Solar-Powered Guns by eva

A little shoot-em-up for the jam! Reload your guns using the energy stations and splat some bugs. Press arrow keys to move and turn (tank-style) and S key to fire.
| Windows | https://evajolli.itch.io/solar-powered-guns |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/solar-powered-guns |
Ratings
| Overall | 543th | 3.167⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 464th | 3.083⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 376th | 3.125⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 329th | 3.625⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 367th | 3.667⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 28🗳️ | 4🗨️ |
Cool little game. I think the mechanic is solid with the refueling and I like the little connector line that shows when you're getting powered. I think it might be good to have some pressure to move away from the charging stations, like maybe they run out too? As it was I found just sitting near one and spamming bullets was a dominant strategy. Also I found that the movement and turning were painfully slow, not sure if that was intentional or maybe a bug?
I think the art is the most successful aspect of this. Great colors and overall unit and enemy design was clear and solid. I like the simple background and overall the visual effect was clear and punchy. Some sound and music would have added a lot I think. Nice work!
The graphics fits nice together and is perfect for this game play.
The theme could be recognized very well.
But I would suggest to change the parameters a little bit:
The inertia in the movement was a bit too much for my taste.
The "running out of power" feeling was not intense enough; maybe (increasingly?) slow down the movement when out of power? But the game title says "solar powered guns" which fits better to the way it is.
Some background music and some basic sounds would have been nice.
Some kind of level progression, a score and/or a winning condition would round things up.
Promising project.
Some sound would have supplemented your game and made it much better(not that it's not good already!).
Loved your game. It was nice, and the idea behind it was unique. Loved the connection system. Good implementation.
Congratulations! and good luck!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnT7cfYd2u8
Very nice art and animations. It's interesting to play, and charge stations mechanic is an solid take on the theme.
But movement is really slow =)
But I love the idea of being tethered to the power stations, but there probably should be more incentive to move away from them too. Maybe to get power ups, or they run out of power too ect. Otherwise you could just hang out at a power station all day and mow the bugs down. Great animation on the splatter too.
Thanks for the game!
Gameplay is decent, but as others said the best tactic is to camp a station and blast the bugs like you are a turret, potentially making the stations run out or increasing the speed of the car would help with this (moving and turning that slow was quite painful, felt like I was stuck in glue), perhaps a few variants of bugs would have changed things up too, but that's rather minor.
The lack of sounds is too obvious, sometimes it's difficult to find some that fit, but even using bfxr for shooting and impact fx (which only takes about half an hour or so) would've made the combat a lot more enjoyable.
Awesome game! Good job :grinning: