Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD39 → The Final Boss: Running Out of Powers
By n-feofentov
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 374 | 3.43 | 25 | |
| Fun | 188 | 3.56 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 239 | 3.39 | 25 | |
| Theme | 159 | 3.91 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 664 | 2.82 | 25 | |
| Humor | 433 | 2.36 | 24 | |
| Mood | 710 | 2.60 | 25 |
As I was finishing my game in such a rush, I didn't add any information about what it is and how to play it...
So I first add detailed description in this comment but @sbeif pointed that I can edit description :slight_smile:
Really nice, this was one use of the theme that I was waiting to see, and you did it quite well. I didn't manage to kill the boss after 3 tries but I think that with a few more tries it could be done. Still, pretty difficult.
Maybe edit the description of the game because I didn't check the comments until after I played and found out I could dash only after I lost that power :D
@sbeif thanks for comment! I didn't notice that I can actually edit the description :)
It is difficult because I didn't have time to balance it.
So I guess I'm the first rate, so I get to not just repeat comments this time :grin:. I really liked this game. It was difficult (but it's basically a bullet hell game, so of course it's difficult), but still a lot of fun. I really liked the fact that the powers went away was not the same every time, so each game required slightly different strategy (you could play more offensively with the barrier up, for example). Really nice take on the theme, as well. My only complaint was more on me than you, honestly. I didn't realize at first that the boss was teleporting to the side rooms, I thought he would end up back in the middle after I killed some guys. I eventually figured it out when I ran into a side room for safety and he was there. Then, after I quit playing I realized you mention it in your post above. Oops. But even with that frustration, it was a lot of fun. And scoping the game to just one boss is a great way to handle the time constraints, so good idea there.
The game is fun, at first didn't really know what was going on. But i got a hand of it fast. The only problem is that you move too fast and in the sequence when the boss shoots all around him its almost impossible to dodge. Also the Boss should be more visually different. But overall love the way you slowly lose abilities and have to try and kill the boss before you become too weak.
I tried maybe 10 times and I still couldn't kill the boss (got him to like 25% tho), but then again bullet-hell shooters are a mix of skill and luck.
The game would be a lot better feeling to play if the FOV were increased a little so you could see enemies before you see their bullets flying at you. I had a pretty similar thought about a boss taking away abilities but I didn't have enough time to implement the feature in my game, so I'm glad someone else did it. It would've felt more powerful if you quickly gained these abilities every 5 seconds at the beginning so you could see what you're losing, but the game was still great. Also I suggest you edit your post with the gameplay details because I didn't check the comments until I was confused.
I really liked the time slowing mechanic too, in Overwatch at the end of a match my favorite thing to do is to kill someone while the game time is slow :) Overall fun game, and good use of the theme!
Edit: this website is slow so not only did I double post, but i see you already edited the description by now. smh.
Thanks everyone for feedback!
Yes, site is so slow that it shows me unedited/fixed description occasionally :)
I wanted to add abilities' description in-game but all menu/UI stuff were made at the last moment.
@reggnos I also think that player's movement speed is too high as well as enemies fire rate. I bit it only few times while debugging so it occurs to be challenging.
Ironically, but Boss sprite was the last I made. That's why it doesn't have any animation.
@ludumanthony Good point about some proving ground for abilities at the beginning!
It's a pretty cool game, the graphics are not so good, but the concept are amazing, i love it xD
Excellent use of design. The more times I play, the better I get with the skills available to me (like dash) ...which then makes it even tougher when I lose it. Probably one of the only games I've ever played where the game is tactically tougher as I get better. Nice.
Pretty good game, had a lot of fun playing. This was really fun. Good Job :)
It's great fun! Interesting interpretation of the theme, fun gameplay, very pleasant art. Really liked this one. However. Shooting could be vastly improved with use of even simplest sounds and slow-motion effect really felt like a frame drop, even though, it was solid 60 according to Fraps. But these issues aren't serious enough to ruin the game completely.
