houseofwillis 2017-04-24 01:43
Please Let me know what you think
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Micro Warriors
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 2.50 | 4 | ||
| Fun | 2.00 | 4 | ||
| Innovation | 2.00 | 4 | ||
| Theme | 2.50 | 4 | ||
| Graphics | 3.50 | 4 | ||
| Audio | 2.50 | 4 | ||
| Humor | 2.00 | 3 | ||
| Mood | 2.00 | 3 |
Please Let me know what you think
I liked the concept, and the art was recognisably cockroaches and grasshoppers on a drab battlefield - very WWI feeling.
If you were going to expand upon this post-compo, I'd suggest a few tweaks; the character models are quite tall, and the bullets you shoot are quite narrow, so it is quite easy to find 'safe spots' where you can shoot the enemy but all of their bullets miss you. As a personal preference, it might be nice to have an 'auto-fire' by holding down space instead of having to mash it (a lot of old SHMUPs will let you mash for a faster fire rate but provide a slightly slower autofire by holding fire button). Its also a little clunky to have to hit enter between waves, imo - maybe stop the player firing and let them hit fire to start the next wave.
I also noticed a few bugs - theres an ammo counter on screen, but I didn't seem to have any ammo restrictions, and despite the game description saying survive 5 waves for victory, I seemed to warp back in time to 9:14 fairly regularly. Some ambient music would have been nice, as would some indication when I'd taken damage beyond just my health going down.
Overall a solid compo entry that works with the theme
The sprites of the insects are nice except the legs that are almost invisible because their color matches the background. That shooting sound gets pretty annoying after a few seconds. I'd prefer if the game would allow me to control shooting and movement direction separate. And gameplay-wise I'd love to kill some boss bug at the end of each wave (if there are any then I haven't played as far, sorry).
It's simple enough to quickly pick up and play, though there's not a lot of strategy to it. Once I realized my bullets moved relatively slowly and I could jam on space to fire quickly, it was trivial to shower each wave with bullets before their bullets got remotely close to me and then run away. Plus a lot of the time the enemies just come bunched up one after another, so there isn't much in the way of complex maneuvering or a difficulty curve between waves.
The bug war concept's not bad, though it would have been nice to get some more vibrant colors in there. It's a little too gray right now.