FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD46 → Star Buffs

Star Buffs

By majk-fl

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall7343.2134
Fun6463.1434
Innovation10272.4034
Theme10332.6133
Graphics3753.6535
Mood7442.9234

Comments

alex-mulkerrin 2020-04-19 22:30

Challenging game, reminded me of geometry wars. I really like the neon lighting the ships and the bullets have. I managed to kill 18 enemy ships but I suspect I was playing it wrong as I never switched.

majk-fl 2020-04-19 22:36

@alex-mulkerrin Thanks for your opinion! I added that lightening and post processing to hide my terrible art skills :)

bjakubowski 2020-04-19 23:36

Yeah, game make some cool neon effects, but it's kinda too easy

rogedragon1234 2020-04-20 01:01

great game

k4v0x 2020-04-20 01:16

Really love the idea. Would be nice to see what kind of buffs you gave. The boost doesnt seem to be doing anything tho. Really great lighting as well.

ciber-turtle 2020-04-20 01:19

Very fun and great art!

reddarkwh 2020-04-20 01:44

Gotta say, love the effects. Only downside is that the ai is a little too in your face for my tastes.

galgris 2020-04-20 01:59

Nice effects! Too hard for me, though.

rickzyyt 2020-04-20 02:26

Fun and nice effects and sprites! Maybe add some healing item or something in order to make it a bit more interesting.

electric-blue 2020-04-20 02:28

Fun game and I like the neon effect.

captainlazer1 2020-04-20 02:30

This game is tough. I had fun though. I like how shooting direction and movment are not tied together. Like the art style too.

stevis93 2020-04-20 02:56

Fun game, very good looking too. Although i couldn't work out how to use E to "take control of enemy". Also, is there any reason why I couldn't just hold down boost forever?

rngames 2020-04-20 02:58

👍 Nice lighting effects 👍 Lots of particles that add game juice 👎 Enemies can sometimes come out of nowhere since there are so fast and the camera is zoomed in

theseusinabottle 2020-04-20 04:00

Enjoyable. I feel like more could have been done graphically. While I always love the geometry wars aesthetic of glowy ships I feel like you should have gone whole hog with it by making the walls of the arena light up and maybe even darkening up the floor a bit as because of the light circle on the floor it kind makes it seem like there is just a spotlight above the player.

majk-fl 2020-04-20 07:58

@bjakubowski @rogedragon1234 @k4v0x @ciber-turtle @reddarkwh @galgris @rickzyyt @electric-blue @captainlazer1 @stevis93 @rngames @theseusinabottle

Thanks for your kind words. Yeah, I love using large amout of particles and lightening

inka-mcatee 2020-04-20 10:08

The Power of Love ! :3 Like the HeartShape <3

majk-fl 2020-04-20 10:27

@inka-mcatee Fun fact - In the beginning there were hearts instead of ships. :) This is first enemy/hearth sprite LD46_Enemy.png

ruoyu 2020-04-20 11:25

The gameplay is a bit too hard. But I like the lighting and effects (seems the new 2D lighting in Unity works really well) - they add a lot of polish to the gameplay

fictions 2020-04-20 11:32

The game is amazingly difficult xD I absolutly dig your UI Animations on the menu - nice touch. Hope you had a great LD. :smile:

majk-fl 2020-04-20 11:34

@ruoyu Yep, I agree. New Unity 2d lighting is awesome

majk-fl 2020-04-20 11:50

@fictions Thanks. I see that I have exaggerated a little bit with difficulty. I will try to add difficulty levels in post compo version

justalocalhero 2020-04-20 12:14

Looks really good. Feels smooth. Pretty fun after the initial learning curve.

It felt like almost all of the danger was in the first moments after an enemy came on screen. Maybe a farther camera angle would help. I guess I could have stopped to check the map constantly to dodge things off screen but that feels against the spirit of the game.

Maybe the heal should be disabled while you're at full health. I used it up quite a few times at first because I wasn't sure what it was for.

Spamming click to shoot isn't the most fun mechanic.

