EcoStar vs Aeronox by DreamTeam
Note: You will need XNA Framework installed before playing (linked above)
EcoStar vs Aeronox
CONTROLS
--------
Z - Shoot
X - Elemental Charge Shot
Arrows - Move
Gamepad controls(XBox360 controller)
A - Shoot
X - Elemental Charge Shot
Right Trigger - Elemental Charge Shot
Left stick - Move
Story
-----
Oh no! The evil Aeronox forces have sent our planet into hyper orbit, sending us spiraling out of
control and fast forwarding our years at breakneck speed! The seasons change every 10 seconds, and EcoStar's
elemental beams are going haywire. Aeronox forces that spawn during a given season inherit that season's
specific elemental traits.
How To Play
-----------
Spring - Water
Summer - Fire
Autumn - Earth
Winter - Ice
EcoStar's charge beam and shield pickups also utilize the current season's element.
Use the correct anti-element to quickly destroy shields and large foes.
Water extinguishes fire
Fire melts Ice
Ice withers Earth
Earth absorbs Water
The player shield protects only against attacks of the same element, while enemy shields can only be
destroyed by the anti-element.
Kills earn points that reward the player with item drops (shield, fire rate boos, spread increase).
Defeat the final wave to win the game, save the planet, and claim your reward!!!
---
Edit:
During a bugfix I accidently made all enemies spawn as Water. I've fixed this and pointed the "Windows" link to the fixed version! // Ditto
Dream Team
Lead Programmer / Assistant Artist
Ditto
@Dittomat
Lead Artist / Animator / Assistant Programmer
Arne
@AndroidArts
Team Leader / Sound Designer / Assistant Artist
SonnyBone
@Phantom_Green
EcoStar vs Aeronox
CONTROLS
--------
Z - Shoot
X - Elemental Charge Shot
Arrows - Move
Gamepad controls(XBox360 controller)
A - Shoot
X - Elemental Charge Shot
Right Trigger - Elemental Charge Shot
Left stick - Move
Story
-----
Oh no! The evil Aeronox forces have sent our planet into hyper orbit, sending us spiraling out of
control and fast forwarding our years at breakneck speed! The seasons change every 10 seconds, and EcoStar's
elemental beams are going haywire. Aeronox forces that spawn during a given season inherit that season's
specific elemental traits.
How To Play
-----------
Spring - Water
Summer - Fire
Autumn - Earth
Winter - Ice
EcoStar's charge beam and shield pickups also utilize the current season's element.
Use the correct anti-element to quickly destroy shields and large foes.
Water extinguishes fire
Fire melts Ice
Ice withers Earth
Earth absorbs Water
The player shield protects only against attacks of the same element, while enemy shields can only be
destroyed by the anti-element.
Kills earn points that reward the player with item drops (shield, fire rate boos, spread increase).
Defeat the final wave to win the game, save the planet, and claim your reward!!!
---
Edit:
During a bugfix I accidently made all enemies spawn as Water. I've fixed this and pointed the "Windows" link to the fixed version! // Ditto
Dream Team
Lead Programmer / Assistant Artist
Ditto
@Dittomat
Lead Artist / Animator / Assistant Programmer
Arne
@AndroidArts
Team Leader / Sound Designer / Assistant Artist
SonnyBone
@Phantom_Green
Ratings
| Coolness | 81% | 2 |
| Overall(Jam) | 3.87 | 30 |
| Audio(Jam) | 4.19 | 9 |
| Fun(Jam) | 3.55 | 69 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 4.74 | 4 |
| Humor(Jam) | 1.84 | 426 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 2.75 | 383 |
| Mood(Jam) | 3.50 | 94 |
| Theme(Jam) | 2.98 | 334 |
I absolutely love the graphics. They are so nice, clean and stylistic. Beautiful, well done!
Same for the music. It's excellent and I'd happily put it in my music folder for repeat listening in the future.
The games engine is really solid and overall the game feels very solid with smooth transitions and nice controls.
The only thing that I find kind of disappointing is that it is such a standard shmup. I like the little shield element but everything else has been seen before many times. All the same, the game is still a lot of fun and I enjoyed it greatly.
Fantastic work all three of you!
Awesome graphics, mood and finishing. Really detailed work! The theme wasn't that clear before reading through the text, though. Nevertheless, dream team -level execution, just as I thought it would be. ;)
So, I should confess, this LD (and last one) the first thing I did was check your account immediately for your game, SonnyBone. You made me feel so welcome here immediately, and your games were so well made and interesting. And I was really, really disappointed that I didn't find a game there.
So I looked again today to see if I could find what'd happened, and found the DreamTeam. And as soon as I saw the screenshots, I was just like "Daymn", and I was so not disappointed. Those graphics look absolutely incredible, and the sound is just amazing. The transitions from terrain to terrain are lovely, it plays so fluidly and the animation is exceptional. You guys are really onto something here, especially as it's your first time working together in a team like this. So epic. And I'm just really glad you're still here too, because you're such a gent. Definitely going to go back and check Ditto and Arne's games too now. :D
When I read you first post about the DreamTeam I was skeptical that a team of random awesome people would be too much awesomeness to handle, but you guys did not disappoint.
So, I've played all the way to the end, it took me three tries. Here are my impressions:
The Good
* Loved the graphics. I specially LOVED that the enemy ships take damage. Loved the "you win" graphics :-)
* The shield mechanic is really clever. Took me a while to get it into my mental checklist, but when I did, it integrated into the game pretty flawlessly.
