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Defend 'till the end
Defend 'till the end
By kjscott
View on ldjam.com
Comments
skruffye
2022-04-17 12:09
Really pretty little game! The gameplay was simple but overwhelming (as per the theme, I suppose) and the controls were easy enough to intuit, but the graphics were definitely the selling point here. Really liked how the planet changed when it was hit by an asteroid.
If it wasn't for the theme, I'd have said it needs to be easier, or at least have a much more gradual increase in difficulty, but I can see why you went with having it as short as you did for the jam.
Could have done with some music, but I definitely wouldn't have gone with anything too overbearing, just something nice and chill to occupy the ears whilst you're playing.
Overall, good work! :smile:
fifut
2022-04-17 13:13
Nice to play. Simple but funny :thumbsup:
I don't know if the earth turns that fast :slight_smile:
Nice game.
The difficulty is very sweet and the bleeding shoots when the earth is low on health adds creates a more tense moment.
It would have been greast to have some music, but if you preferred a nes style it´s ok
good entry!
pordrack
2022-04-17 13:44
Nice technical feet on the planet rotation and on crateria staying ! The graphism are nice and overall the game is well polished, however, not seeing your score until you die make it easy to just give up.
kjscott
2022-04-17 14:23
@pordrack, I had debated with myself (briefly) about the scoring mechanism. In the end I just went with a flat time elapsed since the start of the run, though I had wondered about adding in asteroids destroyed too. If I had done that then I definitely would have added the current score to be visible. If I was going to extend the game a little more that is definitely one of the things I'd implement right away.
kjscott
2022-04-17 14:28
@the-fazzo, The red was meant to represent where the asteroids turn the ground to lava, I had thought about adding extra "clouds" when they hit which dissipated but that would have taken way more time. My original idea for health was to have little pixel wide "cities" and then people "moving" around the world traveling from one city to the next. The endgame would then have been when the last person was killed, however given the time I was going to put into it (keeping to roughly 48 hours even though was a casual extra entry) I scrapped that idea. If I do a post jam version that, and music, would definitely be added.
kjscott
2022-04-17 14:30
@Fifut, totally it does! And the thousands of miles per hour winds created a nice gently breeze first thing in the morning :)
Yeah, was set to super high spinning speed which was super simple to slow down but I just wanted to show off the world as it spun around so didn't think it was too much of an issue. If I had more time I would have put stars in the background and had them rotate too.
kjscott
2022-04-17 14:34
@skruffye, yeah the balancing of the game was a tricky thing. How to make sure you were doomed but without making it too much of a long drawn out game. The way I went with was with a simple 0.01% chance of spawning an asteroid every frame (30 frames per second), increasing by 0.0001% per frame. Meant that in time eventually you'd be totally be overwhelmed. Far too simplistic for anything that I would consider a game jam or prototype but it worked well enough. I'd probably go for more of a wave type scenario if I was doing an non-jam version, but then again I'd do more work on the asteroids themselves so hits don't automatically destroy them but might deflect them instead.
I did take a stab at some music but it didn't sound super great, so I spent the time adding the sound effects to at least give the gameplay a little bit of oomphf instead.
salyon
2022-04-17 15:32
Fun game! Love the graphics and simple gameplay! Would love if we could move faster :D
kjscott
2022-04-17 15:44
@salyon, I did originally have the gun moving around faster (about twice the speed) but I dialed that back as, even with the gimmick of preventing you from moving while holding down the fire button, it became a little to easy to whip around the world to shoot everything down. It then kinda forced tough choices of which asteroids to shoot down and which to leave. Incidentally the damage of the asteroid was the radius squared, so it becomes super important to shoot down the big ones first!
knatt
2022-04-17 16:31
Nice entry! I like the attention to detail on the planet, and how the marks from the asteroids stuck around.
