Fight those Pirates by Dohan

[raw]
made by Dohan for LD30 (JAM)
You are a spaceship captain and your mission is to fight the pirates that are occupying a trade route that connect two worlds.

Right now, my highest score is 42750. Can you do better?

CONTROLS:
---------
Arrow keys: Fly the ship!
Space: Shoot lasers!

--------
3D assets created with Blender3D.
2D assets created with Gimp.
Game developed with Unity3D.
Sound FXs generated with sfxr.
Untitled music loop generated with Otomata and edited with Audacity.
Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner.

Ratings

Coolness 100% 1
Overall(Jam) 3.07 481
Audio(Jam) 3.06 381
Fun(Jam) 3.25 257
Graphics(Jam) 3.32 410
Humor(Jam) 2.70 261
Innovation(Jam) 1.75 763
Mood(Jam) 2.93 473
Theme(Jam) 2.38 640

Feedback

GeeItSomeLaldy
25. Aug 2014 路 19:52 UTC
Ah, a good ol' fashioned space shooter. Though I seem to recognise that space ship from somewhere :)
Crocanti de Pollo
25. Aug 2014 路 20:07 UTC
Cool! I like the fact that you also connected the worlds where the ships were inspired from :D
Will Edwards
26. Aug 2014 路 09:05 UTC
Looks great, sounds great, but damn is it fast! Very hard to play just because of the speed.

And I have a pretty big laptop but it was slightly taller than my browser window. This didn't really impede me much though.

And the theme felt a bit tacked on.

But the looks and audio and feel is really going to stick with me though :) Excellent!
馃帳 Dohan
26. Aug 2014 路 16:14 UTC
@GeeItSomeLaldy & @Crocanti de Pollo: Eachhe ship comes from a different movie/TV show :)

@Will Edwards: Thanks for the kind words :) I've reduced a bit the resolution, I hope it fits in most resolutions now.
miwuc
26. Aug 2014 路 17:15 UTC
Not a new idea, but nicely done and fun. Good job browncoat! Would have been nice to have some power ups.
Colapsydo
26. Aug 2014 路 17:16 UTC
Is the merchant a descendant of John Hammond ?
If so, the Hammonds stopped sparing no expense.

I like the different attacks, and regaining life between is a nice touch, it allows to live the whole adventure.
The score is there for playing the perfect game thereafter.

Like GeeItSomeLaldy and Crocanti de Pollo, spaceships look familiar but I can't find which one.
snooze82
27. Aug 2014 路 14:40 UTC
nice solid space shooter, little too easy :D had fun
mrbungle
27. Aug 2014 路 21:00 UTC
Oh no! Tie Bombers! Oh no! Birds of Prey! Oh, and Mal wants his ship back. It's a 'best of' science fiction spaceships. Nice little space shooter, cool graphics.
MechanicMoon
27. Aug 2014 路 21:04 UTC
Good music and good design of ship, although not very original
ZoneOne2
27. Aug 2014 路 21:05 UTC
Loving the Firefly theme!
Capitals
27. Aug 2014 路 21:09 UTC
Really nice traditional shooter which plays extremely well.
馃帳 Dohan
27. Aug 2014 路 22:01 UTC
@miwuc: Yeah, I wanted to add some power-ups, as they are the spice on a shmup, but I got lazy as I was running out of time...

