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Bars Attack from Outer Space's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #20 | 2.530 | 3.200 |
| How much do you enjoy the game overall? | #23 | 2.846 | 3.600 |
| Overall | #24 | 2.751 | 3.480 |
| Visuals | #25 | 2.688 | 3.400 |
| How well does the game fit the themes? | #25 | 3.004 | 3.800 |
| Gameplay | #25 | 2.688 | 3.400 |
Ranked from 5 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How long was your dev time?
Honestly, I have no idea. All aims for solid planing evaporated and gave way to a large mess. Next time!
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Comments
Man, I love the idea of this game!
Although the controls are very difficult for me to handle so I wasn't able to do much damage to him.
I highly recommend that you continue working on it after the jam.
Ah, thanks so very much – glad you enjoy the concept! Sorry that it turned out too tough. But I totally get it. I played it over and over from the second on that the basic mechanic was implemented and at some point I decided to half the damage that is dealed by the bullets… worried players may blast through it in no time. I even considered to let the playing arena not wrap around and just destroy the ship when leaving the borders – now I’m extra-glad that I decided against that. Thanks for your encouragement – I have indeed plans for a Post-Jam version and that motivational boost definitelys helps. Currently I consider offering an more forgiving mode with at least a healthbar for the player. And I hope adding a speed limit for the ship can solve at least some of the controlling issues. Once in a while it gets out of my control as well and I just smash into some random missile.
Again, thanks for playing & commenting!
I like the art-style, very nice retro look.
It’s just a little bit too hard for me. I could get to about half the bar cleared on my best try. Maybe if I the ship could eat a few hits I’d have made it. – It’s nice that you can see when it’s about to shoot though.
Dang, actually for most of the time, the damage the bullets caused was indeed double of what it is now. Then, after playing it over and over… surprise… I wondered if it might be too easy and halfed it. Absolute 0 beta-testing is definitely not the path to continue on. Ha. Thanks for your feedback! As I plan to do a post-jam edition (there is at least one mechanic that I wanted to include but had to cut), I will take this in consideration. Somehting like a standard and a hard mode (the former with an actual health bar for the ship… I mean, after all the game is all about the bars. :) ). Cool, cool. Glad you liked the rest. Cheers!
The idea is really great. The enemy shoots more frequently as he loses life, it is very clever!
I had fun but the NG+ was too difficult for me :D
Ahh, thank you, Selkione! Very glad you enjoyed it & also managed to defeat the bar! And I hear you with regards to the NG+. It was a very last-minute thing that I had added as a placeholder for an idea that I felt I couldn’t finish in time. I most probably am going to make a post-jam edition of this one (right now I am busy with a post-jam edition of its predecessor).
Already when I added the NG+ I felt that it was a bit too cheap, but then I wanted at least some bonus for winners to pop up. Personally, so far every time I reached the NG+ level my ship was destroyed within the first half minute. Now it just appeared to me that a more interesting variant of the two-enemies approach could have been to just add to the standard enemy a sidekick with lower HP. Something like that. Or just keep it to the one bar and add some changes to the playing field.
Okay, thanks so much for checking it out and letting me know your thoughts! I really appreciate it!
Just a quick note on the time aspect: I attended Trijam to actually get me into some good planning-ahead mindset, but apparently a part of me rebelled big time. The core mechanic was working in under an hour and when I was a few more hours busy (with hardly seperatable phases of just playing, testing features, and reading the Game Maker documentation, etc.) I decided to just go with it and not bother with reconstructing my schedule. So without an underlying plan, I just continued and easily surpased the 3h, and then some more, and then some more. Arrrgh. Definitely trying to up my discipline levels for the next one. I’m quite confident this one would have fit into the 3h constraint quite well – without cutting any of the important aspects.
Cheers!