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This is my first jam so not sure if the use of art/music is allowed, so if I did violate the art rules just let me know, as a non-artist deliver a game without music and some art woudl it feel somehow incomplete, so I search for non-royalty/free assets on that matter.

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GamePlay
You can only make 1 shoot at a time, your weapon will re-load once an enemy is destroyed. The enemies will change your weapon also, thre are 4 diff types of shoot, single, double, triple and sine.

Collect power ups "P" from some enemies (the green ones) to power up your weapon and destroy more than 1 enemy per shoot.

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Controls
Move with W/S or Up/Down and use Space Key to shoot. F - for full screen ESC - during gameplay to restart. Space/Enter on GameOver Screen to continue,

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Story
Earth is facing its last battle against an alien invasion.

3G Ship is our last hope, scientist develop an energy system capable of abosrb energy from disturbance on the Dark Matter energy field, by destroying enemies the ship is capable of cause some disturbance in the Dark Matter energy field and re-load its own weapon for one more shoot.

Different enemies seems to cause different levels of disturbance on the Dark Matter field affecting the weapon system. Battle the last line of defense of the enemy and destroy their mothership.

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Credits
Credits Music: Runner05 by FabC@RustedMusicStudio https://rustedstudio.itch.io/free-music-runner-game-hi-bpm-music-5-free-tracks Epic Boss Fight by https://fornhimmel.itch.io/epicbossfightmusic Background Art: 2D Space Parallax Backgrounds by @GroggyGoblinGMS https://groggygoblingames.itch.io/2d-space-parallax-backgrounds SFX: Generated with https://sfxr.me Scripts: scr_sine script by https://gm48.net/user/490/mimpy
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About
Programming,design,sprites by Victor Ramos (fb.com/allende, x.com/devfailblog) - Made with Game Maker Studio 2 (2023.11.1.160)

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  • Baconlovar
    Lv. 3

    For a first jam entry this is incredible - the boss fight I wasn't expecting and it was fun to beat. Little unituitive at first but after some experimenting its easy to understand. Good job!

  • Henry Haak
    Lv. 41

    I think this is an interesting restriction, but I think it's a bit too punishing at the moment. Especially when your weapon can change its pattern drastically, it feels unfair that my shot might miss an enemy due to moving unpredictably and then I'm basically unable to play and have to die to continue. Some sort of risky alternative to attack enemies that you can do at any time and reloads your bullet would have been a nice change. It also feels a bit strange that the boss fight practically ignores the main mechanic of the game because with the amount of enemies it spawns you're practically guaranteed to hit something every time you shoot. Still, I enjoyed my time with the game as a whole and I think it was an interesting take on the theme.

    • Victor Ramos
      Lv. 2

      Hi

      Yes the boss fight is totally unbalanced and won't match the main gimmick of the gameplay.

      I am working on the post jam update to fix the boss fight, add a reload mechanic and some other fix.

      Thank you for the feedback.

  • pressgoal
    Lv. 8

    This is a really fun game with a unique spin on space invaders via the upgrades and single shot. I really liked the sine shot. The sound, art and gameplay were all really good. Congratulations on your first game jam, and I hope to see you in the next one!

    Trick Shot
    Submitted

    Trick Shot

  • Tydecon Games
    Patron

    I did not realise how much I needed bullets in a shooter until I did not have them! 😂 defintely a unique idea and a short but sweet spacey high-tec experience, good job!

  • ceaselessly
    Lv. 8

    First off -- congratulations on completing your very first game jam!! I hope you had fun and learned some new things about Game Maker along the way. 😄

    The game is simple and short, but I like the interpretation of the theme -- being able to shoot only one at a time. As others mentioned, if you miss, you cannot reload and must force a death to continue. I think also that the resetting the level when you lose might make more sense than restarting in the same spot in the wave where you died.

    Congrats on finishing your game!! Hope you participate in the next Jam.

    • Victor Ramos
      Lv. 2

      Hi

      Thanks for the feedback. You can actually restart the game (with ESC ) but yes a re-load mechanic was needed, after giving a thought while writing the post-mortem I think I have a good idea and may have it implemented for the post-jam update.

      And yes I learnt some new things about GM, the gamejam itself was fun but painful to endurance, but I liked the idea of not having to have a perfect game, I'm likely to comeback for another if the planets get aligned !

  • Ellaris
    Lv. 3

    It felt good, but the look of the enemies didn;t feel to fit in with the rest.

    It was nice to be able to continue after dying, but respawning during the boss attack meant instant death, so maybe a second of invulnerability would be good.

    With having just one shot per enemy it presents a big difficulty to have to clear the whole stage perfectly, the ability to continue after dying is a nice easy mode. The problem occurs when the player misses, because then they don't have a lot to do, which means there is 2 ways to play the game: execute everything perfectly for the highest combo, avoid shooting until the boss so you can win. It kind of feels like you are getting punished for fighting, which is fine if that was your goal.

    It was nice to see a boss fight, but I arrived to it with no ammo then got chain killed and then I somehow spam killed it, so it was basicaly over before I could figure out what was happening.

