Frostbite

mhsco 2020-04-22 20:10

nice effects, found it quite challenging until I realised I could just camp at one bonfire and defend it, so maybe needs an incentive to move around more? had fun still while stationary though!

nachocp 2020-04-23 07:37

Thanks @mhsco. I totally agree, wanted to add some feature to force the player out of the confort zone.. but run out of time! Maybe for the next version!

silas-reinagel 2020-04-23 18:41

This is very nice for a first time compo game!

Simple, clean action.

If I had to offer one suggestion, I would say to be very careful about the top/bottom of the screen with enemy defense games, since the field of view makes it so you can't see enemies from the top and bottom until much later.

Because of this, the action usually feels a little more fair if you give a pre-warning indicator when an enemy is off-screen above/below, or use more horizontal space so you can capitalize on the natural screen viewing area.

seothen 2020-04-23 18:50

I'll just echo the point of the person above me, but I thought that as well - because enemies can come in from above or below, you might want to go for a square playfield (or only make enemies come from the side). Nevertheless - cool concept, neat little game.

nachocp 2020-04-25 16:46

@silas-reinagel that's a good point, to be fair I didn't really think of that. As I made the game I was already expecting where the enemies could come from :v:.

@seothen noted! Thanks

silkworm-sweatshop 2020-04-25 17:40

Congrats on your first jam! It's a simple game but it's better to complete something rather than overscope so good job! I wish I could hold down the fire button for continuous firing. I know you have a charge mechanic but it didn't seem that useful. Also as a general tip: Always, always add sound to your game! It adds so much polish to a game by spending 5 minutes just adding the simplest of sounds. Check out Bfxr for an easy to use sfx generator.

monish-vyas 2020-04-26 05:45

Loved the game. Graphics are really nice (better than I could ever make). Particle effects were really nice and distinctive for both cases (enemy killed and enemy hit the fire). Progression and difficulty felt quite natural in increasing was not too easy or too difficult. I felt like there was no need for player movement as I shot only from one place almost all the time. Also Firing would have felt more fluid if it was mapped with mouse click. Apart from that I really enjoyed he game.

nachocp 2020-04-26 09:51

Thanks @silkworm-sweatshop! I wanted to add some SFX (using Bfxr) but I didn't have a proper audio system implemented... I tried hacking something but it didn't really work well so I decided to take that out :cry:.

Glad you like my programmer art @monish-vyas! It was quite challenging tbf, I need to join more game jams to get fluent doing pixel art.

lintfordpickle 2020-04-26 11:31

This is a solid entry and well done for a first time compo. Well Done. As ffor criticism, as someone above mentioned, I think an indicator to show when enemies are about to enter the screen would be useful.

remco 2020-04-26 14:21

Well that was fun. The balls of eldritch energy or whatever it is you shoot feel very immediate and powerful, even without the audio (which I normally am a bit of a stickler for). Nice touch varying the spread pattern as well.

I found a very easy strategy for my first play-through. Just stand in the middle, keep the mouse-cursor very close to the wizard and blast away! You can press space very quickly if you don't have to WASD after all. I worked around the visibility problem by keeping the top fire at the top of the screen and just continuously fire in that direction, then mop up anything that comes for the bottom two fires (because they're in the middle of the screen & I can see everything around them).

I think some sort of score system would also work very well with this.

nachocp 2020-04-28 16:08

You are too kind @lintfordpickle!

Thanks @remco!