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You brought a gun to a laser fight's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #28 | 3.778 | 3.778 |
| Gameplay | #30 | 3.722 | 3.722 |
| Overall | #32 | 3.833 | 3.833 |
| Graphics | #41 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Authenticity (or, Creativity in use of resolution) | #46 | 4.167 | 4.167 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Themes
Cleanup Crew: Clear the space lanes of rogue robots.
Pattern Recognition: The game is deterministic. You have to learn the patterns in which the robots are spawned to succeed.
Gotta Go Fast: To get high scores, you have to build your score multiplier by destroying robots in quick succession. You also have to kill robots quickly so that you do not get overwhelmed.
Tooling
Pico-8
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Comments
Really nice, well polished shmup! The art was very clean and I enjoyed all the different vfx.
A tough one, but so enjoyable! The hectic action keeps you on your toes the whole time. It’s very polished, even if the challenge level is pretty high. Fantastic job!
I’ve got a plan to make the difficulty ramp up more gradually, but I won’t release any improvements until after the lowrezJAM review period.
Very enjoyable with a lot of nice touches that add to the overall polish, tho it felt like it got too hard too quickly.
My best was 7352. Hoping to revisit and get a better score :D
Tough one! Very well executed and very intuitive and fluid to play. Great job!
I like the juicyness of your game. What's not to like about particle effects =)
It's a bit too challenging for me, but I still couldn't stop playing again and again. What about having different difficulty levels? Or just a bit slower ramp up of the difficulty in the game.
Cool game jam entry you have here. Had fun with it!
A bit too hard for me (my best score was 451), but fun anyway! The game is very polished, well done! :)
Thanks for playing. I have a new version waiting for the review period to be over that has features to reduce the difficulty.
Nice, I am looking forward to try it out! :)
To address the feedback that the game is too difficult and players get overwhelmed by chaos while they are not skilled in the game, I’ve added a new feature: shrapnel.
When your ship is destroyed, the particles of its explosion destroy any robot they hit. You don’t get any points for those hits, but the explosion clears the playing area so that it is easier to get back into the game.
And it creates pleasing chain reactions as robot after robot explodes.
I’ll publish the new version after the lowrezJAM review period has finished.
Those boxes had it coming for leaving such a mess behind! gg
wow I really love the execution of this one! Super polished - visually it's super crisp, as opposed to lots of shoot-em-ups, difficulty is definitely up there but after a while we're able to learn where the enemies are and predict them a bit better. Sound effects were on point, all the subtle visual effects camera shakes, particles, etc. are all on point and really add to the gameplay. This was a ton of fun to play, awesome job!!
Thank you.
Man this is great! Totally captures the feel of the great shoot-em-ups, like R-Type and Gradius. I’ve always sucked at these games, and this one’s no exception, but it was a lot of fun trying :D
score = 601
An interesting dynamic is that the difficulty seems inversely proportional to the player's skill. Since any enemies you do not defeat upon arrival hang around and start adding up. While interesting, it felt a bit lame at times. I'd miss a few shots and watch the chaos build! Perhaps it could have felt more fair if we had some kind of limited defense or ability to help when finding ourself cornered or overwhelmed?
The theme suggestion of pattern recognition kinda seemed redundant to me, because all games are about recognizing patterns.
The style of shooting felt like it required a bit too much precision. If the bullets were slightly bigger or we had a higher fire rate, then it could have been a little easier to split my focus on dodging more effectively, maybe.
Perhaps some of my thoughts come from what the kids call a - skill issue. I do enjoy overly difficult games, but I guess I'm not in the mood to grind this one. I don't know what the wave spawning design is, but the first zone could have been slower or have some set triggers to wait until the screen was cleared or cleared a certain amount before releasing more?
Despite what my thoughts might convey, I had plenty of fun. I love the funny title. Keep up the great work!
I just tabbed back over to the game page and was still hanging out perfectly invulnerable the entire time. I never realized, after dying, I could hangout and assess the situation for however long I wanted. Neat design detail.
Thank you for playing and your thoughtful feedback. After the jam I’ll experiment with different fire rates and other ideas I’ve had to thin out the number of opponents on screen when you get hit.
The shield when you respawn is critical for keeping on top of the chaos. No new robots will spawn until you drop your shields, and you are invulnerable until you do. So you can bide your time until it is safe to drop your shields and for the robots to have gathered where you can take many out with a volley of shots, clearing the screen and giving you some breathing space to take on the next wave.
Nice! It is very difficult, But I don't think it's a bad thing!
Neat game! Maybe the enemy hitboxes could be a little more generous?(its prob just skill issue on my part)
For the full 1980s experience the game has an instruction booklet. Download the PDF and print at home (or read on screen).
The booklet has more lore, and more instructions with illustrations that I couldn’t easily add to the itch.io game page.
It’s in A5 format, so print to A4 landscape with pages ordered for stapling in the center.
A bunch of last minute updates:
And a new version with title music by ridgek.
I’ve uploaded a new version with a new level: level 6.
I’ve added a fourth level and a fifth bonus level. Plus more sfx and gfx.
I aim to add one more level after the bonus level, before the jam deadline. My goal was eight levels, but I doubt I’ll have the time. Five levels and bonus level will still be enough of a challenge.
I’ve added a third level and tweaked the gameplay parameters and level design to make the difficulty ramp up a bit more gently. (Just a bit!)