FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD48 → Billy's Gone Again

Billy's Gone Again

By willoxs, preda, kingofnova, rat_spine and waltsontanaka

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall2803.9286
Fun1064.0586
Innovation14072.8485
Theme16402.9185
Graphics4114.1086
Audio2273.9486
Humor2403.6781
Mood5473.7684

Comments

brianpow 2021-04-27 01:54

Very nice, love the enemies!!

kel 2021-04-27 01:55

Gen-U-ine hootin tootin fun partner!

pickyburrito49 2021-04-27 01:55

Great game, I like the look that you have going on and the protagonists running animation makes me chuckle!

teenythanos 2021-04-27 01:59

This has been my favorite so far!! I absolutely loved it. Sent it to my jam buddies!!

cryptomnesic 2021-04-27 01:59

Strong Zombies Ate My Neighbors vibes, good times.

jarmustard 2021-04-27 02:01

Nice job! It's silly, fun and has a lot of character.

jeremy-scott-olsen 2021-04-27 02:02

Man, what a goofy fun game. Just awesome, well done!

eonarheim 2021-04-27 02:03

The snake in a boot made me laugh, the enemies were very well done. The cactus was a very challenging enemy, I went with the flame thrower for dispatching that one. Shooting the weapons feels really good, the sounds and the visuals are great.

Only nits were it wasn't easy to distinguish which weapon you have active. The mouse wheel control is a little twitchy and hard to land on a specific weapon, but still a cool way to switch out weapons in this style of game.

preda 2021-04-27 02:05

@brianpow @kel @pickyburrito49 @teenythanos @cryptomnesic @jarmustard @jeremy-scott-olsen I'm really glad you enjoyed it, thanks for the review and for leaving a comment! @eonarheim Nice strats, one thing you might've missed was that you can also use numbers to switch weapons

cam-moore 2021-04-27 02:05

There's a snake in my boot! You may have something here, almost like a Enter the Gungeon feel. Great job!

miej 2021-04-27 02:05

impressive work for one weekend!

tylerkealy 2021-04-27 02:05

Very nice! My favorite was the flamethrower... had cool graphcis! :)

mmason 2021-04-27 02:06

Great game and great atmosphere

uncleurgot 2021-04-27 02:09

Ended up just dashing past everything and cheesing the boss. Phenomenal art, music, sound design. Left a lot to be desired in the Deeper & Deeper theme and balance department.

kingofnova 2021-04-27 02:09

Hey all thanks for the positive feedback where happy that you enjoyed the game. It making us really happy to hear the feeedback hope you all had a great jam/compo.

rhoff95 2021-04-27 02:18

Visuals are really nice, and pistol sfx are very satisfying. Would love to see a full version.

preda 2021-04-27 02:19

@rhoff95 I'm glad you enjoyed it!

tucan 2021-04-27 02:39

This is a really nice game! I really like the graphics, the enemies and the music! Really fun! Good job!

brigadeirim 2021-04-27 02:40

I liked the graphcis, great atmosphere, great game!

milano23 2021-04-27 02:49

Nice job. All of the weapons felt good and had their balance. The cactus had crazy range. I thought the skeleton and the cactus might have been using the same range but i was sure the cactus was still firing after i left the area, LOL. I went pretty far in the game, died, revived and died again, but i still didnt come across a boss. Is there one? I noticed another person said there was. Overall i really liked the game. The music, art, sound fx, and game play went well with each other.

stejkrobot 2021-04-27 02:50

This is fun! Moves a little too fast for my taste, its hard to avoid running into a mob without having perfect reaction time. But the vibe is amazing.

rat-spine 2021-04-27 02:55

@milano23 hi! im glad you enjoyed the game, there is a boss! its a stone golem that hurls rocks at you, kind of like a shotgun! :D

incd021 2021-04-27 05:18

Nice graphics, sfx, music and even a bossfight :) Everything fits together. Very enjoyable. Good job. :smiley:

azakharov 2021-04-27 09:12

Fun: it was very fun to shoot all this enemies and run from them Graphics: really cool pixel art style, funny animations Audio: the best sfx and main theme Overall: very funny bullet=hell game

Can I have permanent death? Beer is for healing. What for other things?

preda 2021-04-27 09:29

@azakharov I'm glad you enjoyed it although I'm not sure what you meant by the last part of your comment

matheus-madtrilhas 2021-04-27 17:45

Diablo 2 trained me for this! I loved remembering my dungeon times. Very cool gameplay and art. Wonderful music and sfx. Congratulations to the team.

lucasefdias 2021-04-27 22:59

Definitely a fun game! Music is both fitting and comic and SFX for the weapons are really satisfying.

Had some trouble with the camera, but I guess it's my lack of skills to control it properly =P

Good job, everybody!

silas-reinagel 2021-04-27 23:30

Very nice jam game! A clean and tight experience.

I very much enjoyed the different gameplay styles offered by the different weapons. The final boss and music were the perfect conclusion!

My one improvement suggestion would be to make the camera a little less frantic. Maybe a slightly larger field of view. I like that it follows the mouse a bit, but it wasn't always easy to see in more than a single direction from my character.

kingofnova 2021-04-28 02:51

thanks Silas that means a lot if you go press esc there was a zoom button. Thanks for the feedback

yngvarr 2021-04-29 12:50

A great shmup game you got here! I loved the pixel art and lighting combination, it works great for aesthetics. Sounds and music blend perfectly with surroundings. Gameplay-wise, all the weapons were useful in some way, switching to a more appropriate one depending on the situation feels satisfying. Enemy sprites are hilarious, I also like how they're not getting removed completely from the scene, but leave an artifact on the battlefield.

To improve the game even more I would suggest moving the ammo indicator a bit closer to the player's character and maybe some UI indication of the weapon now in use.

I've recorded my playthrough if you're interested. :)

https://youtu.be/kq623v4DDxs

preda 2021-04-29 15:48

@yngvarr Damn, thanks for the review. Will be watching your gameplay as I am pretty interested in seeing how other would play it.

2021-04-29 16:14

Woow! This game is hardcore! Like all the shootings and the amount of the enemies! take some effort not to die haha!

Great sound effects and music! Got the atmosphere just right and remebers me of old plataform games! Really great job guys!

swoof 2021-04-29 18:42

Incredible game. One of my favorites so far! Everything from the controls, graphics, audio and design, is great

intrepidhero 2021-04-29 18:42

Very nice! Graphics, animations, sounds, and play mechanics are all great. I wish the view was zoomed out a little more, there was a lot of getting killed by off screen baddies. Also, playing on a laptop with touchpad, I got crushed. :-)

windfall890 2021-04-29 18:43

The lighting built into the sprites really pops on the game tiles. This oozes Enter the Gungeon vibes with the sprite outlines and weapon mechanics

The floor tile UI tips are awesome, so many games miss out on in game control hints and its a great feature, They did blend into the BG tiles a bit, i almost missed them.

The mouse scroll wheel to change was giving me a lot of trouble on my crappy mac mouse, but then i realized num keys also worked! then I started having a lot more fun. This is vert polished and i had a blast playing it.

- the Flamethrower was awesome looking, all the weapons stood out. - Snakes in boots were excellent, all the enemies felt cohesive and worked well. - The white outline and animation on pickups is a great touch, really helped me to keep track of them in combat.

nice work!

gazal 2021-04-29 18:46

Very nice! I could play this for hours

spadekhemoglobiny 2021-04-29 18:48

So, I will start with the things I didn't like. First of all, I think that the lighting is too bright in some parts of the map, and so is the flamethrower, which made it hard to see what's going on on the screen (but maybe that was intentional to make the weapon a bit more riskier to use). I also would have liked a reload button, since it annoyed me that I couldn't reload my guns before a fight lol. Another thing with the reload, is that I would put the indicator above the player instead of on the mouse, since it was kinda hard to keep track of it since I was moving it around all the time. I was going to write that the randomness of the cactus enemies' projectiles made them easier to dodge, but after playing for a bit more I realised that this is actually quite the opposite, which is a plus. Other than that I really love the atmosphere of this game, I've got a thing for humoristic western games, like west of loathing which this game reminded me of. The music, visuals and SFX are on point as well. Amazing job pardners

pfs 2021-04-29 18:51

The looks nice and polished and also plays well. Although I'm not quite sure how it fits the theme? :P

benpeterson 2021-04-29 18:53

Lol such a goofy vibe I love it. I didn't realize there were other weapons until about half way through when I realized I had no idea what the pickups were about. IMO the lighting detracted from the aesthetic made it feel less cohesive as a whole, but no biggy.

