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Space Blaster's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| End-of-life plan | #39 | 3.870 | 3.870 |
| Graphics | #58 | 3.652 | 3.652 |
| Sounds | #80 | 3.261 | 3.261 |
| Overall | #109 | 3.270 | 3.270 |
| Theme relevance | #177 | 3.174 | 3.174 |
| Fun | #235 | 2.391 | 2.391 |
Ranked from 23 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Source Code URL
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dDYCvP31PLLyWkXEiirV08KcHII8jaBy/view?usp=sharing
End life plan
The game is downloadable, so it can be played without needing to access any websites, although I have no intention to remove it. Additionally, the source files for GDevelop are publicly available.
Transparency note
I did not use AI
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Comments
Your itch page is exemplary and I want to lead with that, because it's the most transparent documentation I've seen in this jam. You wrote a Bugs section listing your own defects (some enemy movement is framerate dependent, boss weapons break if you load a save mid-fight), credited every sprite, sound and music artist with a link, and left an emergency key that clears all enemies if something goes wrong. That's more honesty than plenty of commercial games manage.
Having SAVE and LOAD in a jam shmup is a rare treat, and in a jam about preservation, letting the player keep and resume their run is a gesture well aligned with the theme. The pixel art space background (purple nebula with coloured stars at different sizes) is genuinely pretty and gives real depth. It also drops you straight in with no menu and no loading, which suits score chasing. And there are well considered details in there: you can shoot down enemy torpedoes for points, and when you run out of lives the game starts slowly regenerating health instead of just ending.
Where I struggled. I couldn't get the score to move. The game starts with 130 points already on the board (I never worked out where that number comes from) and after a long time shooting it was still 130. My shots left the ship and crossed the screen, but enemies didn't die. Either my aim was wrong or damage wasn't being applied.
The pace is also very slow. Enemies cross the screen almost stationary and there are long gaps between them. In a score chaser the opposite helps: more enemies, faster, with the number always climbing.
Two smaller ones: there's no title screen, game name or in-game instruction, you just land in dark space with a ship, so anyone who doesn't read the itch page won't know save, cheat or the emergency key exist. And the window is bigger than the screen, so the vertical red health bar is pinned to the right edge and partly cut off.
The page is a model of how to document a jam game. The game itself mainly needs pace and a title screen.
Wow! This game looks and sounds great. The star particle parallax is beautiful, and I love how it speeds up when the dreadnought spawns. And good god the explosions are so juicy. Jamming music too! Great choice of sounds in general.
The concept is interesting. Spawning in enemies to make it harder on yourself to get more points is a classic mechanic, but not having any control over the supposed player character. At first I was confused and actually thought I was watching some kind of demo, and there was no information on the actual game page to alleviate that.
As much as I appreciate the experimentation, I can't help but feel that I'd have a lot more fun if I got to control the player myself. This could be a really satisfying shmup with a fun self-punishing mechanic, but it doesn't quite scratch the itch I'd want it to.
Sometimes, a game will make me ask "Who's having fun here?" — the player, or the game? In this case, I think it's the latter. But I wanna play too.
Thanks! I have thought about adding a mode where you can control the player. I avoided giving full information on the game page so that playing as the "enemy" is more surprising
Nice! The music is on fire haha
Thank! The music was a bit last-minute, so I'm glad it was good
Thanks, I'm glad you liked the dreadnought
I’m not sure I was playing correctly as I felt like I was the “enemies” more than the player, but still found it interesting, like a shmup version of tower defence. I don’t know if that was intended or not (the game description references to the player seem to refer to the white ship, but the red ships are the player’s fleet it seems?) but it seemed like an interesting angle to me and would be curious to see more of that (maybe some fleet tactics thrown in?), without the burden of the game jam theme.
Also I really liked the graphics and sound, the swirling parallax is nice as are the explosions.
Edit: also love these explosions!
Thanks, I'm glad you liked how the game looks! It is a reverse space-shooter where you do play as the "enemies" and your goal is to stop the "player" from getting a high score.
Aww yiss, love me some space shooter. The swirling stars look super cool. But I'm having hard time controlling the game... does ship fly on it's own and only thing I can do is select power ups?
Thanks! The goal of the game is to stop the computer-controlled "player" ship by choosing which units the "enemy" deploys. Lower scores are better.
Great art and concept!
Thanks!
I love the old school style! One question: is there an auto mode? I was able to play the game without using any controls so I found that pretty cool.
Thanks! You are only able to select which spaceships are deployed, the "player" is computer controlled
Music fits really well with the theme!
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!
I really liked how the background looked.
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!
Great game (also thank you for posting cheats, definitely made it more fun to be super OP!)!
Thanks! I had fun having infinite money for playtesting, so I wanted to make that a feature in the game