Reactor Overdrive by JUSTCAMH
Overview
Manage your statistics in this side-scrolling shooter! With limited energy, you only have a few statistics points to allocate, and must make sacrifices along the way! Different scenarios will demand different stat configurations!
Important Gameplay Note
Even aiming is limited, as you must spend power to light up tiles. Once lit, a tile can be targetted by the turrets, and only lit tiles can be aimed towards. Light a tile by holding right click over it. Active tiles cost energy. There are two active tiles by default; you may want to add more, but that will require sacrifice!
Features
Themes!
Action galore!
Intricately crafted UI!
Stats
- Shield - Affects the quality of your shield, which absorbs enemy bullets. A good shield certainly makes you harder to kill.
- Cooling Power - Affects the 'overheating' mechanic, wherein long periods of fire disable weapons.
- Elemental Power - Used to damage blue enemies. These enemies are immune to regular forms of damage and can only be killed with this stat. Higher elemental power = better damage to blue enemies. Also boosts damage done to orange enemies.
- Guns - Affects the turrets. Higher level = more bullets fired with better coverage.
- Repair - Slowly heal yourself.
Theme
Certain scenarios will require respecs of your statistics, however, you only have a certain amount of power available, and will need to sacrifice some stats to use others. This results in a need to constantly shuffle resources, making frequent sacrifices.
Late in the game will be blue enemies, forcing you to ditch stats to take up elemental power. You may need to weaken the guns to improve shields or repair. You may even need to activate and deactivate tiles to target swarms of enemies and bullets.
Tools Used
- Unity as the game engine.
- Paint.net to create graphics.
- Bosca Ceoil for music.
- SFXR for sound effects.
Craving More?
I made another game in preparation for this jam, in the week prior to LD43. The game is for the Weekly Game Jam and was made in a bit over 5 days. The game is called Big Bash Bolt and was used to hone my skills for this game jam! Feedback would be appreciated on this one too. The theme was 'Finish Line'.
https://justcamh.itch.io/big-bash-bolt
Post Jam Version Out Now!
The post-jam version is ready for you to play, but firstly, a note about ratings. This post-jam version is almost identical to the original game, however it has a tutorial system to teach players what to do and avoid confusion. If you wish to play the original, it is available for download on the itch page. When rating, just imagine the game minus the tutorial segment. For a full changelog, check out:
https://pastebin.com/KUVyHUGb
Play Now:
Ratings
| Overall | 302th | 3.285⭐ | 102🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 289th | 3.133⭐ | 100🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 229th | 3.247⭐ | 99🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 362th | 3.107⭐ | 100🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 291th | 3.179⭐ | 100🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 247th | 2.995⭐ | 98🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 347th | 2.211⭐ | 85🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 345th | 2.874⭐ | 93🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 95🗳️ | 122🗨️ |
Pretty fun overall.
Enjoyable little defense game with surprising depth.
if I had to complain (I do), your pixel sizes aren't consistent. That's a paddlin'.
The stats are kind of too small to see in actual play and their management is... unclear.
However the concept of being able to aim only at highlighted cells is neat. Really liked it.
I like the presentation and in depth exploration of the theme, especially how different gun shapes work better or worse depending on what tiles are enabled for aiming. I also like the attention to detail, projectile effects, little speech bubbles :).
Here's my take on what could be more effective:
* Pause while assigning power (to give people time to understand the options and the trade-off mechanics).
* Make the graphic style more consistent, especially in scale (go full low-res pixel art, add thickness to enemies, switch between reactor and power assignment views rather than zooming in a sprite).
* Introduce the mechanics/enemies one at a time (show a few examples of what is best in a given situation, for example disable shields if enemies don't shoot, choose elemental that enemies are sensitive to). As it is, I found it hard to tell what would be a good strategy.
Overall, well done!
The end comes fast, but I liked the concept. I didn't like the fact that you had to right click to target, when it would possibly have been as easy to code it so it fires where the mouse is?
Anyway, well done!
The system with tiles feels kinda weird because the cannons aren't shooting and aiming on their own (from a technical standpoint it would be easier to make something that shoots at all angles when aimed manually - as tanks do - so it is counter-intuitive for the player), now if they aimed on their own you could think that the sensors for the sectors use power and everything would make sense.
Other than that there are some very good gameplay ideas in this game.
This game reminds me a bit of Parodius Konami, which I played a lot on the SNES when I was younger. You are fighting enemies in space. But you are stationary and you can't get power ups. Instead you have a certain amount of power and you have to choose to make "more damage" or "have a better shield". Sounds nice, you can even enable some "mega weapon mode" for hard enemies by disabling most of the shields.
But your weapons will overheat. Means you can't shoot after a short time. You can give more power to the cooling system but this means no mega weapons or no shield. A bit like "Deserts Of Kharak" with your main carrier. And you have you can only shoots in the directions of "lighted" areas, which takes energy too.
