EVO-001 by kyyrma
EVO-001 is an old-school space shooter made in Game Maker. Unfortunately, the game ended up having little to do with the theme 'evolution'.
My original idea was for a game where the enemies register player behavior and alter their actions accordingly, based on player weapon usage and location preference on the screen. As time began to run out, I had to make the decision between failing the Dare yet again or cutting these 'evolutionary' gameplay aspects completely from the game.
I chose the latter. Hopefully I'm not disqualified!
Default keyboard: Z/X - Fire. C - Change weapon. Arrows - Move.
360 Gamepad: X/A - Fire. Y/B - Change Weapon. LStick - Move.
The gamepad doesn't work in the title menu, but it does work in-game! If you have a 360 gamepad I suggest you use it!
My original idea was for a game where the enemies register player behavior and alter their actions accordingly, based on player weapon usage and location preference on the screen. As time began to run out, I had to make the decision between failing the Dare yet again or cutting these 'evolutionary' gameplay aspects completely from the game.
I chose the latter. Hopefully I'm not disqualified!
Default keyboard: Z/X - Fire. C - Change weapon. Arrows - Move.
360 Gamepad: X/A - Fire. Y/B - Change Weapon. LStick - Move.
The gamepad doesn't work in the title menu, but it does work in-game! If you have a 360 gamepad I suggest you use it!
Ratings
| Coolness | 79% | 2 |
| Overall | 3.05 | 333 |
| Audio | 3.00 | 170 |
| Fun | 3.24 | 160 |
| Graphics | 3.34 | 216 |
| Humor | 2.04 | 387 |
| Innovation | 1.78 | 735 |
| Mood | 3.06 | 167 |
| Theme | 1.53 | 738 |
There's nothing special about this game, but it has good gameplay.
I very appreciate gamepad support :)
Sadly it you didn't have enough time to fit it in theme
@Maacus: I was the only person to test the game during developement, so the difficulty might well be too high. I preferred to use the gamepad, so the difficulty is best adjusted for it.
I really like it and I can't ever seem to get the green things!
If I decide to further work on this game, I'll make it so that they are catapulted forward so that the player has a more fair chance of catching them.
The weapon mechanic is good, enemies tracking the player is fun, sadly I don't see much of the theme, but it's a solid game :)
The theme is mentioned in the opening scroll, but I feel it's a really cheap way of trying to justify it. If you read the notes on top if this page, you'll see that the game was meant to have basic evolving AI, but I had to cut those mechanics out towards the end of development.
For me this year was about finishing an entry. This is actually the first game I've ever shared publicly!
While it may not be very innovative or related to the theme, it's definitely a lot of fun. Quite difficult though, never got past zone 2.
Small suggestion: If you have gamepad support, it should be possible to restart the game and navigate through the menu using the gamepad too, so you don't have to switch all the time.
The issue with gamepad support in the title / continue screen is the way GM8.1 handles joystick input, as there is no built-in variable for checking if the analog stick is brought to its max / min Y position. I couldn't get the cursor to move reliably, so I completely removed the ability to use controllers in the title screen.
Thinking back, writing a custom script to check if the analog stick has reached a certain threshold on its Y axis would've been easy, but it was just one of those things that got left out because of the limited time.
"You collect DNA icons to evolute the weapons"
Now it fits the theme :D
@cacciatc: The laser is initially weak, but upgraded to level 2 it is actually the fastest way to kill both the bosses in the game.
@repstyle: I tried to balance out the weapons so that they all have different uses. The blaster is good against fast and weak enemies, the laser works on large and slower ones and missiles are good for immobile enemies like the turrets.
I couldn't add all the enemy variety I would've wanted in the LD time window though, so I agree about the missiles (especially when upgraded) feeling a bit too useful when compared to the other weapons.
if i would not like it hard, i would criticize the same as you said for my game: one-hit game-over makes it hard... :-)