Cool game! I loved the art of the planet, how it rotated with clouds and how you could see the damage it took from asteroids. I also liked how the asteroids split into smaller ones after being shot. I made a similar asteroid defense game for this Jam but opted for a smaller view and a wave based asteroid system, but originally was thinking of showing the whole planet like you have, so it's cool to see how they compare!
japes
2022-04-17 17:11
Enjoyed, simple but fun, nicely polished, liked the rotating earth effect with the damage indication
kjscott
2022-04-17 17:47
@knatt, thank you! In the first iteration it was a little more complex than it was right now. The asteroid would hit leaving the red afterglow, and wiping out everything that it landed on. Eventually it would cool to grey stone and nearby water would flood in with shallow water then deep water and refill the area if there was water nearby. That was a little too much for the fantasy CPU as it was not well coded so I eliminated the difference between deep and shallow water. Made a significant difference. In theory, if you can have enough asteroids hit you can fully eliminate all the water leaving only a grey rock behind.
kjscott
2022-04-17 17:52
@grumpy-gecko, that all took far longer than I had hoped! About 75% of the 2 or so days I spent on this was on that alone. I used some crappy code to wrap a 2d map over the globe and setting the image pixel-by-pixel (my math-fu isn't strong enough atm to do it better than that). Basically I grab a 32x32 of the 2d map, preserve the y coord but scale the final x coord based on the difference between itself and the center and the map against the width of the circle at that given y coord. Gave a passable approximation of a sphere and the clouds hide a lot of the glitches underneath it XD I'll give your game a try out and see what it's like (thankfully there is an HTML5 build so I will do that soon).
kjscott
2022-04-17 17:56
@Japes, thank you. I didn't really like the concept for the game jam (which is why I stuck to the causal extra entry) so if I was going to do it then it had to be a learning experience for me. That's why I ended up with the rotating earth and damage to the planet to play around and practicing with texture mapping. I was happy with what I ended up with, even if it does need a lot more work. The clouds cover up so many coding crimes XD
mavvy
2022-04-17 18:17
Controls are immediate and intuitive, downtime is minimal and the visual effects from the bullets and planet impact details absolutely complete this package.
The game fits the theme really well with great VFX and spritework and an interesting spin on the theme with a Space Invaders like gameplay but in a circular manner. Great controls too. It's not all that complex and doesn't have that much depth, but for a game jam game, this is a nice quick little journey.
kjscott
2022-04-17 19:04
@mavvy, thank you! I was first thinking I wouldn't need the extra VFX but it just felt completely lacking against the void of space. I had thrown in right at the start a palette shifting for pixels to become darker over time, was pleasantly surprised when it worked out that well. I did try to differentiate between the exhaust and explosions to make it a little easier to tell the difference between the two. I didn't get around to particles for moving the gun or asteroid hits, but ah well.
I got a score of 139!
Backstory time - when I was a kid, I used to love the arcade game Asteroids, but I never knew you could fly around. So I always played at the center of the screen, just spinning in circles trying to shoot anything that came my way. This brought me back to that!
The graphics on the Earth were really nice, especially considering you did it in PICO-8.
I do wish that the player moved a tiny bit faster around the Earth, but that probably would have negated any of the difficulty.
Well done all around!
kjscott
2022-04-17 19:06
@tornadopiggie, as a couple of people mentioned I think it would have worked a little better with some music and would surely benefit from a bit more depth. I thinking of working on a post-jam version of the game to try and add a bit more too it. I wouldn't expect a massive change, I think the basic concept works fine, just maybe an extra mode or two which can address the problems (thus preserving the original game)
kjscott
2022-04-17 19:09
@andrewkennedy, ah I remember playing asteroids on arcade machines at the seaside and also whatever port there was for the Spectrum. I often stayed around in the same place as was often just easier to play that way XD And yes, the speed was specifically restricted to make it more of a challenge and to force the endgame a lot faster. If I were to do another endless mode I would modify that to be faster. Originally it was twice as fast and that felt about right, at the current speed I found myself really having to think did I want to move or not.
