centauri 2018-12-03 09:57
Nice game, i like the pixel art
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD43 → Reactor Overdrive
By justcamh
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 302 | 3.28 | 102 | |
| Fun | 289 | 3.13 | 100 | |
| Innovation | 229 | 3.24 | 99 | |
| Theme | 362 | 3.10 | 100 | |
| Graphics | 291 | 3.17 | 100 | |
| Audio | 247 | 2.99 | 98 | |
| Humor | 347 | 2.21 | 85 | |
| Mood | 345 | 2.87 | 93 |
Nice game, i like the pixel art
Fun little shooter! The controls are simple enough to use and I like that the gun overheats as not to make it too easy! Thought the mood of it was particularly good too! Well done! A little bug I did find was that there is a deadzone straight down the middle where the gun can't fire, so if an enemy is approaching in the middle of screen, the bullets initially all go above or below it.
@wongkongphooey This actually isn't a bug, but a feature, one which outside of the instructions in this page is poorly explained due to a lack of time. Holding right-click on the tiles to the left will cause them to activate, allowing them to be targetted with the guns.
This has a great look. Shooting feels great. I like the aiming mechanic though it's certainly on the difficult side. Good use of the theme. Really nice job.
Great Game idea! The rapid tweaking of the reactor settings along with very fast paced, yet not simple or boring shooting was super fun. I especially liked the fun diversity of enemies! They each had a sort of character or purpose and were well designed. Great fun! Took me a while t understand that you had to choose which cooling pad locations you wanted to be able to shoot at. All in All solid gameplay
Interesting idea with lighting up tiles, you could make it more clear ingame that you need to light them up and how to do it. Made it to 151.1 after I read the instructions. Pretty fun overall.
Nice and juicy interface! I see you speak tween.
Enjoyable little defense game with surprising depth.
if I had to complain (I do), your pixel sizes aren't consistent. That's a paddlin'.
An interesting idea.
The stats are kind of too small to see in actual play and their management is... unclear.
However the concept of being able to aim only at highlighted cells is neat. Really liked it.
took a minute to understand the game play. An easier way to change to power settings would have been great with a bigger UI. overall a good submission with nice enemy variety and art style :smile:
@cameron-borthwick It's interesting to hear that the UI is too small. I was considering reducing the size further, but that may be due to my laptop screen. The UI uses a 'constant pixel size', but I suppose that if your computer had a higher PPI (Pixels Per Inch), then the UI could appear small. I'll be sure to use Unity's 'constant real-world size' in the future. Thank you for the feedback!
@fireslash Ohh damn. Now that you mention it, those pixel sizes are a bit dreadful, especially in the enemies. I'll keep this in mind next time!
Looks nice, but as for me it lacks some better visibility of my goal and current state. I'm still not sure what was my goal (maybe I miss something)
Nice game!
I like the presentation and in depth exploration of the theme, especially how different gun shapes work better or worse depending on what tiles are enabled for aiming. I also like the attention to detail, projectile effects, little speech bubbles :).
Here's my take on what could be more effective: * Pause while assigning power (to give people time to understand the options and the trade-off mechanics). * Make the graphic style more consistent, especially in scale (go full low-res pixel art, add thickness to enemies, switch between reactor and power assignment views rather than zooming in a sprite). * Introduce the mechanics/enemies one at a time (show a few examples of what is best in a given situation, for example disable shields if enemies don't shoot, choose elemental that enemies are sensitive to). As it is, I found it hard to tell what would be a good strategy.
Overall, well done!
Nice little game! The end comes fast, but I liked the concept. I didn't like the fact that you had to right click to target, when it would possibly have been as easy to code it so it fires where the mouse is? Anyway, well done!
I really like the art and the feedbacks are great :) Maybe a little more in game explanation/tutorial could help.
Game is fun, feels good and has an intresting concept. Good job! :D
I really loved your idea, i think you struck gold (or at least with me) I can't get enough of managing power systems, its my favorite part of games like FTL. I did experience extreme slowdown when the yellow enemies got on screen (shaped like arrows who fired diagonally). Maybe I need to get good, but it seemed a tad too difficult for me to properly learn any strategies, as I would die pretty quickly, so perhaps it could use a better difficulty curve. Great job!
Super fun with a great look. I do wish the stats were always visible without overlaying the field. I get it adds to the sacrifice of messing with the stats. I just think the idea of it sounds fun. Awesome work.
