Stellar Sauce by Wheffle
Overview
You are a space soldier fighting through enemy forces on the surface of a planet orbiting a dangerous pulsar. Every few seconds the pulsar sweeps the surface with a dangerous beam of radiation. Take shelter or risk getting roasted.
Investigate why your enemies are so interested in this dangerous world, and stop the evil plans that they are bound to have!
Instructions
Stellar Sauce is a side-scrolling action game. Use the keyboard to move and the mouse to aim and fire your weapon. Avoid enemy bullets and, most importantly, take shelter to avoid getting blasted by the periodic death ray from the sky. If you do get killed, no worries: we'll drop a clone at the start of the level so you can try again.
- Move Left/Right: A/D Keys or Left/Right Arrow Keys
- Jump: W Key or Spacebar or Up Arrow
- Crouch: D Key or Down Arrow
- Aim Weapon: Mouse Cursor
- Fire Weapon: Left Mouse Button
Project Information
- Engine: Godot 3.5.1
- Art: Pyxel Edit
- Sound Effects: LabChirp
- Music: Bosca Ceoil
Post Jam
I made a post-jam update where I actually learned how to code a platformer and mostly fixed the weirdness in the movement. I also fixed some dumb parts of levels and added a few little things, like crouch-sliding and some indicators that make it more obvious how to beat the ketchup cannon.
This version shouldn't be judged, but it felt good to get it out of my system.
:largeorangediamond: Stellar Sauce 1.1.0 Windows (Post Jam)
:largeorangediamond: Stellar Sauce 1.1.0 HTML5 (Post Jam)
Compo Entry Exports
- Windows Executable (see download below)
- HTML5 Web (see itch.io link below)
:smallbluediamond: The Windows port runs more smoothly, the HTML5 version seems to have issues depending on the user's system
Ratings
| Overall | 246th | 3.405⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 206th | 3.405⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 370th | 2.932⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 249th | 3.556⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 312th | 3.23⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 121th | 3.569⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 149th | 3.057⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 203th | 3.338⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 27🗳️ | 50🗨️ |
I could not figure out the ketchup puzzle. I moved the ball up and down for 10 minutes and nothing happened
The movement control is a bit wanky, the friction of surfaces especially on corners cause you to stop and give up, because pushing against the cliff is not building enough force to overcome it but to postpone jump-defeat-admit. I would like to see how it would have worked with a rectangular collision shape for the player instead of a capsule.
Well done for 48 hours!
I did spend most of the game shooting them off screen which probably wasn't how I was meant to play it, but the death sound effects meant it was still fun (please don't judge me).
Liked how creative the ending was but kind of felt personally attacked come on ketchup and mayo living in harmony should be the real winner. Great story and humour.
The ending puzzle felt a bit obtuse and took a while to figure out; I think a bit of additional communication here would have helped a lot; perhaps a special hit sound for the bulb that tells the player "bullets don't hurt this thing" while giving it a distinct behavior over walls and other unimportant objects. Similarly, I'd like to have seen a targeting laser for the ketchup gun since it's hard to know what's going on when it's off screen (and the position it landed after the second shot required me to do some tricky alignment).
Overall a solid attempt for your first platformer! You probably already learned this lesson; but physics engines shouldn't be used for player movement (Write a static or kinematic character controller and use the physics engine just for collision). It's a very common thing to get wrong especially in LD, so don't sweat it too much.
Nice work!
Speaking of Megaman, this mechanic reminded me a bit of some stages from Megaman X5 and 6. There are stages with global mechanics where something happens every few secs, and you might need to dodge or hide behind something or die. The way to make this work and not feel random is to have it properly themed such as this:
https://youtu.be/HgMX3v3D4Z0?t=75
And I think you did that perfectly! Having a beam come down from the sky is immediately understandable and tied in with the world the player was in. I knew what to do next and execute on that plan. A very good choice.
I didn't have any trouble with the ketchup cannon. There were only so many elements on screen and you gave it away in the text that you would have to beat it in an unconventional way. Still, more hints generally isn't a bad thing in jams where player investment is lower.
Kudos for try new things and new genres. I know it's tough and I often feel like I get held back trying to do new stuff all the time. But hey, what better place to do it than LD?
@peachtreeoath wow, that is a good find! I didn't play a lot of Mega Man beyond the first couple, but I'm sure I played other platformers as a kid that had similar mechanics that maybe subconsciously guided my ideas. I feel you on the 'trying new stuff for LD' struggle, sometimes I just can't help it since it's a good opportunity to actually *finish* something. Having a bank of play-tested working prototypes for new ideas later on is super nice! Speaking of doing something different, I feel I need to gush a little more over how good your team's entry was.
It's kinda hard to get on the 1 by 1 platform.
It's nice that you have some story and dialogs
I also find that the enemies are pretty unforgiving once they spot you.
Overall it is a solid entry.
BTW that meteor thingie effect is super cool
Nice.
The only thing that caused me to die so often was jumping.
The player character has a certain friction with the level that makes it really easy to get caught on edges/slow down. Precision jumping with floaty gravity and little to no mid-air control is a bad combo.
I really enjoyed watching the big group of baddies at the start of one scene get toasted by the beam! There's a fun game underneath all that.