Nothing Left by Gremlin
"...perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away..."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I took away the buttons.
"Nothing Left" is a no-button vertical-scrolling bullet-hell shooter with procedurally-generated waves of enemies. (It starts getting really exciting after level 5.)
The game is pretty close to the essence of the genre, to the point where you can't actually shoot at the enemies--its all about your dodging skills.
There is one powerup, a shield. The shield decays faster when you are closer to enemies. The length between powerups gets longer every time you choose to pickup a shield. Might not want to grab it unless you need it. Skilled players may find an additional use for the shield.
The only programming tool used was Processing, with BXFR and Audacity for the sound samples. Audio is done entirely via HTML5, so it may not work on your browser, especially if you aren't using a recent update. Oh, and I used OpenSans, which is an awesome san-serif font available under the Apache licence.
I've also posted desktop versions, in case anyone has problems with the web version. The audio hasn't been ported yet, so if you want the sound, try the web version first.
Post what level you get to. I'd like to see how far you can get. (Level 20 gets insane.)
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I took away the buttons.
"Nothing Left" is a no-button vertical-scrolling bullet-hell shooter with procedurally-generated waves of enemies. (It starts getting really exciting after level 5.)
The game is pretty close to the essence of the genre, to the point where you can't actually shoot at the enemies--its all about your dodging skills.
There is one powerup, a shield. The shield decays faster when you are closer to enemies. The length between powerups gets longer every time you choose to pickup a shield. Might not want to grab it unless you need it. Skilled players may find an additional use for the shield.
The only programming tool used was Processing, with BXFR and Audacity for the sound samples. Audio is done entirely via HTML5, so it may not work on your browser, especially if you aren't using a recent update. Oh, and I used OpenSans, which is an awesome san-serif font available under the Apache licence.
I've also posted desktop versions, in case anyone has problems with the web version. The audio hasn't been ported yet, so if you want the sound, try the web version first.
Post what level you get to. I'd like to see how far you can get. (Level 20 gets insane.)
Ratings
| Coolness | 75% | 2 |
| Overall | 3.47 | 267 |
| Audio | 2.39 | 744 |
| Fun | 3.47 | 182 |
| Graphics | 3.02 | 564 |
| Humor | 1.83 | 863 |
| Innovation | 3.05 | 617 |
| Mood | 2.75 | 684 |
| Theme | 3.93 | 207 |
The shield item came up way too often, always appearing just as the last one ran out which completely removed the need to dodge bullets at all. The game was a lot more fun when I didn't pick up the shield at all.
Oh I like this st-expuery quote soooo much. Always try to apply it to whatever I do :)
My one frustration with the controls was when I wanted to dodge at the edge of the playfield. If you move your mouse off the playfield, even by one pixel, you come to a dead stop. Not even sure if you could do anything about that... but it's really just a minor gripe.
I'd love to tell you how far I got, but there was no game over screen or anything to know... and I didn't have any time during the game to look up at what level I was on... I was busy dodging bullets!
I was concerned that the shield was overpowered, especially early on, so I tried to balance it out by putting each successive shield further apart. If you pick one up early, you might not be able to find one later when you really need it.
The stopping-at-the-edge thing seems to be a browser-behavior issue, since the desktop version doesn't do that. I may try to edit the raw javascript to change it at some point...
http://isaackarth.com/games/minimalism/current.html
If you haven't rated the game yet, play the compo version first.
That said, I already have some music picked out if decide to add some to a future version...it's by a minimalist composer, of course.
However, the game seemed almost too easy. I would just lurk at the bottom of the screen until a shield came along and then I'd quickly clear out all enemies with no trouble. A shield was always ready when I needed it and there wasn't really any challenge. It needed something to spice things up a bit, I think.
Still, very impressive procedural game and it was awesome to see all the projectiles fly!
Overall, you did a pretty good job~
It's crazy that you produced such a polished game in this short amount of time, with randomly generated waves :D congrats yo :D
I loved the game,its simple, yet refined, graphical style, and the procedural enemies. As with the others, the random generation makes for some interesting patterns and gameplay.
I would have loved it better if you could control the player using the keyboard, though. I couldn't do the maneuvers I wanted to execute due to the (over?) sensitivity of the mouse. D:
I guess I'm just more used to controlling players in bullet-hell-esque games with the keyboard, though, so take this with a grain of salt.
Also, I tried running the Windows 32-bit version of the game, but nothing happened when I ran it. :O javaw.exe runs, but nothing seems to happen after about 30 seconds. I'm on Win7 32bit with JRE 7 Update 21.
What I missed:
* I wanted to be a circle! Just to be different from the enemies. (shield could've also been another shape, to further differentiate good from bad)
* Music!
* A pause after I die so I can see my final score. (which you included in your "post compo" version, noted)
* A level selector (or a "continue from last level" or "last [Modulo 10] level").
* Optional keyboard control.
I'm nitpicking with most of these because this is a great game all in all. Congrats!