Insufficient Storage

triplefox 2018-08-15 20:49

I think the concept is good! It's a cool idea to have "waves" of spam emails coming after me. I like the sounds and music. Those work pretty well.

The game is very confusing at first, for a number of reasons:

- The art style is harsh and leans on being "low res" without really developing distinctive shapes. It would benefit from using a more balanced color palette, for example [DB16](http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=12795). Traditional art skills will always help your pixel art! - The HUD elements are large to the point of obscuring the action, and they don't follow a coherent [information architecture](https://www.usability.gov/what-and-why/information-architecture.html). The analogy you are going for is something like a notifications feed, but the layout you have doesn't resemble any application I've used, and the font is very difficult to read with all the letters merged together. It would work so much better simply by starting from an application you use and trying to copy that look. - It's not clear at the beginning that the game is a twin-stick shooter type of game, or what resources are available. You can figure them out through some interaction, but it feels jarring. If the graphics were all scrambled I would have almost as much idea of what is going on as I did on my first play.

When graphics in games work well, they are the so-called "pictures that say a thousand words". The game I did for this past compo also deals with an "inside the computer" theme, and it took extra effort to build up characters and symbolic content that helped it make sense. You might find my [devlog](https://ldjam.com/users/triplefox/feed) interesting to read, it goes through my whole design process.

petitpois 2018-08-16 06:03

Thanks @triplefox thanks for the detailed critique. I've never done a twin stick game before, I never have the full 72hrs as life always gets in my way during LD. The UI was not what I had in my head as I had no time to polish it so I completely agree with that critique. I wanted the colors to reflect the motherboard inside a phone. I hope to polish it in the future.

robochase6000 2018-08-16 07:09

the graphics are more or less fine to me, but yeah the hud really gets in the way. also there's a lot of stuff that looks like they should be pickups, but aren't, or it's not clear what they do.

the game plays pretty smooth though. would have liked to have seen the different enemy types do different stuff. maybe tweets keep splitting in two as they go viral idk :)

freezedice 2018-08-16 07:27

#### Graphics * Design is a bit confusing and sprites are messy. But you can still cleary see you player and enemies so its fine * Particles look good * UI is a bit confusing too

#### Gameplay * I like that gameplay is dynamic and you can move through levels very fast * Running out of bullets mean death. Its bad because player has nothing to do but just kill himself in this situation. Add melee attacks or extra bullets that drop from boxes etc

#### Theme * You delete files that are clogging up your phone memory. Its exactly matching theme :)

#### Overall * The game is maching theme and has good enough gameplay but its lacking graphics and design

brygpo 2018-08-16 16:28

great style! I like the harsh art; it reminds me of some old C64 games. the music was also good and fun.

it was confusing to figure out why I couldn't fire at enemies, and there were times where I couldn't get more ammo while enemies were still spawning.

2018-09-03 16:35

Neat concept! I included it in my compilation video series of the Ludum Dare 42 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/CCzYoSZIQ24