TIGSource Forums

(http://i61.tinypic.com/303e2r9.png)

Category: Arcade

File Size: 2.40 MB

Screen Resolution: 320 x 160 scaled by 3

Download Link: https://www.mediafire.com/?5xhe4t8uy4xxpws

Screenshot
(http://i60.tinypic.com/23mv3id.png)

GAMEPLAY
Shoot down red aliens. Stay alive for as long as possible and beat your high score.

CONTROLS
Z / X   -   Shoot
Left / Right / Up / Down   -   Move / Jump / Duck

I liked it. I'm not a huge fan of score-attack games, but it was pretty good.

I don't really like this style of jump (too quick and I dislike games where holding the button causes endless jumping), and the aiming took a little getting used to, but it all works well enough. I also hate using the Up arrow for jumping. With controls like this, I would've preferred the spacebar, but that's just me.

I only really have two "issues" with it. One is that, with headphones on at least, the sound of my gun was really grating. I felt like each shot fired was my ear-drum popping.

The other "issue" is just that death always caught me by surprise. The weapon level bar is so conveniently placed, while the health/lives are in a spot that I never actually looked at during gameplay. At first, I kept wondering why I was getting Game Over out of nowhere. Every time I die, my first instinct is to look at the bar above my character even though I know that's not a lifebar.

Any chance you'll add a death animation? Just freezing like that is a bit weird and made me wonder if the game was broken the first time.

The difficulty ramps up really quickly. Maybe too quickly. There's no chance for me to get into the zone before I get horribly slaughtered by overwhelming numbers of enemies. Personally, I would rather get that opportunity because the tension and excitement are increased if I manage to last longer.

I like the graphics. Even the text with its slight drop shadow looks really nice. The robot/alien designs are decent. The walking/running/crouching/etc. animations are good too. All in all, it's a pretty good game that I can certainly appreciate even if it's not in a genre I enjoy that much.


Update: One small suggestion I have is that you change the behavior of the "Close" button so that it closes the game instantly, rather than being treated like Escape. If I ever click that button, it's because I want to close the window not go back to the menu.

@Quicksand-S
Thanks for taking the time to play the game. I took into consideration some of the things you said and I made a few tweaks to the game.

I switched the positions of the Lives Counter and the Weapon Level. You will now see the player's lives above him and the Weapon EXP and LVL on the upper right corner. The difficulty also ramps up a tad bit slower now (hopefully, IDK I didn't test it that much).

About the sound, I don't wear headphones so I didn't know about that (sorry).

I can't change the other things though because the gameplay might be broken so (sorry again).

The updated version can be downloaded here: https://www.mediafire.com/?0382y226hywx5fg
or from the OP.

Composers anyone?

I like the switched weapon-level and health positions. The health is still a bit weird because a quick glance can make it look like I have half my lives when I really only have one life left (since the middle one goes last).

I can understand not changing the bounciness of the player, but why would changing the jump key (or adding an alternate one) break gameplay?

The difficulty seems about the same. The game seems incredibly random. Sometimes it'll start out with the little "crab" enemies, or the flying ones. Other times, I'll get two or three arm-cannon robots and a water-jumping thing right away. There's no sense of things building-up and getting tougher over time. On a related note, it also makes me feel like I've seen everything the game has to offer right from the start, which isn't ideal. Maybe there are other enemies that come in later, but randomly starting with all these different enemies seems to suggest that the game isn't set up to introduce new ones over time. The drive to see what will come next is what generally a large part of what keeps me going in games, so I don't feel a lot of incentive here.

Sometimes when I bounce and shoot, some of the flying enemies are too low for me to reliably hit.

The thing that comes out of the water seems to track me too easily. With so many enemies to keep track of, and all the ducking I have to do, I feel like I should have more of a chance to get out of the way of that thing. I would prefer if it targeted the spot I'm standing at when it first appears, rather than tracking me right up until it attacks. The way it is now, I'm forced to move at a very specific time which can often result in me getting hit by something.

In the new death animation, the guy looks like he just gives up and surrenders to death. It's very different from most games and I like it.

Great! I loved it, and it gave me a challenge. One thing: What language was it written in?

@Quicksand-S
Ok thanks. I'm going to make it so that you can also jump with spacebar, along with the up key. I'm also going to try playing around with the enemy spawning and make gradual introductions of the four enemies from easiest to hardest. About the death animation, I was planning to do one that would send the player and the gun flying but I figured it was too much work so I just made a simpler one. :DD


@bloobchube
Glad you liked it. I made it in GameMaker 8.

Changes:

Lives counter now counts down from right to left.

Can now jump with spacebar (I had a hard time using it though which is why I didn't remove the up key xD)

The flying things are now a bit higher.

The fish now spawn closer to the player, which means it only requires a lesser bit of movement to dodge or destroy.

Difficulty ramp is now less steeper (Hopefully).

Updated version can be found here: https://www.mediafire.com/?5xhe4t8uy4xxpws
Or from the OP.

Here's a question for you: Why GM 8? Game Maker Studio: Standard is free now. It runs much faster and it's got a bunch of additional features and built-in functions. It's generally pretty simple to convert GM 8 games over to it, in my experience.

I tried it out and it was pretty fun! The graphics were great and really stood out to me. Overall the gameplay was pretty good. I don't really play many games like this but something that really caught me off guard was using different buttons to shoot in different directions. I don't know if this is a common technique, but I don't recall playing a game that has done that before and it took me a couple of plays to figure out why I kept shooting in one direction no matter which way I was facing.

edit: I later reflected on this and I think it was just me being dumb. The controls were fine.

Awesome game!!!

Nothing to say just put some cool music and a leaderboard.

I´ll keep playing to give you a detailed feedback.