FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD54 → Station Defender

Station Defender

By bloodyaugust

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall2903.1728
Fun1933.4428
Innovation3092.8628
Theme3332.7128
Humor1.256
Mood2.126

Comments

cogcomp 2023-10-02 18:20

Interesting idea. I didn't really understand the whole scrap buy/selling thing at first and ended up selling everything I had on my ship :laughing:

candlesan 2023-10-02 18:34

Reminds me of vampire survivors but I love the way the mouse interacts with an actual turning radius to create the physics for flying around in zero-g physics which gives the game a very different feel. I didn't realize at first that I could scroll down to see more ugprades but once I saw that I realized there were quite a few items to chase!

bloodyaugust 2023-10-02 18:53

@candlesan I'm glad you appreciated it! The inspiration was definitely Vampire Survivors, Brotato, and others like it... But I haven't seen an interesting movement mechanic in any of those games yet, and wanted to see how it affected the formula. I think it gives a lot more gravity to the idea that you're controlling "placement" in addition to your build, and livens up the actual gameplay. Thank you for playing!

@cogcomp Scrapping your modules as you go is definitely important to managing your mass as you progress, swapping out older things for better ones. But yeah, scrapping everything from the get go is probably not the path to success. :sweat_smile:

jellycopter 2023-10-02 19:54

Very fun! The speedy X ships did me in too many times.. Would be great with sounds. Awesome work, great submission 😀

poopgames 2023-10-02 19:58

Holy upgrades captain! At first I was like "oh damage and armor, makes sense" then I saw the scroll-wheel and how much those later upgrades cost and wow you went in depth, you'll have to let me know how you built that system so fast! This was my first time using godot so I'm very impressed by what you were able to accomplish.

As far as gameplay goes, I like the controls and the auto fire but it was difficult to tell what ship I was going to shoot next. Really great job overall :)

bloodyaugust 2023-10-02 20:08

@jellycopter Yeah, those speedy bois definitely punish you for not taking engines early. :sweat_smile: And I agree, sounds would be excellent! But as is usually the case, I just totally ran out of time before getting all the gameplay polish and content in that I wanted.

@poopgames Thank you for the kind words! If you're interested, part of the awesomeness of LudumDare is the requirement for source code, so you can have a look at the architecture at your leisure. Basically, I try to go as data-driven as I can for these kinds of "systems" games. Modules are represented by a special resource that just extends the base "Resource" class, and they hold all of the relevant information. That makes it super easy to add new ones, and easy to reason about when implementing their respective gameplay implications due to the type hinting it gives you. As for not being able to tell what ship you're currently targeting... yeah. I should definitely have added that, in retrospect. :sweat_smile:

Thank you for playing!

koboldskeep 2023-10-03 03:17

I'd like to see other things you could sell off, like the ability to see enemy health bars (or conversely a long-range scanner that improves your lock-on or homing shots).

godsboss 2023-10-03 15:03

Sometimes I feel like it's unavoidable to collide with a ship that just popped into your flight path, which makes some situations feel unfair. Still a nice and polished game.

quasilyte 2023-10-03 16:45

I can see the movement being the core mechanic here that sets it apart from the vampire survivors and alike. Although the camera could use some tweaks. It stutters when you're trying to navigate.

As @godsboss pointed out, enemy spawning could be improved too; I think I noticed enemies appear right in front of me.

The good ol tactic to circle around the enemies still works here. I would add some randomness to the enemy movement, because right now they end up in a single big chunk of vessels.

Also, when I died, I flew outside of the safe area and the countdown started. It didn't go away after I saw the menu; the menu was bugged too, I couldn't start the game again until I refreshed the page.

bloodyaugust 2023-10-03 17:28

@quasilyte Super quality feedback here, thank you so much! I'd double heart it if I could.

ttkayttis 2023-10-04 15:38

Nice game, could see it being good with some more polish on effects and audio. Like that i could sell my engine and just get guns.

First play i managed to spawn 2 players for some reason and it crashed after couple waves or something.

freamdev 2023-10-05 22:24

Very nice entry, really liked how easy it is to imagine how evil the enemy is just based on the sharp designs of their ships compared to the player one. Pretty difficult as well, only managed wave 4 after multiple tries! Then I noticed you can scroll in the shop and gatling gun goes brrr! Had a lot of fun playing!

cheesepencil 2023-10-06 02:24

I love the "no button" control scheme, only have to maneuver well. Cool game GG!

martin-bousquet 2023-10-06 23:18

Super fun and the limited space mechanism is a good concept.

mickey-sanchez 2023-10-10 17:50

the control scheme is pretty nice! the upgrade system is fun : )

harmadillo 2023-10-10 18:09

The limited space and speed vs firepower vs armour choice was interesting. Ship controls nice and smoothly too.

funemaker 2023-10-14 13:09

Haha, I too sold all my stuff after the first wave not realizing what I'd done!! Figured it out next time. I liked the ship mouse control.

dan-str 2023-10-15 19:22

cool game, keep up the good work

notime4games 2023-10-16 21:27

This was super fun. Loved the risk&reward of just speed tanking, going full on glass cannon :) Finished the game on the fourth try, first time the boss really jump scared me haha