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Maximum Voltage's itch.io pageHow does your game incorporate the theme?
Maximum Voltage is a retro-inspired rail shooter with the twist that your ship is electrically powered and can be charged to unleash devastating attacks or nimble maneuvers.
What bonus challenges did you complete?
Cross Dimensional
Did you use any sort of AI during the development of your submission?
No
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Comments
The game is fun and very polished, great job!
Thanks for checking it out!
Really well done! If you told me when I was 15, that somebody would be able to make something like StarFox in less than a couple days, that would have blown my mind. I really hope this is something you're interested in expanding. If you wanted to get more mileage out of one level, you could maybe have the ship repeat it's loop through the level, maybe there is an addition goal to collect a certain number of stars or gems or something, and you keep looping back along the same path until you get them all or before a time limit or something... Anyhow, overall, this is a really fantastic looking game, well done!
I'm glad you liked it, thanks for playing!
I've already started some post-jam working cleaning up some of the messier parts of the code. The feedback I've gotten has convinced me to at least finish what I had planned for the first level since what I ended-up submitting was only about 30s and I had planned for 3-5m. It might not be soon though since I've got some other jams coming up.
Those intel crates in the level were actually meant to be just that. My plan was for there to be unlockable ship skins that you get by doing things like beating a minimum score or collecting all intel crates for a level in a single run. I do like that idea of reusing the same level's path for different challenges though. I'm a big fan of Jak X and it does something similar with multiple game modes using the same tracks. I'll definitely keep that in mind!
Ok what, this is great how did you do this Cool transitions, great menu, the game plays great. I get it being a bit too short, but the vision is definitely there. Even the itch.io page looks cool… what…
My only complaint was already voiced by Frib and others, so I will leave it at that. Good job!
I'm glad you liked it!
A big part of it was I've been spending time since my last jam in 2024 writing quick test projects in Godot to learn navigation, 3D imports, etc so I knew mostly how to make simple 3D games. I am working on a post-mortem though that I'll publish sometime after the results going over some of how I budgeted my time, how the game's code is structured, and some of the effects.
It also just looks a lot more complicated than it is though. Like, both the player and enemies are just PathFollow3D nodes with hitboxes attached and set to follow paths at a fixed speed. A lot of the code is also shared between objects; for example, the player, enemies, and pickups all have the same reusable health component, hitbox component, and death component objects attached to them so I only needed to write that code once at the start (Firebelley Games on YT has a great video on using composition like that). Getting the player camera to track the ship right was the hardest part and where I spent a ton of my time.
The transition effect is also fairly straightforward. I started by texturing a Panel node with one of the SciFI UI boxes, tinted it darker using the modulate property, and added a TextureRect with the stripe pattern over it (also tinted) with the add blend mode enabled in its material. That gave me a reusable door scene that I duplicated and used an AnimationPlayer to create open and close animations for them. I have a game state manager node at the top of my scene tree with all the menus, HUD, and level under it that controls when each thing is shown. Inside that node, on top of everything, is the transition scene so it covers everything when it closes (also tilted 45 degrees to look cooler). The state manager script just plays the transition scene's' open or closed animation whenever it needs to hide loading the level. All-in, the transition took about 40m to get right.
This was a really great game! It could’ve been a bit longer, but even within this short playtime, you managed to deliver maximum fun. The use of the “Cross Dimensional” difficulty made it even more engaging. Also, the game’s aesthetic is definitely eye-catching.
If you’d like to check out my game as well: On The Edge Of Power
Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you liked it!
Visuals were really great, the pixelated effect was a super good choice for this.
You also managed to design a really good looking level, I think the choice to have a short level you can try to perfect was a really good choice, since you can then carefully craft everything.
As for feedback, I had some issues with depth perception and telling how close/far things are. Other than that it was really great! ^^
Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad to hear the high-score is helping to keep people engaged, my goal was for it to be easy to learn but hard to master.
As much as I'd like to take credit for carefully planning the level, most of it was honestly dumb luck. I did plan a few things like giving you a chance to see the intel hidden behind the tower before you approached it and the enemy string around the other tower matching your pace so you can practice leading targets but the rest was just rushed together. It was accidental that you could hit some enemies you missed from multiple points along the track and that you could hit both streams of enemies converging at the end with a single turbo blast.
My thought when designing the level was mostly to make it as cinematic as possible and to give the player chances to try all the abilities with relatively low risk.
Neat game! Pretty short, but it's a nice vertical slice imo. I did find it a bit hard to judge where the ship is at in 3D space, and where you're actually aiming at. Could be a side effect of the retro pixel look. I didn't seem to crash into anything but I found it quite difficult to feel where I was.
Also chiming in on the Ctrl+W trap for web games, I didn't fall for it this time :D
Anyway, good job!
Thanks for the feedback! I'm still shocked I never encountered that Ctrl+W issue in testing. I'm going to have to add that to my checklist for next time.
It's funny you mention the depth perception issue since that was a big problem I struggled with early in the first day. I did a ton of tweaks to the camera FOV, world scale, ship collider, speed, etc trying to mitigate it. I thought I had it mostly solved but in the back of my mind, I was worried I just played it so much that I had gotten used to the issue. I think part of the problem is I don't have enough good points of reference in the scene to help judge distance with the flat shading.
The aiming also definitely has problems. I tried to compensate for the ship's velocity when aiming but could never quite get the shots to land dead center in the far reticule when the ship turned. As it is, you have to aggressively lead targets to get them to land where you intend which isn't a great onboarding experience for new players.
