after collecting the upgrades shotgun + homing + a couple of shoot speed, you will get quite far in the game... PEW! PEW! PEWPEWPEWPEWPEW !!!!


I liked the game but I found a bug and now I am stuck. In the upgrade inventory I kept my UP arrow key down, and the cursor flew over the screen and never came back.


Very good game, I like the graphics and retro style. I couldn't get very far until I got homing lol. I REALLY loved the tetris style upgrade mechanic! However yeah its hard to aim without homing, and controls are kinda hard to use a bit (i guess you get used to them).

Much harder than it looks :-)
Good use the theme... Twice!! The upgrade management really adds flavour on an old genre.

In the embedding my green square starts in a strange place in the upgrade screen, but i found it. Dude i love the aesthetic! The sounds remind me of post-it-shooter from the old experimental gameplay project! I had a lot of fun and the big ship consistently caught me off guard. Well done!


without the shotgun perks it's impossible , i just awkwardly evade all the enemies until i have it.
i love the perks system you made tho .

@novicedevgames @2thegamechanger @erroneous @nales @oillen Thanks for all the feedback :) Some of the upgrades are indeed very strong compared to the others. I also just fixed the cursor going off screen, as this wasn't happening in the windows export, but the HTML5 version had some weird quirks.

looks very promising (i also noted how theme is incorporated twice!), but unfortunately i cannot into this sort of controls so couldn't really appreciate upgrades :/

[here's](https://tube.tchncs.de/w/93nYbi14oNnkhM2YrpBZD7?start=30m47s) me failing miserably at your game :D

Great polish and mechanics, love the upgrade system. Really impressive for 48 hours! Controls I felt were a little tricky, I would have loved to see a version of this game were I can move wasd and the ship shoots to mouse click. I know it would make fighting these enemies trivial, so maybe it wouldn't have worked, either way great jam!

Love the game! I made a similar idea. I love how the ship handles and the upgrade system was an incredibly creative add!

Wow loving the upgrade system. The controls were definitely tricky but I loved it. Hard game but overall really good use of the theme!

Oh, this game is pretty fun!

I wish it wouldn't start from the beginning after every death, but I guess that what it's like to be roguelike (it's about suffering). :D

The sound design is good. Everything feels well-put together.

The graphics are simple, but the shader makes up for it.
The UI could use some improvements (visually), but you probably well aware about that. :D
I don't mind the keyboard-based drag and drop btw.
Since this game is controlled via the keyboard, it's nice to do everything without grabbing your mouse.


I have some minor criticism about the game:
* The big and growing enemy collision shape looks odd; it feels like a circle or a square, but the enemy clearly has a triangular shape. This makes you get hit when it doesn't look like you will.
* The & sign in the font looks weird, like a Euro currency sign or something; "and" could be used instead of "&" to circumvent that
* It looks like the best strategy is to constantly spam the attack. There is no penalty for doing so. Therefore, I wish the vessel would shoot on its own without the need for me to mash the button for it. Or it should be a decision to make (ammo/energy/whatever), so spamming is not as good as it is right now.

Overall, I like the fact that this game has some variety of content for the player.

Nicely done. Extra points for making it work in the browser.

Also, thank you for playing my game. :3

What I liked:
- Visual Style
- Upgrades
- Simple to understand gameplay
- Music

What I didn't like:
- Hard tank controls, especially that you can't rotate when stationary :(
- Loud sounds and no ability to turn them down :(

What I'd suggest:

- I think if ship would follow a mouse cursor to rotate it would be much easier to play! Binary left/right controls make aiming very hard :(

I like the upgrade system (UI not great but works okay). The movement is my least favorite thing. I expected a more classic space type movement where you can rotate freely and keep velocity. Great use of the theme! Good music and sound is as expected :)

I'm a sucker for space games with upgrades! Controls are a challenge to get used to.

I tried to play it like asteroids at first, but when I realized it wasn't, it got much more fun. Great feel!

Fun game! Hard to aim but once you get a homing it gets a lot easier!
I like this kind of graphics, simple, efficient. Well done!

