Power Earth Saver by wwwhizz
Here is my contribution to LD39, written in PICO-8. PICO-8 is a fantasy console, that has 128x128 pixels, 16 color palette, 32k cardridge (which you write). This is my second time participating in the LD Compo.
Story
The year is 3017 Earth is under attack again... :grin:
You are the last space pilot :rocket:
Unfortunately, your ship has only one generator left.. :fearful:
Choose wisely where you direct its power! :electric_plug:
How to play
Controls: * Use left and right arrow keys to move * Use up and down arrow keys to select where you direct your power: recharge your cannon, rockets or shield * Use Z to fire your cannon * Use X to fire your rockets
- Catch powerups to replenish some power, do more damage, recover faster
- Note that your cannon is more powerful when fully charged
- The color of the bullets indicate how much damage they do, same for the enemy's bullets.
Update 1.1
- Edited within compo time
- All ships now have glowy parts
- Ships have varying fire rate
- Player ship slightly bigger
- Enemies now have aiming cannons, making it impossible to camp in a corner
- Higher max hp, because of added difficulty
- Time for new ships reduced
Update 1.2
- Thanks to impbox on IRC for these suggestions
- Edited within compo time
- Less asteroids, more stars
- Inertia when moving left/right
- Minor improvements
Update 1.3
- Edited within compo time
- now shows an integer as high score, instead of a float
Update 1.4: bug fix
- enemies aiming bullets are now deleted when off-screen, fixes slowness
Update 1.5: bug fix
- shield powerup never came due to wrong number of powerups in line 241 (changed 4 to 5)
Released under CC4-BY-NC-SA. This license allows anyone to reuse, remix and share for non-commercial use, with attribution.
| Source code | https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=29732 |
| HTML5 (web) | https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=29732 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/power-earth-saver |
Ratings
| Overall | 84th | 3.818⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 51th | 3.841⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 234th | 3.326⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 126th | 3.864⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 139th | 3.75⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 47th | 3.75⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 395th | 2.057⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 175th | 3.357⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 32🗳️ | 13🗨️ |
Maybe you can make the laser be homing, and the rocket explode in a radius? And then put more enemies to compensate.
Thank you for the game!
It's supposed to be hard, people, just like the old retro arcade games :)
Tip: play on full-screen, that makes the background more distinguished and the enemy bullets more visible.
My controls went weird once I lost my shield, but I played again and it did not occur a second time. Probably my keyboard or something.
Good job!
Very original take on the genre, being a mix of different games and including something unique, the power management.
Graphics are typical pico-8 style, which has a nice pallet of colors.
Music and sounds fit the action well.
My only suggestion would be giving the rockets splash damage for clearing out groups. Right now, it's not very different compared to the cannon.
Other than that, I enjoyed the game!
Game-design wise, Since you want to focus at all times on dodging, you can't really look to the right to see what is being charged. You might use a different SFX for each charging selection so that you know what you've selected from the sound alone, that or showing briefly what you selected right next to the player character. The shields appearing right around to the player are brilliant in that respect.
Also, since the player can only move in the x-axis, diagonal bullets are a bit... annoying. You could make bullets that move diagonally towards the player but once they get close they fall pretty much vertically to balance that. Now that I think of it, giving the player a diagonal shot might be a good idea to make different shot types.
Having said that, the overall feel of the game, art-wise and music-wise, is very consistent, and it is very fun to play. Great job!
The graphics are nice, I like the Pico 8 pixel graphics. The only problem is that the background and enemy ships blend together a little too much. Fewer background stars would make it clearer what to shoot.
The music is nice and fits the game.
Overall a solid entry, just the gameplay needs a little more tweaking.
There is an exploit when there is only one enemy left, so the player can take advantage to recharge. More enemies are spawned when that happens, but I would be a little more harsh with the player to force him cleaning the current wave.
I just loved your game! Good job! :heart:
**Things i'd advice to change** The moving things in background are nice and all but they look similar to projectiles, so making projectiles larger or brighter colors (like neon blue, pink, yellow, green) to easily distinguish them would help.