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[RGMfighter]

As I inspired from Taito's 1972 mechanical game and other competitors like Alien Swarm, Alien Shooter, Space Invaders and Alien Breed, I recently released the original version of my first top-down shooter game of my entire series with various futuristic themes and other contents, which suitable for adolescents and older. It is also where you can experience game play elements, stories, characters, missions and even more features related to other role-playing action games. But I have certain ideas for the expansion update instead of a trial version of the second campaign, while the first one is already full. Either way, you can try to play the game by navigating the following links below this topic when it's currently in progress again for my right time.

The tribute site:
http://spacemonsters.webs.com/

or

At Gamejolt:
http://gamejolt.com/games/space-monsters/47896

If you have any thoughts about this game, please leave a reply. Have fun and good luck for the resistance against monster alien invaders to save the humanity on earth!

[Quicksand-S]

Well, I have to say that ugly, flickering Raiden image with messed-up transparency that's below your avatar on here doesn't inspire confidence. It's also just really irritating to look at.

Anyway, I still gave the game a try.

-Game Maker 8? If you haven't upgraded to 8.1, I'd recommend it. Even porting to Game Maker Studio likely would not require many changes and would make the game run a lot better (but would require payment if you don't want a "Made With Game Maker Studio" pop-up).

-It's nice to see mouse support in a slightly retro-looking game. The menu options are pretty decent too, although I would really prefer volume sliders to toggles.

-The lack of in-game music is a little disappointing.

-I have no idea what the melee attack animation is, but it looks really strange, like his head gets compressed and his weapon gets jammed through his spine temporarily.

-I'd recommend using a rectangular collision box for certain things like the tanks/tractors/whatever. It's easy to get caught on the little pieces that stick out right now.

-An option to stop it from automatically equipping weapons I pick up would be nice. I've never liked that.

-The "hold mouse to pathfind" thing is interesting, but seems useless since the mouse position changes as the player moves. Clicking to pathfind would make more sense. It also causes some vibration when I'm trying to pathfind my way past a wall and the character keeps trying to move slightly into the wall. I'm guessing it's something to do with the pathfinding grid being misaligned.

-It looks like either there's a problem with scaling in full-screen. I keep seeing pixels change size.

-You say that the campaign is finished. I didn't see even one enemy. All I did was find a shotgun and some ammo, and then wander around looking for something to do or interact with. If there's more to do, I think it's unclear. It may just be that I couldn't tell what was interactive.

-Survival mode was better. Enemy variety was decent, although a few different colors might be nice to differentiate them more, and maybe a few more movement styles too.

-Nice choice for combat music, although you probably shouldn't be using music from another game if you're releasing this.

-Aiming is a bit annoying. I'd recommend either shifting the player slightly to line up with the crosshair better, or shifting the crosshair. Bullets from the pistol should go toward it, not next to it.

-Bullets seemed to pass right through enemies about 50% of the time.

-Enemies didn't always manage to activate automatic doors.


I like the menus, the how the maps look and feel, and the sound effects for the weapons. I want to see more of the campaign, but don't feel like exploring for ages without knowing what I'm looking for.

[RGMfighter]

Alright, I understand. See also the page about this game in Space Monsters Wiki, which its link would be found below this reply. You can add more information by clicking an edit button if you want.

http://spacemonsters.wikia.com/wiki/Space_Monsters

[Quicksand-S]

I was kind of hoping to get a hint about what I'm actually looking for in the first level.

Anyway, based on the name of the level, "Infiltration", I figured I might have to find an entrance to a building somewhere, so I went to try the game again. The loader kept freezing until I deleted the files and re-unzipped. Even then it took ages to actually let me into the game for some reason. Really weird.

Anyway, I picked up the flashlight this time, which I missed before. Why does it make everything dark? I'm better off not having it at all. After a while, the battery seems to run out and I'm relieved that I can actually see again.

I don't know what I did to open up the exit (which isn't a good thing), but I got to level 2. I wandered around, not knowing what to do and opened up doors without knowing how I'd done it. I also went near some lockers or something and they kept opening a few seconds after I moved away from them (or even when I hadn't gone near them yet), which was strange.

The shotgun is really weak. Enemies consistently took two or three shotgun blasts at close range. All the guns are far weaker than I'd expect, considering how many enemies there are and how little ammo you find.

I made it to level 3 but decided to try buying something first. The game wouldn't let me buy ammo even though I had enough money for a bunch of it. I also had no idea what the red, blue, orange and green boxes below the Exp value were.

There are a lot of typos in the objectives and the messages that pop up.

I mostly like the level design. It's hard to figure out where to go, but exploring is slightly interesting. I just hate dealing with the enemies. They take too many bullets, and ammo is so limited. I end up having to avoid them, but the big swarms are impossible to avoid sometimes. I just get blocked in by squids and then die slowly while trying to cut a path through them with melee attacks. The annoying enemies make the game a lot less enjoyable for me. It's easy enough to fix, though, if you feel like doing so (Just give enemies less health and maybe don't let squids block the player).

[RGMfighter]

Instead of shotgun, the machine gun (originally found in the 2nd mission of the first campaign) is way better, automatic and much effective to non-robotic enemies. To do this, just switch weapons by using number keys (not Num Lock) if you have any. Also, you need to find the secrets where there are many important things to bring like money, ammunition etc. It is possible by closing against the wall while using WASD keys for checking without leaving away. If the wall doesn't allow you to enter behind the secret area, then use some explosive weapons like grenade launcher to blast the breakable wall.

Of course, I made a YouTube video playlist about the first campaign guide. Before you start the campaign at the first mission and try to improve your performance again, watch the videos to complete 12 missions by going to the URL link below.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdVEAcNahZ9-xZfP1lqxApZmaqDjh87jB

[Quicksand-S]

Instead of shotgun, the machine gun (originally found in the 2nd mission of the first campaign) is way better

It is, but I ran out of ammo quickly against huge numbers of enemies that each took a bunch of hits before dying (although maybe I had extra clips and didn't realize I had to manually reload). My comment about the shotgun was mainly that it's weaker than shotguns in most games.

Requiring the players to find secrets is an interesting idea. In theory, that sounds fine except that you have to make sure players know how the game works before you slaughter them for not knowing the mechanics.

Anyway, I watched the first video and it made it pretty clear that the game doesn't do a good job of showing players how things work. You have to realize that a new player doesn't know everything that you do as the developer of the game.

We don't necessarily know which flat-ish rectangles are switches and which are not (Most of them don't appear to do anything at all). We probably don't know that crates are breakable if they don't react to being hit multiple times (with sound and a visual effect of some kind, like particles or cracks appearing). I actually briefly tried breaking things the first time I played, but it did nothing so I moved on.

Players really shouldn't have to watch videos in order to know these things. The game should make it all fairly clear in some way. Switches could stand out more and maybe be a different color. Pieces of crates could break off when they're hit. Locked and unlocked doors could look different from one another. Walls that are destroyed could look different from walls that are not. The HUD could make it clearer that one number is the number of extra ammo clips you have (maybe using an icon of some sort).

I may sound like I'm being negative, but I'm not saying your game is terrible or anything, just that it feels like it's unclear/unintuitive for new players. It looks like it might be pretty fun after you know how everything works. There are a lot of small things that you can do to make new players understand how the game works without resorting to asking them to watch walkthroughs.

[RGMfighter]

Oh yeah, I get it. While the expansion update event is currently going on, I have to configure it out again like making a shotgun stronger by improving the code.