMB/RMB). Hold both to confirm your selection of menu item. Tap both to activate and deactivate the ship's shield (available after a couple waves).
Auxiliary controls:
* Q to quit
* P to pause/unpause
* Enter/space to select menu item if holding down left and right is too much trouble
Other notes:
* For theme, I obviously majored on the "two-button controls" theme, but did include ship upgrades to allude to the "growth" theme.
* The .love file requires LÖVE 0.9.2
Let me know what you think, especially if it's too hard or too easy.
Ratings
| Coolness | 78% | 2 |
| Overall | 3.90 | 74 |
| Audio | 3.87 | 51 |
| Fun | 3.98 | 34 |
| Graphics | 3.80 | 170 |
| Innovation | 2.83 | 661 |
| Mood | 3.76 | 88 |
| Theme | 3.66 | 541 |
Its neither too easy nor too hard..
It has a good linear increase in the pace of the game! :)
Nice game... i like the art,sounds and the gameplay.
Good work!
There were times, though, when it felt too hard or too easy. For example, one time closer to the end I was just standing in the middle of the screen and me regular bullets were taking out everything by themselves.
And there were a few times when I had to retry a wave, but overall difficulty increase is ok.
By the way, it was kinda frustrating to see bullets that are flying right in your face and not being able to dodge them because you are in a corner. I think the gameplay could be improved. Not in a way "there's much to improve. It sucks now", but in a way "Everything always could be improved. There is no perfection"
@josefnpat: Yeah, love.graphics.newParticleSystem sure got a workout.
@PotatoGrader: Yeah, I kinda had to cram the wave scripts at the end, so they're far from perfect. I also know what you're talking about with getting stuck in the corner. Not sure if it needs altering though, as annoying as it can be, since you can escape with your shield. Thank you for the critical analysis, of course.
The ship is too floaty on both velocity increase and decrease, if I'd guess you have to double the acceleration and damping values you're using. Missiles should use a seek steering behavior to move towards their target as it looks cooler. If you're doing the explosions with code there's no reason to not make them more varied in size, this can be done by randomizing the initial velocity of each particle a bit as well as randomizing how fast they disappear. Explosion particles could look cooler if they started out more like lines and morphed into circles, this would give your explosions a more intuitive looks. When multiple enemies are killed at the same time or when a big boss is killed you could use frame stops. The angle at which projectiles come out could be slightly randomized (like say, between -math.pi/64, math.pi/64), especially when you start getting more fire rate and multiple shots upgrades, this would make them look cooler while also. Finally, you could play with the idea of letting the ships horizontal velocity carry a bit into the projectile's horizontal velocity, this could prove to be more interesting too.
Quality meats quantity in one of my favorite entries this LD!
Great job!!!
You cannot dodge yellow ship attacks when they shoot when they are at the bottom of the screen.
I didn't feel like the health upgrade was worth it over the firepower upgrades (well, the boss taught me otherwise :D), since the firepower upgrades always seemed much more useful until that point.
The only thing to do is add -more- stuff. Without being limited to the time limit, you could easily add in eye candy and make a true high-end game that would sell for a few bucks on Steam.
So that's my gushing praise, here's the negatives:
-Could use more fluff and "innovative" weapons/enemies
-Because of that, I opted not to keep on playing (despite it being enjoyable enough as is)
-Audio gets a tad repetitive
so... add more stuff and sell the thing! It's a very nice, fun little game!
@hunttis: Well the strategy to get past the boss is to move suddenly to create small gaps in the bullet stream (since it compensates its angle immediately). I certainly understand that such strategies and that you need defensive upgrades for later down the line are perhaps not as obvious as they should be.
@BlazzGuy: Yeah I would've liked to add more music tracks, but there's only so much I could do. I'll keep your advice in mind if I make a post-compo version; try vary the explosion soundscape a bit too.
Traceback: Enemy.die (line 206) -- Enemy.update (line 109) -- World.update (line 64) -- Game.update (line 37) -- init.update (line 34) -- main.update -- function xpcall
@acotis: Not sure about the choppiness (never heard of that problem before, even on Linux), but the error is generally caused by your system having an outdated version of LOVE installed (likely 0.9.1). Due to functions like that it require 0.9.2.
Music was pretty good, matched the art style and helped the mood. Excellent use of the one-color foreground. Great game!
<Shield Ready> <Shield Broken>
5 seconds later..
<Shield Ready> <Shield Broken>
...
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! CHHHHHCHHCHH! BOOM! PEW PEW!
<Boss white thing comes down>
You Lose...
Yeah, so its a super fun game. Loved the amount of stuff and explosions and such. I liked the difficulty, but after putting about an hour into it, I could only make it to Round 9. I don't know if you wanted people to go further, but I think it gets really hard around there, especially if you hardly invested anything into the health side of things. Very fun though!
Graphics were cool, I liked the particles and the glow everything kinda had, as well as the way it looked like your spaceship was turning as you went left and right. Very cool, but stayed true to the retro theme.
Background music could have been better, but the manly voice <Shield Ready> and bfxr explosions made up for it.
Very fun game!
The only thing I'd recommend is to maybe make the base fire rate/damage a little higher. Once I had a few attack upgrades I stopped noticing it, but early on the slipperiness of the movement was really bothering me.
Thanks for a really fun game!