This game was created for the Ludum Dare #18 Compo: “Enemies as Weapons”. Fling enemies at each other to destroy them, and collect the green things to earn points and heal yourself. Enjoy.
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This game was created for the Ludum Dare #18 Compo: “Enemies as Weapons”. Fling enemies at each other to destroy them, and collect the green things to earn points and heal yourself. Enjoy.
Personal top score: 1491.
My Top Score: 246 =(
This is a really solid game, Nathan. You wrote the music in one day right? It’s quite good. I thought it was really smart that when you have one enemy left on screen, another automatically spawns so you have something to shoot at.
I had great fun grabbing the level 3 enemy and pointing him at the bad guys.
One design I had for you. What if you treated the controls like Geometry Wars where AWSD is your ship’s movement and the arrow keys are where your ship faces? That way, you could be running away from enemies and shooting at them.
Truly ballin’
3369. I think I may have gotten more the second time I played, but in an effort to pause the game found out that the Esc key causes the game to pause indefinitely.
Seriously though, this game is a lot of fun. I want to play it more to see how crazy it gets.
Okay, I tried it a fourth time: 12032.
Tips: fire the baddies against the wall so they ricochet back to hit baddies (it’s safer at seems to cause more chain reactions), and on the later levels you’ll be able to easily pick up baddies just before they spawn because there are more of them. Oh, and don’t be in the center when they all spawn, that’s how I died.
But yeah, fun game! Definitely one of my favorites.
Yeah, the Esc freezing the game is a Processing thing, and not something that I’ve found any way around. For reference, P for pause and M for mute is standard on all the games I’m posting these days.
Is it just me, or is there a pretty easy optimum strategy in this game? I drive around in circles, letting the shooters blast everything else, until there’s just one shooter left. Then I grab the shooter, grind on the respawns until I have full health, and repeat.
So far I got to 2k+ with this strategy, but it seems to be able to go on indefinitely: each wave is, at this point (five shooters, four little guys, and one fast guy) so it works the same each time.
yrs–
–Ben
Okay, I do see that the waves just keep getting bigger. Nonetheless, that strategy seems pretty impeccable. I got to 5236 before being killed by an arm cramp.
Eh, Giant Vex was better, and fit the theme too. Shame it was done a week too early.
After some more intensive testing, here’s what I came up with. The further you get in the game, the less health drops there should be. The huge swarm of enemies seems less threatening when you fly into them and it doesn’t hurt you cuz the exploding ships around you are healing you.
Also, a lot of the fun I have with this game comes from finishing off every wave fast. What if you added a bonus score to each wave where if I finished them in 3 seconds, I’d get 100 points but if it took me 10 seconds, I’d get 0 extra points? This would give the player something else too shoot for other than just an arbitrary score in survival mode.
Good fun!
Ben: The shooters were a last-minute addition before the compo deadline, and I didn’t have a whole lot of time to playtest later levels involving them.
Joe: I mentioned Giant Vex in my first post for the compo. =) Even if not for the timing, Giant Vex wouldn’t have been eligible for the compo because most of its game logic was written previously. I made a deliberate effort to do something distinctly unlike Giant Vex for Ludum Dare, to explore what other design space that theme had to offer.
John: Thanks for your feedback! I have addressed some of your concerns in the updated Jam version of the game.
Nathan, that version is amazing! Thanks for including my ideas. Much more fun.
Is it a Jam cuz I suggested the ideas or did you work with someone else on it?
It’s a Jam submission because the Jam runs for a day longer than the Compo, and the change was made after the Compo submission deadline. The Compo entry is still intact as a separate version.
Yo, Nathan. I don’t see the same listed under the Jam entries. I see the jam link on the compo entry. Is that a problem or is it all okay?
My game was submitted as a compo entry. The jam version link on its page is as it should be.
Brilliant game this, one of my favourites on this whole site. I love the balance between strategy and madly dashing around trying to grab the green bubbles! Great job.
Oh and my highest score (so far) is 672.
Yo, Nathan. A comment on your LD18 page suggested a combo counter. What do you think of that? Not only do you get points for how past you complete the wave, but with how badass you ricochet the enemies. Consider it =)