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Lemonade Stand: Last Stand's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Theme | #16 | 4.395 | 4.395 |
Aesthetics | #33 | 4.407 | 4.407 |
Overall | #81 | 3.840 | 3.840 |
Story | #83 | 3.494 | 3.494 |
Fun | #113 | 3.704 | 3.704 |
Sound | #157 | 3.358 | 3.358 |
Mechanics | #207 | 3.358 | 3.358 |
Music | #286 | 3.272 | 3.272 |
Ranked from 81 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How many people worked on this game in total?
2
Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
I used free (cc0) sound effects, music, and a font. I will credit them individually on the page description.
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Comments
Well done, I liked it so much I had to get all upgrades :)
Thanks for playing!
This is a great game! I have a lot I want to say about it, so please bear with me. And, also, please know that I'm just expressing my thoughts in general, I know that making a game in only ten days is already a huge undertaking and nothing can be perfect! I think what you've made is amazing, which is why I want to get indepth on some things.
First, I really like the art, both for the gameplay and the screen between waves, plus the attention to detail with the stand getting really beat up when it's low on durability. I really like the circle fade in/fade out effect, (I wanted to put that into my own game and found a youtube tutorial about how to implement one, but it was slightly more complicated than I had time to delve into.) Also I'm impressed you were able to make the game navigable with just the keyboard, very handy in games like this if you don't have to constantly switch a hand from keyboard to mouse and back again.
The base gameplay is very solid and enjoyable and addictive while being very straightforward. In fact, it's so straightforward that you can't shoot diagonally, which is fine most of the time but at the start of waves most of the enemies are coming in from angles where you can't hit them, meaning you're stuck waiting for them to be in line with your shots, losing precious seconds while other aliens encroach on your stall. This could be mitigated if the player could freely roam around the map, but the invisible walls keeping them stuck further compounds the issue. Of course this is all personal preference, but my feeling is that it would be better if the player could stray as far as they wanted from their stand in order to try and take out some front runners early on, with the trade-off being that enemies from the other directions would get closer to the stand while the player has to run back toward it. It's then up to the player's skill and strategy to learn what's the optimal range that they can stray in any one direction, and the speed upgrades would also affect this more so.
Speaking of upgrades, the first one I took was a fire rate upgrade, which definitely helped. The second one was a damage increase, which didn't. The base enemies take three shots to kill without any damage upgrades, and with the first upgrade they still take three shots. Even though the damage numbers now say 4 instead of 3, it doesn't actually affect gameplay when you're shooting something with 9 health. The second damage upgrade was, therefore, a huge boost to survivability since that kills enemies in two hits instead of three. Then, the last upgrade to 5 damage per shot also does nothing significant, as it doesn't one-shot the base enemies. Perhaps the larger, rarer enemies die faster as a result of the first or third upgrade? But I can't be sure because they were too rare to properly test this out. I really do like the upgrade system and it adds a lot to replayability, in theory, but every upgrade should feel like it does something.
A bit more about the upgrade system in general! It would be extremely helpful if it could be accessed between waves (or even during waves if you wanted to get crazy.) Otherwise you wind up in a situation where at the start of a wave you have a damaged shop after barely surviving the last encounter and you know for a fact that you have no chance of winning the current one. On my last playthrough I reached wave 13 with many but not all upgrades. I knew I wasn't going to get any further than that, but the prospect of starting all the way over from wave 1 with the rest of the unlocks felt far less appealing. Another thing of note, since money is only ever earned after successfully defeating a wave, a player who has a very hard time at the start of the game is going to continue to suffer for much longer. In my first run I lost on the second wave, with the $67 that earned me the only upgrade I could afford was to recover from stuns faster, but I hadn't gotten stunned at all so I knew it wouldn't help me at all in doing better on the next run. In a worst case scenario, a player who can't get past the first wave will be soft-locked into never getting any upgrades and never being able to make progress at all.
Anyway, I've definitely rambled on way too long about this. I'm really sorry about that! Hopefully something I've said is at least slightly useful to consider. :)
Thanks so much for your kind words and detailed feedback!
You make a lot of very good points!
The limited aiming is something I could have handled much better. It does feel wrong when the enemies are coming at you from an angle that you can't hit them from. If I was to re-do it I would either implement diagonal aiming, or I would better design the rest of the game around the limitation like making enemies only come from cardinal directions.