An interesting game with a kind of mechanics. I put a rating) Please rating and me, thanks in advance)
Fun, even if it gets a bit tedious when you have to take on multiple tanks
The first 3 times I died of overloading because it's not clear enough that you loose health by going over the power limit (maybe it would be better to always display the power distribution).
The system with tiles feels kinda weird because the cannons aren't shooting and aiming on their own (from a technical standpoint it would be easier to make something that shoots at all angles when aimed manually - as tanks do - so it is counter-intuitive for the player), now if they aimed on their own you could think that the sensors for the sectors use power and everything would make sense.
Other than that there are some very good gameplay ideas in this game.
In Version 1.1 I could not find any executeable for linux. Starting the exe file said: "can not execute binary file"
A small explaination of the game for other players: This game reminds me a bit of Parodius Konami, which I played a lot on the SNES when I was younger. You are fighting enemies in space. But you are stationary and you can't get power ups. Instead you have a certain amount of power and you have to choose to make "more damage" or "have a better shield". Sounds nice, you can even enable some "mega weapon mode" for hard enemies by disabling most of the shields.
But your weapons will overheat. Means you can't shoot after a short time. You can give more power to the cooling system but this means no mega weapons or no shield. A bit like "Deserts Of Kharak" with your main carrier. And you have you can only shoots in the directions of "lighted" areas, which takes energy too.
My opinion: I like the idea. The game is well done, everything works and the programmers art is nice. You fell motivated to beat the shxt out of the bombs, before they reach you. There are different enemy types, and you are very careful to decide what to spend power for. But I died so often, I got a bit angry. When I finaly killed a lot of this blue fxxxxx suddenly some enemies spawned and killed me. But it is fun! :)
@rohezal I don't have a linux, so I don't know for sure, but according to the unity export, the .exe that is in there is compatible for linux. I have checked the download, and there is definitely an exe in the download which works on windows. Unity exports are supposedly cross platform (Windows + Linux + Mac) which is why there is only one download that should work for all of those OS.
Good game! Controls are clear and intuitive, players can shoot and manage the settings at the same time! Smart! Graphics are good and "organic"! Maybe it needs add more feedback about damage and die. Also, adding at the beginning a little tutorial about the controls of the game can be good. Great game! Congrats!
Realtime energy resource management is a great design. Keep the player busy while they are playing.
really nice concept ! as said just need more feeedback for damage
Neat and clever. You did a great job.
I know nobody ever has time to do a tutorial in a compo game, but I feel one could have been really useful here - I felt really like I was just dropped in at the deep end and I died quickly a few times before I figured out what was going on.
I normally cant stand side scrolling shooters, but i could bear this one for abit. Congratz! . Im not sure how well it fitted the theme, I also couldnt shoot at some angles sometimes. Overall fun game though, Good job!
This might be the weirdest compliment, but I really liked your background. Normally an animated background might actually make a little sick or distracted, but I found the pulsing blue-ish/purple background pretty cool. Fun game, good entry.
game.gif
a small tutorial would be a good addition and I'd say the music is a bit repetitive but I know the sound is pretty difficult to make.
Pretty cool game once you have understand how it works :)
@vivien-fargette Yes, the music is a bit repetitive. Don't tell anyone that the soundtrack is just barely 15 seconds long. *It can be out little secret.*
@jfraser314 Thank you. The background uses a perlin noise texture that slides across the screen. Each tile takes the colour of a pixel corresponding to that noise texture.
@lukel Both of those things are explained on this page, but I can understand overlooking them (I tend to not read game pages either...) You can only shoot towards the green tiles. Holding right click toggles a tile on/off, and will use energy whilst on. The point was to force you to 'sacrifice' some energy if you want to be able to aim at different points on the map. You can also right-click on the reactor to open stats. There you can allocate your energy to certain systems, but to increase one thing, you need to decrease others.
@lukel Yep, tutorial is needed. That is one piece of feedback that I've given to most other game devs, whilst secretly knowing I suffered from the same. :wink:
I didn't quite understand the mechanics at first, but managed to figure out how it worked. As others said, a quick tutorial would be great !
Also, as @jfraser314 said, your background is awesome ! Using perlin noise for that is pretty clever. Good job !
Cool game !!!, I took time to understand the mechanics of the game, but after learning, it is much more fun ... it also reminded me a bit about Atlantis of the Atari 2600
Amazing game. The art is simplistic with a lot of polish. The game just feels great to play. The background is looking pretty. I liked the mechanics, the fact that you can only aim at the lit tiles.
