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A jam submission

Empty BattlefieldView game page

Cookie Clicker, but with aliens, and less cookies
Submitted by Bigfootmech — 1 hour, 3 minutes before the deadline
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Empty Battlefield's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme#252.9563.100
Fun#282.2882.400
Originality#312.5742.700
Controls#322.2882.400
Overall#332.3292.443
Audio#352.1932.300
Accessibility#371.8121.900
Graphics#382.1932.300

Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Godot Version
4.1.1

Wildcards Used
Mobius Loop kinda

Game Description
Cookie Clicker, but with aliens, and less cookies

How does your game tie into the theme?
The turret is unstable / malfunctioning, and needs repairs.

Source(s)
N/A

Discord Username
Yak, JoshLmoa, justaguy

Participation Level (GWJ Only)
including this one, 1

My game has an export for Linux, Windows, & Mac and/or is playable through HTML5

name

description

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Comments

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

I love the graphical style! It suits the game well.

I think I ran into a couple glitches when I played. My first play through, I didn't know it at the time, but I'm pretty sure the faster-firing-speed upgrades were not working as intended. This is because I did another playthrough, except this time the gun was shooting way faster after I bought all the upgrades.

The other glitch was this: upgrading the gun to have the fastest swivel speed actually makes it work quite poorly. It will seemingly start to oscillate trying to lock onto a target, and so will effectively freeze itself for seconds at a time... and not shoot any bullets during that time. This means the last turn speed upgrade is actually a bad one to get.

That said, in my second playthrough, my secret trick is I was actually playing with an autoclicker (it's something I do sometimes with jam games). This was what actually enabled me to level up every upgrade all the way, because otherwise there simply is not enough time to collect all the scrap... so I guess maybe the broken fast turn upgrade is just karma for using an autoclicker. 😄

Actually, this is one of the mechanics I think is really cool. The way that free gears just pile up in the end game... but there's no time to harvest them... it's cool! In the early game you sort of feel like, "come on, give me more ships so I can upgrade faster!" and then in the end you do get a plentiful supply of gears... but one you can never access. It's a fun twist.

In my first playthrough, when I was clicking manually, I found the gameplay loop quite satisfying for a while. It's satisfying to be able to click precisely on a ship, and the way that they go splat, as others have said, is quite fun, and then harvesting them for gears is another bit of precise gameplay that helps add to the loop.

My opinion on the end game is not entirely clear. This is because in my first playthrough, the gun was malfunctioning (oh... how thematic 😉) and not shooting fast enough, so I believe I had to click more than I really should have had to... while in my second playthrough I was of course using an autoclicker and could have gone on forever if I had chosen to, from what I can tell. (I stopped after collecting 1000 gears plus all the upgrades).

That said, my feeling is that the gameplay works out OK when the gun doesn't glitch out. I think that it is a good idea for the ships to eventually overwhelm you, and I think that the non-glitched gun will actually help you for real in the endgame. That is to say: I had a reasonably fun overall gameplay experience with my first playthrough, and I think it would have been even better had the gun actually worked, so I think it works in terms of game design.

Note that I did not figure out at all that it was possible to harvest gears from the scrap until reading some of these comments. I tried clicking on various things in the scrap UI but never noticed anything happening. I think in this case even just adding an instruction on the game page like "scavenge for gears in the scrap metal!" would help players figure out what to do.

I did figure out enough for the game to be playable, though. I liked the core "malfunction" component -- it meant that we had to focus on the precision-mouse gameplay with a long-term goal of repairing the gun. It also gave some interesting tradeoffs--do I repair it now, or try to get the shield upgrade? I personally opted for as many shield upgrades as possible.

Submitted(+1)

To me, it was not clear what I had to do in the beginning. I tried clicking on the cannon, but it didn't do nothing, and there was no instruction on how to fix it. In the end, I--for some reason--clicked on the UFO and saw it SPLAT. (eheh)

Gear searching was not convenient, in game, imho: once you understand what you have to do, it is way easier to take out UFOs (since it only takes one click) than dumpster diving (2+ gears vs 1 gear). 

For other players that had some problems with the controls: 

  • clicking on a flying UFO destroys it (meaning, it falls to the ground)
  • clicking on broken UFOs lets you retrieve some gears (in-game resources)
  • you can also upgrade the cannon with the collapsible menu on the right
  • fixing the cannon costs about 10 gears (?), I think

Imho, maybe resources could be collected automatically without player input. 

I loved the UFOs. 

I liked the idea. The game is a nice proof of concept.

Submitted(+1)

Understood the premise quickly, find gears from the scraps and click on turret to repair.

Upgrades didn't work for me and it feels pretty tight in difficulty. If it takes 10 gears I gotta do at least 22 clicks to repair it, immediately go search for more and the turret will break in the 16 to 22 click mark. So you do 1 or 2 fixes maybe and then lose T_T One way that could have made it more amenable is to remove the arrow clicking, right when you pick the gear, it automatically changes to the next scrap area. Reducing the 22 clicks to 12 (if 10 gears is the repair cost).

I liked the graphics, reminded me of Kongregate games, and the detail on how they die and collapse to the ground. That's my favorite part, although I don't forget the sliding upgrades menu :)

Needs more time and tweaking but its a nice proof of concept!


Developer(+1)

Thank you <3

I agree it's too difficult right now, and the upgrades kind of feel weak compared to player clicking - which while very satisfying initially wasn't an originally intended gameplay mechanic. So some rebalancing will need to happen there.

The junk searching was also rushed since I was hella running out of time. Writing a procedural generation code just wasn't in the scope in the timeframe. Nor the various different upgrade components that I wanted. 

Auto-change sounds like an interesting concept. I LIKE less clicking, but also it'll give the player an advantage because it'll tell them that they've collected everything (there's not necessarily only 1 gear - or in the future rare upgrade - per window). Maybe like in "idle" games rebalance it to be a purchasable upgrade?

Haha yea, I love it when they just SPLAT on the ground XD

Submitted

Mmm another way could be having right click to pick and left click to "dig deeper"(changing scrap scene). Wouldn't save on clicks but at least wont have to move the mouse outside and inside of the scrap scene constantly. Could be a middle ground until a better solution comes about!

Submitted(+1)

The game is fun. Definitely gets challenging as the game goes on, trying to click enough things. I like it.

Submitted

I am... not getting this yet. Will try the download to see if I can understand

Submitted(+1)

Hmm, I think I'm supposed to salvage things from the scrap heap? I found a few things I could click on, but not managed to repair in time alas

Developer

Thank you for the feedback :)

I kind of agree. The game isn't as intuitive as I'd like it to be.

This kind of happened due to time constraints, as well as rebalancing during development

Submitted(+1)

The game looks fun! Game breaking bugs are super annoying! You may be able to contact a moderator and get your game working. I would like to play it.

(+1)

Pretty sure we tried, but might be waiting on a result. Thanks for showing the interest, means a lot.

Developer(+1)

Ye, we got a ticket open. I guess this is a learning experience :p

Gald you're looking to play ^_^

Developer(+1)

Ayy, the bug should be fixed now :D

Submitted

Glad it got fixed and I can play it. After a hectic week of coding, level and graphic design, sitting back and playing so many unique games is one of the best parts of a game jam.