Fun little game. Kind of tough. I liked the idea of picking up more ammo lowering your health, but I think there just was not enough available ammo. I never felt like I really had a choice because I was often so low on ammo I HAD to pick it up. So, if there was more available ammo, I think I'd have liked it even more. Still liked it, though!

This is so much fun!! It seems to be really well made, the music is fantastic and it looks great as well. I just think it's pretty challenging but I might just be bad at this kind of game :)

Very fun game! Captures the theme nicely! I like the movement mechanics and that the player actually has multiple possible strategies to advance.

Thank you so much for your feedback everybody! As I write this, I'm uploading a quick bug fix to address some issues that I found in the game. Details can be found in the description. Once again, thank you!

Man!!! Your game is nothing short of amazing! The level design is superb, the balancing too, the art works pretty well (nice touch on getting darker and darker as you descent and the LD posters), the audio is great!! I had to play 3 times until I got to the end, and I had a lot of fun thinking about how many bullets should I get and where should I spend them, so your interpretation of the theme was fantastic. You said you wished you could make more levels. Well, in my opinion you didn't have to, because these 12 levels were definetly more then enough to show you are a very skilled game designer and that you know this genre pretty well. I hope you are proud of this game, because you have every right to.

I'm going to rate you 5 stars in everything EXCEPT audio because, even though the SFX were amazing, I think reloading and empty clip when trying to shoot sounds are essential in this kind of game, and they were missing.

Some things you might want to know in case you didn't notice: if you overlap one of the enemies that shoot, he just stays there and can't damage you. If you alt+enter and go fullscreen, the game doesn't resize properly and the UI doesnt work properly (couldn't select the options properly on fullscreen, for example).

One of the best games in this jam, congratulations!

edit: another thing I forgot to say. Usually the bullet counter is like "bullets loaded/bullet magazine", but in your game it's inverted. It's not that big of a deal, it's ok to be different, but IMO it would be better if it followed tradition :)

Oh, so that's why I had no bullets on the last level, I thought it was supposed to be that way haha. You still can beat the last level only with the bullets you can find there, though

it was a very nice game. loved the mood. the controls where very good and responsive. the level design was great and appropriate. it was difficult. but a great experience overall. awesome work.

Very tough, had to up my strafing game. Great job!

This is honestly one of the most fun games I played this jam. I also like how the game applies the theme. Nicely done.

Man, this is definitely the most fun I've had in the jam so far. It's a fun, classic gameplay style with the modernized-retro feel, including simplistic artwork and good animations. (Sounds were also on point!) Thumbs up for a great game. Just out of curiosity, what did you make this with? I really can't tell if it's made in something like GameMaker or if it's home-brewed.

Thank you for your feedback everybody! @DarkSamus9000, this was made in GameMaker

This was really fun! I think the audio and graphics mix perfectly. It was so cool to find out the cabinets actually get damaged if you shoot them! And then the next time round it spawned a health pack! So many cool little discoveries in here.
My only issue would be that the robots' bullets were quite difficult to avoid the first couple of games, perhaps a mix of their high speed and small size... But otherwise the gameplay was great.
Good job! :D

Awesome ! One of my favourite game so far !

Really well done!
I like the little detail of shooting the file cabinets. This fits perfectly with the theme, but why is it when you get ammo it lowers your health?
Anyway, I like it.

This was really fun. It was a little too hard. It would have been nice if the health packs and ammo packs were a little more balanced together. I liked how the revolver spun around when you reloaded. The music fit the chaotic theme a lot which I liked. Good job.

@kingmatthew, your health decreases when you pick up ammo because the theme is "The more you have, the worse it is," so it makes the game more difficult if you grab more ammunition.

Really cool game. Shooting enemies feels good, the upgrade system is cool, and I like the use of the theme. It's interesting trying to decide whether it's worth shooting enemies for money or if you should save ammo to keep your health up. The music is really good and the sound effects work well. The graphics are pretty decent but the grey scenery gets a bit repetitive.

Grey is one of my favourite colors. Maybe that's why I really liked in-game graphics :D Anyway, the game really does follow the theme and becomes hard quite quickly. Solid entry, good job!

Tough game, but everything about it just feels solid. I'm having a tough time coming up with a comment cause it was just overall a good game! Maybe the range on the gun felt a bit low? Even with the range upgrade I couldnt shoot enemies from as far as I liked.

I liked the controls and the looks, it was easy to understand immediately. I didn't like how my bullets had a limited range but theirs did not.

I'm fairly bad at this kind of game, so it was definitely a challenge. The main mechanic of gaining ammo but losing health, is fun in terms of gameplay, but to me somehow doesn't make intuitive sense. But on all other accounts the controls and level design were fun and I really enjoyed it! Great work and I look forward to seeing your future projects!

Unbelievibly hard but fun game. You succeeded in interesting me for like half an hour, and then I gave up because it was to tough for me.. I really enjoyed playing it, good work!

This is one of the best games I've played for LD40. Interesting mechanics and addictive gameplay. The game just felt so polished. Well done.

This game is amazing, the level design is simple yet very strong, good job on the art and the music, it doesn't seem like a 72h game, great job ! :)

Really enjoyable game! The controls are super slick!

The theme felt a little tacked on because there was no real reason or explanation why ammo reduces your health and since you actually need the ammo, there is no real choice there.

Other than this minor gripe, it is really good!

I liked your game a lot!

The main issue I found is that it felt that the number of levels you could do were mathematically limited. Going with the idea I'm not sure of the best way to fix it. It would probably be best to make it more of a balancing act. Getting ammo decreases your health, but getting a debuff increases it again? I don't know, but there is some room for expansion there.

