Skip to main content

On Sale: GamesAssetsToolsTabletopComics
Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
(2 edits)

Hello. I really like your casual game. I saw that you used the OLC::PixelGameEngine and I appreciate the way you manage the theme. How you create the lightning bolts is really good - the FX is perfect and creates a cool PixelArt. You have a lot of time in order to improve your project. For this reason, I put a brief message so as to give you my first impressions. It's very slow. You should increase speed ball movement, but decrease time between lightning bolts. It could become more frenetic. I guess that you manage time correctly (game becomes harder with time), but at this stage, it is just too slow - almost boring. However, it's a good entry. Well done. I wish you the best ++

PS : I assume you have a vector for the lightning bolts pixels and you manage their alpha color value creating some fading from vector bounds. I would like to read the algorithm in order to create lightning bolts. It seems really clever to me. Displaying on screen is beautiful ++

Thanks for your comments.


My original goal of the game was to capture the feeling of "Why am I doing this again?" from Final Fantasy 10.  In order to obtain Lulu's ultimate weapon one of the items you need to obtain is the Venus Sigil by dodging 200 lightning bolts.  This isn't fun and many FFX players will remember this particular section as a sort of trauma.  So in that regard, its not supposed to be fun.  I am considering making it more fun / interesting though by speeding up the earlier stages since I've gotten some positive reactions.  The bulk of the gameplay was completed in ~6 hours, and I'm now just tweaking things (bolt positions, sound, etc) to make it a bit more interesting.

As far as time goes, yes, things get faster over time.  The bolts occur in stages, Idle (nothing on screen), Hint (when you can see the bolt early), Trigger (bolt coming down from the top), Show (the image of the bolt is retained), and Fadeout (when the bolt fades away).  In the beginning the total time is ~11.5 seconds for a complete cycle, after dodging 20 bolts however this time decreased to ~5.4 seconds.  After 200 bolts this reaches the minimum time of ~1.275 seconds.

If you want to check out the lightning bolt code, its available on github: https://github.com/dandistine/VenusSigil.  The github isn't updated with sound yet, but the game concepts are otherwise all there.  Generically speaking, the lightning bolts use an L-system which is a concept I borrowed from here https://www.cs.rpi.edu/~cutler/classes/advancedgraphics/S09/final_projects/lapoi...

Thanks for the link and the explanation. I will test your final release when mine will be done :)