Very enjoyable project all in all, was satisfying to beat the boss. Great job guys keep it up!

briibot 2021-04-29 18:59

Probably one of the most charming and well put together games I've seen so far this jam - I'm amazed that your team was able to put something together this smooth in 72 hours, so great work! The music worked incredibly with the atmosphere, and the art was so incredibly charming for it - the animations of the snakes retreating back into their boots when defeated was so very delightful to watch, and I love the design for the main character.

I'm a person who's really bad at keeping track of multiple weapons in games, so when I was introduced to three different weapons off the bat, I was immediately of the opinion that I was only going to use one of them throughout the run. That said, I quickly grew to like the others much more than I expected! Around the middle I was delighted by the flamethrower, and by the end I was almost exclusively using the cactus needle gun after having picked up a bunch of ammo for it throughout. Each gun had a distinctive feel and use that made it actually feel impactful switching between them, and each of their firing types was actually fun to use, so great work there!

I appreciate that ammo was given in good quantities throughout - it was always limited, but not so much that I felt I was going to be run out at every turn and corner, and whenever I swapped weapons, I usually had enough ammo stored up in it from prioritizing the others that I could easily go for quite some time with the one I switched to. It was also very easy to pick up on which enemies to prioritize for what - I appreciated that whenever I was running low on health, I could instantly see a skeleton and know that's who I was going to be targeting.

I easily found cacti to be the scariest enemies, the last boss included (once I found out I could hide half behind a wall and pretty easily hit him because he was so large) - more of those included in the last boss room may have made it more challenging, but as is it was a satisfying conclusion to the game with a bopping soundtrack to boot!

The only thing I might recommend for this game is showing a picture of the different types of ammo above the weapon ammo amount when you switch (i.e. showing a picture of the cactus thorns above the cactus gun ammo when you switch to it and showing a picture of snake oil above the flamethrower ammo when you switch to it) - the distinctions of the guns wasn't super easy for me to make out on the tiles, and an easier indicator of what ammo was loading which gun at the beginning would have been an easier way to ease players into them. I was definitely able to pick it up pretty quickly anyway, but it would have been an appreciated UI addition.

Overall, absolutely great work - It was a pleasure to play, and I think your team did an absolutely amazing job putting it together! ☆☆☆☆☆

masaru 2021-04-29 19:31

Before saying anything else, I'm used to compo and therefore have no idea as to what I should be expecting from a jam game.

Now that this has been said, this is a pretty cool game. It went on for a bit too long, I think having multiple level rather than one long one would have been better (I started to wonder if it was infinite just before I ran into the boss). For the entire playthourgh up to the boss I thought the flamethrower was bugged as it seemed to not do any damage when I shot it at ennemies, it's just against the boss that I realized that you had to hold the mouse key down, maybe an indication would have helped. Also, icons for which weapons is equiped, and a bit more challenge.

Overall, this is a pretty good base for a little game. The Nuclear Throne / Entre The Gungeon gameplay is a tried and tested formula that's always fun and the universe seems interesting. The music and sfx are also pretty good.

mm-gamedev 2021-04-29 20:18

This Game is fun, Funny , has sick lighting... and i love it. The enemies are kinda funny and are well quite hartd to beat ....except if you've got a flame thrower xD . ..... Noice

brian-mayberry 2021-04-29 20:24

Shotgun 1000% effective, blasting through cool baddies and jamming to cool music... and then the music changes... and the shotgun doesn't work anymore... uh oh! LOL! Excellent game, awesome job at pulling together such a complete feeling project.

tom-robson 2021-04-29 21:06

Took me a little while to realize there were multiple weapons. But when I did? Ooooooooh boy I had a rootin' tootin' time with yer shootin' partner!

