Shootanoid by drludos
Breakout meets Top-Down Shooters!
Using your laser gun, you'll have to "guide" balls so they break all the brick walls! But beware, if you get touched by the balls, you'll die!

I had very few time for this compo, so my entry was made with only ~15 hours of work in total. Everything is made with TIC-80, the fantasy console I used for the first time (LD are great to discover new tools).
It was a very pleasant experience to use TIC-80, it's a wonderful piece of software. I never thought I could build something from scratch in 10-15 hours with a tool I didn't knew before the compo!
My entry lacks a bit in the audio and graphics area, but I tried to focus on the gameplay due to the limited time. There are 10 levels in total!
Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy my "Breakout+Top-Down Shooter" mashup!
| HTML5 (web) | https://drludos.itch.io/shootanoid |
| Windows | https://drludos.itch.io/shootanoid/purchase |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/shootanoid |
Ratings
| Overall | 161th | 3.69⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 102th | 3.77⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 307th | 3.449⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 152th | 3.969⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 366th | 3.194⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 332th | 2.851⭐ | 49🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 426th | 2.408⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 355th | 3.023⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 33🗳️ | 33🗨️ |
A really cool idea, I love how the balls become your enemy, as well as your path to winning.
Pretty hard to manage the shooting in 8 directions. Would have liked to see a score come up, or a timer.
A really great idea and very unique!
I love those fantasy computers like pico-8 and tic-80 maybe next compo I'll learn too.
EDIT: To see my live thoughts, check out this recording of the livestream [here](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/253875862).
Thanks very much for the game!
You did a neat job on game feel, level design, and game design. The core mechanic is super simple and easy to learn, it also creates a huge window so you can design different types of levels that are simple and challenge.
The sound effects and the visual effects really added a lot to the game, making it very satisfying to play even after some time.
Overall a very solid game! Keep up the good work!
Can you rate also my game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/gender-circle
Oh, just one negative point: I actually finished all levels, but I couldn't read the end screen because I was hitting the button and thus I was immediately sent back to the title screen.
Oh, and I guess level 10 is a reference to Space Invaders, right?
@LMB: Yes, level 10 is a reference to Space Invaders :).! I'm sorry you couldn't read the ending screen, so here it is attached:

As you can see, it's nothing fancy (not enough time), but it does display the total number of death you had before finishing the game ;)
Also, I gotta give TIC-80 a shot sometime.

This game is proof that a game doesn't need to be very sophisticated or fancy to outstand. It sticks to a core mechanic, does it right, and implements it in a very rewarding fashion.
The presentation is extremely simple, but makes sure that nothing is ambiguous or that anything gets lost in a big mess of colors. This allows to easily manage through the bullet hell that later levels become. The lack of music is not exactly a problem either, because the sounds of breaking blocks along with the particles and the screen shaking add a lot of "oomph" to the atmosphere.
The gameplay is king though, with a "simple" mechanic of destroying blocks while avoiding being destroyed by your own machinations. I never felt safe in the game, even when I was spamming fire. It feels so good dodging that many balls.
I loved this game. It's great what people can come up with so little time and little resources, as long as there's a great plan to pull it through. [My team](twitter.com/whalesandgames) would really like to see more games like this one. Kudos! :whale:
Very well done, i considered you being solo in my notation
My only complaint is level 4. After level 3 (which I enjoyed a lot) level 4 seemed slow and not very exciting. I was glad to see that it picked back up after it. This is a small thing and I only bring it up because the rest of the game was so excellent.
Put in a dodge ball mode where it just spawns a gold ball every couple seconds and you can't shoot. Then the game is to see how long you can last!
The graphics matched that vintage arcade feeling of the gameplay. With more polish it could become a modern classic. Congratulations!
The game has a good difficulty curve and it feels natural to play these two genres combined.
It was really fun to play and kept me through to the end.
Nice graphics sound and screenshake effects.
A bit unfair though that you can be killed by spawning balls.
Great entry!
At some point, however, I did find it to be not completely, but fairly, safe to just sit in a corner and shoot diagonally at anything approaching, which helped me do a lot better, so maybe that's something to look at if you decide to make a fuller version of this game!
Not a lot of audio to speak of, but of course you opted out of that category. Still, a little volume balancing would've been good, because the bleep on startup was at a level that seemed good, so I kept my speaker at that level, but when I died for the first time I jumped into the air because it was so loud. Just glad I wasn't wearing headphones. :p It didn't bother me (I actually kind of liked it!) but some of the impact sounds were a bit like biting and chewing a popsicle which some people might not be able to listen to at all (kind of like nails on a chalkboard), so may be worth considering!
Gameplay and levels were great. You managed to figure out a bunch of different concepts and ways of using the mechanic, allowing the player to feel a little clever after figuring out the best strategy to go about each new challenge. And challenging it was!
Marvelous job!