August 19th-22nd 2011 :: Theme: Escape
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You're under attack by a Thargoid Invasion Fleet. Make good your escape while shooting down as many of the pesky blighters as you can.
Controls: Arrow keys to move, X to fire.
I had other plans this weekend and so I didn't originally plan to enter Ludum Dare. However, I had ideas for the three top-rated themes, and I knew I'd be spending three hours on a train, during which time I might as well be making games, so I decided to have a go at making a game for Ludum Dare on an extra-short schedule.
In the end I managed to spend about five hours on this game, but it wasn't really enough. It's a bullet hell game, but I didn't write code that's flexible enough to generate sufficiently interesting patterns. I had intended them to be fairly simple to fit the time constraint, but not this simple.
Since I'm not convinced this sloppy pile of code has any real potential, I haven't bothered to write scoring code or code to detect collisions against the player. It just loops endlessly without any possibility to win or lose, although it's moderately satisfying to shoot the Thargoids for a while.
For five hours I'm reasonably satisfied, but sorry it's no fun!
Downloads and Links
Ratings
| #336 | Community | 2.00 |
| #371 | Audio | 1.00 |
| #375 | Graphics | 2.20 |
| #407 | Fun | 2.00 |
| #418 | Coolness | 0% |
| #441 | Humor | 1.14 |
| #450 | Innovation | 1.82 |
| #474 | Overall | 1.77 |
| #491 | Theme | 1.60 |
Comments
A bit bummed this isn't more fleshed out, seeing as it's the sort of thing I'm totally into.
If you decide to flesh it out more, might I suggest either slower movement or a Touhou-style "focus" button that slows the movement down for finer precision? It's not a huge deal here, but if things carried on too long it could become one.
Also, bullets show up under the player...? Can make it a bit hard to judge their relation to your little hit box.
But for five hours, not bad.
This would be quite tough if the bullet collision were implemented.
@zaron I was going to add a DoDonPachi-style button to fire a more powerful solid beam while also moving more slowly, but I didn't get that far :)
@zaron oh and yes, bullets should definitely appear above the player. Had I implemented collision detection I would have fixed that but as it is there didn't seem to be much point.
@tcstyle only the little red square would be vulnerable, so it wouldn't be quite as hard as it looks.
Nice work for such a short timeframe - I like the simple asthetics and with the collision and a few sounds effects it would have felt like a bite-sized and to-the-point bullet hell shooter.
Pity it wasn't complete, was enough to have fun mindlessly blasting stuff for a while though. :-)
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Nice effort. Too bad you didnt finish it, I bet if you had spent the whole weekend this could have felt more complete. :P