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A jam submission

Power WingsView game page

Bullet hell with alternative shooting and evading methods
Submitted by ZenMar — 6 days, 4 hours before the deadline
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Power Wings's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Innovation#1093.3333.333
Gameplay#1143.3333.333
Overall#1663.2503.250
Graphics#1673.3333.333
Audio#1713.0833.083
Theme interpretation#3082.5002.500

Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

GitHub repository URL
https://github.com/ZenMar2000/PowerWings

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Interesting idea for a shooter! Took me a little to understand the mechanics, but once it clicked I thought it was fun. Nice job!

Submitted(+1)

love the space shooter. good job.

Submitted(+1)

first of all i like the space shooter gameplay like old school game, the mechanic is great , anyway good job :D

Submitted(+1)

Awesome game, congrats! My only suggestion would be to set a keyboard shortcut for the retry button, like spacebar or enter.

Developer

Thanks! It was planned but I ran out of time.

Submitted(+1)

Great game! However, I think an interactive tutorial could help users get used to the main mechanics faster. Right now, sometimes, you start with a random wave and die pretty fast.  I felt that it was a bit hard to get started, but after a while, you start discovering how to play properly (maybe that's the goal?) and properly enjoy the game :)
Good job!

Developer

Thanks! Yes, i wanted to create a simple tutorial but had to fall back on a text explanation under a help and rules menu because time was running short. I'm glad I archived a good learning curve without begin too difficult and frustrating  or too easy :D

Submitted

It was very hard to get into the game even after reading what to do it was hard to do that. I am not a good bullet hell player though.

Graphically game obeyed overall bullet hell rules and it was in a cohesion other than the shield. Correct me if I am wrong but shield only shows front barrier but still blocking sideways.

I would let the player decide how much bullet they want to spend instead of using all of them with 1 press.

Music could have a more action tone.

Developer (1 edit)

As a bullet hell, the game is harder and not for everyone by design. I agree that you have to get the hang of it, as it uses different mechanics from more traditional ones.

The shield hitbox is exactly the same dimensions of the sprite, so you get covered on the front and a bit to the sides, it is intended to work that way as it's easier to use.

Music was not planned and i found some bgm by chance, so yeah.

Submitted(+1)

Well game. After a few initial failures to understand the game engine, I began to appreciate the fun aspects of this game. Spending time building up defenses and accumulating energy, only to unleash it all in a final wave to defeat the enemies, is immensely satisfying. Additionally, the music and background art are well-suited to the game's theme.

Developer

Thanks for playing! Glad you liked it.

Submitted(+1)

This game has some really fun mechanics, like the bullet unload feature and tanking dmg. I, however, like the enemy ai most. they feel unpredictable to me which makes them feel more alive. some of the numbers could use a bit of tweaking, but overall this is a solid first game and was fun to play :) gj!

Developer

Thanks for the review, glad you enjoyed it!

Submitted (3 edits) (+2)

Very fun shmup game, where i need to take risk at timings i ain't familiar with.

Finding a good bullet pattern to gather multiplier is fun,
being able to tank damages at unusual timings is fun, 
being able to last that long in the rain of fire is fun.

However i feel like this game has not got enough play-testing.

For one, releasing the hard-earnt multipliers feel underwhelming, as i frequently straight up kill nothing, even with an overloaded energy reserve. Some kind of help in guaranteeing at least one enemy is being hit will be nice, say, part of the energy is homing, or i don't know, just give me more barrage of bullets will be great. At this point, i am basically 80% time not shooting and  19% time shooting barrage at the void.

It said in the description that my attack power is exponential, but compared to the amount of time not shooting, it is actually less than that.

As for the enemy wave, i feel like the waves are totally random? i makes me not able to shoot at any enemies for a long time, because i only see the suicide green fighters. I tired to ram my shield at them, thinking it would charge my attacks as well. I was wrong. I would appreciate a choregraphed stage that i can practice and recite, (but i have done that and it is hell-lot of work to choregraph a shmup stage, so...) or you can create some always-on enemy types that are more like ammo crates with legs (wings) than actual enemies, just like how Doom 2016 balanced their ammo crate balancing.

Man, such a nice idea, wish i can see a next version with better balancing :)

(Edit: Oh yeah having a guaranteed boss around is also nice, coz again you can guarantee some amount of bullets to harvest from. Just give it a boss health bar and you can reuse much of all your existing wave system. And make it so that killing the boss clears the screen)

(Edit: also the sfx choices was great. Super intuitive of what they represent. The music is kinda too chill though)

Developer (2 edits) (+1)

Thank you for the very detailed comment! I'm glad that the core of the game is actually good. 

From what I understand, many problems are related to just tweaking numbers, it shouldn't be that difficult to fix.

Regarding the waves logic you're completely right, I got a bit overwhelmed :3 Yes, the waves are groups of enemies, and those groups get randomly spawned. This way you get a fresh run every time and I hoped to keep things fresh a bit longer. I already have plans on how to improve it though, since some groups as you said are not well built.

I will definitely pick it up again for balancing and smoothing things up, that's for sure.

Submitted

i think one thing to change is to not stop shooting when the shield is not up (i.e. keep shooting unless the shield is up). That way you only trade "the amount of time not shooting" for the exponential bullet waves, and the enemy difficulty will be more constant if the player has semi-reliable baseline firepower.

I quite like hoarding bullet charges as tanking power. it gives weaker players a way to survive longer, while skilled players can throw the tanking away for a truly hung amount of attack power.

It would also be great to customize the charging weapon's type for diverse way of playstyle expressions. Say, homing photon missiles or a think ol beam, or just regular spread shots.