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[Jimbob]

First post here, so I thought I might make it a half decent one...



This is game I've been making in Blitz+, but after labouring on (and off) it for over a year I played it and wondered what had happened. It just seemed to have lost the sparkle from when I originally thought it up.

It is basically a redecorated Fantasy Zone 2 at the moment, without the shop and with extra platforms. Then I realised that I probably only liked Fantasy Zone 2 because I really didn't know any better years ago and that it hasn't really aged well. But I still think something could be done to stop me from just abandoning this altogether.

Here is a three-area demo with joystick/fullscreen support, several different enemies and a funky warping effect. No sound though, which may have contributed to its lack of sparkle.

Industrika 3-area Demo (about 550kb)

It's got a readme for controls but if you're lazy it's cursors, left shift and left ctrl. Shoot everything that's animated, and collect anything they drop.

So... what I've thought about are:
- Making the levels larger (i.e. having vertical scrolling as well) and letting the enemies respond more to the landscape (i.e. having them run along platforms).
- Making it more like that GameMaker game 'The Cleaner', only I don't really want to have to use mouse aiming.
- Making the levels more linear, so that to some extent you can explore, but you aren't so readily surrounded/surprised by enemies and stuff.
- Scrapping it completely and working on a different game (which is kinda what is happening at the moment.

[Matt]

 I haven't played the game this is modeled after so I have no expectations coming into it.
 I enjoyed the movement of the character once I figured it out. He has a loose floating feel like he is jet packing around. This might prove frustrating during an intense sequence though. Right now there is no penalty or reward so it isn't apparent yet.
 The pixelart is clean and distinguishable. The only sprite that stood out was the main character. I like him.
 I had a bug where the character fell through the floor.

[BenH]

I can see Fantasy Zone was the inspiration behind this, but to me it doesn't really play like it. I don't know how close you were aiming to copy the game mechanics though, so that might not be an issue here.
The shop played a very important role in FZ and it takes away a key aspect of the game if you remove it. Also I found you didn't really fire rapidly enough to be able take out the  enemies in a timely manner, I remember most FZ enemies could be wiped out almost instantaneously, apart from the enemy generators of course.

I'm hoping to work on a FZ game myself eventually, so you can scathe me back on that once I've released something

[Jimbob]

Yeh, good point on the shop.
I think I'll try to fix one in to see if it makes a big difference. I do remember on the first level just racing as fast as possible to the shop, just to get an engine that pushed you faster than 1 pph (pixel per hour). Otherwise you had no chance. I have in mind a jet pack that lets you hover as well as some other standard weapon boosting equivalents.

I made the enemies harder in an attempt to not make it too easy.
I'll try bumping down the health so you can see how much of a difference it makes.

One point is, did you find the auto-strafing when you fire intuitive?
One thing about the original is that you couldn't shoot in one direction and move in the other, which always annoyed me.

Also, with the auto shield that appears when you warp, is it on for long enough to let you dodge initial enemies you see? That always frustrated me in the original, you would enter a warp into the middle of a swarm and have no way of avoiding instadeath.

Cheers for playing. You may just have reperked my motivation for this beast...

[BenH]

I think the strafing and the shield work well. Those were things in the original that annoyed me too (mainly the shield problem).