@kjscott yeah music would add a lot to the game, although I think the vibe you get from no music is pretty unique. I think maybe a mechanic or two more could add a lot of depth, for example a second gun that rotates at a slower pace but pierces through asteroids or maybe allow the gun to build up momentum so it moves faster if it stays moving. Also I'd recommend adding a cooldown for the gun so that you can't just spam. But as you said, all these problems are just post-jam stuff.
kjscott
2022-04-17 20:01
@tornadopiggie *takes notes for a post-jam version* uh-huh, go on... XD
I tweaked the button press to reduce spam shooting but still leave it fairly quick, to compensate for that you couldn't move whilst shoot. I could see implementing waves, different obstacles, weapon types/effects etc. I did have a vague plan for the inhabitants themselves to launch random missiles themselves, which would be similar to an automatic second gun, but I didn't get around to implementing people so that seemed kinda silly.
I did also want to implement asteroid colliding with each other, what would mean you'd end up with a huge field of fragments which would end up hitting the world (or destroying each other, never got around to testing out that idea).
Hmm, I have a second completely unused button so I could get it to swap weapon/gun types so you can choose the weapon in the best situation and I could even add a second gun anyway by having a second (up to 7) player. That would then modify the difficulty and can do that on the fly.
Cool game, it looks amazing, really impressed by the visuals and the fact that it is made with pico8, you really made the most out of it Generally the game is fun, but I find the controls to be slow and sluggish at times, you have to spam shoot to get some points and the ship moves so slow so it's hard to get every rock But it feels really good and is quite responsive so well done!
kjscott
2022-04-17 20:33
@cube-logic, yeah the original build was twice as fast for both movement and shooting. I tweaked it down solely for the balancing of the game for the jam so you couldn't get every rock and had to make choices thus leading to your inevitable demise (this also included the not being able to move and shoot so you could track objects whilst shooting).
I will be looking at a post-jam version which will specifically address the movement often mentioned.
harksa
2022-04-17 22:46
For a game made with pico-8, I can say that I'm very impressed by the graphics. Very good job on that. the particule effects are really cute lol. I really like that the damage was visible on the Earth as well ! I got a max score of 116, I guess it's nice, the game feels a little bit unfair sometimes but it's okay. I wish there were a 8-bit music with that lol. Good job, I really liked it. Keep up the good work !
levi
2022-04-17 22:47
Hey, I had a fun time. You got the color palette down for the visuals, which is no small feat. In terms of game play, I'm not going to lie, it did get a bit dry after a while. Still, it looks like you spent a good chunk of time on the planet visuals and for that it's worth a good rating. Nice job :)
kjscott
2022-04-17 23:11
@harksa, yeah 75% of my time went onto just doing the planet graphics and the clouds cover up the errors. I know music is my weakpoint, so rather than subjecting people to some horror I used what time I want to spend on the game towards the SFX instead. Post-jam its one of the areas I want to work on to see if I can write something appropriate, was watching tutorials beforehand to try and learn more.
kjscott
2022-04-17 23:17
@levi, I agree with you on the dryness as you put it. One of the factors why I limited move speed, to help reduce overall game time by forcing a loss quicker, and something I couldn't come up with a quick solution for without some considerable effort. As i was vaguely trying go stick to 48 hours overall i felt was sufficient to cover the theme. Post-jam I will try and address this, currently reworking the original code to preserve the jam version as-is and provide other "better" modes of play. And yeah, most of my time was on the planet visuals. Took me far too many hours to just wrap the 2d map to a circle :( i have some tweets of the hourglass world i managed to create in the process :/
So at first I thought I could just spin around shooting, and it took one planet's worth of destruction before I caught on to why that did't work. To the denizens of that planet: oops. But seeing an arc of missiles spiralling out from the planet is still satisfying, even if my gun is pointing 180° in the wrong direction.