One of the parts I enjoyed most was the gun reloading. The animation was simple, but wonderful. Maybe you pulled it from somewhere, but it felt really innovative to me. I also found that I could get the robots to shoot the cabinets to find me treats without me spending ammo. That was nice too.

Good music, good art, good gameplay, dude, thats a good game !

Fantastic game, really loved the artstyle, the gameplay and the music.
Nice with a top down with limited resources, so you actually have to aim.

Good work!

This was a fun game, but it was also difficult. I had trouble pointing to the enemies and killing them.
I didn't feel like I could not pick ammo, as I was missing too much in killing them and I kept having low ammo. Maybe have even more available ammo or being easier to kill the enemies would help.

I liked the coin and gun reloading animations, and the enemy AI was well implemented.

Overall nice work :)

Really nice to play. I didn't find it too difficult (as you posted about the people complaining). Maybe more ammo would help those who need a bit easier game. Very, very enjoyable to play.

PS: Your "reconfigure keys" is not working (HTML5 version).

@pcmxms Thank you for your feedback and letting me know about the reconfiguration bug for HTML5. I'll look into that!

EDIT: What exactly are you experiencing that is wrong with it?

@acr515 You mean about the reconfiguration? Well, I chose "e" for reload, but I still have to press "R" to reload... "E" didn't work at all.

@pcmxms Ah, I see what you mean. Thank you for letting me know, I'll be releasing a fix for that shortly!

Nice game! I had a lot of fun. It was decently difficult, too!

Thank you everybody for your feedback and helping us reach 35 ratings! You guys rock! I just released another version of the game, fixing and tweaking a few larger and smaller bugs, and adding difficulty modes for those who thought the game was a little too hard. If you previously played the HTML5 version and the changes aren't being applied, clear the cache by holding down CTRL and pressing reload in the browser.

This is a nice little game. Is this your first Ludum Dare? The game was fun and it kept me busy fora good while. The game could use a bit more polish to make it feel that much better. Here's a video that can demonstrate that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg

If this was your first Ludum Dare, congratulations, but a bit of house-keeping first. I see a few comments saying that the game was a little difficult. This is a big consideration for when making the game, when you spend hours making your game, it starts to become second nature thus becoming 'easier'. To a new player, they are seeing the game for the first time so things such as the controls and the mechanics of the game will take time to get used to. That's why some may say it's hard. So playtest, give the game to family/friends to test it out, see what their response is and adjust the game accordingly. I'll stop rambling. This is a great game, would love to see the evolution of the game. Congratulations! :smile:

Really nice work! I really appreciate how stray bullets can destroy the file cabinets.

This was really fun. The upgrade store was a nice surprise, and made collecting coins a bit more fun than simply a high score thing. Your take on the theme was interesting. Good work on this game!

I loved the game! About the difficulty, I gave you more feedback on the other thread you linked to, but overall really polished and well done!

I like what you did with the game, I think the controls were pretty sweet and the graphics, music, and sound effects were minimalist but fitting. I especially like how the gun flips while you reload; I thought it was a nice touch.

That being said, I'm a bit more critical than some of the other commentors here. I know I'm going to sound harsh, but I'm only trying to make this game the best it can be. I know it's tough making a game in such short time, and it's even tougher to make one with 12 levels. So, in no particular order, here are some of my thoughts:

-The game's regular difficulty is way too hard; I think this might be because you have 8 bullets, the enemies take 4 to kill, and you almost always face them 2+ at a time. So any missed shot means you have to sit and reload while an angry enemy charges at you.
-If you run out of bullets and ammo pickups, you're pretty much defenseless. I think there's one level where the exit locks until you defeat all the enemies? That wouldn't be very good. I feel like you should have some backup melee just in case.
-On the level where you first get the key, the disappearing blocks are almost all off-screen, and the ones that aren't are obscured by the GUI. Those blocks should be front and center to show what the key does (granted, it's easy to figure this one out, but keep this in mind for future jams)
-The time between game over and retrying is too long
-There has to be a better way to show that you're losing maximum health when you get some bullets. Maybe shorten the health bar when you pick up ammo instead of rescaling the green portion?
-Similarly, there has to be a better way to show ammo count, and for differentiating between ammo in your gun and ammo in reserve. Maybe make the active ammo bigger? And shown with bullets drawn on screen?
-I hate level three. The fact that those guards can spot you as soon as the level begins is incredibly cheap.

Also, I got this error on the first level with the laser turret (version 1.02). Might be because I destroyed the turret on the same step as it shot? I know that's a common error with GameMaker.

##############
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object obj_playerArm:

Variable obj_laserTurret.ignoreRange(100008, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Object_obj_playerArm_Step_0
#############

Again, I hope I don't come off too critical here. I think you made a pretty great game here, but with a few minor tweaks, you could have had an incredible one.

@niterich Thank you for your feedback! I agree with a lot of the things you said. I found the best strategy to be to knock off the enemies one at a time whenever possible (and it wasn't always, particularly in the third level which I could've assembled better like you said). Because I was so strapped for time during the jam, I was unable to get any feedback from other people as a result of my inability to, in a timely manner, build the file and send it to a friend who was willing and had time to test it.

I did also consider adding a melee weapon, but I barely even got the game out; I made the last 2 levels without even testing them because I was running out of time. If this game continues to evolve I will make it a priority to add that.

Also, thank you for bringing that error to my attention. I'll be looking into it as soon as I can!

Wow, so nice and fun playing this game. I kinda suck at it tho but I think it's nicely done. The music was killer! The art was also fine too it works pretty well with the game. For a single person to make this for a Jam entry is really something, congratulations on your effort I truly enjoyed playing it!