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A jam submission

CONJOINView game page

Alien Shooter
Submitted by FrogMagician — 13 hours, 34 minutes before the deadline
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CONJOIN's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme Usage#183.0313.500
Audio#192.3092.667
Graphics#232.0212.333
Overall#242.3452.708
Gameplay#262.0212.333

Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How did you implement the Theme?
You have to piece together the your one masterweapon to beat the game, each peice building it up.

How did you implement the Modifiers? (if you did)
One hit death for player

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

I like the concept of having a weapon that changes as you progress through the game.  That kept the game varied as I played through it. I like that there was a slight difference in weapon function based on the charge level. I think that the difficulty of the game stems from the weapon being unreliable, and if it were improved, the enemies can become more manageable. 

The level one weapon feels fine as it is because it is just a hilt being thrown, which justifies how limited it feels.

I like that the scattershot allows for controlling the amount of shots fired for charge levels 1-5, and a single charged shot for charge levels 6 -11. This would allow the weapon to be good where crowd control was required vs. focusing on a single enemy. However:

  1. charging the weapon was difficult. It would be an improvement if it were a hold-to-charge mechanic instead or reduce the number of levels from 1-11 to 1-4 (1-2 is scatter shot, 3-4 is the charged shot).
  2. the charge level 1-5 spread of the shots were consistently wide. 
    1. There were times where the spread would leave a gap in the middle of the spray, essentially causing me to miss the enemy. The stray shots would then hit other enemies.  In order to get the full benefit, I would need to be at near point-blank range so that I hit the intended target and avoid drawing aggro from the wrong enemy. 
    2. A useful feature of this level range is that the shots didn't aggro on near-misses. 
    3. An improvement for this level range would be to reduce the spread for multishots, and for a "single" level 1 shot travel in the exact direction that it was aimed at.
  3. the charge level 6-11 shots didn't feel beneficial at intermediate charge levels. 
    1. It felt useful when picking off individual enemies. It was a nice trade-off to have more power in the shot and to focus on one target .
    2. Only level 11 felt consistent enough to be worth using. Sometimes a charge level 6-10 would 1 hit-kill an enemy, sometimes it would take 2 shots. As such, I would default to charging to a level 11 shot as it would consistently 1-hit kill non-demon enemies. 
    3. Similar to charge level 1-5, the spread of the shots would occasionally result in shots going too wide, which would aggro nearby enemies even on near misses. 
    4. An improvement would be reduce the number of intermediate charge levels, or have levels 6-10 be at the same power as a level 11 shot and have the level 11 shot have more damage.

As a result, the majority of my strategy for stages 2 and 3 was to charge a level 11 shot, get into the aggro range of one or two enemies, and quickly move to a safer area and kite them as I charged more shots. This made it feel like a slog to get through the levels, and would be frustrating when I die the demons as the shots felt like they did an inconsistent amounts of damage. 

Overall, I like the evolving weapon concept, and it would be interesting to see how it can be refined further. 

Developer

Thank you for the indepth and long review! I didnt really think much on the health being frustrating on how each aliens health is randomised on spawn (not the demons though they stay at the same amount of health and the bullets dont change damage) But i changed it now so they have set healths.

With the charging weapon instead of right click, yeah it was planned to change it right now its kinda exhausting to charge the weapon i get that thanks for the pointer!

But one mechanic i dont really see as a bad thing is the spread shot, I made it with the intention of alerting enemys if the spread shot hits them, its a risk for reward system, each bullet for the bust does 2 damage and the 5 bust can insta kill all (exept demons) So i feel it is a good exchange, saftey for quicker alien deaths!

thank you again for the long review, the game was going to be ALOT diffrent cause i over estimated everything i colud do cause its my first game jam and all. Thanks again!

Submitted(+1)

Fun game. I collected 2 parts, but the 3rd was hard. Those guys were crazy fast!

(+1)

pretty good game

(1 edit) (+1)

Nice work for you first entry on the Game Jam 

It's hard and i kinda like it for it

I hope that it gets in the game jam

Developer(+1)

Thank you!

Submitted(+1)

Great effort for your first Jam entry, well done :) was quite hard though I got to the second level but I couldn't shoot quickly or accurately enough haha!

Developer(+1)

thanks! Shame you coludent pass the second level i never meant it to be that difficult (compared to the last level that is). Is there anything you think i colud change to make it alot better? This is my first time making this sort of game so i am quite shoddy with it. Thanks again

Submitted

Hey, not to worry... maybe to make the process of shooting easier on the second level with the charges, instead of right-clicking to increase the charges one at a time, maybe holding down the right mouse button instead increases the charge value over time? Just a suggestion, but don't be too hard on yourself, its a learning experience :) and you will surely be able to build on top of this if you do proceed with updating it or taking what you've learnt to your next project...

Submitted(+1)

Good game! Really hard tho

Developer

thank you for playing! Yeah and with the difficulty belive it or not but i made it so much easier than it use to be, but this was my first sort of game like this i usually make more chill games so i suck at balancing rn. Thanks again!

Submitted(+1)

Excellent ideas for the theme.

Game is hard! Could not get very far :(

Good effort!

Developer (1 edit)

thank you for playing! colud you tell me what you found fun and hard and all that good stuff? Also its a shame you didnt get far, it wasnt meant to be THAT difficult (except the last level i suppose what has 2 evil twists that make it quite alot harder). With the game i suppose i really needed to get more people to playtest it as i already knew the game mechanics off by heart ofc. Thank you again for playing!!