As others have mentioned, the visuals are great. Using clouds to cover up errors strikes me as a very creative solution!
It's an all-around great game.
piscythe
2022-04-18 06:00
Oh nice, a pico-8 game! I like the retro feel here. It really feels like you made exactly what you set out to create here. I got 95 on my first try, and walked away with a very clear sense that my failures were failures of my own skill. The mechanics may me simple, but I think there's a lot of execution depth here.
bufalloo
2022-04-18 06:20
Absolutely love the animations and the effects of the world spinning. That alone was interesting enough to watch
This is a cute and pretty game. Love the detail on the earth. You can fire fast by spamming the shoot key which makes this feel like a retro shmup. Music would have been perfect.
aune
2022-04-18 07:15
Wow Great solo creation! I didn't know pico 8 at all (so thanks!). Minimalist and efficient! The fact that the meteors are sent back gently by the shot makes it really interesting to delay the impact ! I love the art style!
kjscott
2022-04-18 08:22
@aune, there is a free to use web version of Pico-8 (https://pico-8-edu.com), it runs functionally the same as Pico8 and was created for educational purposes along with making simple tweetcarts (a whole genre in and of itself).
The asteroids being sent back gently was semi-accidental. When they break up they actually have a random X and y speed assigned but limited to a range of -0.5 to 0.5. If they were up close, the absolute values were likely to be a lot higher so it just happened to come out that way. I did try a few other implementations, such as trying to impart the missile speed and explosions to push them away but this ended up feeling more natural and a whole lot easier to implement.
kjscott
2022-04-18 08:24
@congusbongus, you should just be able to hold down the fire key and it should fire at exactly the same rate however you wouldn't be able to move at the same time. Yeah, I agree with the music. Still learning how to make not awful music by myself. I know enough to take sheet music and implement it into Pico-8 but that's not the same XD
kjscott
2022-04-18 08:29
@bufalloo, thank you! That was the area I spent the most time on so I was hoping people liked that and given all the comments I think it was time well spent.
kjscott
2022-04-18 08:32
@fionnabhair, yeah the clouds work so well for that. If you look carefully there are times where the land seems to squish together for a moment before expanding again, and tiny islands disappear and reappear at times even around the equator (way more prevalent at the poles). Because of the way I implemented the code (very simply and crudely) it can easily overwrite already set pixels so tiny details get corrupted. Hence why the clouds provide a nice distraction!
Nice game! The Earth is well animated, especially when the meteors hit and the damage stays!
My biggest wish for improvement is not to allow infinite shooting (so the player is rewarded for precise shots instead of always bashing on the X key). Also some upgrades for faster speed or more power.
kjscott
2022-04-18 09:50
@christian-zommerfelds, I totally get you there. I had originally thought of adding a limited number of shots that regenerated over time. Figuring out how to balance that in a short space amount of time meant I cut that and just limited how fast you could shoot and restricted you to moving or shooting. I do want to go back to that idea with the post-jam version, plus upgrades, faster speed, power etc (I.E. more of a game and a sense of progression).
silurus
2022-04-18 10:19
Planet pixel art is cool, Well done for spinning it ! A real old arcade game
Nice. Feels good and the effects sounded good
ntimi
2022-04-18 11:58
Thank you for your entry, I had fun! Shooting the asteroids felt very rewarding. At first glance, the game seemed very simple, but after playing for a while, I started to notice all the cool details you put in, like the earth changing after impacts or the gravitational pull on the asteroids. Moving around the earth was stressful, since your character is slow and shooting seems to stop you for a moment, but that improved the sense of urgency and the inevitable feeling of doom - so: theme well done. :)
Awesome art, polished gameplay. Got a high score of 124 :)
Awesome! Lightweight, cute, theme covered. I'd really liked it, thanks for your submission
Nice entry! Quite impressive graphics, the earth almost feels alive with those clouds and reactions to the meteorite impacts. I like the idea of "health" you propose on your second comment, I think it would add more originalty to the game. Also I enjoyed the game balance, it feels like a reinterpretation of the classic Missile Command where you have to shoot wisely, not because of bullet limit but for gun movement speed.
