That was really fun! At first I was really confused but then it clicked and was really enjoyable! And the art is great too! Simple and to the point!
I liked the fact that the enemy had more health than you, it meant that in an equal exchange of attacks, the enemy would come out on top. The health difference meant that you HAD to be better than your enemy and get more attacks in on them.
Though the health values might have been a bit too high haha. Once you figure out a strategy, the amount of health the enemy has becomes a lot more annoying because you're just repeating the same thing. imo, you could counter it in two ways: reduce both the player's and enemy's health by equal amounts (while this would make the game shorter, it would mean that once you figure out a strategy, you are rewarding with a quicker game end. also don't make them too much smaller, really small health would mean that a player could get a few lucky shots in an win! It's about finding the balance), alternatively, you could have the enemy go through attack 'stages' (this would naturally involve more work though)
I read some your comments and it's unfortunate that having asymmetric levels didn't work out, good job on trying though! But I would say that if the main problem you had was that once the positions were no longer symmetrical then the player could simply walk an enemy off the edge, then maybe you should make it such that they CAN'T fall off the edge! ...or even let them still fall off of the edge, it could be a quick reward for a player for figuring out that they could do that! Not every level idea needs to reused multiple times! (also I never even knew you could fall off of the edge haha)
To throw out some ideas that DON'T involve asymmetric obstacles:
- Have projectiles automatically fire, rather than be player controlled (you could have a countdown on one side). You could even have the countdown value change randomly in later levels! (Or maybe have it go with the beat of a song??). Doing this will take one aspect of control away from the player and force them to think a bit more on their feet!
- Asymmetric randomly placed (even randomly moving?) upgrades/health/mines! These 'pickups' will force the player to move in interesting ways. And they'll also have to be careful not to give the enemy any boosts!
- Similar to the above, maybe the arena itself has turrets that fire randomly occasionally! The player could try getting the enemy hit by the projectiles, but the projectiles would also get in the way of the enemy
- Different bullet types! A projectile that curved in sine-waves/circles/zigsag would add a bit of complexity to positioning that might cause some players to panic! (it wouldn't really change the strategy for more level headed players though, but it could still provide a bit of excitement!
- Enemy stages! I mentioned this above, but if you're only going to have one level, then maybe have the enemy aiming style change at certain levels of their health! (this 'change of stage' would need to be visualized so that the player knows that something is different and their strategy might not work anymore). The 1st stage could be much more random aiming, the 2nd could be more player position based, the 3rd could be position AND velocity based, the 4th could be sneaky and actually base itself on where the player is aiming (as an example, if the player is aiming 2 units left and 1 unit above the enemy, then the enemy will aim 2 units right and 1 unit below the player, plus a little randomness to keep it interesting/different every time)
~~ SPOILERS!!! ~~
Just so you know, the 'strategy' I figured out was:
1) Aim to the left of the enemy
2) Fire
3) Wait a split second
4) Move to the right (so that the enemy moves left and into my projectile)
By doing this I was able to avoid all damage while ensuring I hit the enemy. I had a friend that hasn't played too many games also try this and they ended up on this strategy on their first try!
Sorry for the essay! I just saw that you were interested in continuing to work on this game and I thought I'd try help! Also congrats on making this game, great job!
WOO making games!!!!