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[crowbarska]

Switch 'N' Shoot is out now
Steam
Website
Trailer








Everything below is the original dev blog, so it's kind of out of date.

Meet the Admiral (your boss).

Gameplay video on YouTube
(it's much better with the crunchy sound and music)

Hello everyone!

I started this one-button shmup about a year ago and let it gather dust for a while. I've decided to pick it up again recently and I'm looking for feedback.

There is a free playable build on itch.io.
(Windows, Mac and Linux, plus an older build for Android.)

It's pretty small and you can play a round in well under a minute. Please let me know what you think, either here or on Twitter: @crowbarska


About

Blast and dodge your way through a neverending onslaught of alien badbutts in Switch 'N' Shoot!!

Your ship can't stop strafing (the control system must be on the blink).
BUT (!!) you can switch directions with a simple shot from your on-board blaster cannon.

Some facts about this game

• It can be played with just 1 (one) button.
• It's a simple, fast-paced, arcadey test of skill and endurance.
• It can all end in an instant.
• You can try again in another instant.
• It sports a low-fi aesthetic with crunchy effects and pulse-pounding soundtrack.

Plans and development

• See the roadmap for a detailed feature list.
• Planned for Windows/Mac/Linux first. Android at a later date, and potentially iOS after that (depending on its popularity).
• I'd like the game to either be free or very cheap (like, less than £2 / $3). The reasons for this are that it's quite a small game, and I'd like it if everyone could have a go at it.
• I'm considering releasing on Early Access (although the game is about 60% finished). But it needs to be Greenlit first!

Play for free on itch.io




Follow me on Twitter: @crowbarska


_{P.S. There's also this flippin' laser.}

[EddieBytes]

I love the cam shake. Really adds to it

[bitslap]

Great job.

Cannot have enough innovative and engaging 1 button games. Looking forward to see the progress. The latest gifs are already looking pretty sweet.

On top of my mind i can suggest adding some ikaruga, albeit minimal version of it, somewhere into the gameplay.

/bitslap

[crowbarska]

I love the cam shake. Really adds to it

Thanks! I learned from

Great job.

Cannot have enough innovative and engaging 1 button games. Looking forward to see the progress. The latest gifs are already looking pretty sweet.

On top of my mind i can suggest adding some ikaruga, albeit minimal version of it, somewhere into the gameplay.

/bitslap

Thank you

Oh man, can you imagine if your colour flipped every time you pressed the button? That could be pretty intense. I think I could add this as an optional challenge mode or something, but I'd like to keep the core game 'pure' as it's already pretty intense! Great idea though.

[EddieBytes]

Oh, CorwbarSka, man, thanks for that link. That talk is genius, I loved it.

[crowbarska]

No problem! Vlambeer have some awesome tricks and techniques that make gameplay feel way better at very little cost. I'd be lying if I said their games haven't had a big influence on my own.

[mtarini]

a one-button shmup!

Pure. Genius.

[sidbarnhoorn]

Awesome! :-D

[mtarini]

Can I... customize keys?
No, seriously, would it affect the single-key elegance if the game interpreted any keypress as a button?
(the space bar the natural choice but also an ugly key to press in many keyboard,  including mine: it is noisier then most other keys, and for some reasons it feels clumsier too).

I wonder how would it feel if keeping the key pressed caused your ship to freeze.
Mmm... I not sure how much would like it.
Maybe the ability to do so could be the temporary effect of a differently colored power-up.
Not sure I would like this either.
If you experiment with this idea, I suggest the shot is produced when the key is released (and not, pressed).

[crowbarska]

Pure. Genius.

Awesome! :-D

Thanks to you both! :D

Can I... customize keys?
No, seriously, would it affect the single-key elegance if the game interpreted any keypress as a button?
(the space bar the natural choice but also an ugly key to press in many keyboard,  including mine: it is noisier then most other keys, and for some reasons it feels clumsier too).

I wonder how would it feel if keeping the key pressed caused your ship to freeze.
Mmm... I not sure how much would like it.
Maybe the ability to do so could be the temporary effect of a differently colored power-up.
Not sure I would like this either.
If you experiment with this idea, I suggest the shot is produced when the key is released (and not, pressed).

Support for more keys is definitely something I'm going to work on. I'm adding it to my roadmap now as I missed it off (I guess it was too obvious to me, haha).

I agree that the spacebar isn't ideal. I tend to use the left mouse button when I'm testing it as you can click really fast. I need to communicate all of this more clearly in the game. Ideally you should be able to press pretty much any key and have it work.

The freeze is something I considered when you actually shoot, and having the 'freeze time' vary between different ships you can choose. I haven't implemented multiple ships yet though, so I will revisit this later.

Thanks for the feedback, this is good stuff!

[godDLL]

 

[TheWing]

Oh this looks nice! I had the same idea a couple years back when me and a friend of mine had the idea to program an one-button game in a weekend, since we happened to be under the same roof then.. I didn't make one though, instead made a somewhat arkanoid-like game (and my friend made a space-flyer thing with rotations and stuff..)

Love the concept and the aesthetics, will keep an eye on this!

[crowbarska]

Oh this looks nice! I had the same idea a couple years back when me and a friend of mine had the idea to program an one-button game in a weekend, since we happened to be under the same roof then.. I didn't make one though, instead made a somewhat arkanoid-like game (and my friend made a space-flyer thing with rotations and stuff..)

Love the concept and the aesthetics, will keep an eye on this!