The upgrade system is really smart, I was thinking about doing something similar! I struggled a bit with the slow turning circle and the power-up noise was weirdly annoying (amazing how these things can make a difference). Very cool that with a few small tweaks you'd have a really fun game!

I find it maybe a bit rigid but the retro style, the upgrade system and inventory were a great add, well done :)

Oh wow, I wasn't expecting the upgrade system! That is a great use of the theme. I like the way the big enemies grow, but maybe their hitbox grows a little faster than their sprites (could just be me I don't know). Another thing is that I personally don't like the piercing sound effects of the shooting. Skill based gameplay where you have to take into account later rounds for placement of upgrades is really intriguing. If you perhaps added online leaderboard or even multiplayer in some way I think it would be really fun. Yeah, I enjoyed this entry, great job!

Very fun to play! The graphics are not from another world but they work perfectly for the game. Once you get used to the controls the game becomes very fun.
One thing i didn't understand is how the "upgrades" section works, does combining colors gives you any bonus? If not i think it would be cool if it did!

That main gun sound is horrible! Why?

Other than that it was actually fun to play. Controls were a little weird too, but you get used to those.

Really hard, but that is expected from this style of game.

Good job! Change the PEW PEW PEW tho lol!

at start I didn't know what to do with the grid screen, but that I figured pretty fast by tapping keyboard buttons.

nice pew pew game! good implementation of the theme.

I like the relaxed music.

quality of life improvement could be that when placing upgrade-blocks, you could swap blocks if they fit the same space. Like the block you are holding on and the block on the grid.

I wish I was just better driver :smile:

Very nice idea ! The controls are bit difficult to get used to, especially since you need to keep moving and shooting, but it's hard to aim correctly.
The inventory & upgrades are a nice touch !
Nice entry overall. GG.

Very cool little game! Well done.
As others have said, the upgrade system is a highlight and a fun use of the theme. The cursor is a bit weird on that screen but just minor stuff that's to be expected.

Not a lot of criticism:
The controls are a little weird feeling - I also would have preferred to be able to turn without moving.
The sfx leave a bit to be desired (though the music is vibey).

I did better once I realized that killing enemies didn't help my score. Is there any sense in putting in a reward structure for that?

The shadows were a nice way of elevating otherwise very simplistic graphics.

A simple yet highly addictive game! The 'vector-like' graphics, coupled with that CRT filter, grant it a distinctive touch! The theme is also very well-tuned, requiring you to eliminate enemies before the circle closes. Truly, for a game developed in 48 hours, it strikes me as impressive. My congratulations!

I really like the simple graphics with the CT filter, that looks great. The idea of doing a Resident Evil style inventory for upgrades is really neat, though I can never get far enough for the space to actually be limited. I have a hard time with Asteroids style gameplay, so I couldn't get very far, but I liked what I played!

Very creative idea for a bullet-hell game, I love the upgrade system, it's a really interesting interpretation of the theme. The graphics and audio do remind me of those old shooter games on arcade machines, very nostalgic, although the shooting sound is kinda loud and annoying.

The control is a little bit weird to me, it took a while to get used to the movement and aiming, I died a few times before I could get the movement right and manage to land hits on enemies. It'd been nice if I could rotate the player alone without having to move forwards, because doing so makes it difficult to dodge incoming attacks.

But regardless, very impressive job for a Compo entry! Well done man!

Cool game design and visual style in this one! I really enjoy the upgrade configuration/swapping and the shrinking arena boundary is a fun challenge. I could definitely see this game turning into a fun post-jam version where you could add more upgrades and have to swap in certain items for various challenges (maybe like a boss enemy that's weak to EMP damage, so you can equip more effective weapons for that fight and need to remove other upgrades to make room). Great job on this game; I'm looking forward to seeing what you design next!

Great implementation of the theme! Such a cool idea with the upgrades. Movement controls are bit too hard though (would love to at least have the ability to move backwards) :sweat_smile:

Hey, I’m the host of the Ludum Dare score chasers tournament for this jam

Wanted to ask for score chasers if you were fine with me playing some gameplay of your game in the background in the waiting period / intermission. In the waiting period its going to cycle between gameplay of a bunch of different games in the background (with music from games in the jam playing as well)

@ategon yeah, that's totally fine :)