My opinion:
I like the idea. The game is well done, everything works and the programmers art is nice. You fell motivated to beat the shxt out of the bombs, before they reach you. There are different enemy types, and you are very careful to decide what to spend power for. But I died so often, I got a bit angry. When I finaly killed a lot of this blue fxxxxx suddenly some enemies spawned and killed me. But it is fun! :)
Graphics are good and "organic"! Maybe it needs add more feedback about damage and die. Also, adding at the beginning a little tutorial about the controls of the game can be good.
Great game! Congrats!
as said just need more feeedback for damage
Pretty cool game once you have understand how it works :)
@jfraser314 Thank you. The background uses a perlin noise texture that slides across the screen. Each tile takes the colour of a pixel corresponding to that noise texture.
@lukel Both of those things are explained on this page, but I can understand overlooking them (I tend to not read game pages either...) You can only shoot towards the green tiles. Holding right click toggles a tile on/off, and will use energy whilst on. The point was to force you to 'sacrifice' some energy if you want to be able to aim at different points on the map. You can also right-click on the reactor to open stats. There you can allocate your energy to certain systems, but to increase one thing, you need to decrease others.
@lukel Yep, tutorial is needed. That is one piece of feedback that I've given to most other game devs, whilst secretly knowing I suffered from the same. :wink:
Also, as @jfraser314 said, your background is awesome ! Using perlin noise for that is pretty clever. Good job !
There is one thing I would love to see in your game. When you open the upgrades menu the game could go in a "slow-motion" mode. I find myself not opening the menu just because I don't have much time for it. And I am pretty sure that the game will look extra awesome in slow mode :smile:
I just thought of an advanced version of this game. A different type of tower defense. Think of it like reactors, different guns, unlockables, different types of enemies, maybe even workers to do some work!
Tower defense and power management game. I would buy that :smile:
While the graphics and sounds are simple, but they prove effective in this game. Really liked the entry. Excellent job!
Graphics are minimalist but neat! The short looping soundtrack does all it needs to do.
Great job! :)
I'm not sure I quite understood all the mechanics. I also felt a bit uneasy when going into the menu since the game was still going on and I couldn't see most of it. This may be better if the menu was slightly transparent...?
The guns felt a bit frustrating to me since they always seemed to shoot everywhere except where my cursor was or where I wanted them to shoot :D Maybe I'm missing some crucial aspect of the combat mechanics to fully understand how they work.
The music was pretty strange. Sounded a bit like music generated by a computer.
I'll try to make better quality music next time. I honestly wasn't too pleased with it either, and I can assure you, it was not generated. A computer would have made a much nicer piece and it wouldn't be so repetitive (I'm no musician, and the track is only fifteen seconds long, repeating). Probably a good call though to list the tools used to make the game. This page has been updated accordingly.
Props for making the music with Bosca Ceoil though! When I tried it, I thought that it was a neat little tool but hard to use for more serious projects. I'm using FL Studio myself.
Cheers!
I think it might also be nice to have the player's three guns shoot different colored lasers... It might just be me, but I found the three overlapping trajectories really confusing initially.
Some gripes:
- your central turret doesn't shoot where the croshairs is pointing
- web version was extremely laggy, had no sfx (tried on Google Chrome), had to download windows version to play
- the UI was way too small
- (this is subjective) the bullet trails were a bit of an overkill and didn't fit with the overall style. Maybe some particle effects such as semi transparent pixels would do the job better (see example below)
Overall, it's a decent submission, especially for a one-man 2-day team. Hope I didn't sound too harsh.
Keep up the good work!
P.S. sorry if the I repeated some of the other comments, didn't check them all out
1.The shooting was a bit confusing. If the enemies were standing in the middle I couldn't shoot them. I think it
would be better if the player could shoot in all directions.
2.I liked the pixel art, really well done especially for compo. :)
3.The sound effects are really good for the style but the music doesn't fit that well, something more "energic"
that will put you in the mood for fighting will be better.
4.I didn't know there was a upgrades panel until the end when I accidentally clicked on it. Mabye a small button
in one of the corners will solve that issue.
Overall a great compo game! :)
@vlad-ilisan I wasn't planning to create a post-jam version, but after hearing near constant confusion, I think a simple tutorial might be in demand. With the text renderer and all of that, it should be doable.
@franciszek-pyrc Yes, lag is something I have experienced too. The particles are probably a bit overkill. If a post-jam version comes out, this will be a fix.
@simanis Thank you for the feedback. Confusion is never a good thing in a game, and there really isn't any excuse for it. If you're confused, I didn't design the game right, so I'll look into this for future games. Thank you for the feedback.