Thank you

I did actually make the core gameplay in about a weekend. Been adding bits to it over the last year or so, very gradually, but I've ramped up development recently.

The core gameplay remains almost unchanged though.

[diegzumillo]

It's fun! It's pretty hard though. I would like it if lasted longer, maybe instead of making the sides kill the player make it go around the other side. Then again a lot of people seem to enjoy these highly difficult games, where the best times will be around 2 minutes.

[Alec S.]

This is pretty fun.  I look forward to seeing it develop.  The feedback effects are great. 

Are there going to be more enemies at some point?

Also, I would have liked the player's hitbox to be a bit more forgiving.  It doesn't have to be a bullet-hell style magic pixel, but it was kind of frustrating to get a game over from just barely grazing the side of the screen, especially with how small the space is.

[crowbarska]

It's fun! It's pretty hard though. I would like it if lasted longer, maybe instead of making the sides kill the player make it go around the other side. Then again a lot of people seem to enjoy these highly difficult games, where the best times will be around 2 minutes.

Thank you!

I'm kind of in the middle of some changes which tend to elongate the average play time; I'm trying out a system whereby you will have 'waves'. After 50 kills (this number could change) you get a brief pause in the enemy spawning, you zoom ahead to a new zone, and the difficulty drops back down a little bit (but gradually ramps up over time).

I do like the white-knuckle intensity of the old system though, so I'm not sure if I'll stick with this. And I do still want rounds to be pretty short.

I might try out a wrap-around effect when I get round to adding multiple ships, but I do want to keep the standard gameplay pretty tight and difficult. The idea would be to have like a 'beginner' and a 'pro' ship on top of the existing one, which would make the game easier or harder by changing the controls.

This is pretty fun.  I look forward to seeing it develop.  The feedback effects are great. 

Are there going to be more enemies at some point?

Also, I would have liked the player's hitbox to be a bit more forgiving.  It doesn't have to be a bullet-hell style magic pixel, but it was kind of frustrating to get a game over from just barely grazing the side of the screen, especially with how small the space is.

Thanks!

By "more enemies" I'm assuming you mean different enemy types...? In which case the answer is yes, but probably not too many and just simple changes like different movement patterns. I would like to add a boss of some kind but I'd have to spend a bit more time thinking about the best way to do that. At the moment I'm just focusing on the regular enemies.

I'm experimenting with a narrower collider for the player ship right now. Again, this might be something I mix up for each different ship type but it's an easy change to try for now.

It will be in the next build which shooould be ready sometime this weekend, so keep your eyes peeled on this thread or my Twitter (@crowbarska) for updates.

Thanks for all your thoughts. It's really good feedback and super useful! I wasn't a regular on this forum but I'll definitely be sticking around.

[crowbarska]

(Apologies for the double-post, but this is a significant update. )

Version 0.8 is now available for free on itch.io!

You can view my full roadmap for the full list of past/future changes.

• Chaining kills will give you a score multiplier (up to x3). Allowing enemies to reach the bottom of the screen resets your multiplier. Note: it is now much easier to get higher scores, so I will be repopulating the High Score table at some point soon!
• Enemy spawn rate will continue to increase after it hits a threshold (instead of just remaining constant), but the rate of increase will drop off over time.
• Reduced the spray on rapid-fire, to avoid repeatedly firing either side of a single enemy.
• Added a 'demo mode' to the title screen.
• The top score is now displayed on the title screen, along with the name associated with it.
• Player collider is narrower (reduced from 0.9 to 0.6).
• Bug fix: Added missing colliders on the triple shots so they collide with enemies.
• Bug fix: Fixed player's bullet offset sometimes being inverted when the laser ends.
• Bug fix: Fixed power-ups adding 1 to your score on collection.

I've also been working on this new feature I mentioned in my previous post. Basically when you reach 50 kills you go into 'hyperdrive' and accelerate forwards into a new zone. The background changes colour to indicate this. Difficulty drops back a little at this point, but each zone is more difficult than the last overall.

I like the sense of progression it gives, but I'm really not sure it's working as I want it to just yet. For this reason I have decided to leave it out of the current build (actually, it's still in there but you need to kill 9999 enemies to trigger it... good luck with that!)

And finally, here's a gif of the new title screen with the 'demo mode'...

If you get a chance to try out the new build I'd love to know what you think of the changes!

[Alec S.]

I really like that start screen!

I managed to get to 311 points this time around, and for some reason my powerup reset themselves at some point.  I was at the tripple-large-shot level, and suddenly I was back down to the starting projectile.

[crowbarska]

I really like that start screen!

I managed to get to 311 points this time around, and for some reason my powerup reset themselves at some point.  I was at the tripple-large-shot level, and suddenly I was back down to the starting projectile.

Cheers!

The powerups reset after 15 seconds. The only way to keep them is by stacking up another one on top. I did experiment with having them just drop back down to the tier below but I was finding it became too easy.

[Alec S.]

In that case, you should have some sort of meter or feedback to let you know when you're going to lose your powerups.  Also, I lost mine a couple of seconds before I could get another powerup.  I'm not sure if I ran out because I missed one, or because the powerup spawn time was longer than 15 seconds, but it would be nice to have a little leeway, like if at least two powerups could spawn in the time it takes for the powerups to run out, that way you can miss one and still keep up your powerup level.  Alternatively, you could make it more explicit and have it be letting a powerup get past you which resets your powerup level.  Since there's no way to speed up or get the powerup more quickly, it would be pretty frustrating to see a powerup on screen, but not be able to get it in time to save your powerup level.