Pretty neat! Crisp pixel art and nice tunes, as is quite often the case with PICO-8 titles.
It was a bit confusing at first because the sacrificing button did not seem to do anything and normal shots were indeed killing the enemies just fine. But it all made sense after first encountering one of the big enemy ships and failing horribly against them.
As you mentioned yourself, hitting the rocks was hard. And even with a fixed hitbox, it would be better if the little shots just didn't go through but instead stopped and maybe made some kind of immune indicating sound to more clearly point out that the power isn't enough. And against the little ships, it would be more satisfying if the fully charged shot wouldn't stop at the first ship and instead you could mow them all down with a single well placed shot.
But yeah, well done! All that is really missing is more content and an actual difficulty curve. After going for a second run after my first success, it was very very easy.
cerno-b
2018-12-08 01:07
I love PICO-8 games, and yours looks amazing. I loved the final boss fight.
There are a few game mechanics issues I would like to point out.
I felt the game's economy is a bit out of whack. So you rarely take damage from enemy ships, and the only real danger of dying is to lose all your fighter ships. Since you get one fighter per rock and the number of fighters you have to expend on bosses is fixed, the core concept of the game is basically to collect enough rocks, which feels a bit out of place for a game that looks and feels like a straight SHMUP.
The sacrifice mechanic could have been probably balanced a bit better, it felt a little tacked on. For instance, if the player had more fighter ships but the bosses would recover if they are not killed with a fighter (and the fighter would be lost if the boss recovers in the middle of the sacrifice) may give the game more urgent pacing and force the player to strategize with their resources a bit more.
There are a few glitches. The hit boxes on the rocks are a bit off since some shots would pass right through them. You probably know this but there are no screen boundary checks so the main ship can fly anywhere outside of the screen.
I felt the power shot, while cool, wasn't really necessary as a quick succession of normal shots would do the job as well, but this could be remedied by making the power shot look cooler and be stronger so it gives the player some bang for their buck.
Generally it's not a good idea to use the x and y keys because the y tends to be in different places on international keyboards. Ctrl and Alt or WASD (unless you use them for motion) are a safer bet because these keys tend to be standardized internationally.
All in all it's a sweet little PICO-8 game that looks great, and would benefit from a little more polish.
bradur
2018-12-29 22:05
Nice retro shmup! It was a little weird that the game told you beforehand you would lose (if you didn't have enough stuff collected from the space shrooms). The graphics were pretty and the sound effects fit well with the aesthetic. The boss fight was hard! I think I finished it with 1 HP left 😅. Would have been nice if the smaller enemies served a function, now I just dodged them and ignored them. I really like how the enemies look when they "die" and are ready to receive your sacrifice. They really look beaten down lol.