Ikaruga Devolved by ChronoDK

[raw]
made by ChronoDK for LD24 (COMPO)
What a hard theme! I went for a shmup where your spaceship evolves depending on how you play. If you shoot a lot, your spaceship gets better at shooting. Same for movement. Also the other way around - no movement makes you slow. I would have had the shields and thrusters evolve too, but I didn't have time for that. Still, you should be able to get the idea when playing the game.

More info on the website - be sure to read about the controls! WASD, SPACE and all arrow keys are in use.

Ratings

Coolness 78% 2
Overall 3.02 353
Audio 2.68 272
Fun 3.13 204
Graphics 3.36 210
Humor 1.60 541
Innovation 2.42 552
Mood 2.68 346
Theme 2.59 490

Feedback

aquasheep
27. Aug 2012 · 18:43 UTC
It was kind of fun. However, it was really easy once I learned that shielding made you invincible to bullets of that color. You should make the shield temporary use. I thought the dodging was great! That was a lot of fun; it just kind of didn't matter because the shield was OP. Cool concept though. Develop it more!
thewiseguy99
27. Aug 2012 · 18:44 UTC
Really clean look and gamelay!! I liked the parallax background and the smooth movement of the ship. Good job!
surreal_whale
27. Aug 2012 · 18:47 UTC
The first time I played I didn't read the description and only used the arrow keys (I thought you were just forced into 3 lanes). I think I might have even got a better score like that than when I was trying to change colour and heal myself. Some music would have been nice, but other than that I really enjoyed it.
pekuja
27. Aug 2012 · 18:47 UTC
I like the idea, but the problem for me is that it seems like if I want to evolve any of my other traits, I need to stop shooting, but shooting is the only thing that gets me to the next round.
SecondDimension
27. Aug 2012 · 18:51 UTC
Great controls, the dodging was good and I liked the colour changing mechanic. Made it interesting to play
Kickerua
28. Aug 2012 · 07:25 UTC
I like fullscreen option, it's cool.
I played couple of levels using only arrows. :)
Kmad
28. Aug 2012 · 07:50 UTC
Looks slick and the mechanics were interesting, good work.
sampyxis
28. Aug 2012 · 07:50 UTC
Clean, fun, polished - nice!

Sometimes the keys felt like there were sticking - but great
nseward
28. Aug 2012 · 07:53 UTC
Clean game. Needs some playability tweaks to make it more of a challenge. I look forward to seeing more.
batiali
28. Aug 2012 · 09:09 UTC
Oh, I liked how you used the theme! There's so much potential in the mechanics...
Talslain
28. Aug 2012 · 09:09 UTC
Overall a good game, I liked the difference in ships, it allowed for a more difficult game play. I also liked that when changing your ship the way the sounds changed, one of the more simple but effective mechanics I've experience in this compo
gbellgames
28. Aug 2012 · 21:37 UTC
You got me confused there, I was trying to absorb bullets of my color and was losing energy.. and I was like "what the hell?". Then I figured out I actually had to activate a shield, unlike the real Ikagura game.

Yeah, I am a big "shmupper" :D

The game is too easy. Recharging your energy by absorbing bullets make everything even easier (I could get up to stage 10 without even caring about it). You should had mixed more black and white enemies at the same time.

Also, I didn't get how I "evolve". My shot speed just kepting getting slower and slower (Which actually made the game harder, which is a good thing, but a very annoying way to do it), even though I was holding up all the time.

But I kept playing the game for a while, so its fun. Alas, dodging bullets and exploding alien ships is always fun :)
Benjamin
29. Aug 2012 · 07:19 UTC
Parallax and sprites are nice, the gameplay tend to be a little to close Ikaruga original and I'm not convinced by your way of adapt evolution concept to speed of move and firerate. The control feeling is perfect and that's not an easy thing to do when you program shmups.
Christina Antoinette Neofotistou
30. Aug 2012 · 13:43 UTC
This was fun, and well-presented. good job
Teknik
31. Aug 2012 · 17:50 UTC
awesome game. would have been nice if there was some indication of how much you changed. didn't really notice a difference between changes
Maple
01. Sep 2012 · 04:16 UTC
I like the concept, but I didn't notice any changes. Perhaps it was because I was both moving and shooting constantly and it didn't know which to upgrade? But man, this would be something really great if worked upon and refined.
JaJ
01. Sep 2012 · 14:16 UTC
The backgrounds worked really well. I didn't feel that much of a difference after evolutions, perhaps you could show a screen with exactly what changed on it after each level. The shooter part of the game worked really well and was very fun.
Sestren
07. Sep 2012 · 15:00 UTC
Agreed with earlier comments, the evolution mechanic needs to be more noticeable or have some kind of a description between rounds of what changed. Also, agreed that the shield felt overpowered. An energy bar for the shield or something to that effect would fix it, I think. Otherwise, very nice game and fun to play.
voxel
11. Sep 2012 · 10:29 UTC
Nice presentation, nice ideas
csanyk
17. Sep 2012 · 03:26 UTC
Seemed like it was playing in slow motion, but I really liked it. Got through three rounds my second time playing. I didn't really feel anything evolving in that time, so if things were changing they were too subtle for me to notice. Found that it was maybe a bit too easy due to slowness and infinite shields. I think it's high time I played some Ikaruga!
Dan C
18. Sep 2012 · 00:27 UTC
Lovely work!