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Planet Bullet's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun | #32 | 3.680 | 3.680 |
| Overall | #38 | 3.680 | 3.680 |
| Visual | #56 | 3.720 | 3.720 |
| Audio | #59 | 3.280 | 3.280 |
| Theme | #81 | 3.087 | 3.087 |
Ranked from 25 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Did you use any third-party assets or skeleton code?
Three music tracks and three 3D models, see game page for details. I also used a small code library I wrote for common things like object pooling and basic math functions
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Comments
I'm getting there, consistently reaching the boss now at least.
I think the small planet as a playground is actually a better use of the theme than the more banal limited resource ;) even if overcharging mode is very satisfying largely because you can see your bullet turning around the planet, which is already cool in normal mode.
The game is fun, controls are good, the bullets navigating stuck to the planet is really nice, the difficulty is right on point and the boss bullet patterns are beautiful.
Well done!
Thanks! I am a little embarrassed to admit that I had not even thought of the spherical gameplay as an embodiment of the jam's theme until you said that. Part of me wants to defend the resource system and point out that it is deeply embedded in the core game balance, with different strategies producing fairly different experiences depending on when it's used. However, it's clear from your feedback and others' that it's not coming across with a strong thematic feel, which is fair enough.
Anyway, I'm glad you liked it! I'm kind of blown away to be getting positive feedback on this one, because when I started it was sort of a random, off-the-wall idea that I didn't really expect to work at a pretty basic level.
Wow, this was such a cool idea! The waves of bullets cascading across the surface of the sphere look phenomenal! And I love the animation and movement of the final boss, it looks so polished and alive. I played the normal difficulty first and immediately died, so I played through again on casual so that I could experience the whole thing. A few recommendations I have: It would be great to see a health indicator on the enemies, some of them took a lot of sustained damage, and it would have been nice to know how long to fire at each one. I didn't really understand the Overcharge ability at first, I would press the right mouse button, see the charge animation, but nothing seemed to happen. I eventually realized you have to shoot after pressing the right mouse button, but that didn't seem to be communicated in any way. The final boss takes such a long time to kill even in casual with sustained damage the whole time, it takes about three full loops of its attack patterns, so I can't imagine how brutal that would be if you have to be dodging the whole time. And lastly, I would love to see the lifespan of the players bullets increased somewhat, so that you can see them travel around the entire sphere. But overall, this was really brilliant stuff! I'd love to see what you can do by expanding on this concept!
Thanks for all the feedback!
I try to avoid putting in health bars unless I need to, but I agree that the purple, spinning turrets don't give enough feedback about how much damage they've taken in particular. With 15 hp, they require nearly two seconds of direct hits to destroy, even if you don't miss. I wanted to do some sort of "damage stage" system where they'd get more beat up after taking hits, but since I didn't have time for that, yeah, I prolly shoulda just done floating hp bars.
Really cool mechanic with the tiny planet. Its makes just basic projectiles being shot at you way more interesting with them wrapping around.
The boss fight felt good. One complaint might be hitting the boss wasn't that pronounced.
The charge mechanic was neat but I feel either getting it recharged once the boss fight starts or maybe getting one recharge after killing enough enemies would have been nice. After I used them up I quickly forgot about the mechanic, and they didn't feel that game changing when I did use them to justify such a scarcity.
Overall, very cool concept, enjoyable execution, good entry.
Yeah, I should add a special hit sound for the boss and probably some form of vfx, like sparks when it gets hit. Pretty sure that was actually on my to-do list at some point, but it got lost in the rush.
It's interesting to hear your thoughts about the Overcharge ability. I think you may be underestimating its actual impact, as the game's overall difficulty is quite sensitive to player damage output due to the fact that all enemy spawns are time-based. Adding even one extra use of Overcharge would actually be a fairly large balance change, especially since it does quite a lot of damage when used against the boss (about half of its health!). I'll probably revisit some things I thought of but never got to try out in order to make Overcharge feel more appropriately game-changing, like adding even more bullets in a wider arc (which would miss the boss anyway), or having it wipe out all enemy bullets when used.
In any case, I'm glad you liked the game. Thanks for playing!
very cool game, but the boss is very difficult
Wow this game is so cool! I love the theme (maybe I'm biased as I love space haha) but I love the way the bullets bounce around the planet. The game's difficulty really ramps up nicely, this game is so fun! Really nice work :)
Excellent use of theme and implementing it into gameplay. The bullets orbiting around the planet gave the game a unique perspective I don't usually see and it's hard enough to prove a challenge in harder difficulties. Casual mode feels a little too casual though.
The main purpose of Casual is to allow anyone playtesting the game to get all the way to the end, regardless of skill level. Outside of a jam context, I would consider removing or redesigning it, and in hindsight it probably should not be the first setting selected when starting the game.
It's nice to hear from someone who likes games to be hard. Thanks for playing!
The movement around the sphere felt super cool and i liked the pressure to take out enemies before the sphere was overrun with bullets. nice work!
Thanks, I'm glad to hear it! I was worried that players might not understand that the pressure-based design is intended, and may simply find the difficulty too hard/arbitrary.
Wow! I really liked everything being on a sphere like that
What a fantastic design. Love being able to shoot all the way around and hunt the planet based on where the bullets are coming form. Well done!
Thanks :)
During first day of the game jam I had a similar idea to this one, glad we didn't go with it because you really made the concept shine. This game has it all and is tough but fair as far as gameplay goes. Out of all the games in the jam so far this one looks closest to an official release. Also gives me that geometry war nostalgia.
Woahhh super cool! Love the spherical-ness. I thought the difficulty was the right amount until the end boss when it got a little out of control. Only other feedback is that it didn't seem like I could actually die. I realized this near the end and then just didn't try to avoid the bullets and ended with a negative score
Did you play on Casual? On Casual, damage is disabled on purpose to make sure people can see the whole game if they want to. I hope the hit sound wasn't too annoying; you're only supposed to hear it a few times per game!
Thanks for the feedback on the difficulty. I might reconsider the boss attack patterns a bit; I really wanted to make sure you saw the bullets coming back and the patterns overlapping, but I think I can get that effect without making it so hard (and maybe make it look cooler in the process).
Ah I must've played on casual then
really fun to move around the planet
I really like the play space, totally wasn't expecting that. well done!
The boss has multiple attack animations! 💙 It’s really nice to see the traditional “wrap-around” shooter rendered on a sphere, in real time. Thank you for sharing this with us.
Thanks! I should point out that I did not make the boss model or its animations, I just integrated them and added things like particles and sound. I'm quite happy with how it turned out in-game, but I don't want to take credit unfairly.
the gameplay works so nicely and supercharging your bullets is so satisfying! very good fun
Very polished 3d style. A neat well scoped game with a lot of polish. Feels like there possibly should be a dash or slightly fewer projectiles as at a certain point I felt I couldn't stop running into them. (Also once the boss and everything else was destroyed nothing seemed to happen). Overall though very enjoyable.
There is a (hopefully) rare bug where the game fails to end sometimes. I wasn't able to replicate it after finding it, so unfortunately it didn't get fixed.
A dash is not really in keeping with my design concept for the game, but I appreciate the feedback about the projectile spam. I think it would be less overwhelming if I'd had time to add more structure to the bullet patterns, but time limits are what they are.
Thanks for playing!