Shoot them down ! by Masaru

Hi fellow pilot !
Here's the deal, we all know that depth can be scary... but while going down a quaternion-based hell, I found a new kind of "deep" : a shmup made by someone who has no clue how difficulty curve are supposed to work.
How far will you go ? Will it be bug free ? Will your mind survive this experience better than mine ? So many questions that I hope you can answer for me !
Good luck !
Controls : movement is made using either WASD (qwerty), ZQSD (azerty) or the arrow keys. Both mouse button are use to shoot : the left one triggers the machine-gun (autofire available if you hold down the button) while the right one launches a drones forward. It will pass through weaker enemies and attach itself do bigger ones, doing damage over time. You can call it back by pressing the right mouse button again, or wait until he's done killing its current prey.
Escape closes the game.
/!\ a lot of enemy data (their HP for example, but also their score) is multiplied by the level you were at when they spawned (indicated in the top left), so the first enemy spawned (in level 0) is worth 0 point, that's not a bug, just keep going right and they'll be worth more and more points, but they'll also be more and more dangerous ! You can in theory go left immediately, but then you'll get into negative levels and probably find a lot of unintended features (like enemies with negative HP), I'm not saying "don't do it", I'm just saying "you're not supposed to".
Hope you're going to have fun !!
Ratings
| Overall | 764th | 2.964⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 694th | 2.911⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 785th | 2.554⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 838th | 2.589⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 546th | 3.268⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 590th | 2.786⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 496th | 2.327⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 739th | 2.679⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 37🗳️ | 37🗨️ |
I think the camera should be a bit farther from the character, I often found myself really close to the enemies, making it hard to dodge their shots!
Overall well done :D
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100/10
@sashabox : Ah ! It loops ! I get it ! Thank you very much =D
Even though I knew better, I kept expecting the ship to remain facing and shooting right when I moved left so I could dodge incoming enemies and projectiles while still firing forward. This is pretty standard for the genre, so I think that's where that instinct was coming from.
There was also a slow moving blue cube that looked like a "powerup" to me. It didn't get hit by my bullets, but when I went to pick it up it destroyed me. I'm assuming it some kind of projectile from an enemy ship.
The art and gameplay reminded of an old flash game called Platypus.
I think the strongest point about your game is the enemy diversity. Also it was funny to go to level " - - 1 " and get negative scores :laughing:
@ramkey : Killing enemies offscreen was "intended" in a sense, they should probably spawn a bit closer but that was intended ^^.
@jason-wilson : The "level display" was, with the background moving down, my way to say "look, I've seen the theme, I know I'm not going to be in it, but I've tried". I went into this LD really wanting to make a Super Fantasy Zone clone, that's a shoot them up where you need to kill special enemies to go to the boss and where the levels are big horizontal loops where you can go left or right, hence why this feature is there. Obviously, when I saw the theme, I became very sad and decided to just go with some visual stuff but still do what I wanted to do, I think it kinda paid off in the end ^^.
The blue cube is one of the two attacks of the "boss" (the big wheel thing), there's a laser that stops and then goes super fast and there's the slow cube. To me, because I've seen it in other shmups, it made sense as a "bullet" but now that you say it... it does look like a power up ! Sorry about that. Should have made them destructible as well, that would have worked and that's a very good idea... I should have had but didn't ! ^^
@noef : The camera and sfx issues are real issues, the speed parameter is a consequence of a dropped feature : the game was supposed to have a shop and in there, you would have been able to buy speed upgrade and damage upgrade. I didn't have the time to code it sadly, and so I tried to put a base speed value that would "work" to me, but didn't have the time to really solve this either.
@bitshift : ^^. ZQSD is just WASD in the AZERTY layout (which is the one I'm using, as it's the standard in France), using it on a QWERTY keyboard must be a weird experience !
PS: Btw. I really liked getting to level "--20" (these are two minus signs, btw.) with enemies destroying themselves offscreen xD. For a "real" release, though, I would prevent the player from getting into the negative range.
And thank you for testing this bug, I think I'm going to consider it an easter egg =p.
I found the game too difficult for my taste, and I think the main reason is because when I move my ship to the right, it gets closer to the right edge of the screen, and therefore I don't have enough time to react to incoming enemies and shots. Many games do the opposite: if you move to the right, you actually appear more to the left of the screen, so you can see more of what lies ahead. I this would work really good for your game!
I had some fun on the negative levels, too (going to the left) :laughing: It was easier, for sure!
Kudos! Very solid compo entry. Could be a _really_ nice space shooter with some additional work on balancing, controlling, and maybe some additional content.
@dmitriy3342 : Thank you =)
I love the music. Very quirky and easy to listen to.
I also love the description you wrote! Very honest and fun. :) I love the part about you being open to the idea of players going the wrong way at the start!
Very nice entry!