@mrbungle: You got 3 of the 5 ships! Wow! :D

Thank you all for your comments ^_^
Druid
28. Aug 2014 路 21:28 UTC
Childhood restored! :D Nice game!
jjhaggar
29. Aug 2014 路 10:23 UTC
20250 points, I suck at shootemups XD Good game, I liked it, also I always enjoy hearing "Ride of the Valkyries" in a game ^_^
pikkpoiss
29. Aug 2014 路 15:36 UTC
Great graphics and effects! Also, cool that you were able to include a boss battle.
badlydrawnrod
29. Aug 2014 路 19:00 UTC
That's an inspired choice of music, and I rather like the particle effect trails that the ships leave. Good job - ver enjoyable.
thecolorhacker
30. Aug 2014 路 00:55 UTC
34700 points... nice entry
Hypnohustla
30. Aug 2014 路 06:58 UTC
Good shooter, the enemy lasers just travel WAY too fast. It would be more enjoyable if they were at least somehow avoidable. I really like your music choice :D
Oddly Shaped Pixels
30. Aug 2014 路 07:42 UTC
Nice little game although I suck at shmups!! And the ship doesn't get stuck at walls and obstacles ;)))
ChuiGum
30. Aug 2014 路 22:50 UTC
Very fun! Cool graphics, and nice music too
AlbertoSM
31. Aug 2014 路 10:36 UTC
Does more for the shoot-em-up genre than it does for the theme of the jam.
The music doesn't loop...so I was fighting the boss in total silence.
I do like the "galaga" treatment and the references to Firefly (the main guy looks too much like Mal Reynolds and the ship looks like Serenity).
Shide
31. Aug 2014 路 11:01 UTC
It was fun to move other ship with you ship since they are all collidable, but then it's easy AND hard at the same time. You have a lot of health and really hard ro kill, but the speed makes dodges almost impossible
mrexcessive
31. Aug 2014 路 19:11 UTC
Hi there. Kept getting wiped by the end of stage 1... nice graphics. Not heard Midi-Wagner before... Good job!
jukimv1986
01. Sep 2014 路 06:42 UTC
Buen trabajo! The bearded guy looks like the investor in Jurassic Park :) And some of the ships from Star Wars :D Great inspiration and good level progression. Nice audio and graphics too! Well done!
Cake&Code
01. Sep 2014 路 07:06 UTC
Haha, love the ships you chose! Fun little ship shooter, very classic :)
ceosol
01. Sep 2014 路 14:10 UTC
Other than you saying in a story cutscene that worlds are connected, this did not focus much on the theme. However, it was a very well made entry. I think the execution was smooth and so was the gameplay. I would definitely play more.
Lvyn
01. Sep 2014 路 18:36 UTC
Nice game ! The music made ma laugh :D When I saw the ship in stage two, I thought... Vader is that you ? Then saw others... disappointed... (joking huh ^^)
馃帳 Dohan
01. Sep 2014 路 18:58 UTC
@Lvyn: Darth Vader's TIE has only one cockpits, those are TIE Bombers ;)
SoulGame
02. Sep 2014 路 15:37 UTC
Just completed it. Nice work on this entry! A few comments : 1.Music is copyrighted I think? 2.Controls feel a bit odd due to the slow acceleration thing. In order to move faster, you have to keep holding keys and that's not convenient to shoot and avoid. 3.I'm not sure about how this is theme related?
ConflictiveLabs
03. Sep 2014 路 22:53 UTC
Good graphics and sound, but I think you definitely need to adjust the difficulty. (I'm not a game-design expert but I'm trying to help here with what I know):

Enemies are too fast and don't give you much of a chance to kill them. In most shoot 'em ups you'll notice that the enemies react and move slower than the player and they tend to "walk/fly" a lot in front of you so you have a fair chance of taking them down.

In this kind of game enemies don't move in random patterns either. They move and attack in patterns the player can "learn and counter" (and sometimes "predict").

Having a single life and "restarting" from the very first level is a bit too punishing. Not many games can get away with something like this without being called unfair.

I'm not saying your game has to be easy or that you have to adhere to the "industry standards" but those "best practices" are there for a reason. It's not because one dude made the first shooter like that and the other games just cloned the mechanics and design decisions. You can "bend" the rules to make your game "harder" but there's a limit to how much you can "bend" them before the game breaks and becomes downright unfair and frustrating, so be careful with that.

I quite enjoyed the humor in your game and the references to different cult movies and series. I also liked the graphics and the "retro-yet-modern" feel. The parallax field of changing-color stars gives it a REALLY nice touch. For a jam game there's an impressive amount of good work here, from the graphics to the particles and sound effects and dialogue. Good Job.
馃帳 Dohan
04. Sep 2014 路 08:49 UTC
Thanks a lot for your feedback!

@SoulGame: Wagner's music is now Public Domain, and I found the web from I downloaded it looking for sites with CC licensed music, although the license message was a bit strange, something in the line of "if you upload something here, you accept everyone could use it" but nothing about downloading. The other music was generated by me using Otomata. The control can use an overhaul, yes, I was just experimenting. For the theme, you are a bounty hunter and the commercial route that connect two worlds has been occupied by pirates, so your mission is to reconnect those worlds (yeah, theme is only obviously present in the story, not so much in the gameplay).

@ConflictiveLabs: Thanks for your advices! I doubt I'll continue this game, but if I make another shmup again I'll try to follow them :) About the difficulty, I wanted to have power-ups, lifes and a balanced gameplay, but I started coding whith only 11 hours left for the deadline and there was no much time for testing the enemies behaviour, less for adding more features.
kristof
06. Sep 2014 路 15:12 UTC
Nice bullet hell! Feels complete and polished. A bit too easy for my taste though.
bluesky
07. Sep 2014 路 16:29 UTC
Nice game Love the gameplay.
Menesetsu
09. Sep 2014 路 17:04 UTC
Firefly detected! Nice try!
lotusgame
09. Sep 2014 路 22:14 UTC
Nice game ! Too bad there isn't any power up. It's frustrating to fight ships bigger and bigger while you still have a little laser :p
rjhelms
11. Sep 2014 路 16:48 UTC
Nice classic vertical scroller. My only real critique is that the boss fight could have used a bit more variety in the patterns - once I got down to dodging both of them, it was a little repetitive.
IamAcoconut
12. Sep 2014 路 02:46 UTC
Nice game! It was very fun and I really enjoyed it. It would be really awesome if it had power-ups :)