There is one thing I would love to see in your game. When you open the upgrades menu the game could go in a "slow-motion" mode. I find myself not opening the menu just because I don't have much time for it. And I am pretty sure that the game will look extra awesome in slow mode :smile:
I just thought of an advanced version of this game. A different type of tower defense. Think of it like reactors, different guns, unlockables, different types of enemies, maybe even workers to do some work!
Tower defense and power management game. I would buy that :smile:
@ytaha Thanks for the feedback! Interestingly, the game actually does go into slow motion, but it mustn't be noticeable. It slows down by 50%. I initially had it slower, but I found this ruined the balance of the game, as it made it easy to micromanage. My view was that only halving the game speed kept up the heat, but I can understand how that would be tough whilst learning the ropes. Thank you for all your nice words of encouragement! :smiley:
Lots of work in this game, I really enjoyed it. Lots to tweek and change the experience. I really liked the art style. Pretty solid entry.
It took me a while to understand the mechanics, but once i got it really shines. It is an interesting concept for a shooter to have limited aim, but it is well implemented so it works well.
While the graphics and sounds are simple, but they prove effective in this game. Really liked the entry. Excellent job!
Wow, the mechanics work really well! They remind me of my favourite part of FTL, alloting your limited resources. This makes combat quite stressful and I love it that way. I thought about maybe making the game pause while opening the reactor screen, but on the other hand that would take away from the fun. Maybe you could make it bigger to have it easily accesible. However, the implementation works really well as is already.
Graphics are minimalist but neat! The short looping soundtrack does all it needs to do.
Great job! :)
It's impressive that you managed to pull this off alone! There's an upgrade system, different enemy types, various strategies, visual effects... Cool stuff!
I'm not sure I quite understood all the mechanics. I also felt a bit uneasy when going into the menu since the game was still going on and I couldn't see most of it. This may be better if the menu was slightly transparent...?
The guns felt a bit frustrating to me since they always seemed to shoot everywhere except where my cursor was or where I wanted them to shoot :D Maybe I'm missing some crucial aspect of the combat mechanics to fully understand how they work.
The music was pretty strange. Sounded a bit like music generated by a computer.
@yaen Thank you for the suggestions. Aiming is limited, you can only fire towards the green pads. Make more with right click.
I'll try to make better quality music next time. I honestly wasn't too pleased with it either, and I can assure you, it was not generated. A computer would have made a much nicer piece and it wouldn't be so repetitive (I'm no musician, and the track is only fifteen seconds long, repeating). Probably a good call though to list the tools used to make the game. This page has been updated accordingly.
Oh, that makes more sense now haha. Yeah things like that completely went over my head when playing :)
Props for making the music with Bosca Ceoil though! When I tried it, I thought that it was a neat little tool but hard to use for more serious projects. I'm using FL Studio myself.
Cheers!
Cool game, a bit hard to understand how to play it in the beginning. Fun to adjust the stats. I like the pulsating background also.
As others have noted, the tile mechanic is very difficult to discover and understand. It might be worth considering providing the player with some more visual feedback in addition to a tutorial -- if a crosshair appeared on the tile that was currently being targeted, it would be immediately much more obvious that the guns are firing at fixed tiles rather than the mouse position.
I think it might also be nice to have the player's three guns shoot different colored lasers... It might just be me, but I found the three overlapping trajectories really confusing initially.
@pennycook All nice suggestions! The black, jagged line thingy that appeared when firing was meant to be visual feedback for where you are aiming, but clearly this was ineffective. I will consider this in future projects.
My PC was really lagging, but overall it's a fun game!
Was generally confused, but I don't usually play bullet-hell or similar games.
Some gripes: - your central turret doesn't shoot where the croshairs is pointing - web version was extremely laggy, had no sfx (tried on Google Chrome), had to download windows version to play - the UI was way too small - (this is subjective) the bullet trails were a bit of an overkill and didn't fit with the overall style. Maybe some particle effects such as semi transparent pixels would do the job better (see example below)
image.gif
Overall, it's a decent submission, especially for a one-man 2-day team. Hope I didn't sound too harsh.
Keep up the good work!
P.S. sorry if the I repeated some of the other comments, didn't check them all out
Nice compo game. It deserves some more polishing but good job. Whether you decide to make a post-compo version or not, here are some thoughts and annoying suggestions:
1.The shooting was a bit confusing. If the enemies were standing in the middle I couldn't shoot them. I think it would be better if the player could shoot in all directions. 2.I liked the pixel art, really well done especially for compo. :) 3.The sound effects are really good for the style but the music doesn't fit that well, something more "energic" that will put you in the mood for fighting will be better. 4.I didn't know there was a upgrades panel until the end when I accidentally clicked on it. Mabye a small button in one of the corners will solve that issue.
