Super LD42 by anikki
This is heavily inspired by Space Invaders, Breakout, Yar's Revenge, Galaga, a touch of DoDonPachi (not really) and Space Megaforce. The idea is to help your 'friends' in the diamond-shaped escape vessel MacGuffin to escape from some extremely generic space baddies in an interstellar space race. There was only time to build the first level... but thats at least something. Also: Lots of particle effects.
Severely lacking: Balance... It starts out very difficult but gets super easy quick.
Gameplay Tip 1:
Charge your power [multiplier] by killing [small enemies], then you can hurt the bigger ones... but beware: multiplier drops when you don't kill quickly. So keep a balance between focusing small and big enemies!
Gameplay Tip 2:
Always shooting makes it harder. Let small enemies spawn in number, then kill a mass of them to boost your power multiplier.


Post submission Updates:
- Fixed a bug with the RNG
- Added a HTML5 build
- Addad a version with improved visual signifiers. Should make the game more accessible.
Ongoing issues:
- Windows: Player can't move.
| Windows | http://anikki.com/ld42/superld42.win.zip |
| macOS | http://anikki.com/ld42/superld42.mac.zip |
| Source code | http://anikki.com/ld42/superld42.source.zip |
| HTML5 (web) | http://anikki.com/ld42/original/index.html |
| HTML5 (web) | http://anikki.com/ld42/improved/index.html |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/super-ld42 |
Ratings
| Given | 8🗳️ | 12🗨️ |
It's satisfying to fire at the enemy ships, though. They have an interesting movement pattern, that's the important part. Shooting games are so reliant on making the enemy waves do interesting things.
The player movement feels slow and cumbersome. The "you're always moving down" thing feels... unnecessary? I don't know. Distracting. The player hitbox is probably too big, it feels impossible to dodge things - classic arcade shmup games like 1942 and Jamestown tend to have a tiny player hitbox so that it feels good to dodge hordes of shots.
The player aiming feels like a distraction more than a feature. I basically left the cursor on the enemy for most of the game, sometimes I'd move it but I feel like that should all be taken care of by the game automatically because it's not really that interesting. And again, distracting. I want to focus on the fun bits of the game, which is in this case dodging, mostly.
Again, gorgeous. But I don't understand the game and it feels slow and frustrating.