Like a Boss

obscenebard 2022-04-05 01:43

Had a fun time playing, the controls are a bit wonky with the character teleporting around but it makes for a tough game especially with fireballs running out haha. Keep making!

nathan-evans 2022-04-05 01:47

Fun Game. I Think this is a solid start. If you gave the boss some kind of movement ability like a dash that clears that line would be helpful as you begin to get overrun. The controls are slightly uncomfortable. Maybe consider space for attack or maybe the mouse buttons. btw I don't hear any audio.

thementalsheep 2022-04-05 01:49

It was a great submission the controls were a little hard to grasp and the claw attack didn't seem to follow the cursor very well (perhaps add an offset to the rotation). The art was nice and besides the minor control issues it was a good game. Good work , keep making games

turkey 2022-04-05 01:55

I really like the premise behind the game! Unfortunately the controls were a bit hard with wasd and the attacks all on 1 hand. Also the 3 grid system coupled with the high spawn rates made it nearly impossible to dodge damage.

fc85057 2022-04-05 02:07

A very cool premise and a promising start! The 3x3 grid movement works well and adds an interesting element to the game, as well as being given multiple attack options. There are some beautiful pixel art characters. Still, it is a little hard to appreciate their variety, since they are all sent in mass numbers from the very beginning. Although the basic controls are not that hard to figure out, they are relatively difficult to get used to. At the time of this writing, audio is extremely quiet.

doctor-zeus 2022-04-05 05:42

Thanks for the comments, folks! The controls are definitely wonky, and the way stuff is just thrown at you from the start is definitely a little frantic (maybe the most generous way of saying it :P). I'm glad you all gave it a shot and took the time to comment!

craig-l 2022-04-05 08:16

NOoo! I wanted 500 so bad! Like a boss.PNG

Since you asked for balance, corner camping is a little overpowered. This is partly because the fireball can go as far as you want I think. I do like the rate you get fireballs, but using them to blow up the guys in the opposite corner is strong and the game doesn't punish you much for staying in one spot or give you incentive to move (the earlier mentioned dash is a cool idea). I did have a lot of fun corner camping though haha, never seen a boss cheese a player. Thankfully for them I'm not one of those healing bosses.

PS: fireball sound is so cute.

doctor-zeus 2022-04-05 13:16

@craig-l Thanks for the feedback, and nice score! I definitely agree about the cheesiness of camping. I think that a partial fix might be to make score tied to dropped coins instead of just defeating heroes, or periodically spawn some kind of power-up that would be important the the player - then you've got a reason to strike out from your safe spot.

Another big thing would be making heroes more distinct - some kind of projectile attack could require movement to get out of the way, maybe. It'd also give some needed variety and give us something to build a difficulty curve around that's a bit more interesting than just the rate that the folks spawn in at.

failuer 2022-04-05 14:25

Good start! Love the sprites, very cute.

IMO the biggest issue is the grid movement. Allowing free movement WASD + aiming/attacking with the mouse would've been fun IMO - but then it would of course lose some of its unique flavor. :)

Good job!

doctor-zeus 2022-04-05 16:26

@failuer Yeah, it's a tricky thing. The decision to use grid movement started from a technical concern.

Scratch wasn't running terribly smoothly during early testing, which feels pretty bad when you're trying to weave around things in a game with free movement. It's kinda compounded by how we already knew we wanted the boss to be a bit big and bulky; if we start with something a bit unwieldily and throw on choppy control on top of it seemed like a surefire way for play to feel really bad.

There are definitely a lot of ways that we could've navigated around it, but I knew Scratch handles direct (teleport-ey) movement without much issue. It was a way to make your control reasonably snappy and mitigating some of the issue of the boss's bulkiness was a nice bonus, since damage / attacks are doled out according to this grid-bound logical positioning instead of the literal size of our boss. In theory, I think it's the sort of mechanic that could become a neat cornerstone of how the game behaves but in practice it's not terribly fleshed out.

In the end controls definitely ended up being messy (I also agree with you, mouse for aim + attack would've been a lot better) and the grid-style movement is definitely pretty odd.

Thanks for taking the time to play and comment! :D

mmason 2022-04-05 19:57

I got 300c not a bad game, could have used more sound, I found hiding in the corner clawing and shooting fireballs to work the best

phillip-scott 2022-04-05 22:32

Missed sounds etc but a good solid start - Great job on submitting

welliton 2022-04-05 22:38

Its the first time that i see a game made on scratch here on LD! This is awesome! I don't know why sometimes the enemies accumulated in a corner of screen, but this made me gain so many points with the fire ball that i cant complain :) :). It would be nice if the game had a how to play in the main menu. The first time that I played i just tried to avoid the enemies XD. Congratulations team!

doctor-zeus 2022-04-05 22:52

@welliton yeah, sometimes the "heroes" get scared and decide to run away - err, tactically retreat. Turns out it's not always the best strategy :D

nidel 2022-04-07 14:58

Well done there, a good strategy is to stick into one corner as I think there are lesser ennemies popping there.

escapade 2022-04-17 08:33

Interesting game, quite simple but still fun. You could consider adding a bit of background music during the fight, that would certainly add a lot of atmosphere to the game (though if you didn't due to time constraints that's fine).