hamdogu
2022-04-18 16:23
A really simple seeming game, but with so many nice details like the perfect level of difficulty, the touches on the earth's graphics when a creater hit it (honestly how did you do that, super impressive!!) and the nice retro feel, wish I could've voted on it if it was in the Jam, but overall amazing game :D
machwerx
2022-04-18 18:15
What a fun little game! Does it move any faster if you're not firing? I couldn't really tell, but if not, that might be an interesting thing to give it a little challenge to decide whether to move or fire.
kjscott
2022-04-18 20:08
@machwerx, yeah it's setup so you can either move or fire but not both at the same time.
rojo
2022-04-18 20:45
This was a simple, fun game. I enjoyed the chunky graphics in particular. Nice work.
rbn
2022-04-18 23:39
Nice game. Love to spam missiles lol! Love the fact that you have to mash the button to fire at a higher rate. My finger is burning but it's worth it lol
Nice! The spinning earth is a true work of art :heart_eyes:
Nice game! Graphics are cute and sounds are satisfying. Maybe the default hold fire should be faster, or the mashing should be limited to the held speed to make them equal options in terms of accessibility.
junber
2022-04-19 01:13
How come that there are so many great looking Pico-8 games? The art here is really great! And though the player's rotation speed could seem painfully slow at times, I had a lot of fun shooting asteroids. I'm not sure why but I was quite surprised to see the asteroids actually being effected by gravity in a realistic-ish manner, which was a cool touch. Good job!
naali
2022-04-19 04:05
I liked the graphics a lot. Would have liked to see some more mechanics to make the game last a bit longer.
Nice and simple game. I loved the asteroid impact on the planet surface effect. Really looks 3D even though its probably all 2D
Simply love the game, and the graphics are sooo DOPE
saikai
2022-04-19 09:10
really nice graphics and simple but fun gameplay
A very nice highscore-based retro arcade-like title. Looks great and the sounds are really authentic.
Very cute, really solid arcade style defense game. The asteroids are manageable at the start, but by the end there's no chance to save the planet. The slow moving turret and slowdown when firing are well considered, it takes big commitments to swing around the globe. The pixel art here is excellent, the planet breaths life and the impacts feel strong. Really well done.
Thanks for the game! Безымянный.png
mira
2022-04-19 17:09
nice little game, i love this art style. Too bad I can't improve the cannon or at least speed up the movement. I appreciate that gravity acts on asteroids
Really love the aesthetic!
2022-04-19 14_51_31-Defend 'till the end _ LD50 Casual Extra by Kieron Scott — Mozilla Firefox.png
The clouds are really nice! I love how they match the color of their shadow to whatever they're drifting over! I also dig the variety in asteroids, it's nice to not be shooting the same rock every time. Not sure how hard it is to do pitch bend with pico8, but the missle-shooting sfx got a little repetitive, and even just randomizing the starting pitch a little bit would help a lot. I really like the visual effects: missile trails, astroid explosions, etc. all very nice! It's especially cool that when a meteorite hits a continent, after the meteorite explosion fades (which is also a cool effect) the continent is destroyed and there's a giant lake there now. The planet having its own gravity well is also sweet, it's neat that sometimes asteroids get slingshotted away. Nice game, Well done!
You did the earth justice. It's a beautiful little globe and a great game. You've done so much with so simple of a package. Excellent game, would play on a game boy color
codebug
2022-04-20 19:09
Nicely done. A well executed aesthetic.
