LudumData

SquidBoy & StarFace by willowblade

[raw]
made by willowblade for LD 40 (JAM)

Squidboy & Starface on their afternoon stroll! But lo and behold the deepsea bully, the fearsome 'Bloody Beakhorn' is up to his usual shenanigans again! Will Squidboy and Starface put a stop to the tyranny of old Beakhorn? Will this encounter ruin their afternoon picnic?

Find out for yourself!

TitleComplete.png

Features

  • One epic boss battle with multiple stages
  • A bullethell
  • Three difficulties of which the hardest one might actually be totally impossible!
  • You thought a bullethell with ONE ship was difficult? How about TWO?! More firepower, but with a shared lifepool you are sure to destroyed!

Screenshots

Screenshot from 2017-12-07 13-33-26.png

Screenshot from 2017-12-05 03-45-16.png

Screenshot from 2017-12-07 13-33-47.png

Controls

SquidBoy

  • KEYBOARD: WASD or QZSD
  • GAMEPAD: Left Analog Stick

StarFace

  • KEYBOARD: Arrowkeys
  • GAMEPAD: Right Analog Stick

Shooting is done automatically!

Credits

Made with Godot Engine v2.1.4 & Krita

Changelog

7 December 2017

  • Added missing assets of the boss (Horn & Tubing) that were forgotten.
  • Removed a bug where you could move below the bosses' eye and not get hit.
  • Tweaked boss health & animations.
  • Delayed the bosses intro so beginning players have some time to adapt before they get blasted.
  • Put SquidBoy in front of StarFace as the Z-values were messed up.
Windows https://all-in-development.itch.io/squidboy-and-starface
Linux https://all-in-development.itch.io/squidboy-and-starface
Windows https://all-in-development.itch.io/squidboy-and-starface
Linux https://all-in-development.itch.io/squidboy-and-starface
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/squidboy-starface

Ratings

Overall 726th 3.283⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Fun 569th 3.317⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 866th 2.833⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Theme 817th 3.1⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 198th 4.145⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Humor 506th 3.069⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Mood 656th 3.167⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Given 34🗳️ 30🗨️

Feedback

Timestop
05. Dec 2017 · 03:49 UTC
I like the cartoony art style! Fun bullet hell.
the_ShaderMaster
05. Dec 2017 · 18:47 UTC
@timestop Thanks! The initial goal was to have multiple bosses, but this was of course waaaaay too ambitious!
Bugmobile
05. Dec 2017 · 19:21 UTC
The graphics are cool but the gameplay is hard for me =) (I need two brains)
the_ShaderMaster
05. Dec 2017 · 19:27 UTC
@bugmobile If you need two brains then find a friend to play it with :D
Easy difficulty mode should however be doable alone! Don't give up!

Thanks for commenting!
Tabass
05. Dec 2017 · 20:28 UTC
Cute but lacking a bit of feedback and sound ! Good job for the art !
dcolgan
06. Dec 2017 · 04:28 UTC
Well, it was hard all right. No denying that. The premise of controlling two ship on your own is pretty interesting. That I actually like a lot, but doing it on my own was just too much. I did impress myself with just how coordinated I was able to be. When I read the description, I thought there would be no way, but I held my own for a little while. I think it would be better on a controller. The play felt okay apart from that. Not bad.
the_ShaderMaster
06. Dec 2017 · 10:05 UTC
@tabass thanks! Sound is unfortunately missing yes :(

@dcolgan you can play it on a controller! The support is implemented!
🎤 willowblade
06. Dec 2017 · 10:40 UTC
Controller support is indeed implemented! You can use either the joysticks or DPAD + ABXY. We wanted to do voice acting, but finding someone musically inclined as a team member would help a lot with making that more of a priority in the project. Thanks for playing!
KirUn
06. Dec 2017 · 14:57 UTC
I probably will not be very original...
But man, this art is amazing! Really loved it.
the_ShaderMaster
06. Dec 2017 · 15:08 UTC
@kirun and no mention of bugs! Thanks for the comment :D
tmpxyz
06. Dec 2017 · 15:51 UTC
The artwork is great, you should put some sound effect and BGM to get things heated up too.

To the other players, you could overlap the two planes and control them together, this would make things a lot easier.
X Budsterized X
06. Dec 2017 · 15:56 UTC
Same as other "not very original" people said - Fenomenal artstyle and game flow!