It'd be nice to know a summary of your buffs. Mostly the ships I took over felt similar to the one I started with, but maybe I never got far enough to notice.

majk-fl 2020-04-20 12:31

@justalocalhero Thanks for being honest. I will try to fix this issues in post compo version

munkkeli 2020-04-20 13:46

Love the looks and style! The gameplay is also very fun and action packed. I do feel like the buffs are not noticable enough though, could not feel any difference myself. I think the difficulty is good, not too easy but also not extremely difficult. A very solid entry :)

majk-fl 2020-04-20 14:49

@munkkeli Yeah, current buff system adds from 0,01 to 0,03 to fire rate, damage, speed, or projectile speed. I will change it to something bigger in post compo version, at least for enemies

louiejams 2020-04-20 22:04

I really like all the effects and style, I found it quite hard to back away from the enemies once they've gotten close enough and my health was just zapped away! Fun little shooter :D

bmacintosh 2020-04-21 01:09

Great job communicating when enemies are spawning with the audio and particle bursts. I'd have liked to be able to hold down the mouse button to fire rather than just mashing it all the time.

slimabob 2020-04-21 01:36

Very tough but I enjoyed the art style. Could use some background music to elevate things to an entirely new level!

majk-fl 2020-04-21 07:20

@louiejams Thanks. I"m considering introducing dash instead of boost, which would prevent the situations like you described

@bmacintosh Thank you. I was wondering how to communicate the existence of an opponent, one of the ideas was to add arrow in his direction, but I decided that glowing particles would work better with map

@slimabob I agree, but unfortunately I can't create music :(

mungo 2020-04-22 14:17

Nice work, I like how snappy the movement is

untitled-studios 2020-04-22 14:42

Fun, snappy, and quick! Very polished and fun, although it could use a little bit more love as far as sound goes. The mechanics took a second to figure out, but once I did they were pretty intuitive.

majk-fl 2020-04-22 14:45

@mungo @untitled-studios Thank You!

blackopsben 2020-04-22 14:47

THat was very difficult. I couldn't tell if the boost was even doing anything. THe graphics look good, but I would go for more visual feedback.

ridde 2020-04-22 14:47

really fun game nice work!

vivoubos 2020-04-22 14:49

Nice work, the movement is great also the difficult. Congrats

grizley 2020-04-22 14:52

Great game no bugs or anything bad nice mood with the everything is darkness and only u and the enemies and projectiles are lighted would like a bigger aim on the mouse tho but overall great!

datagreed 2020-04-22 14:52

Fun twin-stick shooter with nice graphics! I wish you could hold the fire button to shoot though :)

fabula-rasa 2020-04-22 14:55

Very, very challenging. It's a cool take on the theme! Some background music would add a lot to the atmosphere. Great job on the game :)

colan 2020-04-22 15:02

Really nice art and lighting! Good job

bemmu 2020-04-22 15:02

I liked the glow effects. It was very hard at first, until finding that circle strafing around an enemy works pretty well, until another enemy comes along to mess up your circle :)

Wasn't so into having to click all the time to fire.

majk-fl 2020-04-22 15:13

@blackopsben Thank you for opinion. In upgraded version will be dash instead

@ridde Thanks!

@vivoubos Glad to hear it because I hate making movement :)

@grizley Thank you! I love playing with light :)

@datagreed Great Idea! I will add it to post compo version

@fabula-rasa Thanks! Sadly I can't create music :(

majk-fl 2020-04-22 15:22

@colan Thank you!

@bemmu Thanks! I'm glad you found the most optimal tactics :)

fabula-rasa 2020-04-22 15:57

@majk-fl I can't create music either. But there are some nice free assets out there that you may consider looking into for the next jam. I can, in particular, recommend https://freemusicarchive.org/ (for the actual music) and https://freesound.org/ (for music and sounds). Most of the assets there are on CC 0 license or on attribution license - so you can use them for jamming easily, as long as you give credit to the authors.

For this jam, we made our own sound effects but we still can't do music to save our lives :wink:, so we took the music track from freemusicarchive and it works very well. Just a tip :)

fabula-rasa 2020-04-22 16:30

@majk-fl Aaaa, you're compo! Disregard everything I said in my previous post :wink:

majk-fl 2020-04-22 16:41

@fabula-rasa Thanks for your help! I'm afraid I couldn't use it in compo, but I will definitely use it in the future :)