* Really liked the music. Is it just me, or does it seem to get more intense when you get to the final wave?
* Difficulty curve seems to be right there. Died at the final wave quite a few times, but got a little better each time.
The bad:
* I think you need better feedback for the Elemental Shot. I was failing the elemental shot all the time, because there was no clear notice that it was fully charged.
* It seems that there is a bug where all the enemies only shoot water shots.
* I didn't really like the score font. I feel it contrasts too much with the rest of the game style.
The minor:
* I felt that the changes between the power ups (except the multiple shot) were kinda hard to notice.
Finally, as promised, I made a video of my playthrough, from first play through until the spoilery ending. The video is semi-private (you can only access it with the url) and it is here. Hope it helps!
http://youtu.be/mmRPxD5fzAg
For the others: This video contains spoilers! I'll release a non-spoilery video later in my journal!
http://youtu.be/kh-C7XWejus
Also, the video is CreativeCommons, so feel free to remix it! (By removing my annoying voice with Zuzanda's awesome narrator :-P)
In any case, for a Jam game this is really well done. I'm not the greatest Shmup player, so the amount of projectiles I had to dodge did seem pretty intense at times. But it did also make the experience a lot more engaging as it kept me on my toes.
Good entry and nice work!
Two little nitpicky thing to make the game better though; the didn't feel frantic or epic. The waves felt very controlled and relaxing because you knew you had time to deal with the enemies. I think a small touch of having an enemy or two either come from the sides or slide in fast would add some tension by breaking up the pace a bit.
I would have also liked to have seen some much bigger enemies near then end. Everything was scaled pretty small, and a ridiculously large boss or just some physically scaled up enemies with slightly better health and attacks at parts would also help to make the player feel like they are progressing more and accomplishing more.
These are minor items, and most things that would be hard to address in a three day time frame, but they are something to think about if you pursue the game later. In any case, awesome job on making such a polished and fun game.
The change of the seasons idea is promising (and, again, I must say that it looks great), but it felt a bit slow to me compared to other shmups, at least until bullets started pouring out from everywhere :D
It would be interesting to see this further developed, with some variety of scenarios and enemies.
Great job!
One little thing: sometimes it's difficult to differentiate between bullets and explosions (I think it happens during autumn).
It looks and feels (and... hears?) as a full complete game and I would play it for hours maybe if it weren't so damn hard! Either I don't get something about the game mechanics or it's very, VERY hard even to the point of frustration. Spawning enemies which I can kill in at least 20 seconds (due to shields) if I'm god of the game and aiming? Which shoot like hell and don't allow me anywhere near the line of fire? Four of them at the same time? While I'm chased around by 4-5 aiming rockets that seem to be indestructible? Really?
And I think there may be a bug somewhere as sometimes I would shoot random special attack instead of what I was expecting. But I'm not sure about this one.
Anyway, it's a great game and one of the best I've seen so far for sure. Maybe the best. Thanks for it guys and good luck with the post-compo version.
jomomomo: No, sorry, it's made with XNA which is pretty much just for desktop apps.
mortus: Balancing the waves was really hard and made in the last hour of the compo.. Also, the "random" charge attack you mention is determined by the season in which you start charging. Start charging in the spring gives water, summer gives fire, etc.
Finally the game feels pretty easy to us who made it, since hey, we played it a couple 100 times during 3 intense days, sorry 'bout that : P
//Ditto
This game has a lot going: Wonderful graphics, satisfying sounds, cool music - and most importantly (at least for me) an interesting mechanic! I really like how the shields, enemies and projectiles have elements they are strong against. At first I thought you could change your element at will, but having to wait for the right season while defending is compelling too. I enjoyed playing the game, and I don't normally play Shoot'em ups!
I have a few suggestions for a post-compo version:
- Less (or less visible) debris when something explodes. I've died more than once near to an exploding enemy ship because I couldn't see the bullets anymore.
- Clearer elemental affilation. I know, I know, the enemies look different, but I am easily confused, and a symbol on them or hovering next to them or anything similar would help me a lot.
- Having a not-fully-charged elemental projectile release a weaker version of said projectile. It was extremely frustrating each time I released it to early. Or at least clearer feedback when it's ready.
Apart from that - great game with a very innovative mechanic. I'm looking forward to the post-compo version!
I second TobiasW's additions, they sound like they'd make the game twice as fun! Good job!
Most of my suggestions have been mentioned, so I'll stick to congratulating you guys on putting together a pretty cool take on the traditional sidescrolling shmup. I enjoyed it!
Something about the feel of the movement seemed a little off to me. Maybe the player's too fast or the bullets are too slow or something. It seems like the player basically moves at the same speed as their own bullets, which is weird, and I kept flying backwards into enemy bullets that had gone past me which, well, whatever, fine, but it just had sort of a wrong feel to it. Maybe it's that the player's horizontal movement speed was too fast. I dunno.
Good job anyway, the audio and graphics are outstanding!
The seasons mechanic was really novel and interesting. :D It added strategy to a genre that normally is only about repeating this: "memorize pattern->avoid bullets->destroy everything" (not a bad thing, I really like shooters, but this game was something else).
I only think it lacked a boss battle... (c'mon, it's a side scrolling shooter.. it's necessary xD)
The seasons mechanic could make a boss battle great!
I find the player's movement needs to be more fluid to add the sensation of flying, but with the time limit to develop the game it's understandable, so great work.
Congratulations for making such an addictive game.
Here is gameplay video I made if aynone is still hesitating wether or not to try it ;)
http://youtu.be/5zni-k4k_mw