Seripusly, this was great! The characters and their animations were quirky and enjoyable, the combat was satisfying (once I stopped using the pistol...), and it's one of the more fun entries I've played. I'd maybe move the camera back, increase the pistol's fire rate, and add a reload button - but other than that, this is awesome!

filgru 2021-04-29 22:15

Hey! Very nice and enjoyable game. It has really cool mood. I love the characters, especially cactus! Great job!

jiri-hysek 2021-04-29 22:31

That was FUN! Controls feel great, shooting is satisfying and the whole setting is just hilarious. It could be easily called Binding of Redneck! ;)

feralpoodles 2021-04-29 22:35

Loved this game!! And I'm not even a big fan of bullet hells haha. The weapons were great and really satisfying to use, and I loved the graphics and animations!! Everything feels so polished and cohesive, super awesome job!! :)

kr4ft3r 2021-04-29 23:06

One look at the enemies and I start to realize Billy has a severe alcohol problem and is gone shooting up an empty building (at least I hope it is empty).

This is probably among top entries when it comes to how fun it is to actually play.

zerocomms 2021-04-30 00:18

The zoom level seems just right, really adds to the atmosphere.

Also, do the snakes drop snake oil? nice touch.

starrynitegames 2021-04-30 01:16

Very tight controls. Great audio design. Low difficulty level, but was still a blast to get through.

There were a few times when I dodged upward and wound up outside of the camera's view. I was playing fullscreen on an 21:9 monitor, so that may be why.

Thanks for the game. Well done!

threeli 2021-04-30 02:37

This ended up being a nice little time sink for me. The controls worked well, and I think the theme is pretty fun overall. I think the only bit of criticism I could offer (besides asking for more content!), would be that I wished the pistol had more feedback when hitting the enemies or even the wall.

Will you continue to work on it post JAM? Either way, great work!

jaiden-gerig 2021-04-30 03:53

Charming pixel art and a great visual style. Controls are tight and the weapons feel great and have a nice amount of oomph to them. The overall structure outside of the combat felt a bit basic, but you've got a great foundation to build off of. Excited to see where this goes after the jam!

zerokun 2021-04-30 07:17

REally nice game, it has interesting enemies, super nice art and sound effects and it is very fun.. I think that the flamethrower and the cactus-shotgun were a bit too simila, it would have been greate habing an indicator above the ammo and maybe a big red text saying NO AMMO when you don't have them, since it's much more noticable than the bullet counter

Anyway this is still waay better than what i did in 72 hours so good job, amazing game

kingofnova 2021-04-30 15:21

The amount of feedback we have gotten is absolutely crazy thank you every one for the positive feedback.

willoxs 2021-04-30 16:25

Thanks for the critical feedback as well^^

havok06 2021-04-30 17:00

Very strong gameplay. I particularly like the way the camera was working, it did not feel too static and was following the player very well. The different weapons were interesting. The sound design is very well done and the visuals are good. Thank you for the game.

mykola 2021-04-30 18:02

Very solid entry! Really well-put together and polished. A lot of content and mechanics. AI is really decent. Amazing visuals and audio. Trully reminded me of Enter the Gungeon. I had a lot of fun going through it!

I do have suggestions to improve as well. The level was so long and all the same that at some point I started doubting whether there is an ending and whether I'm moving in the right direction. Some feedback to the player that you can win this game would help. A story would be really nice to understand what you're doing there and what you're after. Otherwise, feels more like a generic bullet hell with unlimited procedurally generated world. Not sure if every player will have the nerve to make it till the end.

Another small suggestion would be to make dash give you invincibility for a short period of time, otherwise it's not that useful. I haven't seen a need to use dash till the final battle.

Finally, I'm so glad that there was a final battle, defeating the boss felt rewarding. But after winning the game just froze for several seconds and then returned to the main menu, which wasn't rewarding at all. Even a "Congrats" text would make it more rewarding. But ideally, some uncovering of the story and a small animation would make player experience a lot better. I would personally trade one of the weapon and enemy types for it. :smile:

Nevertheless, overall, really amazing job for a jam game. Very impressive and inspiring. Well done!

leonardo-coyado 2021-04-30 18:07

Great work! Amazing game!

nsadie 2021-04-30 19:28

I really liked this, and you get extra points for the snake in the boot! The animation and style was very charming and made me laugh!