Overall a great compo game! :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0DzBsanD-A
@jacklehamster Thankyou for a video of your playthrough. Your confusion is understandable. As a compo submission, there is very limited time available to create a tutorial, so unfortunately, this is the result. Where you went wrong, was that you had to HOLD right click to light a new tile. The point is that tiles consume power and you have to hold so that you can't micromanage and instantly create / destroy tiles. I'll keep this in mind for future games.
@vlad-ilisan I wasn't planning to create a post-jam version, but after hearing near constant confusion, I think a simple tutorial might be in demand. With the text renderer and all of that, it should be doable.
@franciszek-pyrc Yes, lag is something I have experienced too. The particles are probably a bit overkill. If a post-jam version comes out, this will be a fix.
@simanis Thank you for the feedback. Confusion is never a good thing in a game, and there really isn't any excuse for it. If you're confused, I didn't design the game right, so I'll look into this for future games. Thank you for the feedback.
Really well done, I didn't understand it at first but after a few plays and actually looking at the instructions, it made a lot more sense. It fits the theme perfectly and it feels like an interesting game mechanic itself, rather than just having to get rid of mechanics, like I think a lot of other games have done in this jam. One thing I would have done is make the "upgrade" menu more easily accessible, or at least have a more clear break between waves so the player has time to strategize. I felt like if I went to change what the power was focusing on, I wouldn't be able to concentrate on enemies and would start to lose health. Otherwise, I had a lot of fun with this. I really liked how you had to choose where you could aim, it's something I haven't seen before and it made the game a lot more interesting. Good job!
Nice job! I liked the game, overall one of the best games so far for me. Somehow I had some performance Issues and hitting problems with some waves. Did not managed to get past that point, but apart from this (and the somehow hidden configuration) its quite good!
Interesting game. If I understand correctly, the more green target fields I have, the slower my shield regenerates, so I need so sacrifice offense for defense.
I like the idea, but I feel that it could use a little more polish. I made it quite far by having only two markers, one in the middle and one below that. For me that got rid of most enemies and only let enough shots through to regenerate the shield. Maybe making the placement of the target fields a bit more strategic, maybe with tower defense-ish elements may give a better reward for placing them well.
Graphics-wise I dig your pulsing background, but mixing pixel art resolutions is kind of a red flag for me, especially if they vary a lot, and in this case, there is a huge difference between your largest and your smallest pixels. Maybe a non-pixel art approach may have worked better, but that's just my personal taste. I do like the visual effects of the shots though.
The background music sounds a bit random and becomes a little grating after a while. If that effect was not intended, I would suggest you start off with a simple regular beat and add a simple melody without too many jumps between notes for starters and improve from there. Sometimes it's the hardest part to know when to stop adding stuff, that's something I usually struggle with.
I hope these points don't sound too harsh and that you find the criticism useful.
It's a solid Compo entry, good job!
Cool game, the simple pixel art looks cool, and the game idea is fun (: Nice audio as well. Congrats! :D
@JackLeHamster @cerno-b @vlad-ilisan @simanis
A new post-LD version is available! Now includes better usability and performance. There's now a tutorial, and you can enjoy heaps of minor bug fixes. For a full report on what's new, check this; https://pastebin.com/KUVyHUGb
As a note to upcoming players; be aware that the current version IS NOT the originally submitted game. If you would like to play the original game, it is available for download from the itch.io page. This version is very similar to the new one, and the main difference is the lack of a tutorial.
Very hard to read the font in fullscreen. Otherwise it's a nice game! Bravo!
@vademetro In what way is the text too hard to read? Too big, small or blocky? Also, how effective was the tutorial? I would love some more detail! Also, thanks for your comment.
The game is great and a lot of fun, but ive got some gripes with it (that might or might not be very nitpicky): -Different size pixels. Ew. -Text is cut of [here](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/524561409808400384/524561437746659329/unknown.png). -Button feedback for "New Tip" stops working in the game over screen once you press it once. -The letter "f" in the font makes it seem like there isnt a space before it. Press something to pay respects -Yet "'" makes it look like there is. -The tutorial text should have some "Ive read it!" button so the player can take as much time reading it as they need. -Health bars for enemies would be nice.
Other than that, its pretty neat! I really liked how the background looks.
Great game. The idea is nice and the graphics are cool as well. Good job considering the time limit
Good game! I enjoyed the visuals and the game felt very polished in general! (always a big plus for LD stuff). Anyways I guess I'll keep it simple...
