Pulse of the Ethereal by DzejPi
Embark on a journey across the cosmos after a powerful summoning from the stars. Ancient beings and their mysterious mechanical minions have been set loose, posing a threat to our reality itself. As a bold space explorer, you'll need to navigate the vastness of space and face off against otherworldly foes, like the mighty Swallower and the enigmatic Thinker. Only by using clever tactics and staying determined can you uncover the universe's secrets and come out on top. Are you ready to take on the challenge and explore the unknown? The destiny of everything lies in your hands.
Gameplay: Less than 5 minutes.
How to play
WSAD: Move in order to avoid enemies and projectiles.Mouse movement: Move by mouse to aim. Aiming spot stays in the same place even when you move the ship. This means that you can aim at the target far away and zigzag at the same time.Left mouse/Space: Shoot your machine gun. Unlimited ammo, so, shoot away!Right mouse/Ctrl: Shoot rockets. You can see the amount of remaining rockets on the left.Middle mouse/Alt: Activate the shield. You can see the amount of remaining shields also on the left.
Gear
- Machine gun — Base gun. Unlimited ammo, so, no need to save.
- Rocket — If you need to clean up your way, rocket away!
- Shield — Shield makes you temporary invulnerable. Use freely when you feel overwhelmed.
Enemies
Depths of cosmos have prepared many for you enemies. Do you have what you need to defeat all of them?
- Shooter — This ship just exists and shoots in your direction. Make sure to avoid bullets. Drops health pickup occasionally when destroyed.
- Suicide drone — This drone is out to get you personally. It self corrects its course in periodic intervals in order to strike you directly where it hurts the most. Can be avoided by zigzagging all over the place. Can drop rocket pickup when destroyed.
- Rotator — freely rotates and floats through the cosmos. Once its lasers are activated, you should do whatever it takes to avoid them. Can drop shield pickup.
Pickups
During your play, you will encounter multiple pickups. Let's have a look at them.
- Health — Shoot the health pickup to gain the extra health.
- Rockets — Get an extra rocket. You know you will need it!
- Shield — Collect an extra shield; helps to have one!
Tools used
- Game engine: Godot v3.5.1
- UI: Aseprite
- Skybox: Inkscape
- 3D Models: Blender
- Music: Ableton Live 11 Standard with reFX Nexus
- Sounds: SFXR
- Sound edits: Audacity
My commentary
I always wanted to create a rhythm based game. Close enough! I was picturing a powerful hardstyle (and this game sure plays differently with Sub Focus or Da Tweekaz set in the background!), but this should be good enough too. I'm feeling more and more confident in 3D, but those rotation vectors are still making my head hurt. Why does something have to look Vector3.UP and something Vector3.DOWN and why does something go by X and something by Z?! I still have to git gud. Created in Godot 3.5 so that you can all play it in your browser right away!
Post your high score into comment in order to find out who's the best sharpshooter in the galaxy!
Ratings
| Overall | 167th | 3.524⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 137th | 3.549⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 269th | 2.951⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 346th | 1.976⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 169th | 3.5⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 60th | 3.75⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 186th | 3.268⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 45🗳️ | 63🗨️ |
This is such a cool game! It looks fantastic too, and controls almost like starfox. I found it a little hard to shoot where I wanted without a crosshair, but eventually I settled on a kind of straffing tactic that seemed to work, but I would like to have a crosshair.
I love that you even included bosses!
Great game!
@candlesan true, the reticle would make it a little bit easier. There actually is one, but invisible, and the ship is shooting towards it. It's pretty far away though, so I would have to bring it closer, and I didn't have the brain capacity for that, but I agree. Thank you for the comment!
@atomicptr enemies have been summoned from the depth of cosmos, but... yeah, you're right, it's a stretch for sure, lol!
@magnusfurcifer yea, strafing tactics works the best. I agree with the crosshair, I can bring it later when the LD rating is over!
@freakyzelga you're too kind! We will all get there, and much better!
