Attract by hturan

[raw]
made by hturan for LD18 (COMPO)
A simple shoot 'em up, in which the enemies shoot themselves up.

[Note: The larger the browser window, the lower the framerate, unfortunately. If you're having issues try making the window smaller and refreshing. If you're having severe framerate issues and are using Firefox, try switching to a WebKit-powered browser such as Chrome or Safari.]

By default, all shots are attracted to you. Use this to your advantage by letting them orbit back into the enemies. Move around to gain repulsion energy, then hit 'a' to switch and send bullets flying. The scoring metric is the time taken to clear the screen.

It's a difficult game. Take your time to get used to the mechanics, and try to have a store of repulsion energy for when you get surrounded. If you need precision, get a bullet to orbit and then switch to Repel when the shot lines up. For what it's worth, my high score hovers around 60s.

Attract is written in pure JavaScript, using the HTML5 Canvas APIs. This was my first time using JavaScript for anything other than simple web design stuff, so it's highly un-optimised and probably not too clean. If things start to slow down, try closing a few tabs or resizing the browser window. As always, I doubt this will work with Internet Explorer.

Ratings

Coolness 3% 129
Overall 3.05 63
Audio 1.00 149
Community 2.85 80
Fun 2.81 71
Graphics 2.43 117
Humor 1.11 169
Innovation 3.48 35
Theme 3.24 89

Feedback

Sparky
22. Aug 2010 路 22:40 UTC
This is a really appealing idea. I like how simple it is.

It does seem to run a bit slowly on the computer I'm playing on, but it's playable if I use a very small window. One other thing I noticed is that it's sometimes hard to tell exactly when the player is struck by a projectile. Some sort of impact effect would help to make it clearer.
hdon
22. Aug 2010 路 22:48 UTC
Using my display's full resolution made the game freeze up after, I assume, a certain number of projectiles exist.

Cool game!
馃帳 hturan
22. Aug 2010 路 23:19 UTC
Yeah, the framerate is directly proportional to the number of bullets on the screen, and the number of bullets is directly proportional to the window size. I probably should have put more thought into performance.

Glad you enjoyed it though!
skintkingle
23. Aug 2010 路 03:44 UTC
yea shame about the frame rate. looks like a neat idea though!
madpew
23. Aug 2010 路 11:32 UTC
runs great on my computer, game play was a little confusing the first try, but once you get the hang it's nice, still a little slow though.
sinalta
25. Aug 2010 路 13:12 UTC
It ran just fine here (after I switched to Chrome from Firefox). Nice idea, although I suck at playing it =P
pekuja
28. Aug 2010 路 11:53 UTC
That's a pretty cool concept. Kinda gets old quickly though, but it is still pretty cool to watch those laser beams go.
Jhelle
03. Sep 2010 路 04:29 UTC
It is very nice to see a js+canvas submission.

I liked the idea but maybe it's a bit too simple.
speciesUnknown
05. Sep 2010 路 02:14 UTC
Runs nicely in chrome, I actually found a neat strategy for killing them whereby they end up shooting themselves :p

I was able to nearly clear the board through a mix of this strategy and another where I would charge my Repulsion Energy, then use it to sit near one long enough for a barrage of bullets from other ones to kill it. I loled a bit when one killed itself (thus 2 for humor) but sadly no sound... so no stars there
Mik
05. Sep 2010 路 10:03 UTC
I like the idea of this game.