Cons:
-I could not read the text very easily, its somewhat tough to distinguish letters with that blocky font.
-Health bar was a little small(in comparison with the rest). I mean... I played fullscreen on a 24" monitor and it was fine, but I imagine if you port this on mobile or smth it will be very straining to see the health.
-I get the theme but I survived for so long with just three green blocks. I didn't feel the need to create more or delete the currently existing ones :P.
Pros:
-Great visuals (literally AMAZING particles! good job on that <3)
-Fairly innovative and the theme is there for sure...
-Actually played for more than I though I would, so it's also surprisingly fun!
I enjoyed this entry!
The simplicity of the controls works well! but the visuals are messy and make it hard to tell what's going on - not intuitive. I think a different font choice would have been better as this one was not very readable. I also found the audio (music in particular) really grating and far too repetitive. The balance of the gameplay itself seems pretty good to me tho! but i don't play this kind of thing tbh :)
Overall pretty good! I liked the visuals, sound effects also the mechanics! But music becomes really annoying over time, also it was pretty hard to learn how to play. You should add a click to continue(Next) button to the tutorial. I actually liked the UI, it gives the game a cool feel!
Let's just get right into the negative, then I'll wrap up with positive.
Cons: - Even with the tutorial, controls were not at all intuitive - My health got low, and I saw no way to refill easily - Some enemies were almost unbeatable with the shield bullets - Graphics were jarring, hard to see what was happening with so many particles - Maybe I didn't play long enough, but the boosts and such seemed rather useless - Never saw a health bar, some better UI would be welcomed
Pros: - Solid level of polish, especially for Ludum Dare - Gameplay felt good, once I got past my confusion around the controls - Theme is obviously implemented, though not very well used in my opinion
All in all, a very solid LD entry! Good job, and keep it up!
Absolutely brilliant. Great graphics, audio and a deep gameplay. A balance you don't expect in these games. When I lose I feel like it's because I'm bad, not because the game is unfair.
Once you got the idea though I feel like you get to ~150 without effort (max guns & overheating and put one aim-point in the middle and just spam away. When elementals come, remove 1 gun & put on elemental), but around 150 (149) when the big boys come, it becomes VERY challenging and I find it hard to balance defence and offense while also changing the aim. The wallers get time to come up and then you're TOAST.
Other than that... Brilliant, to be honest. Had me wanting to play it again and again to try different strats.
Oh, the font isn't very readable. Needs more whitespace.
What's the highest score you've seen?
Very solid entry, and once you figure out what's going on it's quite enjoyable to play :) The little notes when you destroy the enemies were very enjoyable, and made me want to work hard to get the good ones! Might have been nice to have been able to see things like the health bar and various stats from the main view, instead of needing to right-click into the time window. Especially if you could manage them from the main view to not have to look away from the action. The pixel art and music were fun and exciting, though a bit confusing sometimes, especially during the tutorial where many things were fighting for my attention.
Main trouble I had: -Were there separate levels? It would have been interesting to play a game with extremely short levels but NOT be able to change the stats on the fly. What happened was I'd optimize for each type of enemy when they appeared. It was a lot of menus that eroded the fun of the game.
Very interesting entry. When I opened the game I realized that it will be a great game just because of the small details that you put in the title. My only suggestion is to change the tutorial font. It was a little bit hard to read, specially for me that don't speak english very well. But amazing game, congratulations!
Well made game with good attention to details. It's a game that has a lot of strategy to it, even some tactical gameplay as to where you should put the active tiles. It took a few tries of playing the game and reading the description and comments of the game.
The tips after each game was another example of the level of detail you put into the game. It was quite helpful and I did understand a few key points of the game after reading through some of the tips.
The UI could have been better because it was very confusing when I open up the menu which seemed to have paused my game but I still took damage, it would have been better to have integrated some hotkeys or HUD so you can always see the enemies attacking.
Not sure why but there was no audio for me even though I played the game for a while. Would have helped to know whether the game was running or paused but I still managed to get a good experience. Good job overall!
When I aimed the turret's reticle at the incoming yellow shapes, I felt the intensity! If you continue to develop this, at first I wasn't sure which shapes on screen I was controlling and which shapes were the enemies or allies.
Lovely concept! I included it in my compilation video series of games from the Ludum Dare, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/piFMgX8tbrA
Quite nice game! Graphics and audio effects are cool. My only complaint is lack of option to disable music. (Sorry, but it can get a bit annyoing.) ;) Great job!