Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Arcade Wars
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 144 | 3.87 | 25 | |
| Fun | 119 | 3.82 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 224 | 3.52 | 25 | |
| Theme | 36 | 4.15 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 146 | 4.21 | 25 | |
| Audio | 181 | 3.71 | 25 | |
| Humor | 234 | 3.40 | 23 | |
| Mood | 257 | 3.66 | 23 |
This is an incredibly well polished vertical shmup with a really clever concept. I really like how ammo can be collected from the remains of destroyed games or even from their projectiles. The game did softlock for me though at the end of the second level. I ran out of ammo and the last pinball machine stopped firing bullets and kept following me from a distance away. Hope that gets looked into because I genuinely had fun with this one.
@gamepopper Thanks for playing! Honest Dan got the same softlock on his stream, unfortunately. It is fixed now :)
I liked this a lot, and it took a bit of time to truly appreciate it. The whole balance of health = bullets = coins, along with getting coins from killing enemies but using the scoops to catch bullets adds a nice dynamic to a game that typically sees the player holding down shoot mindlessly and spamming the enemies. The 3 spinning wheels at the bottom was a clever little addition, I would have liked if it felt I had more control - maybe the timing of the shots stops the wheels - so it encourages you to time your shots (as well as be conservative). Good job as always Aurel
I'm really bad at arcade shooters, but I enjoyed this for a while. Took me a while to fully understand what's going on :laughing: It's very competently made, music and sound effects are tasteful. A well-made entry that captures the theme! I think I'll give this another go after I rated some more games.
Really good job on this! The graphics are nice and the gameplay is really polished. You nailed the theme I think, and catching coins on the side of my player character was a nice trade-off between risk and reward. I couldn't do the game justice since it was lagging because of my streaming setup, but I could tell it was a good game. Nice work.
Great shootem up! Nice graphics and the player movement was just right.
Loved the graphics and game play. Audio started out really good but i had to turn it way down the longer i played.
Really solid game and would love see a longer version, good job <3
I really had fun playing this game ! Well done !
Nice game. I liked the enemy wave formations, the slot machine, the coin stack. I ran into a pool table(?) that seemed a bit unfair (it rushed me and it was faster than the player, so I couldn't kill it.)
That was a lot of fun. I liked the slots, power-ups, and coin mechanic. But I couldn't figure out what to do with the claw boss at the end of level 3. I kept on firing and I thought maybe I should be aiming for its coin collector, but I couldn't tell if I was doing any damage and eventually just ran out of bullets and lives.
I took a few chances a few too many times, died a bunch lol. Had a good time, the funnels were a welcomed departure from the genre. Great game!!
I have no idea what I'm doing wrong here. The claw boss is just not taking any damage whatever I do. On my first run, the same thing happened but on the claw miniboss. You see it flashing white here but do damage is taken. Kinda infuriating really.
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I love shmups so this is right up my alley. I like the touhou-like graze mechanic even though I wasn't quite sure in the heat of action whether it was like that or not but now reading the description I see that it was there. Couldn't really see it that well in the game itself since the hurt flashing was so quick and there were always non-bullet coins in the mix too. The bullet coins and just straight up pickup coins could have looked a bit more different even though it didn't really matter since you didn't gather either with your actual hitbox.
I think the theme here was kinda working against the fun aspect of the game. The fact that spending too much money thinking that you'd get enough back soon enough was a bummer after dying and realizing that the starting life is the same you had after your shopping spree. And the whole slot machine thing sure was on theme but wasn't that fun either. Made the whole fast bullets thing way less cool than I thought when buying it since it always just triggered on times when it did nothing but waste my ammo/life. And I'm not even 100% sure what else was there (I'm quite sure you could get more bombs and maybe lives too).
And my last nitpicks are the fact that you had to use the mouse between levels. It's kind of a golden rule that if your gameplay is keyboard only, your menus should work with it too. And same goes for mouse only games. Obviously it's the best way to include both always. And the last super minor nitpick is the somehow OCD-level annoyance of leaving the ship at the buy spot spot after being done shopping. FFS, you moved me there automatically, now move me back! :angry:
And that's about it, nothing bad I can say about the visuals and sounds. Both were great and made it a cohesive experience. Good job!
**Edit:** Oh yeah, one more thing. Another touhou staple that could work here is the variable movement speed. Unless you're familiar, there is a button that slows down the movement of the character for more precise dodging capabilities. The reverse would be needed here and it could even be combined with the shooting button, so moving faster when not shooting. It wasn't too fun noticing a huge pack of coins floating away and your puny movement speed was not enough to catch them.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/419497157?t=06h42m35s
Cool spin on top-down shooter, you can't really spam fire buttons since you are literally shoot your life away, killing or avoiding enemies is a constant 'tactical' decision that player has to make. Game is pretty well balanced, the difficulty curve gives time to get used to controls and provides later on a decent challenge. I am also digging the graphics, neat coin animations.