Great concept, funny dialogue too! I love the way it looks when those mouth dudes turn you into mulch.

I found the controls kinda quite awkward. Have you thought about adding a dual-stick control scheme?

You're supposed to be able to map the analog sticks to move and shoot, but it seems to be broken in the Windows build. I'll have to fix it. You could map movement to the dpad, and shooting to the four face buttons (if you have a Playstation or Xbox controller), like how Smash TV controlled on the SNES. Might be less awkward than keyboard for you.

I think I will also implement analog movement and shooting as an option.

I checked out the demo.
I love this game.
It definitely reminded me of Smash TV.
I made it to the 4th floor and lost all my lives on the second room I think.
Got a score of 1.2mil or something.

Nice work! No one else I've had try the game has made it past the 2nd floor.

You should maybe make the second snake tougher to defeat after taking care of the first.

That's a great idea. Maybe I could make him turn red, move faster, and have him fire spread shots.

I think it would be a good thing to make enemies flash when you hit them cause it would help you tell the difference between destructible and indestructible enemies.

The destructible enemies that require multiple hits should flash red and white when hit (tank, jellyfish, spiked bomb, etc..). They flash very quickly though. Would you mind double-checking to see if they flash on your machine? Maybe I need to make it less subtle.

I think the powerups are pretty broken because they last too long.
But then again you could design the game around permanent powerups.
Losing the tri-shot and having to start from the single shot makes the game more intense when you die because of the increased difficulty.

I would like to see different powerups though.

Yeah, I'm still working on adding more weapons. I might end up making them last 20 seconds or so, and then revert back to normal gun. As it is now, there's a bit of Gradius syndrome going on, where losing spread shot is devastating.

Was there supposed to be music?
I didn't get any to play during the game even though I checked out the options.

No music in this build. I do plan on adding some though.

Also, do you plan on making it so that you're not limited to shooting and moving in 8 directions?

I think I'm going to stick with 8-way. Analog shooting makes things extremely difficult in some of the rooms, which require you to shoot through single block gaps. I also like how 8-way forces you to move around more, instead of just standing still and spraying in a circle. If I was making a game for consoles where all players are guaranteed to have analog sticks, I'd probably redesign the game around analog, since it feels smoother. But on PC, I want it to be playable on the keyboard without disadvantage.

On the other hand, people who like this style of game probably have gamepads with twin sticks.

What do you think? Should I support analog controls when playing with a gamepad?

Either way, the game's definitely fun.
Good game!
I'm excited for the finished product

Thanks again for testing it out. 

Guess I was wrong, I tested it again with the volume cranked to max and I could hear it, barely.  But you should still fix this because it's really, really silent.  And yeah the volume in-game was set to 100%

Ok, thanks. I will definitely boost the volume on the sound effects.

I tried it out, it's pretty fun.  Unfortunately for some reason I didn't get any audio ..

Thanks for trying it out. Music isn't in this build, but there should be sound effects (firing, explosions, etc.) So you got no sound at all?

You control a maintenance droid on board the Star Dungeon, a giant floating prison in space, which is headed towards Earth to enslave the human race. By listening to 80's FM radio signals from Earth, you have grown to like the humans and must stop the ship by destroying the Master Control Processor.

It's not complete yet, but there are 4 floors currently. I'd really like to get some feedback on the game: fun factor, difficulty, controls, graphics, bugs, etc..

Default controls are WSAD for movement, and arrow keys fire. Controllers are supported as well.
Diamonds award an extra life for every 25 you collect.

Windows build: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vjswry9s9aq4x2v/StarDungeon.zip

Well, that works.
the things i calculated! Or tried to calculate! Madness!
Thanks

Oh, so instead of the center of the rect you want the upper-left corner before rotation?

function DrawThickLine(ax, ay, bx, by, thickness)
{
  dx = bx - ax
  dy = by - ay
  length = sqrt(dx * dx + dy * dy)
 
  x = ax + dx * 0.5 - length * 0.5
  y = ay + dy * 0.5 - thickness * 0.5
   
  angle = atan2(dy, dx)
 
  DrawRectangle(x, y, length, thickness, angle)
}

function DrawThickLine(ax, ay, bx, by, thickness)
{
  dx = bx - ax
  dy = by - ay

  cx = ax + dx * 0.5
  cy = ay + dy * 0.5
   
  angle = atan2(dy, dx)
  length = sqrt(dx * dx + dy * dy)
 
  DrawRectangle(cx, cy, length, thickness, angle)
}

Does killing an enemy allow you one extra air dash?

