itch.io

There are three reasons as to why I called it 1291. The first reason, as you already figured out, is because the inspiration is comic 1291. The second is there was a demo game that came with Game Maker 6 (the first "engine" I ever started messing with making games on) called 1945 that was a side-scrolling shooter. The third is that the only other option I could think of in the time was just calling it "Shoot the Moon", which honestly might be a better title as it does what it says on the tin.

Just getting vertical movement to work nicely together was a big hassle for me. As I have mention several times before, this entry was made in 5 hours, and it had been over a year since I had last used Unity. To add horizontal movement to the mix as well would have taken more time than I had, but it will probably be added. That said, I have been idly thinking of other was to do the horizontal movement, without actually moving the character. Mainly, slowing and speeding projectile's horizontal speed by pressing back or forward.

The shooting might feel less tedious if there were more things to shoot, but thank you for the feedback. I might not change the speeds as they are at the moment, but instead introduce difficulty settings and part of the increased difficulties is an increased speed modifier.

You're quite right. At the moment, it is a very boring game. I knew I didn't have the time on my hands to create an full game or even the full boss. Maybe if I had the full weekend, maybe. So my goal was to make it as mechanically complete as I could in the time I had. As such, you can move, shoot, damage things you shoot, kill the moon, get hit, get killed. At a very basic, fundamental level that is everything you can do in the game. All the variations on how you do it is additional content rather than additional features.

And good to know about the art assets. That said, I would like to either make, or talk to some art-y friends about making, assets specifically for the game. As is apparent up-scaling snippets from the comic does make a high quality sprite.

Well, probably not much actual progress in the next couple weeks as I have some friends from university stealing me away form my computer to Japan :P (long response time due to preparing for the trip)

Though I probably will spend some downtime, either there or on the flights or maybe both with a pen and notepad and noodle with some ideas, mechanics and maybe designs.

Thanks for the rating :) I'll be sure to keep an eye out for the review vid.

Yeah, I had waayyy bigger ambitions for this game than I ended up being able to fulfill. Between working on getting my car running, longstanding weekend commitments, one friend having a 21st and another having a "I'm going inter-state and you probably won't hear much from me in that time so let's get everyone together for a party before I go", and a job coming up like the weekend before the jam, I ended up getting like 5 or 6 hours of work done in total.

(And now for my own shameless plug :P)

I do intend to continue working on the game though to try and realise some of those ambitions and ideas. Progress will be posted on my blog at rainbowserpentlabs.wordpress.com, where I tried to make posts on stay on top of the jam but between only a little progress and general busy-ness, there was not much to write about and even that was delayed. If you are interested in reviewing it and its design when I have a more complete game I would be happy to get in touch and get it to you.

5 stars for "xkcd-ness". Literally cannot interpret this one more accurately as a game than this one right here. Art could stand to be polished up, even if trying to emulate the art of the original comic. The "good job"/"bad job" on submitting a solution is somewhat difficult to read and half the reason I understood it at all is because they are displayed in green/red boxes respectively.

While not really feasible in the time frame of the jam, an interactive tutorial level would go a long way rather than just leaving it to the player to figure out. Also sound effects, and a bit of background music. Maybe a multiplayer mode to play friends. The highlighting was very helpful to figuring out what to do though and it is certainly a unique combat resolution mechanic.