@impalpable glad you liked it and enjoyed the challenge!
@risminator glad you found the controls revarding in the end! 3D in Godot in 48 hours sounds more challenging than it is, but there have to be some corners cut for sure, and you have to be confident with Blender. But it's a great challenge and I can recommend it, it's my fourth game in 3D. I still have to get much better with vector math, because the way how some things are implemented is pretty disgusting, but that's what we do when we have only 48 hours, haha!
@bewelge thank you very much!
Rated all of your games back, thank you again!
Amazing compo submission! The music is right on spot, I was imagining myself staying in front of arcade machine playing it thanks to the music.
I was trying to play it with a mouse, it was a bit challenge, but I manage to get used to it.
It would have been cool to have some particle effects or other visual/sonic feedback for when you hit different targets, but there's only so much that can be done in a weekend.
Great job!
Digging the music too!
I did struggle with the aiming controls as there was no crosshair to show where exactly I was shooting which made trying to target the enemies flying at me very difficult and the lack of a clear indication as to the position of my ship in relation to the incoming attacks made figuring out if I was about to be hit or not very hard until it was too late. I'm not sure if this is down to the camera angle, or just the flat lighting but it was hard to tell what the 'depth' of objects was on screen. Perhaps some additional background parallax effects (ie a moving starfield or similar) would help here.
That being said, the controls felt smooth, moving and shooting felt good, and when I did eventually start hitting things and making them explode, this also felt very satisfying. The music and sound effects are also pretty great, not too loud, not too distracting, and fit the gameplay well.
Other than the poor fit for the theme, this was a solid entry. Well done for making this in a weekend!
@pete-valeo oh yeah, particle effects would be great, that's a great suggestion! I was actually struggling a little bit the particle system, because I wanted to use it for explosions. I normally use Godot 4 where it works a little bit differently. I didn't want to spend too much time with figuring it out, so, explosions are just billboarded 3D sprites, ha! I will definitely have a closer look at the particle system beforehand. Or hope that they will improve HTML5 export down the line so that I don't have to use 3.5.
@laniph glad it envoked these feelings! My friend told me that it reminded him of Star Wars: X Wings from 1993, but I will be honest, Star Fox was a bigger inspiration to me.
@olenikimid & @fataljg glad you liked the music! I was relatively happy with it in the end, but I was originally planning much different one. Thankfully Nexus makes everything sound pretty good.
@the-neon-shark oh yeah, I was struggling a little bit with making them more reliable, but I felt that it was close enough lol. Have to get better at proper vectoring!
@historymaker118 those are great suggestions, especially with the depth of objects. I have to look more into some shading in the future, I usually do either flat 3D or pixel-art 3D, so, I never dealt with shading much. Noted the poor fit for the theme. I thought I was clever by having an excuse of enemies being summoned by cosmos, but clearly not, haha!
Thank you all for your amazing feedback. Played and rated all of your games back! :heart:
Pretty solid game overall :D well done!
@cogcomp glad you liked the music, game and eventually got used to controls, they are slightly unusual, true.
@amerigo-gazaway thank you for your kind words! My friend tried to play it on trackpoint on his ThinkPad, and apparently it somehow works too, but I would definitely take the mouse, haha.
@gravityflip glad you liked the game! Technically, enemies are summoned by cosmos, but yeah, it's a stretch.
Thank you all very much for playing and for your feedback! Rated all of your games back too! :heart:
For movement a little inertia would make it feel more interesting
I feel like there wasn't a reason not to shoot. Having to spam click got tiring pretty quick for me.
Like others said, crosshair would've made aiming a lot less frustrating.
I liked the graphic style and music, very well done on that! 🚀
But I made it to the end (total score of 512630) on my second attempt, I think a few more sound effects would have been a nice bonus as well. But the graphics are very impressive, the controls works really well and yeah, 48h, this looks like a team Jam project.
Congrats! Are you planning on expanding it? :)
- The auto shoot would stop sometimes, especially later on and during bosses, I could still spam click but not hold
- I shot 1 rocket at the very beginning to test it out and never got rockets again
- I'm not sure if enemies had different hp or if I was just missing, but I sometimes were able to kill one side but not the other?
But I think adding a crosshair would be better.
And the mouse sensitivity is too low for me, I wish there's an option to adjust.
Also, the music was really solid. Nicely done.
@linky439 awesome that you got all the way to the end! I am not planning on expanding this one, but I am working on my own game in my spare time, but it's still far from done nor presentable, so, I am focusing on that one for now. But I can see how with more levels and songs, this could be a full game!
@ellaris oh yeah, you're right that shooting would sometimes be inconsistent. I ran into it too, but I had no idea why, so, I have to check and figure out, true. When it comes to those enemies, then yea, sometimes colliders are slightly off, but I am not sure why. Like I said, those pesky vectors, gotta get better at those.
@thomaszane ah, true, mouse sensitivity option would be a really good idea. Will keep in mind for the next time.
@jajo yea, I will not forget to have it next time, it's really something that this game is missing!
@brainbetter yea, will add autofire the next time, and I ran into some inconsistencies too, but was not able to figure out quickly enough what was the cause, but it's surely annoying for sure.
Thank you all very much, rated your games back! :heart:
I did it! I like the difficulty level and length, works great! The rotators are my favourite :D And the bosses look awesome! The aiming is a little bit unintuitive (feels non linear? idk) - a cursor would definitely help. And the game's missing spicier feedback on getting hit - when you focus on the game you can easily miss it. Other than that it's fantastic! Great job!
Music always on!
Rated your game back :)
One question - I got the feeling it's impossible to get RIPed, strange. xD And the shield just remained. I will play more..
With some tuning this would be amazing. Solid base!!!
In my first playthrough I've managed to get to the Thinker, which thought me to death I guess. But in the end I got my revenge, even though it took me a few more goes.
It felt nice to have two separate kinds of weapons, with the rockets being a more special kind, with limited ammo, forcing you to use it sparingly. I also really enjoyed having the shield - quite a literal life-saver! One thing I'd perhaps add to it is some feedback on how long it's going to last, maybe make it blink as it reaches the end? Maybe fade it out with transparency?
I've also encountered the bug with auto-shooting sometimes being interrupted. I'm not sure what the cause is, but after looking at your code one thing I'd try is to move the cooldowns from the `_process` to the `_physics_process` method. I found it's better to have the gameplay-related timers be based on a constant delta instead of the FPS-dependent `_process` delta. Definitely makes it all more stable and predictable.
I'll agree with other commenters that aiming can be difficult, but I'd guess that's something that can be solved with some more time. Maybe adding a crosshair will help, or maybe it would be better to have something like a laser pointer shooting straight out of your ship? Tough to say, I guess that's something that needs some experimentation. ;)
The sound design is also pretty good. Everything has appropriate sounds, and there's a cool tune playing in the background. It does feel a bit arcadey, but it actually reminds me more of some techno songs and remixes from the late 90's and early 00's. :P
Overall, it's a pretty cool StarFoxy game. I had a lot of fun with it, it made me want to replay it until I got good enough to finish it, and then some more for a good measure :). Well done!
You mean impossible to die, @aweskybear? Well, you must be the first one, haha. Shield should stay for 15 seconds, maybe it was just a lack of feedback that would communicate the shield countdown. Glad you liked other parts!
Thank you for a truly amazing feedback, @lcstark! And you're totally right with the _physics_process instead of _process, such a rookie mistake. aka when I'm not seing the forest for the trees! :face_palm: You're right with the shield feedback, that would definitely improve the game a lot! I would go with the crosshair. There technically is one, but it's hidden and too far away, so, that should be a quite easy fix after LD if I decide to look into this game. Glad you liked the song, I created it on the second day and that was definitely an anxiety filled forenoon, haha!
Rated both of your games back! :heart: