I dig the "1-bit"-ness of it,
I'm down with harder games, but the enemies might be a tad too difficult at the first few spawns.
I think the 1-bit-ness is minimal in the color sense, but there's a lot going on that removes me from that minimal zen i like.
I do love the camera shakes and other visual effects, whether "minimal" or no.
Overall, I think this is a great game!
Excellent Job!

It's not too bad. I like the 1-bit enemies. Not always sure what they are but they are bad and you should shoot them!

Super cute graphics :) I'm not good at these games, but this was fun; well done.

Really loved the look of it. Multiple weapons was also a good touch. Good pacing.

Really fun! Didn't really know why weapons 2 and 3 are always available, the seem just flat out more powerful. Didn't feel like it was a perfect fit with the theme, but most fun entry I've played so far.

Very Nice, Very Minimal, quite good fun, possibly could of been more innovative, but to be honest, it was so nicely done, it doesn't matter. Good Job!

Great, how more minimalist you can go other than a black & white game? The audio and graphics are right on mark. No to mention that the action is frantic and well balanced. However, I wish we could also control the game with the cursor keys. This is a major hurdle for people whi use the mouse with the left hand.

love the style, and it was done really well. fun game. I'm horrible at it but I had fun dying over and over.

love it! great action game, nice graphics. Hard to play with my macbook's touchpad tho ;p

awesome uber supercool. weird request: crumble parts of the level as you play

Awesome game, a bit difficult but very fun. Great how there actually is some strategy involved with each weapon

glad to hear you guys like it :D

@pvwradtke:
thank for the tip, I'm going to add cursor button controls to my games from now on

@biscuitdough:
I thought about letting the player upgrade his weapons, but didn't implement it - so that's why you have three different weapons at all times (although I find some weapons work better again certain enemies)

Sweet! Really liked this.

Awesome!

Just lovely =) For a post-compo version, do try changing the color scheme to something more LCD-ish (silver/black), and add a slight motion blur =)

Good little game, very minimal and good fun!

Great visuals! I have a hard time with WASD directions and mouse gun aiming on 2d games for some reason. Great job!

Is like judo but whit guns! :D

Super cool stuff here, I like that there is no concept of 'health' besides if the enemy is on the platform of not.

Really fun, although yeah, everything seemed so hard to kill at first. The visuals were really well done.

Tricky, but very fun with awesome art and great music. Good job.

Nothing really new about the game, but it's a fun arena shooter nonetheless ! The gameplay is flawless and the bouncy tune is minimalist yet enjoyable.

The rocket/grenade launcher is a bit overpowered :]

Awesome fun and a banging soundtrack! I love the art style, but I did keep losing my mouse cursor. I could definitely see this as a full game with collectible or upgradeable weapons (as it is, I mostly just stuck to the main gun - didn't see a reason to use the others)

Loads of fun!

This game was really cool. It works well with the theme and is really fun to play. Great job, this is one of my favorite LD games that I've played!

Good use of 1-bit color, except some enemies have the same "blackness" as the character which from time to time got me confused. Sometimes I lose track of where my cursor is amid the chaos.

I like the idea of pushing enemies off the platform to kill them, it adds more tension to the game than just blasting away.

Really cool game overall!

Really like it!
One thing i think is little funny is that on that website you play it on, the title says LD#23 ^^

I really like this one. The graphics were perfect, and the game felt quite polished.

fun game and nice art :)

Excellent gameplay and good use of the theme. Found the shooting sfx a bit repetitive. Maybe gun pickups, instead of the option to switch, so the sound changes up occasionally.

Love it! Nice!

I like how it's 1-bit with a mouse :D (in a positive way btw)

Aww yeah, right up my street! Bullets and pixels flying everywhere!

Great visuals. Music is a bit repetitive. Great game overall.
Wish if it were more challenging though.

Nice. This reminds me of Hero Core. Great job!

