Cybercage Battleground by makiki99
Welcome to the Cybercage Battleground! You'll be pitted against countless bots during this competition, to test a new experimental weapon. Your weapon is extremely powerful, but has one problem - it gets weaker the more ammo you hold. We can't explain this phenomena, but well, it's not like you have a choice. Thankfully your opponents drop ammo. It doesn't matter that they don't use it, they still drop it on their death. Let's hope you survive long.
This game was made using Pico-8 fantasy console. I personally love the simplicity of it, just because it makes it a perfect tool for game jams.

| HTML5 (web) | https://makiki99.github.io/ld40/ |
| Pico-8 Cartridge (Github) | https://github.com/makiki99/ld40 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/cybercage-battleground |
Ratings
| Overall | 182th | 3.658⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 69th | 3.895⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 528th | 2.75⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 544th | 2.921⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 268th | 3.474⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 388th | 2.75⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 184th | 3.389⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 18🗳️ | 7🗨️ |
Really enjoyable gameplay :)
For some reason movement sometimes got stuck on one direction. Luckily that didn't make me die.
Good job.
I'm not a fan of running out of ammo though. It makes it feel like you're destined to lose since the only way (afaik) to replenish it is to run into enemies to kill them, while also taking damage yourself.
I also wouldn't have known that the bullets got weaker as you held more if I didn't read the instructions. While actually playing, it just seems like the enemies have a lot of health. Maybe adding some kind of indicator in-game would've helped. Knowing how the bullets work will let the player choose a different strategy.
Besides that, I think it's a solid game overall. The retro vibes are strong in this one!
I'm not sure whether the theme came through, as the bullets reduced over time it just felt as though you gained in power.
- Mouse controls didn't work in fullscreen (this may just be a limitation of PICO-8 though; can't say I've tried that before)
- I think the difference in bullet power needed to be exaggerated more: I played the first round "as intended", purposefully keeping ammo count low to try to do more damage, but on my second run I did much better by just picking up ammo as soon as I killed enemies.
- It bugged me a little bit that there was a visual indicator for health, but just a number for ammo, especially when the ammo is far more important/dynamic than the health is.
Really nice use of a simple graphical style. Using circles and lines for everything probably gave you more time to work on other aspects, and the few little details like the flickering text helped add a bit of polish.
Oh, and the sound of taking damage scare the sh*t out of me! I liked that too :)
Sometimes the controls stuck on Google Chrome, so I switch into Mozilla Firefox and had no more problems.
My high score was 236 seconds.
Someone else said this, but I think if you had the ammo be a meter instead of/in addition to health, it would have been easier to track your resources. Other than that, it was solid.
But, I am not a huge fan of an 'infinite-time survival' mechanics, so from my perspective, I would prefer if it has some stages (e.g.: for 20 - 30 seconds each).
Also, unfortunately, there are some issues with controls in Chrome: sometimes it stuck, and full-screen mode doesn't allow to rotate the main character.
Anyway, I liked it very much, it was fun trying to survive without shooting (90 sec my record so far). It was twice as interesting to rate this one because my LDJAM entrance has a little bit similar mechanics which is related to 'bullet-hell' games.
Great job!
I'm not sure how it fits the theme ? Seems like I'd want to have more amunition ! okay, they are weaker when I have more amo, but most of the time, I have no amo at all or almost :I
I survived for 150-ish seconds if that's useful for you =)
the game feel is super good, the game alternates between avoiding stuff and shooting and that feels nice.