The first thing that came to mind when hearing “10 seconds” was “kill as many enemies as possible in 10 seconds”.\u00a0 I started this LD with a laid back attitude.\u00a0 I had other important things to do in the week-end, such as relaxing on the beach and visiting friends on my last vacation days.\u00a0 And I just wanted to do something that I personally find fun and inspiring.\u00a0 To hell with the ratings, which many people think suck anyway (I myself prefer constructive comments over numeric ratings).\u00a0 So I stuck with this simple but fun idea.\u00a0 The enemies were going to be totally stupid.\u00a0 It’s the weapons that have interesting behaviour.<\/p>\n
I spent little time coding on Saturday, just fiddling around with graphics and level layouts to see if I could find something that inspired me.\u00a0 But when I created the bullet bouncing mechanic, I found that this simple mechanic can result in some interesting gameplay, so I stuck with it.\u00a0 From Saturday night onwards I had a blast creating funny and interesting weapons, which took most of Sunday to implement and balance.<\/p>\n
I decided to have the player play through all the levels without the need to “complete” any level before proceeding to the next.\u00a0 I just wanted the game’s appeal not depend on anticipation of the reward to see the next level for a change, something I got fed up with after playing too much WOW.\u00a0 The result is that the player is taken through a dazzling array of weapon mechanics and graphics in the span of two minutes.\u00a0 And hopefully think, wow, let’s try that again!\u00a0 Or maybe not, then at least the game has been entertaining for two minutes, which is not too far off from the recommended time to spend on a LD game review.<\/p>\n
The graphics are mostly procedurally generated, using my sprite generator<\/a>, and Evolvotron<\/a> (a linux-only program). I spent a little over an hour on them, and it appears people like them, so I consider them a success.<\/p>\n Sound was added 30 minutes before the deadline.\u00a0 I decided to have the game trigger lots of “rapid fire” sounds, resulting in a sort of “ambient” noise, which I thought sounded quite OK when I used multiple slightly different samples for each sound. Unfortunately the sound is a little too loud compared to most games, and when it’s on loud, it sounds rather grating and unpleasant, as sfxr sounds tend to do.\u00a0 As is, the game is probably going to score lower on sound than a game without sound, which I believe scores about 2 stars on average.\u00a0 So, please turn the volume way down to make the game sound better.\u00a0 Reminder for next time: lower the volume by 6db for sfxr samples!<\/p>\n Which brings us to some other things that didn’t turn out so well.\u00a0 First of all, the game is too random, you need luck to complete some levels, and just shooting in random directions is a reasonable strategy.\u00a0 That’s the most important flaw I think, but it can be fixed.\u00a0 I am a little surprised I still find it enjoyable despite of that, in fact it has the same kind of appeal as a coin drop machine.\u00a0 Another is that the game probably lacks character. No cool intro or characters, no compelling or funny storyline.\u00a0 I am very bad at this sort of thing.\u00a0 I must admit, I personally don’t consider it important, but I know some other people do.<\/p>\n About the “kill as many enemies as possible in 10 seconds” concept, I wonder how many people though it up, but abandoned it because it was too obvious.\u00a0 As yet, I have to find a game that follows the same concept.\u00a0 I do hope to find some before rating ends!<\/p>\n Oh, I almost forgot… play the game here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n