Powerbase

Lovely graphics, good game! I included it in my GM48: One Tool, Many Uses compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/i6dgliSj-A0

Cool game. I know some people have criticised your use of the theme but I like how this game provides a slightly different take on it. The random powerups are interesting plus there's a nice variety of them which helps to mix up the gameplay.

It's clever how the power-ups slowly drift towards the base so that even if you like your current power-up you need to switch eventually. Likewise, I enjoy how your shots will damage the base so you're disincentivised from constantly shooting despite the lack of ammo limit.

The visuals are quite nice with some really cool particles effects and nice sprites. The background is a little bland but you've explained why that's the case. The sound effects are mostly good but the laser recharging sound is a bit grating and the shooting sound could use some variation. Some music would be good too.

Not sure what the tool is there?

I mean, why not have powerup as tool, but if half of them are bad for you, that's not really a tool anymore.

Other than that, pretty solid game, I especially liked that you could shoot the base and missiles.

I like that you can shoot enemy bullets to destroy them and that their bullets move slowly. This gives you some time to stop an enemy attack even if you can't kill the enemy quickly enough.

I think the most important thing to improve this would be reduce the number of power cells significantly, and make the negative effects less pronounced so that it's not game over if you get a bad powerup.

It seems like it could have been fun, but there was just way too many powerups all at once, I didn't even know what effect I had half the time, and some of the powerups, like the laser or double enemy speed, are really bad (although the idea of a laser could get the player out of some tough situations if it worked better).

Highscore: Wave 12, 4604 points

Edit: I played one time and had a little more fun, realized the top shows your current powerup. Still think there's too many powerups though, and too many strongly negative effects. Reinforcements is by far the hardest to deal with.

Man, screw those speed increase powerups. So hard to deal with >.<

I get what you were going for with the random "powerups", but honestly they didn't really feel like tools? If that makes sense? They were more like things that would happen to you, instead of things you would utilise to beat the enemies. But overall, not a bad game at all!!

I noticed that I somehow still got more points after I had died and my highscore was set lol

I didn't get the idea how it fits the theme. But a pretty decent game, you should try playing Bit Blaster Xl once. One problem I had is the movement speed is too fast when I press W. I can't collect power ups so easily most of the times, I went and hit an enemy out the enemy or I will miss catching the power up. All the best!!!

Totally self promotion for my game. Sorry :P Gravity Shooter: https://gm48.net/g/780 This is my game, go give it a try. I want to know how people are feeling about these kind of different mechanic where you use the gun recoil to move around and shoot enemies at.

The gameplay was ok, but didn't really follow the theme at all or am I missing something? Also the laser sound effect was painful for my ears. Overall solid game, but again, not sure how it fits the jam theme.

Ok yeah I see what you mean about giving some information to slowly let the player learn the gamedw. I do appreciate how you did an interactive tutorial to teach the player how to do things. And the difficulty can be random depending on the power-ups so that was cool.

This is a solid submission! My main criticism would be that the game got pretty hectic pretty fast. The learning/challenge curve here should be a little bit less sharp, as many enemies and bullets started appearing really early into the game and I was barely able to deal with them. Besides that, this is a good game that I had a fun time playing :)