Phantom Cell by Suui

[raw]
made by Suui for LD34 (JAM)
Be ready! There are some invisible enemies lying around!

Thanks to your radar, you are able to see them for a second, every 3 seconds. Check it out, because they are moving back and forth, and sometimes stop.

The blue cells allow you to grow. For every 3 cells consumed you will grow a little, and thus gain the ability to shoot a projectile for each growth.

Shoot 'em out to gain some extra score points, the blue cells you retrieve also give you some score, and finally your time is added to get the complete score.

Good luck and have fun!

Known bug: Sometimes you kill an enemy but you can't see it dying. If the sound is played, he is certainly dead, it's just that you don't see the visual :)

Ratings

Coolness 39% 1766
Overall(Jam) 3.79 132
Audio(Jam) 3.63 175
Fun(Jam) 3.44 295
Graphics(Jam) 3.17 656
Innovation(Jam) 3.72 137
Mood(Jam) 3.56 254
Theme(Jam) 3.61 573

Feedback

JimmothySanchez
14. Dec 2015 路 23:56 UTC
That was pretty clever. The invisible sharks get pretty hard.
djfariel
15. Dec 2015 路 01:02 UTC
The game was really well presented and I really enjoyed the soundtrack. That being said, the inability to know where enemies were going to be while at the same time being in basically constant motion made progression rather difficult. Also, only have 1 projectile at a time at a cost of 3 powerups made it difficult to get a useful shot off. Mostly its the fact that your enemy is invisible most of the time that got me killed. Still, a great submission. Thanks for posting!
gkxd
15. Dec 2015 路 01:57 UTC
The invisible enemies are a bit difficult to get used to.

Also, it seems that there are safe spots in the corners of the screen where you can get high scores without doing anything.
馃帳 Suui
15. Dec 2015 路 02:02 UTC
Thanks for the feedback. Seems that it may be a bit too difficult.

Yes, the corners are pretty safe and easy high scores, we may limit the player movement to the center to solve it someday as we haven't got more time.

Just go all in and keep taking blue cells and killing enemies :P
NidzaKornjaca
15. Dec 2015 路 13:07 UTC
The radar mechanic is pretty cool. The sounds is good too. My only complaint is that maneuverability of the cell is pretty low.
csanyk
17. Dec 2015 路 05:05 UTC
I kept hitting A and D, but I couldn't tell if or how I was moving. So, couldn't really play it.
HuvaaKoodia
17. Dec 2015 路 16:52 UTC
The gameplay is good fast paced fun.
The music is also great. I'd like to know the artist and the song.

In other games I've seen with a similar radar mechanic the camera and the radar follow the player character. This combined with a level that wraps around the edges gets rid of the corner problem.
scorched
19. Dec 2015 路 23:00 UTC
Interesting idea with invisibility! Wish there were more bullets for one blue cell, because with the invisible enemy it's easy to miss.