Cool
This is a lot of fun and it's enjoyably 'retro.' The author apologizes for the poor quality of the sound effects, but I actually kind of liked both the sound and the music; reminded me of games on the original nintendo system (especially the explosions, sounded a lot like "Contra").
I'm also discovering that I like pretty colors.
Hey.
Thanks for your reply.
Yeah, only reason regarding the sound quality, was that MP3 just kills any kind of clarity, especially on the music. When I first compiled using somewhat higher quality MP3s, the filesize was almost 8MB! I thought that was rather large, although several songs are in the game, not just two or three. So, I reduced the quality to reduce the file size for faster load times.
The sounds, especially the big explosion, was actually modeled after Contra. ;-) I took a square wave and some "noise" waves, and played around with them.
Pretty colors. :-)
Nice!
Great job on the game, Ziros. I loved the graphics and graph idea. The music was good and clearly suitable. I wish it was possible to fire multiple lasers at the same time and receive upgrades for you weapons/shields/spaceship. Also, you could add a few more enemies to give it more difficulty but I'm sure this happens later on in the game (I only did a couple of levels). Overall, good job mate! 8/10 is a good score from me!
Hey.
Thanks for your reply.
The ship does get upgrades, and funny you mention multiple lasers, because that's one of the upgrades! ;-)
You'll automatically get those upgrades, and yes, you do have to make it a little farther - makes the upgrades more appreciated, I think. ;-)
Also, you can charge up your shields, but you don't have enough energy to do that in the beginning levels. Each time you destroy the big Guardian ship at the end of the level, you'll get a little more energy. Eventually, you'll be able to charge them up.
You're right, more enemies are in the later levels. A new enemy is introduced every other grid, up until grid 15.
Beamrider brought to the modern age!
I remember Beamrider. It was one of my Colecovision favorites. It was damn hard, too: no lasso upgrades, only 3 torpedoes. And all the high-level enemies were as frustrating, if not more so, than the ones here.
Laser Stryker is surprisingly faithful to the original Beamrider, even down to fine enemy ship movement patterns and similar sound effects.
My only criticism is that for a game like this, having explosions with a lot of particles makes it hard to see the dangers around the explosion's periphery. Not a huge complaint, since most spaceship shooters seem to have that problem. But you get only 5 lanes to maneuver in a game like this, so anything that clouds your judgment can have deadly consequences.
It's a piece of work. Keep 'em coming.
Hey.
Thanks for the review, man.
I also had the Colecovision port of Beamrider. It was the only one that introduced the two new enemies (I-Tinker and Magnetic Mine). And you're right, it was harder: no upgrades or shields, and only three torpedoes. Another thing I added was that when you die, your next ships starts right in-game, instead of having to restart from the launch screen. Plus, I toned it down a bit: your upgraded weapon can kill most enemies that could previously only be destroyed by torpedoes (and you get points for it - which you didn't get points for destroying them in the original).
Yeah, I tried to keep a lot of original detail. The AI of all the enemies was pretty easy to emulate, except for the regular ships. I had to improvise there, but they all follow various preset patterns. I love those Chirper sounds. (:
Regarding your concern: thanks for mentioning that, however, I'd say that many shooters suffer from not having enough eye candy. Perhaps if I ever worked in this again, I could add an option to turn those off, although that takes away some of the selling points of the game.
Thanks again for your review, soldier. Most appreciated.
* salutes *
________________________
- Ziro out.
nice..
not bad not great but entertaining enough to waste some time on it
very addictive
well made game, but so addictive!
Thanks.