I uploaded my gameplay of this game on youtube, you can find it here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4gWYkISonk
Thanks for being part of the stream :)
The game is very well made!, I loved the game mechanics. The graphics need a bit more improvement. Otherwise, The game was very very good!
Loved it
As I've opened this game, WHY NO AUDIO!? The game was bullet hell and it would bring out the maximum fun. So I called one of my tunes to feel the game (and gain thoughts on what to say). Lots of things are happening in the game, the camera can be a little dizzy at times (or is it just me...). Like what others said, the graphics needs improvement, yet the fun factor of this game still lives at any way :D
Running circles around bad guys and blowing up tons of them with a wide spread of bullets ends up being a ton of fun, as is chasing down the boss from room to room. One suggestion: I wish the game came down on a side of top-down shooter versus bullet hell. If top down shooter, it needs to be more lenient about the number of hits you can take, or give health drops. If bullet hell, the bullets themselves should be more clearly visible and move slower. As it stands, the only viable option is to circle strafe, which is fine, but combat could be tweaked to allow for more skillful gameplay.
Since this is Unity, any chance of you spitting out a macOS or WebGL build? As a sucker for shmups, I'd really like to try (ie. beat) this one ;)
@antti-haavikko I'm afraid I've made a lot of changes already in gameplay and balance so I can't build jam's version on Mac OS or other platforms :slight_frown:. Still, I'll share next upgrade with everyone as soon as it's done. I'll let you know in comments to your game. It may sounds a bit confusing but I'll have to ask not to rate my game based on updated version, so it'll be fair to others. Thanks for interest!
Sure sure, I'm sure I can rate it fairly cause I've already seen it in action. I can probably figure out what it was like in the original version.
And you can just shout at me here since I'm tracking mentions on feedback friends anyway...
Here is **Update 1.2**:
- Lower difficulty (less enemies, slower enemies' bullets, faster player's bullets, slower movement).
- Level design!
- Less time before you lose power.
- Spawn bugs fixed.
- Hit indicator around the screen.
- Improved menu (game pause, restart, continue).
- Player's and enemies' colliders fixed.
- Awake time for just spawned enemies.
**Download**:
*Windows*: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bx4l-RdxJ0OtMmxNQnlzeDVsdnc
*Mac OS X*: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bx4l-RdxJ0OtMm1uQ0xXNG9iMzg
I've never made a build on Mac OS systems and don't have such to test it. So I'm very interested in feedback on how does it work if work at least.
I hid this update in comments so it won't confuse anyone who didn't try the game yet. I want people to see what I've made for 72 hours, not a week.
First of all, for anyone trying this on macOS and encountering the following...
finalboss.png
This fixes it:
`chmod 777 "The Final Boss 1.2.app/Contents/MacOS/The Final Boss 1.2"`
Cool!
Still needs major balancing. Some of the powers were too good to lose and some of them were pretty useless. Like if I ever lost dash/arc/burst before boss was on less than 50% it was a straight up restart. Might be a nice idea to add RMB as an alt for dashing.
There was a lack of feedback on some actions (like getting hit). And the lack on audio didn't help here at all. I would slow down the enemy bullets just a bit and add a white/lighter outline to them to make them easier to see. Especially the red ones were pretty notorious because of the lack of contrast. And did you really think having player dodge red bullets over red background would be a good idea?
I'd also decrease the player hitnbox size. Not quite sure how big it was because it was impossible to know when you got hit unless it was the killing blow. Could decrease it way down to be like a circle with a diameter of 25% of the sprite width. It'd seem more fair since player would not get hurt on close calls and you could even add more bullets then. More bullets on the screen is better, right? It was also pretty hard to weave in between bullets because of the fast speed/acceleration. This is why quite a lot of bullet hell shmups have a key which when held, slows the movement speed of the player allowing more precise movement.
@antti-haavikko Thanks for such a good feedback! I'll reference to it when start making the serious game.
Nice idea! I included it in my Ludum Dare 39 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DrJOSU_FjM