Congratulations on Compo! A small and enjoyable game with very clear mechanics.

The enemy hitboxes, however, aren't very big. So hitting them is difficult. But in any case, I enjoyed playing your game and I liked it!

Fun way to collect score! maybe a little better feedback when the enemies are hits by the bullet could go a long way!

Cool game idea! A bit more audio cues and feedback for shooting, hitting and moving closer to targets, and the ability to move in a direction while shooting in another, and I feel like this would be perfect.

Petty fun game! At first the hitbox of the flies confused me. "I'm shooting at them how come they aren't dying?" After figuring that it's a small hitbox I guess it's just a kind of game balancing mechanism.

Nice graphic. Fun gameplay. Fits into the theme well.

Thank you for the feedback so far. To explain the combat: The flies have 5 hit points, and pellets pass through all enemies hitboxes. So that does make it unclear if your attack hit or not. If I had more time, I'd address this first & make this hitbox a little bigger.

I hope this helps new players understand: hold attack to auto-shoot at least 5 pellets per fly.

Pretty enjoyable game both visually and to play
are a few small kinks, like objects spawning out of bounds
other than that, enjoyable

Hi! Nice little game, I like the idea and the aesthetics.
The main issue is the lack of feedback. First thing that comes to mind is the enemies not showing any visual cue once damaged, and the bullets go through them so there's no way to know the shooting works. Also, taking damage or digging should have more feedback, especially with an artstyle like this where you can make sprites blink, tint them with a solid color or something, which is simple yet very effective.
Also the SFX are a bit too loud and very harsh, you could tone them down a little.

Overall I enjoyed playing the game!

Most of the "signal-tracking" (I don't know what to call this mechanic) games are very slowly paced, so it's neat to see a different take on the idea. Random notes:

- Neither the score nor the dig radius seem to get reset when the game does.
- I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do when there are no more items to dig up. Do I win?
- I think the enemy hitbox is fine, but requiring multiple hits to kill an enemy seems a bit unfair given the sheer number of enemies and how difficult it is to land a shot.

@henk Thanks for playing. The score is bugged. The intent was playing for a high score in one of three zones. Or play through all 3 and keep your score.
I should've set a notification to players after they reach max score in a zone, i.e. no more treasure.

@saering Thanks for the sound & visuals feedback.

I like the idea! Enemies are maybe just a bit strong to really pay enough attention to the signal. Audio is nice. I would remove the full screen button on itch, the UI elements break in full screen.

Pretty fun! I encountered some bugs but they've already been reported. Having your upgrades carry over to the next playthrough makes things pretty easy :D

I like the metal detecting gameplay loop, it was enjoyable to make mental notes of where treasures are located while a giant swarm of flies push you out of the area

Good job!

Flies are piled up into one ball, which is easy to escape from. Wonderful graphics

Thank you for the opportunity to play in the browser.

The graphics I liked a lot... And I get the NES feel! Retro graphics are just the way to go! :)

I just wish the player had some animation!
But otherwise good job! I tried this many times and like it is challenging!
Somehow you've this very addictive and I want to try try and try again!

oh, I know that mechanic 'hot and cold' really well :D
Pretty fun to find all these stuff like powers and so on!
I miss the feedback for these fly, like hit or something.

congratulations!

Nice idea, I had died once before I realised mechanics, clever idea to find metals using signal strength, while shooting down pesky flies of doom. Good luck!

I really liked this one! It's easy to understand but hard to master! Maybe a little bit too hard sometimes, but I think if the shooting direction could be controlled independently from the move direction the difficulty would be perfect.

The SFX and the music where good and really fit the whole theme of the graphics and the gameplay.

Well done!

I think it would've been amazing to shoot with the mouse (in all directions) while moving with WASD. I was playing and thinking about this all the time hehe. That being said, the game loop is very fun, it looks like it can have a lot of potential. It kinda felt like "high-pressure" bomberman, because you have to get the items fast to be able to fend off the enemies, except there are no walls (I mean, not a lot of them). The enemies being flies is really funny btw, it reminded me of that Mario Paint minigame. I like the design of the levels and the signal mechanic works really well.

Besides controls, I feel the powerups could have better communication on what they do (maybe it was present in the UI but it was somewhat confusing), but that wasn't that big of a deal.

I could see an interesting roguelite here, like: detect metals, grab stuff, kill waves of enemies, improve your metal detector, get better weapons, fight stronger enemies, in a level that constantly expands as the waves go, rinse repeat. I think people would dig that (sorry for the pun)

Nice music as well! Good job!

This was a surprisingly fun game given how simple the mechanics are. Trying to manage the swarm and read the signal strength was a fun balance to strike. The powerups were mysterious but useful which was fin. I loved the music and the flies were such a good sprite. Great work.

I thought it was cool! At first, the Atari aesthetic caught my attention (a motionless character and a screen somewhat empty of elements). The "blessed" flies disturbed my peace.

I was unsure if the spawns are finite or not, because sometimes they wouldn't appear anymore and I'd just be dodging the flies, and other times all the items would start spawning desperately all over the screen, turning me into "The Flash".

Anyway, I tried my best.

Sometimes items spawn inside the walls. I imagine that shouldn't happen.

Congratulations!


Ooof this one is hard! It is also a lot of fun to play. I like the take on the theme and the way you laid out the levels. I love finding the little artifacts, somehow it gives little dopamine boosts :smile:
Those enemies though, oof those come with many and the situation escalated so quickly! In combination with the way shooting works, it is almost impossible for me to avoid the enemies more than a minute or so.

Shooting goes into the last moved direction. So when the player grouped the flies together, the player needs to move towards the flies and shoot. If the player retreats, the gun will go backwards too :sweat_smile: It makes for an interesting challenge, bit somehow I don't think this behavior was planned? Or am I mistaken?

@crowelian Thanks for playing!

@rafa-fiedo Unfortunately any sort of pellet/enemy hit feedback was missing. I'm working on sharing a post-jam version.

@drtizzle and @conradoclark and @wouter52 I agree the shoot direction is a little 'fiddly'. My reference was the arcade game 'Pocky and Rocky' and while it worked for that game, there's a lot of other stuff going on in that game that supports that control scheme. Furthermore, *other* games that were inspired by P&R since went on to address the 'shooting direction' problem their own way. So yes I probably should've tried to expand a bit more on the attack controls.

@bentglasstube thanks for playing and noticing the music

@euler-moises thanks for playing! Yeah the fly spawn rate is a little aggressive.

Very solid game.It would be better if players can get a feedback when bullet hit the enemies.Congratulations!