Made it retro and simplistic without making it boring. good job!

I love this! The 1-bit graphics style is fantastic and I love the idea of not really having a life bar of any kind, but instead pushing enemies off the platform while avoiding being pushed off yourself is a great, simple idea for an intense little shooter.

Genuinely fun and very satisfying to play with everything just working very well. Huge kudos!

I only wish it was a game on a real retro console.

I am so used to one-hit kill shooters that the bumper-cars gameplay was really refreshing. I think the art is great and you still managed to get a lot of detail and variation with only the two colors. Well done!

Cool minimal art style. I loved it.

Very Nice. It kind of throws you in the deep end. Maybe introducing one kind of enemy at a time and then pitting you against combinations could help to shallow out the learning curve. Fun game!

So fun and amazing use of black and white! Minimal in the extreme.

I freaking love the art! So good, such a cute little shooter.

Fun game! Pushing enemies off the platform is an interesting game mechanic. Like the graphics too. The bullet sound of weapon 1 is annoying though.

A whole bunch of awesome in just two colours! Reminded me a little of Cannon Fodder.

Cute game. Loved the artwork and music. The sound effects were spot on. My only issue is that the monotone colors got a bit confusing after awhile. It was hard to focus on the player and the enemies at the same time. A small variation in shading might have helped. Overall, great job. Fun, enjoyable, and wonderfully retro feel to it. Nice job.

Nice shooter! Gameplay is fun, and music fits.

It feels a bit "overcrowded" though, there is way too much stuff on the screen to easily read it.

Cool black & white graphics style and simple game concept.

like the art a lot :3
Also, very nice job on the design, it's fluid and really enjoyable to play, maybe it's just lacking of speed or something makin' it more nervous some times.
Loved it overall :D

I loved the game, got so addictive, so far only got up to 38.

Nice entry!
2-bit graphic looking incredibly awesome. Except poor visibility of enemy bullets.

thx guys :D

@SaintHeiser:
it's actually only 1-bit color depth, since 2-bit would allow for four different values (00,01,10,11) which would mean four different colors. I figured I go as minimalistic as possible - hence the name 'super 1-bit space arena'

@perebu:
you're the first person telling me the game lacks speed - wow, maybe I'll introduce a 'hyper' mode in a potential post-compo version - just for you :)

@matthias_zarzecki:
yes, it is overcrowded, but that's kind of the point of it I guess

@patrickward:
the monotone (1-bit) color depth is how I interpreted the theme, since 1-bit is the lowest possible, hence minimalistic, color depth. Upgrading to even only 2-bit (like the original game boy had) would allow for 2 shades in between black and white which wouldn't seem as minimalistic as I would like it to be

@BrothersT:
yes, implementing a more shallow learning curve was my original idea - maybe even some sort of tutorial. but I figured you guys are awesome enough to not get your time wasted with such nuisances :P

@Cybearg:
Since it's based on Flash I might implement some sort of shader/filter that might modify the look of the game to something more 'real console looking', like a NTSC filter. although this might cost quite some performance I guess

@kidevil:
one of the things I've learned is that randomly chosen multiple, slightly mutated version of one sound can make a huge difference and I'll definitely implement them if I decide to release a post-compo version

for everyone interested in color depths and palettes, here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monochrome_and_RGB_palettes#Monochrome_palettes

It is incredibly fun and only with two colors! Very cool!

Good idea! love the 1-bit style.

YES

Really nice game. Its also very nostalgic :P

Very nice! Took me a little while to understand why things weren't dying very easily, and I didn't have a health bar. I so very much prefer the way the game works to the way I initially thought it worked. =) Awesome presentation, and super fun.

This game is great. Nice and interesting concept with pushing down enemies from the platform. At the later stages it gets really difficult. Sometimes the enemies stay in the air, but I think, you already saw this. I'm not sure, if weapon 2 and 3 are good enough, I just played with 1 and it worked well. Additional, you should gave the player more time to explore the level before the first wave comes or show a little graphic so he can get an idea of it. I failed a couple of times while searching for a better tactical place (distance to the stationary turret, shape and area size of the platform etc.).

