It's just a quiet day in space, drink in one hand, and a view of the stars out your port window. You swore to protect and fight for the Union of Planets. Today becomes another chance to prove your worth.

The warnings sound to get to your ship. Relentless marauders are attacking the station again. They warned the next attack will be never ending. You run to your ship knowing this mission will be your last.

You know when destroyed the enemy drop valuable Power Cells, which can be used as a tool against them. But these tools have many uses...

Dev Notes: Well in my rush to get the game done I didn't enable the background on the final build. If you want to play it as pictured in the banner, use this link - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d_8uTvmQ9TGxAo6z_FrKij8e1b2SoQuo/view?usp=sharing

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  • Jupiter Hadley
    Lv. 13

    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

  • Veralos
    Lv. 38

    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.

  • Fachewachewa
    Patron

    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.

  • Joseph
    Lv. 4

    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.

    Parum
    Submitted

    Parum

  • baku
    Patron

    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

    img
    • Slyddar
      Lv. 4
      Slyddar Coder of Powerbase

      6yrs ago

      Totally get that people might not be on board with the powerups being tools, but also feel in jams the themes should be loose to give maximum fun and creativity to developers.

      Nice bug you found, and also taught me something. I score check at the game over Create event, so if a stray bullet hits something after you die, which I assume happened to you, it doesn't get counted towards highscore, only to score. In the future I'll do this check in the Step to cover that. Thanks! :D

  • akhilnivarthi
    Lv. 1

    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.

  • Rohbert
    Lv. 13

    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.

    • Slyddar
      Lv. 4
      Slyddar Coder of Powerbase

      6yrs ago

      Well the powerups were used as a tool for the player, and each one had many uses, in this case random. A tool is a device used to carry out a function. Doesn't have to be hand held.

      Thanks for playing, and yes I agree the sound was annoying, so I turned it way down. Hard to find a fast shooting laser/bullet in 8 bit that doesn't annoying. Happy to hear any options though.

  • Barret
    Lv. 2

    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.

    • Slyddar
      Lv. 4
      Slyddar Coder of Powerbase

      6yrs ago

      Thanks for playing.

      Tbh mine was not a great tutorial, as lots of things are happening at the same time as the hints come up, but it was the best I could do without freezing the action mid battle, or have more intro levels. Time didn't allow for either.

  • jack
    Patron

    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 :)

    • Slyddar
      Lv. 4
      Slyddar Coder of Powerbase

      6yrs ago

      Thanks for the feedback.

      Yeh, if you get the reinforcements powerup, and don't either kill the blue spawns, or change powerups, things will get hectic fast. I assume that's what happened to you. Thanks for playing.