FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD40 → Power Surge

Power Surge

By mettra and frozedon

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall424.0932
Fun154.2332
Innovation773.9332
Theme684.1832
Graphics2214.0932
Audio1273.8431
Humor5882.8828
Mood3373.5730

Comments

luxorix-games 2017-12-05 04:48

Very nice! Interesting and fresh!

michael-clavell 2017-12-05 04:53

Spent the most time on this game out of all that I've rated so far. It is pretty fun! Graphics and audio are great. One issue I have is that it is hard to remove upgrades. Maybe right clicking on one will get rid of it instead of dragging it out of the ui?

muromets 2017-12-05 04:54

Awesome game! It reminded me of "Droid Assault" by Puppy Games, that feeling when you are charging your Three-shot-multi-damaging-charged laser and it gets fired almost at the same time the enemy gets to you, obliterating them is priceless!

nardandas 2017-12-05 04:57

Pretty fun game, though I found it a bit easy. It'd be nice if the play field changed a bit or the monster AI changed. Frantically trying to aim and get good position provides a great feel though!

helciarius 2017-12-05 04:58

Awesome game! Looks and plays great, I managed to win on my second try and never really had to enter the menu. For menu interaction my personal preference would be to just click and drop an upgrade rather than clicking and dragging.

mrthee 2017-12-05 04:58

Art's cute, sound's great, but the chargeup was a bit more than i could take :P Fortunately i soon realized that you don't completely lose your charge when you release the button, I still died on the last wave. GG

yokcos700 2017-12-05 05:05

hoo the upgrades in this are such fun! I know what the penalty is but I *can't pass up more damage upgrades!* This is great!

jeffchen 2017-12-05 05:18

Very interesting game!,the mechanism makes me want to try many times in different strategies.Players need to think what they really need,i like that.Graphics all good too!

jespersb 2017-12-05 08:15

Damn... add an Easy, medium, and hard settings, for us Newbies. I'm not that good.

sidewalksleeper 2017-12-05 08:49

Hey, I survived the last wave! Takes some time to get used to these mechanics, but it's so satisfying to get through another wave. Nicely done!

oskarolausson 2017-12-05 13:55

I also won, thats nice. Having to think which upgrades are worth the time. Wish it was easier to get rid of them. Takes too long. Also the collision for the large enemies should only be where there feat collides with the floor, not all the way up to their head.

Best strategy (according to me): Lots of damage 2 (or 3 speed) 1 triple blast. Lead them to one corner, run to the opposite. Blast them, repeat

Great game, lots of fun

v-ad 2017-12-05 14:50

Great game! I love it.

romain-navazo 2017-12-05 15:32

Looove it !! Nice chara_design and animation ! I wish i could play with the controller :(

tatos 2017-12-05 16:03

Nice game with high replay value to try new approaches!

fractalsunrise 2017-12-05 17:34

I liked how well-made this game feels; the graphics, audio, and mechanics all work well together. It was really fun! I liked how there were lots of choices in how to upgrade, and there were a nice variety of upgrades. The balance between running away, shooting, and upgrading was done really well. I didn't really use the upgrades menu much; instead I just tried to avoid the ones I didn't want. I got beat the last wave after 6 or 7 tries, and ended up favoring 1x wide beam, 3x damage, and 1x multi shot. I tended to stay on the edges of the map running between corners. Thanks for making it!

lamossus 2017-12-09 07:40

I love the concept, it's such an original take on theme! Graphics are also pretty nice. I beat the whole game in 1 try without losing any health tho. Just pick up 1 speed upgrade, 1 multiple lasers upgrades, and 3 damage upgrades and you're unkillable. I would really like to see post-jam version if you're planning on doing it!

kingofwhawha 2017-12-09 07:43

WOW This is the most intense game I've played so far! It is very interesting how you tied the theme with the mechanisms of this game. The charging audio is VERY nice. This game definitely has a lot of potential if you try to boil it down to the core of its mechanisms. Great work!

tuomo 2017-12-09 07:54

I really enjoyed your game. Is it me but I found managing the upgrades really tedious so I ended up just avoiding getting any. Especially ones that weren’t instantly obvious what they did. Art is really well done, sounds maybe bit bland. Overall great job!

Ps. Press any key (except mouse button) to continue;)

lonewolfdev 2017-12-12 14:51

Really good game! It's a pitty the short it is :(

richard141289 2017-12-14 13:56

Audio and art are very well done :)

bobbytables 2017-12-20 02:49

Great game! Was a good difficulty level once I got the hang of it. It might have helped me if there was a description of what each upgrade did before the game started or on the game description but I got the gist of it (good icon choice!).

finntastico 2017-12-21 00:52

Would be awesome if this was available for other platforms as well. Also a web version would be great!

miziziziz 2017-12-21 01:51

Really clever use of theme, takes a bit to figure out how it works but once you do it's fun to play around with. Could use some more enemy variety and maybe some chips that reduce charge time? (perhaps at the cost of something else)

huvaakoodia 2017-12-27 23:41

Short, simple and fun! A novel mix of familiar mechanics: upgrades, lasors, robots, and module management. Works well.

The graphics are great! There are enough effects to keep things juicy. Audio fits too.

Played once, lost a single life and then played again to min-max. Did not take long to figure out the best composition: 1 speed + 3 dmg. This way the small critters die in one direct hit, the beam cooldown is as low as it can be and to top it off you are faster than the enemies.

I think the problem here is the beam itself. It hits every enemy in a row. Because of this the width of the beam is not a useful upgrade due to the hefty increase in charge time and relative small increase in total enemies hit. Try 1 speed + 3 width and you'll see that it is not as power as the min-max combo.

I would change the beam into a projectile and add a new upgrade: projectile hp. The projectile by default is destroyed instantly when hitting an enemy, but the hp upgrade allows it to keep going through enemies dealing more damage.

These changes give each upgrade more gravitas. A small projectile with loads of HP will penetrate like a beam, but deal damage only to those enemies on its path. A large projectile with some HP will not penetrate as deep, but will deal damage to bigger groups of enemies. Lastly the default projectile only hits one enemy and deals little damage, but at least you can shoot very often!

Another thing is the upgrade spawning. They mostly appear in the middle of the area, while the player tends to stick to the edges. Dodging unwanted upgrades would be more difficult with skewed randomization.

This is a solid base for something bigger. How about boss battles which force you to keep changing your upgrades on the fly to deal damage, or fast moving enemies who randomly mutate your upgrades on hit? There's potential here.

Good work!

Overall: *Good (4.0)* Fun: *Good (4.0)* Innovation: *Good (4.0)* Theme: *Good (4.0)* Graphics: *Excellent (5.0)* Audio: *Great (4.5)* Humor: *Above average (3.5)* Mood: *Good (4.0)*