I liked the game, overall one of the best games so far for me. Somehow I had some performance Issues and hitting problems with some waves. Did not managed to get past that point, but apart from this (and the somehow hidden configuration) its quite good!
I like the idea, but I feel that it could use a little more polish. I made it quite far by having only two markers, one in the middle and one below that. For me that got rid of most enemies and only let enough shots through to regenerate the shield. Maybe making the placement of the target fields a bit more strategic, maybe with tower defense-ish elements may give a better reward for placing them well.
Graphics-wise I dig your pulsing background, but mixing pixel art resolutions is kind of a red flag for me, especially if they vary a lot, and in this case, there is a huge difference between your largest and your smallest pixels. Maybe a non-pixel art approach may have worked better, but that's just my personal taste. I do like the visual effects of the shots though.
The background music sounds a bit random and becomes a little grating after a while. If that effect was not intended, I would suggest you start off with a simple regular beat and add a simple melody without too many jumps between notes for starters and improve from there. Sometimes it's the hardest part to know when to stop adding stuff, that's something I usually struggle with.
I hope these points don't sound too harsh and that you find the criticism useful.
It's a solid Compo entry, good job!
A new post-LD version is available! Now includes better usability and performance. There's now a tutorial, and you can enjoy heaps of minor bug fixes. For a full report on what's new, check this; https://pastebin.com/KUVyHUGb
As a note to upcoming players; be aware that the current version IS NOT the originally submitted game. If you would like to play the original game, it is available for download from the itch.io page. This version is very similar to the new one, and the main difference is the lack of a tutorial.
-Different size pixels. Ew.
-Text is cut of [here](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/524561409808400384/524561437746659329/unknown.png).
-Button feedback for "New Tip" stops working in the game over screen once you press it once.
-The letter "f" in the font makes it seem like there isnt a space before it. Press something to pay respects
-Yet "'" makes it look like there is.
-The tutorial text should have some "Ive read it!" button so the player can take as much time reading it as they need.
-Health bars for enemies would be nice.
Other than that, its pretty neat! I really liked how the background looks.
Cons:
-I could not read the text very easily, its somewhat tough to distinguish letters with that blocky font.
-Health bar was a little small(in comparison with the rest). I mean... I played fullscreen on a 24" monitor and it was fine, but I imagine if you port this on mobile or smth it will be very straining to see the health.
-I get the theme but I survived for so long with just three green blocks. I didn't feel the need to create more or delete the currently existing ones :P.
Pros:
-Great visuals (literally AMAZING particles! good job on that <3)
-Fairly innovative and the theme is there for sure...
-Actually played for more than I though I would, so it's also surprisingly fun!
I enjoyed this entry!
Cons:
- Even with the tutorial, controls were not at all intuitive
- My health got low, and I saw no way to refill easily
- Some enemies were almost unbeatable with the shield bullets
- Graphics were jarring, hard to see what was happening with so many particles
- Maybe I didn't play long enough, but the boosts and such seemed rather useless
- Never saw a health bar, some better UI would be welcomed
Pros:
- Solid level of polish, especially for Ludum Dare
- Gameplay felt good, once I got past my confusion around the controls
- Theme is obviously implemented, though not very well used in my opinion
All in all, a very solid LD entry! Good job, and keep it up!
Once you got the idea though I feel like you get to ~150 without effort (max guns & overheating and put one aim-point in the middle and just spam away. When elementals come, remove 1 gun & put on elemental), but around 150 (149) when the big boys come, it becomes VERY challenging and I find it hard to balance defence and offense while also changing the aim. The wallers get time to come up and then you're TOAST.
Other than that... Brilliant, to be honest. Had me wanting to play it again and again to try different strats.
Oh, the font isn't very readable. Needs more whitespace.
What's the highest score you've seen?
The little notes when you destroy the enemies were very enjoyable, and made me want to work hard to get the good ones!
Might have been nice to have been able to see things like the health bar and various stats from the main view, instead of needing to right-click into the time window. Especially if you could manage them from the main view to not have to look away from the action.
The pixel art and music were fun and exciting, though a bit confusing sometimes, especially during the tutorial where many things were fighting for my attention.
Main trouble I had:
-Were there separate levels? It would have been interesting to play a game with extremely short levels but NOT be able to change the stats on the fly. What happened was I'd optimize for each type of enemy when they appeared. It was a lot of menus that eroded the fun of the game.
The tips after each game was another example of the level of detail you put into the game. It was quite helpful and I did understand a few key points of the game after reading through some of the tips.
The UI could have been better because it was very confusing when I open up the menu which seemed to have paused my game but I still took damage, it would have been better to have integrated some hotkeys or HUD so you can always see the enemies attacking.
Not sure why but there was no audio for me even though I played the game for a while. Would have helped to know whether the game was running or paused but I still managed to get a good experience. Good job overall!