I also agree with the movement space feeling quite limited, I was designing the game with the idea that the stand should always be visible and it wasn't until playing it after the deadline that I realized that you have very little space to move around in and that the invisible walls don't feel great to run into.
The feedback about the damage upgrade is spot on, I spent very little time on balancing which was a big mistake. The damage upgrade was kind of an afterthought to synergize with the piercing upgrade since piercing does less damage each pierce. But as you said, on it's own (without piercing or spread) it has some very redundant levels since they don't allow you to kill things quicker which was a huge oversight.
Upgrades being available between waves is a very good idea and something I definitely should have considered since going back to wave 1 is quite tedious if you've gotten far.
Now I am the one rambling...
Feedback is INCREDIBLY useful so I really appreciate your write up! <3
I LOVE "die and come back permanently stronger" type games! This is quite fun, with fantastic art!!
I have a few thoughts:
I'd love to be able to buy upgrades between waves, but failing that, I think it would be nice if the early waves could be skipped or sped through somehow once you get strong enough.
And I would spend $1000 on a "shoot diagonally" upgrade, haha.
But this is clean, polished, and very well-executed! Awesome job!!
Thanks for the kind words and feedback! A diagonal shooting upgrade is actually a really interesting idea!
Solid visuals on this. especially liked the way the control scheme was introduced (handdrawn?)
The balancing on this was good too, the fresh start felt limiting but fair, so as to allow room for death-and-upgrade gameplay loop with meaningful powerups. The stun feature was a good alternative over a player healthbar, making for a cleaner UI (just stand HP).
Some music would be good to set the mood!
Overall, solid, bug-free entry.
Yes, I was lucky to have a talented artist on my team. Appreciate the kind words!
The art is very well done! The upgrades is also a good addition, which make the game feel like a complete package.
Thank you!
Had a good laugh playing this game! The fact that aliens come from all directions, but you can only shoot up, down, right, and left, leads to some interesting strategic decisions. The art is beautiful and sets the tone perfectly.
Thanks for playing! :)
Art is just awesome!! Nice and fun game, Unlocked all the upgrades. Lemonade business is now booming.
Thank you so much!
The art is just incredible! The control is a bit hard to get around but overall a great experience.
Thanks for the kind words. Appreciate the feedback :)
Loved it!! Specially the art is a 5 starts from me. I can't find a single thing to say about how to improve it. Excellent work!! Congrats!!!
Wow thank you so much for the kind words!
Awesome work! The art was cool and the progression system was a very nice touch. Very polished experience!!
Thanks! :)
Wow the graphics are simply perfect, great game.
Thanks for the kind words!
This lemonade stuff is serious business... Great job on your game, it's very fun to play!
Thank you so much for playing!
A lemonaider, a true survivor.
I would love to see this developed further! I just spent a lot longer on this than I have on any other submission I've played. I do agree with others that use of the mouse to fire would be better. Perhaps an option would be to make it so that the player doesn't move, but stays behind the stand and can shoot 360 degrees with the mouse?
Thanks so much for playing it, I'm so glad you enjoyed it! We've gotten a lot of feedback on the aiming and I agree it's too restrictive, I would change some things if I developed it further. Appreciate the feedback! :)
A+ bruh! Running a lemonade business is not easy...
So true..
Thanks for playing :)
I really love the art style, like so much. And I also think it's really clever how you doubled down on "the last stand" because it's the last lemonade stand AND like your last stand against the aliens. Great work!
Thanks so much for the kind words!
This is really cool!
I liked the visuals and the theme, the rougelite type of buying persistent upgrades it is cool too
great job!
Thanks for the kind words!
Great game! It's quite addicting, love the permanent upgrades and the overall vibe! well done with this one
Thank you! :)
Great job you two! The game was very hard until I could afford quite a few of the upgrades. Managed to make it to wave 17. I really like the art style you used.
I'm honored you played that far. Thanks for playing! And thanks for the kind words!
I lol'd when I saw this game. Clever premise. Great UI and art, I enjoy the transitions from wave to wave. I think there should be cheaper upgrades available earlier so I can get a feeling of progression sooner as the game seems pretty challenging from the start. Great job guys!
Making some early accessible upgrades would have been a good idea. Thank you for your feedback! And thanks for playing! :)