o, the game

chaseplays 2017-04-24 21:28

The game is simple and fun! It's addicting, and given the minimalist design of the gameplay, the graphics and audio both fit the game perfectly. I really enjoy the ability to hurt yourself by missing an enemy, as it forces you to form strategies a bit more, but the ability to jump makes it less frustrating. The only major complaint I have is that sometimes the "enemies" will spawn directly next to you, or even on top of you. These are almost impossible to avoid, which can feel irritating and unfair. If you could find a way to fix that before the jam ends, you really should. Overall, this was a great, simple game!

pta2002 2017-04-24 22:14

@chaseplays thank you for your feedback! It should be fixed now :smile:

pta2002 2017-04-24 22:17

My high score is 84. Can you beat me?

chaseplays 2017-04-25 03:44

@pta2002 YES! I devoted way too much time to this!

I got 90 points!

2017-04-25 18:02

This is great: the minimalist style is really attractive, but the animations and sound effects still make the game immersive. The game-play can be kind of addictive.

I found I didn't need to jump very often (it was easier to just be careful about shooting too much). It might be nice to add a flying enemy or something else which made jumping more useful.

Overall a really nice job! :)

rombus 2017-04-27 22:16

Wow man! really cool concept here. I like how simple it is, yet so fun :D

Keep it up!

anayk 2017-04-29 14:55

Nice game! I like the concept. Except that, we are pretty helpless when there are no enemies and our planet is about to disappear. Also, as @toasty pointed out, flying enemies would make the jump feature more useful.

pta2002 2017-04-29 22:08

Thanks for your feedback @anayk! I have fixed that on the newest postjam version, now the circle slows down to a stop when there are no enemies.

fell-trsi 2017-04-30 11:38

Yeah, great and frenetic one! (I played the jam version)

anayk 2017-04-30 16:32

@pta2002, Great!

rombus 2017-05-01 13:59

Rated!

s-ol 2017-05-01 15:32

Very cool, a minimalist take on the 'small planet' concept that really works well IMO. I loved the planet-collapse animation too, the reduced style of everything really integrates it well.

Also it's always nice to see fellow LOVErs in the wild :)

doppelgunner 2017-05-01 15:57

One of the best games with minimalist design.

pta2002 2017-05-01 20:32

@s-ol I've found that löve is quite popular for LD actually. I think I'm in löve with it :smile:

davidthelazar 2017-05-01 20:35

Very fun, minimalist game. Interesting strategy, and risk vs. reward with bullets that can kill your player.

My only complaint is that enemies occasionally spawned directly on top of me (while I wasn't even moving!) so I couldn't avoid them at all and it felt unfair (I noted you said above you fixed this; I was playing the postjam Mac version, if that helps).

All in all, great game!

nickw 2017-05-01 20:43

Very cool simple game. I don't think I could get more than 78 as a score (I got it twice in a row) since the game gets a little to insane at about that point. I feel like in order to make this a more complete game, you would need something to allow the player to reset the collapsation rate, which would give it a bit of pacing as well. Awesome art style just using circles and ovals. I grew to hate ovals very much over the course of playing this game. Thanks for letting me play your game on stream!

pta2002 2017-05-01 21:17

@davidthelazar I'll look into that, thanks for reporting.

g12345 2017-05-01 23:39

That was a really nice little game you've made!

Minimalistic, fun, frentic, nice explosion sounds... Ticks all the boxes for me :heavy_check_mark: (maybe music but i dont think it will fit here)

It's my first day playing LD games, but I have the feeling that this could be one of the most fun entry I'll be playing.

zelos 2017-05-02 16:43

I actually love these types of games for game jams. Really easy to understand, easy to play, and overall a lot of fun for a few minutes. The graphics are exactly right for this kind of game and the sound effects work pretty well. I especially like how the explosion feels when you lose. I think this is the first game without music where I'd say that it actually doesn't need one, because it works well without. The gameplay is really fun and the idea is very cool. It's a bit weird to control for QWERTZ keyboards since Z is jump, but since you can temporarily switch to US layout it's not that much of a problem. I got up to 96 and then I got killed by my own bullets. I feel that the best way to get a high score is to shoot them in a steady rhythm, so you can jump over them effortlessly while hitting enemies all around the big circle.

I don't really have anything negative to say other than the thing about the keyboard layout. The game's really good.

pta2002 2017-05-02 17:08

@zelos I'll look into that keyboard problem

(*if anyone knows a decent solution to this problem, talk to me on IRC*)

ava-skoog 2017-05-03 15:14

Hey, Mac user here! It seems you haven't properly packaged the Mac build in the archive, haha. There's only the "Contents" folder in the zip, which is supposed to be inside an .app. I had no issue creating an o.app folder and putting it there—the game started just fine—but you should fix this. :D

Anyway, got it up and running by doing so, so I got to play it. It's very nice. Really clean æsthetic, both graphics and sound. Simple but fun mechanics. I guess the main use of the jump button is if you shot too many bullets and need to avoid them, and not to actually jump over the obstacles? :p

After you stop somewhere, depending on where you are, the direction the arrow keys take you can feel a bit arbitrary, but I can't say I know of a better solution… Maybe let a key keep taking you the direction it started to so long as you hold it down, but let it start taking you in a different direction depending on where you are on the circle when you start pressing the button?

I got a little confused when the circle started shrinking but obstacles to shoot in order to expand the ring again weren't showing up fast enough to prevent it from eventually collapsing altogether in the end. Is that how it's meant to be?

Great game! Definitely material to work on post-jam (and I see that you have, but of course I can't rate based on the post-jam version :d)!

impbox 2017-05-03 16:07

Nice gameplay mechanic, I like having to dodge my own bullets. Occasionally enemies spawned on top of me which was not ideal. Like the minimal graphics. Could have used some music and more variety of sfx. Maybe some variety of enemies, different heights / shapes that required bullets at different levels. Maybe an enemy that required two hits, one low, one high? could make it more interesting. Definitely potential here!

pta2002 2017-05-03 19:47

@ava-skog It looks like I haven't packages the jam version propperly, because the post-jam one seems fine. The issues you have with the shrinking speed is mostly fixed on the postjam version (the shrinking speed decreases when there are no enemies, coming to a stop after ~2s). EDIT: The jam version should be alright now, thank god I used version control :smile:

@impbox Glad you liked it :) I'm sad I wasn't able to add music during the jam, but I suck at making music so it's probably for the best. Those suggestions do seem interesting though, so I'll probably add those in a later release :slight_smile:

vidinu 2017-05-11 23:32

A fun, simple and addictive concept. I love this type of games that give instant fun without investing much time. Thank you for your work!

tuomo 2017-05-16 15:41

Cool minimalistic visuals! Altogether polished and fun little game. Only little complaint is that while standing still it’s impossible to tell in which direction the “bullet” is going to go.

zorongo 2017-05-17 14:31

This is a cool concept. I love Löve (see what i did there? :D) and the gameplay is very polished, even in the LD version. If you want to check out our game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/dr-zorongo

bog13 2017-05-17 15:07

Great game here !

Here's some possibles improvements : - Two keys to shoot to let the player control in which direction the bullet should aim at. - Make the baddies not spawn on the player's position (it's frustrating).

avocadosan 2017-05-17 16:14

Great game! I really liked it! It was simple and pretty fun! :joy:. Take care!

atmospherium 2017-05-17 23:16

This is great. The incredibly minimalist art and gameplay worked really well together. You stripped a game down to its core and still came out with a game that felt engaging and incredibly polished (great particle effects, btw). Really enjoyed this.