Short, but sweet. The game honestly left me wanting for more. Really nice throw back to classic rails shooters, especially given the pixel shader. It was a lot of fun. You could try releasing something like this on mobiles.
In terms of improvements, I think its length is the main one. That's something you'd want to fix post-jam, if you feel like it. It also did seem too easy, which can hinder the replayability aspect. So, you might want to tweak the difficulty a bit.
As a very minor issue, I think you should have picked a different title.
Thanks for the feedback!
Believe it or not, the pixelation isn't from a shader. I set the game to run natively at 256x224 with integer and viewport scaling enabled in the project settings to make the pixels scale cleanly to larger windows. Then on itch, I changed the default canvas size in the game settings to a multiple of that resolution to force it display in a larger window. It has the downside of breaking Godot's loading screen (why I disabled it) and making the game open in a tiny window by default on PC exports though.
Definitely agree on length and difficulty, I was planning for 3-5 minutes a level with a short tutorial level explaining things like the charge ring but spent too much time tweaking the camera and main menu to do everything I wanted. The section of the level that made it into the jam was originally just meant to be a soft start to let players get a feel for the controls and abilities with my plan being to ramp up the difficulty dramatically after the collapsed building. Based on other's feedback, I am seriously considering finishing at least the first level after judging is over.
For the name, I honestly just picked the first thing that came to mind. I wanted something over-the-top that sounded like a 90's arcade game and didn't seem to be taken already. Out of curiosity, did you find the name wasn't descriptive enough or was there another problem with it I could potentially improve on?
I don't think it fits the game. I had a different picture in mind when I read the name. It's not a big deal. I doubt people really care and, as you say, it does evoke memories of the old arcade games. So, maybe it's fine. It was a very minor point though, so definitely don't get hung up on it.
I even made a post asking for suggestions for my own game, so I guess it's just a quirk of mine.
Ah I gotcha, and no that definitely makes sense. I think it's fair criticism since some games have been hurt by misleading titles before (like how Prey 2017 was a system shock successor but nobody knew that at first).
very great game and job please try My game
I'm glad you liked it, thanks for playing!
This was great! Love the style and the controls worked great, just wish there was more, but for a 48 hour jam you can only do so much lol. Great job!
Thanks for playing!
In hindsight, I can see ways I could have spent my time differently to make more time for level design. I waaay over-scoped and had plans for unlockable ship skins, alternate weapons, more enemy types, bosses, tutorials with dialog boxes, etc. Implementing all those systems ate away at my level design time and most of them never got used in the end so I could have gotten more time back if I had cut them in sooner.
Oh man do I feel that 😂
I really went back hard to my overscope and underutilize ways with this jam too, it happens lol. What you submitted is solid though, is nicely polished etc!
Wow, very impressive! Love the visuals and sound effects. The controller worked flawlessly for me. Huge accomplishment for a gamejam, congrats
Thanks! I'm glad you liked it! I was really close to doing something else for fear I wouldn't be able to finish it or that people wouldn't care for the pixelation but I'm glad I did
Very fun game and the aesthetics are on point. I like that there are a variety of aspects used for scoring, my high score is 2741. Having more levels would be awesome. Great work!
Thanks for checking it out! The best I've been able to get is 3780 but I had to practice the level about 20 times in a row to get it and I think it's possible to get higher.
The levels were definitely something I wish I had more time for. The game actually does have all the code needed to handle multiple levels and I had originally planned to make them 3-5m each but ran out of time. I thought it would be easier to build them but I didn't have a way in editor to see the range of ship movement along its path which made level design a bit of trial-and-error. In hindsight, I could have definitely found workarounds for that though.
You hit the vibe for this genre perfectly with the visuals you got going. It looks absolutely amazing!
I just have one small tip: Some people will inevitably play the game with WASD movement, and when they do that AND you have a keybind on control AND they press W and control at the same time, the tab will close and they will wonder if the game just crashed (totally didn't happen to me tho, at all >.>)
Terrific job, I adore this game
Thanks for playing! And I did not know that, thanks for letting me know! I realized too late that I really should have made E the turbo button anyways since Ctrl, at least for me, was a bit awkward to press. I got so focused testing the controller with the UI that I forgot to tweak the keyboard later in.
Couldn't get my controller working (my end, not an issue with your game) but even on keyboard this was a fun little experience! The visual style is beautiful and works together great with the music. Great fun to play!
Thanks for checking it out and I'm glad the keyboard controls worked for you! In hindsight, I think I should have mapped the turbo cannon to E in addition to Ctrl so it was easier to press when playing with WASD.
Good job. I enjoyed this game, really liked the chosen style.
Thanks for playing!
i liked it it was fun, I like the retro-ish style also!
Thanks for checking it out! I'm glad people are liking the style. I was a bit worried it may be a polarizing choice.
Awesome game! Really great job. I love the retro feel of it with the fixed movement, reminds me of 3DO and Sega Saturn games I use to play back in the day. Great vibes! I wish It was longer, you should 100% keep working on it, would be neat to see a boss fight :D
Thanks! There was so much more I was planning to add but sadly had to get cut for time. Part of the reason for the dodge mechanic was for a planned boss fight where you'd need to dodge its lasers. I've got some other jams coming up soon so I can't promise anything but it is pretty easy to add more to a level and some of the code for the cut features is partially implemented like unlockable ship skins and level selection.
I'm having so much fun with this. Great job!
Thanks! I really wish I could have made it longer and added more enemy types like I planned but I'm glad you enjoyed it!