antagonist

GREED by Ethan Allwood 2017-12-28T04:30:51Z

I managed to afford an item by sitting in the corner to the bottom left of the map, hiding right behind a spawn point. If I camped out there I never got surrounded. So far I haven't managed to buy more than one at a time, but it seems like I could just sit in that corner and farm forever if I just wanted coins. I also bought an item a couple times by waiting around in the store until I could afford one, but it's risky to be out in the open.

Lots of people have said how it takes a long time to afford items, and I agree, but I wonder if the problem is actually that the common enemies have too much health. If they died in one stab it might feel better and be more manageable to get to 30 coins. Of course, the pacing issue can be solved in several ways but it almost feels like they were meant to have low health and it got changed last minute, or something...

The sharper sword didn't seem worth buying at all, and the stronger arms and pickpocket were better but still not worth the cost. I didn't try the deeper pockets.

I definitely think that the most important thing is to make items cheaper (or something similar, like making it faster to get coins). I think the other commenters' asking for extra features, like a way to heal and stuff, is unfair; it's fine to not have much content and variety and such, since it's a 48-hour competition, but regardless of the difficulty, the 95% bug-dude army can't hold a player's interest for the time it takes to get 30 coins, so the amount of time it takes to do that should be adjusted to match how long it *does* stay interesting for.

OverPowered! by Sir Mr Dr Prof Sr Jr PhD 2017-12-06T11:00:05Z

A clever concept executed well.

I'm a contrarian, so I put some time into figuring out how to make the corner camping strategy work, and I wound up getting [1520 points.](https://i.imgur.com/BsgNpUR.png)

There're some tricks to it. Bounce and multi-shot powers are the most dangerous if you're sitting still, and since shot-speed helpers fire so quickly, you can soak up their power ups and largely avoid the others with iframes if you have enough of them around. It's best to play legit for the initial waves, to avoid as many bounce power ups as possible early on. Enough bullets on screen will make the game slow down, causing the physics to get wonky, so I turned the graphics down, but I don't really know if that did anything. The main important technique is to fire at an angle that gives you a bit of room to move, and then periodically peek out of the corner to draw the helpers in, then clear them out without changing the aim direction.

Abstraction Blaster by antagonist 2017-12-06T11:40:28Z

@fudge, I agree completely. I was planning to, and would have loved to, have stuff like that. Feedback is pretty make-or-break for quick arcade-y games like this, I think. As it is, all the details in here are pretty much just what I threw together as I went; I never got around to a "polishing" phase.

Mini Post-Mortem: I lost a large amount of time on the first day, and then spent another large part of the last day working on a boss fight that I never really finished, and which ended up being unreachable anyway due to a bug. I would have preferred to get the actual game finished 50-75% of the way through, and then spend the rest of the time on menus and options / game balance / particles and sounds and special effects, but, well, that's not how it went. I hope to manage my time better in April.

Abstraction Blaster by antagonist 2017-12-27T22:25:27Z

Added links to my work in progress updated version. Try not to play it if you haven't rated the entry yet, but if you just want to have fun, it's the better version.

I added particle effects, a start menu, and a couple bosses (one of which was already created but was inaccessible). Can't remember what else. I optimized the bullet stuff so it should run faster, but that's offset by the particles which are as inefficient as is possible. If it runs slowly, try setting particles to "low."

It still needs: gamepad support, better default controls, custom control schemes, three-player, sound effects, better music, more balancing, more bug fixes. And also: netplay, more content.