bajtix 2021-04-30 22:29

I like the artstyle and the attention to small details (like the cracks in the ground and the fact that when you kill enemies they leave behind "corpses"). I think that the difficulty curve is a little steep, it should be layed over more levels/rooms/waves (idk how to call it) in my opinion, so that it would feel less repetitive.

commanderstitch 2021-05-02 05:33

Wonderful little top down shooter you have here. The guns were easily op, but who cares! That was fun. :-) i preffered the shotgun over all the other weapons. Just like realm of the mad god and other close up shooters, it's always generally frustrating to always be shooting things offscreen, but i enjoyed like all this stuff. THe sounds, the music, the boss, the drops. Neat stuff. Funnnnzzz

stone-studio 2021-05-04 03:10

Great dungeon-style game! I really love these weapons!

pat-cleaver 2021-05-05 12:57

Great entry! Love the variety of ennemies and weapons, it's simple, but adds depth. Congrats!

roberto-braga 2021-05-05 16:18

Cool game! The music sets the mood and the cartoonesque SFX brings a funny feeling while playing. Sweeeet!

itsisaac 2021-05-06 12:43

Absolutely awesome game! I love the comedic nods like "Snake in a boot" and cactus' dropping Diving Rods! The graphics and sounds are fantastic and all the guns feel delightful to use! Great job! Only tiny piece of improvement you could have made is to add like a time based scoring system and to incorporate a tiny bit of story. Good stuff!

deathstorm 2021-05-06 20:45

It played soo well. The Controlls where nice and snappy, The Graphics are awesome and the sound and music are on Point. I really loved to play the Game.

I dislike the Flamethrower just a bit because you just not able to see anything anymore when you use it. And One Point in the end was a bit disappointed, I dont know what exactly happend. I think I killed the Boss but the game froze and went back to the Mainscreen. So what I would recommend is to put a Win and Loose screen in the End.

NExt to that the Game was really really nice.

WEll Done

cameron-paxton 2021-05-07 23:19

This was great! Loved the sense of humor and enemy-specific drops. Well-balanced, and the music and audio were a lot of fun. Nice work!

vitluke 2021-05-08 03:33

Nice game guys!

I loved the graphics (the enemies sprites are awesome), the smooth movements and controls, well balanced fights, also the country-inspired soundtrack and all SFX were really great and fitted the game very well. I don't have much to add other than what has been said in previous comments, such as: a better indication that you have other weapons (maybe a hud or just a weapon icon), some indication of the checkpoints, maybe a life counter (game over when it reaches 0), and maybe a level progress indication - but these are only details to improve a pretty solid game.

Congrats for the great job!

deadmanjw 2021-05-09 09:23

I really like this game but not sure it really fits the theme.

The character seems to slide around instead of moving, also the blocking obstacles are a little tough to distinguish with the normal map. These are only small grips though from a very well done good dungeon crawler.

neontropics 2021-05-15 13:44

This plays really nice! Great visual feedback and sound when hitting enemies, which is really important especially when you have to wait a bit between shots. Getting hit didn't have nearly as much impact though and I mainly didn't care that I got hit (except when I died). It was very fun getting into fairly chaotic huge shootouts.

The graphics are very nice and charming in a lofi way, though it might've been good with a bit more contrast between the floor and wall tiles. The game controls very nice but it does feel "loose" - perhaps some momentum or more weight to the character would make this feel more grounded.

yurikun 2021-05-16 02:04

A fun and frenetic game. The art is simple but fitted the game and it's theme. Congratulations to the developers.

cjgladback 2021-05-18 01:41

Thank you for letting me play this on stream (forever ago)! [Here's that clip](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1007876502?t=0h54m18s) if you ever want to rewatch a poorly-excuted playthrough again. The main takeaways (other than misunderstanding of the ammo UI, personal difficulty switching weapons, and two minor visual glitches) are the rave reviews for the snake-in-my-boot.

oadt 2021-05-18 19:13

I love every sprite in this game! Some enemies are sometimes a bit hard to see (I am looking at you, snakes on gras!) Maybe some kind of outline would have helped, but I guess this would have destroyed the style of the game... It is a fun game, I would have only wished a fourth kind of opponent showing up before the boss fight.