I enjoyed every piece of it :)
🎤 willowblade
06. Dec 2017 · 16:17 UTC
Thanks for the kind words, guys! There's always more difficulties to try beat, and normal should be doable using the overlap trick. I'm thinking of making the other ships move speed a bit different, or containing each ship to their half of the screen, as a way of forcing the player to separate their movement anyway. Thoughts?
jfraser314
06. Dec 2017 · 17:47 UTC
Very nice!!!
Pixelectric
06. Dec 2017 · 20:05 UTC
Trying to control two characters at once in a bullet hell shmup ... oh my poor brain. I had fun, though! The art style is fantastic. I wish there was sound but considering all the hard work you already put in, I'm still impressed. For some reason I had some slow framerates after a while.
Elemental Zeal Game Studios
07. Dec 2017 · 01:52 UTC
I really liked the art style, nice job. I ended up playing with another person because it's more fun. Nice entry!
GameDevMumin
07. Dec 2017 · 20:39 UTC
Liked art style! Here should be more perceptible impact of our hits but i know i have to blame a small amount of time all of us had to finish a game! :D Was fun to play, good luck!
NORRIMO
07. Dec 2017 · 21:28 UTC
Hehe. I love your space ship fish design. Or space fish ship? xD
I think this kind of gameplay is more for a co-op. Do you know 'Brothers A Tale of two Sons'? It has the same controls. But it was nicer to play together with a friend.
And yeah, overlapping is a good Idea. After that I managed to defead the boss. And great placed enemy waves.
Did you put sounds in the game? :O
the_ShaderMaster
07. Dec 2017 · 22:54 UTC
@jfraser314 thanks!

@Pixelectric Unfortunately we didn't have a sound expert with us and ran out of time! Thanks for voting!

@elemental-zeal-game-studios Yes! It's an accidental co-op game in that sense!
Junber
07. Dec 2017 · 23:10 UTC
Cool game. It's nice to see a bullet hell game in LD and this one was really fun; so fun in fact that I played through it a second time on a higher difficulty. The graphics were well done (especially the logo is great) and having the control 2 characters is a good idea. The end was a bit anticlimactic though but that level of polish is not something you can expect in a game made in such a short period of time. Great work.
Fluffi
08. Dec 2017 · 11:17 UTC
Great cartoon art and the controlling also feeled good. Hard to do both alone but much fun with two players.
x1212
09. Dec 2017 · 13:39 UTC
Way to hard for me (even on easy) but fun none the less!
But I still think it's a little too easy to cheat around the concept of harder because two ships by having them in one place and maneuver both in the same directions at all times. Maybe giving them slightly different velocity or making them slowly drift apart would help against that?
Anyway good job!
🎤 willowblade
09. Dec 2017 · 15:42 UTC
Hey man, thanks for the feedback! I've also thought of giving them different speeds, or constraining them to different halves of the screen, to force the mechanic more.
Badly Drawn Rod
10. Dec 2017 · 12:24 UTC
Great art style, nicely presented.

A couple of observations:
- When you link the two ships to the same position then it becomes a bit easier to play.
- The frame rate gets a bit jumpy as the number of bullets increases.

It's a shame that you didn't have time to add sounds as that would have added to it greatly, but what you have so far is excellent.

And now for another go...
the_ShaderMaster
10. Dec 2017 · 15:20 UTC
@x1212 Yes, the easy difficulty should be tweaked a bit more to be less difficult. Now there's hardly any difference between easy and normal.

@badly-drawn-rod Linking the ships wasn't supposed to be a solution.. :p oh well!
Elmeri
12. Dec 2017 · 00:04 UTC
Well done! Nice art and nicely done in this short amount of time! Found as well that linking the ships allowed me to win :)
makiki99
16. Dec 2017 · 15:14 UTC
The victory felt satisfying. The reason? The boss didn't explode. It just warped you to the "victory" screen and that's all. The patterns were designed nicely, though, and I really like the graphics, which are clear and quite good. Controls are good too.
the_ShaderMaster
16. Dec 2017 · 15:22 UTC
@makiki99 Unfortunately the boss indeed doesn't explode or die in a satisfying faction. We didn't have time to implement the victory animation.... we do know it's not that satisfying :(
masterkrepta
16. Dec 2017 · 22:46 UTC
Love the art style of this. huge fan of bullet hells. I love how you can play this as a single player or two player game, Used to love couch co op games with shared life pools.
defiart
18. Dec 2017 · 19:18 UTC
it was hard)