Give some opportunity to fail without much punishment.  In your demo the very first time you introduce moving platforms it's over a giant pit of death 4 rooms into the game.  If you fail it'll be awhile before you can practice again, an din all honesty mechanics like that should be included more consistently throughout the level so you get time to adjust to it.  Also the ability to regain health would be nice.  Castlevania had wall chicken, maybe enemies can drop little balls of energy and collecting a bunch will get you a heart back.

These are just ideas on how to make the game less frustrating, do whatever you think would work best for it.

Suppose I add a few screens at the very beginning of the demo level, where it's just a zombie or two, and some candles. The next room would just be a bat on its own, and the one after that would be an axe thrower on its own.

Then, at a point before the moving platform over the death pit, I could add a moving platform or two that you need to ride to get over a wall too high to jump. But if you fall, you just land on the ground and get to try again.

And finally, I want to have a midpoint checkpoint in each level. Perhaps right before the moving platform over death would be appropriate for this level? It's close to halfway, and seems like the point that most people have trouble with.

@Irock: Yeah, an intro stage (like in Mega Man X) is a great idea. I'll consider adding one.

Thanks guys for the design tips, very helpful. 

Are you designing your areas and levels out of order? It seems like it would be difficult to create a proper difficulty curve that way.

Well, the structure of the game is going to be like Mega Man. You can play the first 8 stages in any order. Each stage will give you a magic spell when you complete it. After the first 8 levels are complete, you enter the final, multi-level area (like Wily's Castle).

This leaves the question of how to handle the difficulty curve. I'm probably going to make the difficulty vary a bit between the first 8 stages, and of course the final area will be a bit harder.

I was also thinking that some levels would have a 'heart container' that permanently increases your max life by one, about half way through the level, which you keep even if you can't totally finish the level and decide to switch to a different one.

And of course, getting magic will also help complete levels you find hard (time stop, turn into a bat, kill all enemies onscreen, heal yourself, ranged attack, create and ride on a platform, etc)

In general, I'm a bit worried I'm making the game a bit TOO hard. I don't find it hard, but everyone that's tried it has commented on it being very hard. I don't want it to be a masocore game; I'm aiming for a difficulty similar to Mega Man 2 or Castlevania 3.

Any thoughts on how to handle difficulty, given the player can play the stages in any order? Seems like Mega Man has a few stages that are slightly easier, and a few that are slightly harder, with most being about the same level of difficulty.

Thanks for the comments. 

Here is a youtube video of the dreaded sewer level. It's not quite finished yet, but getting close.

Here are some screenshots of some new level tilesets I'm working on.

I also have been experimenting with NES style music. https://soundcloud.com/detective/nes-suki-test

Feedback welcome!

[Some thoughts/suggestions/criticism:]

Some thoughts/suggestions/criticism:
-snip-

Thanks a lot for trying it out and giving feedback. I'll take your suggestions into consideration as I continue to work on this. And a big thanks for helping me get the Mac version working.

hey,
the windows version doesn't work for me, it starts the first menu, but is than unresponsive, it doesn't die because it still uses a lot of processor cycles.
i'm on a samsung ultrabook 5, i5 1.6ghz, onboard gpu, (i think)

Did you try waiting a little bit? Right now I don't have a loading screen and images and sounds just get loaded as needed. I noticed on my laptop it takes a few seconds to load the images when you choose PLAY.

Do you see the level at all or just a black screen?

10.8.4 and yes.

Ok, I uploaded a new build (same link as before). Let me know if it fixes the issue. 

What version of OS X are you running? Also, do you have a 64-bit cpu?

Upload a Mac build!

Done! Check the post above for the link.

[First playable build!]

First playable build!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9pw7earryzv3s5a/cake-build-oct-03-2013.zip (1.6 MB, Windows)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/a7ltw99sgg4vbi6/cake-build-oct-03-2013-mac.zip (1.4 MB, Mac)

(Note: the stage isn't complete, so if you die by going off the right side of the screen at the end of the 5th section, you beat it. )

Any feedback would be awesome.