Nice visuals and ...

... phew phew phew phew phew

Fun game, may lack diversity in weapons or longer & better looping music, but works well, lovely graphics, good job ! (high score around 16 !)

I loved the B&W visual style. I could only get 4-5 waves in because I suck at these games where you have to aim with the mouse. I seemed to die easy. Maybe it should be harder to kill the player?

like a sumo fight in space. love it :)

Cool game, but the music does get repetitve, it's just a too short loop. Otherwise, very much fun! :)

I like the black and white graphics. Reminds me of the games I used to play on my old black-and-white Macintosh as a kid.

So I replayed this and I think I got a bad experience of the game first time, it was running slightly slower on the laptop I was on, but for some reason that made me glance off of the enemies and their bullets with considerably more force (Or just much less uncontrollably). It was notably easier this time round so I officially redact my comment about the learning curve. The only thing I did find this time was that when I got onto level 3 I was holding left at the time and before I even realized the level had changed, I had strafed off the level and died.

Loved the visual style. Quite a lot of action going on and the gameplay mechanic where you knock enemies out of the arena to score points instead of killing them with bullets was pretty cool.

very fun. great vfx. coulda used a little longer music loop though :p

I really liked it! Loved the art style too!
My high score was 54 after 5 or so tries.
I found that the guns weren't really different enough to justify ever changing weapons. The 2nd gun was generally the best. The enemies' attack patterns weren't terribly different from one another either, but I did like the variety in their appearances. The various level designs were really fun! I also thought it would have been a more enjoyable game if it just had directional shooting, rather than mouse aiming, but that's just my opinion.
Anyway, a really solid entry! Great job!

This was really fun! At first the screens gave me a Hero Core vibe, but upon first playing it felt Robotron-esque. Only later did I realize the Smash Bros. element! (btw high score 55, with one freak-in-the-zone moment of 69 that I couldn't replicate..)

Not really 1-bit for me ... but great execution ... and the flow is great ... so is the fun

Excellent! Awesome music, graphics. This game fits minimalistic style very well.

Pew pew pew pew. You could have some walking animation. Nice monsters.

Music is a bit repetative, I know the pain of finding something that works when you have no clue about music =P Nice art style by going for just 1 bit!

Nice game with nice graphics and music it was fun to play it.

Nice game.
I always like 1-Bit games, and it was cool that you had to knock them off the edge.

Very cool game - controls are fluid and intuitive, artwork is cute and the 1-bit part is a really fun touch. Not much to it other than shooting stuff, but there doesn't really need to be.

Nice polished game. It's fun but not totally on the theme.

Great game!

Good game! Nice art!

It feels wonderfully complete as a vision - very playable with great roots. Excellent stuff. Wish I had a nuclear option :)

Simply awesome!

Really fun! I like the graphics too but in some areas I can't understand what's going on because of the colors, especially when the character is on a "grid". Good work anyway!

Only two colors? Impressive.
Game is fun, but sudden level change can feel a bit unfair at times. The main game mechanic is not apparent at first, until first deaths.
Great job.

thanks guys

yes, the level change is really unfair. I realize that :/
I should have implemented something like a teleport effect or something that introduces 2 seconds or so as some kind of delay - so you don't move your player immediately off the level

one of the things I'll change if I ever make a more fleshed out game out of this

Really great visuals and fun gameplay. Nice job!

Great entry. The music and mood are awesome.
What a pity, I have an AZERTY keyboard (I'm French)... I have strong difficulties to play correctly with WASD.

- SEPHY (@sephyka)

Whoa. Those graphics <3 This game is amazing and really fun. Got a high score of 46.

This is a fantastic entry. Congratulations!