My only gripe (and this might be personal to me) was that it felt a little frustrating that there were immediately asteroids that I couldn't physically get to in time.
jajakeim
2022-04-20 20:57
Very cute game, solid entry! good job
seanc
2022-04-20 21:42
Very cool simple to understand game - crazily hard, I guess the end is inevitable! I really love the attention to detail with the burning craters that appear on the Earth. Also - thank you for the generous healthbar. I felt like luck played such a factor that the nice buffer of health balanced it well.
natahan
2022-04-21 11:46
Very cool gameplay !
Love it :hearts:
Very polished game. The graphics and sounds fit well together. I would've prefered a slower rising difficulty and a little help aiming. Especially when aiming diagonally it's not always obvious where the shots land. Allowing shooting and moving could solve this issue, too. You are too slow to hit most asteroids anyway.
I like it. It reminds me of the old arcade classic Gyruss, just inverted. The graphics are nice, and the sounds very fitting. Great job. :)
I really really like that the movement slows down when you shoot, made it feel like there was a more mindful reason to decide when to start/stop firing and prioritize where to move instead of just spinning and spamming fire the whole time :) Nice game!
kjscott
2022-04-21 15:35
@chriiis88, yeah about the aiming. I had originally tried to implement a form of aiming assistance but it didn't work very well so I abandoned that in order to focus on other things in the time I had given myself to complete the game. I'll look at that more for a post-jam version.
kjscott
2022-04-21 15:38
@seanc the health bar was added in part to help actually add an end point to the end in a reasonable manner. Previously you would just get overwhelmed and the game was still going on, so it helped create a more natural endpoint so you didn't have to keep going past the point you knew it was all over for you.
kjscott
2022-04-21 15:41
@codebug I totally sympathise with your feelings. For the sake of the theme (and to help push the player towards inevitably losing) that was intentional for the game jam but not what I would have done for a properly fleshed out game. A sufficiently skilled player with either fast fingers or autoclicker would have been able to spam the screen full of missiles thus preventing a loss (and probably crashing the game in the process too due to memory overflow).
kjscott
2022-04-21 15:43
@markopolodev I think it's possible to pitch bend (though a little CPU intensive), or at least add some more variants to the missile sounds. I completely hadn't thought about that and will add that to the post-jam version to help break up the audio a bit.
kjscott
2022-04-21 15:45
@mira I will be altering the movement speed and firing mechanisms post-jam, that was purely in to help bring a game to an end sooner (to fit the theme better) rather than dragging out the gameplay beyond what I thought was practical fun.
kjscott
2022-04-21 15:46
@naali, will be working on a post-jam version that will extend the gameplay a lot more and add more to it. Right now working on a waves and endless mode and still figuring out exactly how I want to implement them XD
Very nice arcade game, I do miss some powerups, butt it does still feel very polished, especially the earth design.
kjscott
2022-04-21 16:45
@life-lich powerups, or variant weapons to deal with different scenarios will be a post-jam feature. Will be playing around to see what works best.
@kjscott good to hear :) I can take a look after the jam if you want, some feedback on the updated version
kjscott
2022-04-21 16:58
@life-lich, I'll be updating the itch.io page with the final build, might upload to lexaloffle for any test builds. Best way to get in touch regarding update would be on Twitter under @NerdOfGamers.
sulo
2022-04-21 17:56
Really nice look and feel, the player is a bit too slow but that makes it all the more challenging. Nice entry!
maximeg
2022-04-21 18:23
really great for a Pico-8 game !
trizalio
2022-04-21 18:53
Tapping "X" button allows to shoot faster, than holding Do dark asteroids differ from light somehow? Planet damage graphics is awesome! i'll try to implement it too)
kjscott
2022-04-21 18:56
@trizalio, yeah the X tapping was an oversight. I had thought I had limited the fire rate in the jam build but I got it wrong. Ah well, people can spam fire by tapping XD The dark asteroids are "behind" the planet. If you watch the light asteroids hit and the darker asteroids hit, you'll notice the damage is applied differently. It was a tiny little effect but I felt it would add a little more "realism" to the damage.
2022-08-29 19:15
I'm a noob here at the site. this place rocks!