    • Victor Ramos
      Lv. 2

      Hi , thanks for playing.

      The GameOver/Continue was something I pull out at the very end to give you a chance to go through the whole level but yes a reload mechanic was needed and a "invisibility" timeframe is something I didn't think back then but sure would've done the game feel better.

      Boss fight was also made in a rush so wasn't balanced at all, if I would've implemented the reload/invisibility mechanics would've felt much better, I'm adding this 2 points to my post - mortem entry, thank you !

  • Javifugitivo
    Lv. 2

    The adaptation to the theme is very good, with only 1 shot, although if you miss one there is no way to recover it without dying. It would have been nice to be able to recharge it with an item. Otherwise, incredible graphics and sound. The ship is controlled really well. Good job Victor!

    • Victor Ramos
      Lv. 2

      Thanks !

      Yes once you miss you are done so you got it make count ! nah you are right, a mechanic to reload by giving up something (maybe a "P" if you had it) would it be better.

      Thinking in retrospective as mentioned in my post-mortem a horizontal shooter wasn't the best fit, maybe one in the line of Asteroids had fit better my concept.

  • Joe
    Lv. 3

    Was a fun gaming experiance. Enjoyed the old arcade styling. Appreciated the UI.

  • 2102
    Patron

    Actually pretty fun! Never really knew what kind of weapon I'd be shooting, but there were some great ideas in this game. Keep it up!

  • Dexter English
    Lv. 5

    Graphics could match a bit more consistent. Interesting idea with switching weapons based on what you hit, but a few times I had double shot and missed a block in front of me.

    UniDrive
    Submitted

    UniDrive

    • Victor Ramos
      Lv. 2

      Thank you ! yes art is not my thing and didn't have time create sprites for the enemies to try to match the Ship, maybe I could have go only with blocks instead of mixing stuff.

      About missing the shot that was on purpose, I meant each enemy should give you a weapon that helps with the next one but by shooting blindly you may miss the shot.

      The "sine" weapon (which you get from the first green enemy) the first time you may think will be hard to hit the next enemy but its actually easy.

      Sadly I couldn't design/balance the whole level to make it feel right or give you a better visual cue for the type of weapon you have at the moment.

This was my very first gamejam, I joined since the jam was solely for GM devs and the theme was quite open/simple to get around.

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What went wrong ?
If a 5Km,10Km run, etc are physical test to try your endurance and mind, same can be tell about GameJams, I ended up destroyed.

I put ~16 hours of actual work (plus some hours researching for GM functions, background art, music and generating the sound effects) and did the bad decision of working overnight (I'm 39yo and not in good shape so this was a bad idea overall)

I had not a single template to built upon,so code/design wise I start from scratch. Kudos to the amazing artists from itch.io from whom I took their assets (music and backgrounds) (I asked for permisson or they explicitly allow it on the description/license).

I may have got a bit ambitious building upong power ups instead of focusing on a single game mechanic.

At least you play several times is hard to get used to the diff weapons each enemy gives you, I thought about giving the player some visual cue but couldn't come with something. It's a gamejam so whoever is playing the game won't play for more than 5-10 minutes at least is having a lot of fun.

Maybe a boss fight wasn't needed. The Boss Fight wasn't supoosed to be that chaotic but I didn't have time/energy to balance it as I've wished. Even the simplest idea/theme can get out of hand.

A diff kind of shoot'em up may have fit better instead of a "horizontal scrolling" (there's no actual scrolling), maybe one in the line of Asteroids.

Edit: after some feedback 2 main things were missed a reload mechanic in case you ran out of your 1 only ammo and some invisibility timeframe when continue after gameover, I totally thing those 2 mechanics would've made the game feel much better.

Edit2: There's a design flaw/bug, whereas a bullet is outside of the room automatically set your shot type to "none" even if another bullet destroyed an enemy (like when using the double shot)

As non-english speaker I'm having a hard time between using shot&shoot.

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What went right ?
I finished a game.

Also technically I learnt some things I didn't know about GM and which turn out to be quite simple to do (I've been using GM for the past 6-8 months, so even when I have some experiencie with programming, it is not my daily job).

I had a clear idea right from the beginning, but 1 thing is to have an idea and way diff world is to expand that into a whole game, speciall based on the genre you choose for it.

I went for shoot'em up (kind of Space Invaders) with horizontal "scrolling" (there's not actual scrolling the ship is static on X and enemies come to you but that gives the illusion). because was the simplest thing I could have done, after the gm is over I think this was a good decision.

As theme was "just one" I went for just one shot, the gimmick was that if you destroy an enemy you will be able to shoot again. Also based on which enemy you destroy you will get a diff type of weapon/shot, I also feel good on this matter.

My idea was to make some sort of rhythm game/shoot'em up, where you will use each diff weapon to destroy next enemy and so on, (sometimes with enemies positioned (on purpose ) in a way that will make you fail.

I got to give a good feeling on that but only for a couple of times during the gameplay.

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Full gameplay

Result 15th
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