Gameplay is just wow. It's highly enjoyable, plain and simple. The only minus is a strange graphic dissonance - vector bullets and pixel enemies just looks a bit weird together. Music during battle with ordinary enemies is a bit slow-paced, too - maybe it must not be so chilly?
And man, why did you hide "enable story" in options with huge number of disclaimers :DD
Author Comments
060317 Update
-Fixed game not correctly saving save files (how the hell
did I miss that?)
-Fixed a few typo
-Added a text alert when you level up a stat
-Increased size of level up menu
-Increased blast radius for lower blast levels
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This is my first crack at game developing. A few things to note:
I strongly suggest at least skimming over the instructions, especially if you're going for a high score.
Quick overview of controls:
You fire automatically
Only your hitbox (white dot on ship) is vulnerable.
Enemies and black bullets won't hurt you.
Move with mouse (change to keyboard in options)
Click to fire a vector blast (SPACE bar if using keyboard)
ENTER key to bank your multiplier.
M key to mute
P key to pause game
Q key to quit game
if you lose all your lives, your score will be cut by 75%.
Your score will be posted when you return to the main menu, either by losing all your lives or by quitting after passing a checkpoint.
All of these controls can be changed in the options menu. Have fun! And please let me know what you think!
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12/16/16
Added manual fire. Hit "A" to toggle autofire. Hit "Z" to fire while not in autofire mode. (Both can be remapped in the options/pause menus). Thanks to K2Shape for the great suggestion!
Also, removed that 10 second gap in lvl 1 with nothing in it. Forgot to remove it before releasing the game =(
brokeman11 responds:
Hey, sorry for the VERY late response, been crazy busy with work and all. First off, thanks for the review, good or bad, guys like me live for this stuff. I get what you mean about mixing vector and raster graphics; I had just learned to do that with the bullets and...sort of got carried away, heh. And the character dialogue...when I read the story back, it was just so AWFUL. Yet I couldn't bring myself to take it out since it was the first time I wrote anything like that before. Btw, AFAIK, you're the first to even find that option in there, heheh. Anyhow, like I said, thank you so much for the review! Glad you liked it!
This is a very good game.
At first I didn't realise it was your first game, that makes it even more amazing.
It reminds me a lot of touhou, the bullet patterns are great. Sadly I didn't see all of them, the sword boss is really hard to me. Maybe I just need some more practice.
The music is also great and fits well.
Overall the game is very good but some things can be improved. A first thing to improve is the hud. As it is now it looks really boring, just some text and numbers floating in space. Use some icons instead of text, for example a heart instead of 'lives'. The enemies seemed a bit weird at first, it feels more like I'm fighting abstract shapes in space. The bosses have a rectangle around them, I think it would look a lot better if you lose the rectangle (visually). The sound changing when a boss is almost dead is a great touch, and using the rectangle to know how much health the boss have seems unnecessary and looks a bit unprofessional.
Overall the graphics can be improved, but the gameplay and music are great. However, a practicemode with unlimited lives (or just a lot of lives) would be great, maybe consider adding one, and make it so the highscores for practice don't get saved.
brokeman11 responds:
Wow, thanks for the detailed critique! I completely agree about the hud, as it stands, anyone who hadn't read the instructions wouldn't have know what half that stuff even was. I'm working on separating user interface from the game area in the next one so I can show more detail w/o cluttering the play area. And the graphics...I'm definitely getting an actual artist to to do that next time. Found out REALLY fast that I'm no artist. Funny thing, I HAD a practice mode; then I scrapped it thinking "no one would want that..." Now I know better, heh. Thanks again for the feedback, it's reviews like this that help us devs (especially newbies like me) get better! Edit: as for that midboss you mentioned, if it's the 4th (last) wave that's giving you trouble, I find it easier to stay in one 'lane' until it's almost vertical, then switch to a lane further to the right. That way, when they're horizontal again, you'll be towards the back of the screen already instead of in the boss's face. Hope that helps!
This game is awesome! If this is truly your first game, then you have lots of talent in game developing! Keep making games like these, you might become a great and popular developer one day! ;)
brokeman11 responds:
Thanks so much for the kind words! I'm hoping to be as good as polymerrabbit (the Frantic series) and kupo707 (the Bullet heaven series, love that one) someday. I'm still a loooong way off from their level though. But anyway, I'll definitely keep at it and keep improving. And thanks again for the review!
It is a very awesome game, but maybe allow the player to choose to fire the bullets manually instead (while also having the option of firing it automatically of course) as well as death-bombing.
brokeman11 responds:
Great idea! I already had a key to stop firing, so it shouldn't be too difficult to add a manual fire key when I get home. Thanks for playing AND for the review.
Credits & Info
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Daily 3rd Place December 17, 2016