Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
A jam submission

StarborneView game page

A space-themed multidirectional ​bullet hell made with the design of a GameBoy
Submitted by Nadeem Wali, Ibrahim Hassan, Lucas Kingman, Zilonis123 — 13 hours, 55 minutes before the deadline
Add to collection

Play game

Starborne's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Soundtrack/SFX#483.8643.864
Interpretation of the Secondary Theme#774.0004.000
Overall#983.6733.673
Gameplay#1253.3183.318
Gameboy Soul#1383.7273.727
Graphics#1733.4553.455

Ranked from 22 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game match the theme?
You play as a spaceship in space trying to survive an invasion of enemy spaceships

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Comments

Submitted

Neat! The controls were a bit fiddly but the overall experience was fairly unique from other bullet hell entries. I like the choice to go with very gameboy-esque colors. The biggest issue I had was that the menu was hard to understand since I went straight to the player name so I don't expect to have to press back on the next screen to start playing the game. But that's a pretty minor thing since I was able to figure it out fairly quickly.

Submitted(+1)

I'm pretty happy with 12700.

That was fun, albeit a tad strange. The art is cool and readable. The soundtrack is action-packed. The enemy variety was especially great!

The "if you let go of the direction keys, the ship snaps to 90-degrees" feature feels like it came from a rage game. It's counter-intuitive and fiddly. It was so difficult to aim diagonally that I spent most of my time running away from enemies to attempt lateral strafing runs like it was Galaga. This isn't a condemnation; the game was really fun! It's just not what I would expect from the blurb or description.

I sympathize deeply with the ship sprite rotation issue; I've been burned so many times by "automatic sprite rotation."

The limited dash is a great complement to the free-gravity movement. It even paired surprisingly well with the odd control limitation!

For the most part, the audio is balanced. However, a lot of sound effects can occur at the same time, peaking the audio, sometimes above 0.0 dB.

All-in-all, great work!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and the detailed review! If you can please tell us how we can improve the description

Submitted

I'm not sure.

If the ship's control is something your team plans to change, it would probably be added to the list of disclaimers on the game page. If it's not going to be changed, I don't really know to contextualize it in a way that makes sense. That's your team's decision.

Submitted(+1)

cool game

Submitted(+1)

cool game

Submitted(+1)

Had really nice game boy energy. The music track was super catchy!

Submitted(+1)

Great game! I like how quickly you get into the action. The music & sprites are well done. The gameplay is solid too. One suggestion is to add some form of lateral movement.

Developer

Thanks i tried very well

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Very cool! Always appreciate Asteroid-like games. Those enemies are maybe a little *too* good at aiming!

Developer

Yeahhh it does get a little difficulty. Maybe i should have added a little delay to the shots so they aren't as accurate xD

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Very neat game! I couldn't make it onto the scoreboard, but I bet I could with enough practice... I wish I could see my own score and roughly where I'd place, or at least what my best score is, so I know how far I have left to go.

I also wish the ship wouldn't "snap back" to cardinal directions though, it makes it so much harder to shoot diagonally. I want to fire back at the ships that bully me! Also, I keep thinking of my own ship as a crayfish. It has a bit of a crayfish shape, doesn't it?

Developer

Oooh that is something we overlooked, letting you see your best highscore or your position in the leaderboard if you're higher than #10. That's something we'll add after the jam is over so thank you for the feedback! With the camera snapping, we had some issues with the rotation making the ship super pixelated and would basically make the ship look weird so it was a design limitation that we needed to overcome.

Also it definitely looks like a crayfish, maybe the design was inspired by one ;) 

Submitted(+1)

Super cool!

Pretty simple gameplay overall but you're delivering a complete experience, with a scoreboard to boot! Love that feature but I'm mad that "hcat" is on the top!

Someone beat "hcat" I'm not worthy!!

Developer

Thanks for playing! Im not worthy of beating hellcat either though 10# place aint bad. As of my knowledge there are 2 bosses in the game and i cant even beat 1..

Submitted(+1)

This game is really nicely put together!  The music is great.  No matter what I did, I couldn't figure out how to avoid the enemy projectiles.  Fun to play though!

Developer

Thanks for playing! To avoid the projectiles id suggest using the WASD keys

Submitted(+1)

Simple and fun! The controls were difficult to get used to and could maybe be a bit smoother. The leaderboard was a highlight for me and was a good motivator to play multiple times. Made it to #6! 

Submitted(+1)

Nice no nonsense asteroids-style shoot 'em up.

I wish it was easier to shoot diagonally, but maybe thats just a personal preference.

Clean design, sweet music. Well done!

Submitted(+1)

Really simple but very fun to play! The controls worked in a different way than I expected but when it clicked, it was extremely enjoyable and addicting. The soundtrack is extremely good too, great job!

Developer

Thank you for playing our game and for the kind words!

Submitted(+1)

Very fun and simple game, the art works well for its purpose, good enemy variation, the controls once you understand it work really well, the boost to get around is really fun. I liked the music too, the leaderboard is very good for the replay factor, I even got 6th place with 4350 points. Great job!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing our game! Good job on placing on the leaderboard :)

(+1)

i got 7650 score but didnt manage to get killed by the big bad guy aww. really liked the music (another track seemed to kick off over 5000 score)! nice graphics and ui layout, really nailed the gameboy spirit!


the ship snapping to some odd 90 degree rotation after any turn i made was a bit of a downer; you learn to play around it but with smoother rotation this would be a blast of a little space shooter!

Developer(+1)

Ayyyy congrats on reaching the boss! Beating him though proves to be quite difficult xD Thankyou for the feedback. The rotation snapping was due to a design limitation with not using pixel perfect movement and we chose to snap to 90 to keep the ship sprite the way its supposed to look

Submitted(+1)

the controls require a little adaptation (like my game lol) but the dynamic gets interesting after that.

several sfx sounds are a little too aggressive for my taste.


cool work !

Developer(+1)

Thank you for trying the game! The controls became clunky due to a design limitation because we didn't use pixel perfect movement and that made the sprites mess up when rotating. So we decided to snap the rotation to keep the ship sprite looking how it was intended to look. Definitely something we need to go back and work on in the future :) 

Submitted(+2)

Got to 2800 without shooting XD

Developer

Ayyy nice! Never really thought of trying a pacifist run xD

(+1)

Controls we're a bit clunky, but I enjoyed regardless

Developer(+1)

Thank you for trying the game, glad you enjoyed it! The controls became clunky due to a design limitation because we didn't use pixel perfect movement and that made the sprites mess up when rotating. So we decided to snap the rotation to keep the ship sprite looking how it was intended to look.