Red Archer by BadPiggy

Red Archer is an Arena FPS which combines platforming and combat
Made (Rushed...) in more or less 1 and half days
Go deeper and deeper through the temple stomping every demon in your path
NOTE: - If possible, please play the windows version instead of the webgl version, there may be some issues with the webgl one - Also I forgot to mention it in-game but the slow-mo ability is kinda necessary to aim in mid-air
| Link | https://badpiggy.itch.io/red-archer |
| Link | https://badpiggy.itch.io/red-archer |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/red-archer |
Ratings
| Overall | 481th | 3.784⭐ | 127🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 193th | 3.948⭐ | 127🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 329th | 3.764⭐ | 127🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1579th | 3.012⭐ | 128🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 808th | 3.766⭐ | 128🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 992th | 3.077⭐ | 125🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1090th | 2.455⭐ | 102🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1098th | 3.354⭐ | 122🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 26🗳️ | 25🗨️ |
I felt the slow mo was a beat op, could not hit anything without and could not miss with
Maybe a restriction on the duration could balance it
Great work !
Controls felt unplayable outside of slo-mo (and switching manually after every kill was repetitive). Dashing seemed somewhat unnecessary due to the simple environments, but I appreciate the low-poly pixel scenes :)
This is my favorite sort of jam game: one that takes a wild gameplay concept and proves how fun it can be. Well done!
A couple issues I noticed: the game freezes if you go outside the map (had to try), and it seems you can only fire arrows with a "short click" (nothing happens when you hold then release, which felt counter-intuitive for a bow and arrow).
I often see your games on social media, and I gotta say I really like your art style, it has a unique pop to it, and your gameplay always feels satisfying and cathartic. Great job on this entry!
(oh and as a fellow french dev, it's nice to be able to use ZQSD, merci pour ça! :smile: )
The sensitivity seemed a little high for me, which made it slightly more difficult to play. Other than that, it's a really solid entry. Well done! :)
Dashing into enemies after attacking them is so much fun. I love how my character flies into the sky which lets me chain attacks.
The gameplay loop is really solid; it feels like a huge power trip. I feel so amazing playing this.
Though, at first I thought my left mouse input was broken because I was holding down left click, but I eventually found out that I had to click and let go soon enough.
I would have preferred that the tutorial text is given to me in small sections so I can process the information easier; it's a powerful tutorial design tool :)
I do however like how I have a simple room to test my controls before I enter the first portal.
The final boss is a good change of pace.
An extra challenge would be to play the game and never enter slow motion.
Amazing game. This was a lot of fun! :smile:
The gameplay felt a bit clunky... I think it would have been greatly improved if mouse-down turned on slow motion while drawing the bowstring, and mouse up fired the arrow. Also having "fire" double as the fly-to-enemy was often surprising when I was trying to line up a second target and would suddenly get pulled away. I tried playing without slow motion the first time which was basically impossible--the enemies are move way too fast for the arrows (which are unaffected by slow mo). Mouse speed was also way too high, although this mattered less using slow-mo as I had all the time in the world to line up my shots. A longer music loop would be nice too (but i get it, we're not necessarily musicians haha).
I think with a bit more time you could have developed this into a really fun game, but for now I am left imagining what could have been.
Art carries it though. Love that red/green combo.
There is a little roughness around the edges, like I feel like dash should go forward if no direction is pressed, and I would have liked to be able to choose whether or not I was pulled towards enemies. Also shoot doesn't work if you hold the mouse button down too long and wall collisions are a little iffy.
Aside from these, the game plays well, sounds good, and is pretty fun and unique. Keen to see what the future holds for you! Nicely done.
PS: I fell of the side and the game got stuck. But I had a fun time until then, great job!
Few minor suggestions:
- Have slowdown be a hold down rather than a toggle. Toggle on and off felt a little odd. Also maybe consider have slowdown be limited, like you can slow down time for a short time, then have to wait a short time before using it again
- Have bow be held down for a moment before firing? Not a huge one, but what I sort of intuitively expect with bow mechanics
- Mouse sensitivity was really high, made precise aiming hard, but that also might have been a webgl issue.
Overall a really cool prototype, such a fun little shooter.
You can find the timestamp of when your game was played here: https://tinyurl.com/LDJAM48-ursa
Either way, much enjoyed! Great job on the submission :thumbsup:
* Slow the game down enough for real time aiming to be feasible. In the first round or two I managed to get hit some shots without slowmo, and it felt great to hop between the enemies.
* Have the portal appear a the top of the towers! Force us to redo the level if we haven't ninja-mastered it!
* As was mentioned before, the slowmo toggle is a bit odd. It'd likely work well with some restrictions to its use.
Overall, good job! I enjoyed my quick playthrough!
I liked the clever gameplay design. The problem with an FPS having many enemies is that you can't see enough of what's going on to really deal with much (as opposed to a 2D bullethell game, say). And if you throw the player and enemies up into the sky it gets even worse! But then this game dodges the problem by having the slo-mo mode.
The other interesting part was the teleport-to-hit-enemy for finishing them off, and the way that the primary fire action FORCED you to do this, since you couldn't shoot again otherwise. The concept of gaining vertical height from kills was also pretty cool.
All of this gave the game a cool, unique core gameplay. It felt a little bit like a 3D bullet hell, a little bit like a midair FPS with a bit of leading your shot (which as an old Tribes player I really appreciate) and a little bit of a turn-based battle system feel. A unique mix!
For critique points, I'd say the game could stand to have more challenge that I need to think about, to take advantage of the turn-based feel. It didn't seem to matter what enemy I shot when, no specific enemy was really a threat.
Also it was too short!
If this idea were fleshed out more, I could really dig in.
Cool stuff, although maybe not fully realized. Very interesting entry, nice work!
Maybe, for a post jam version, I would add some combo system and limiting the slow motion time (this way you aim the player to use the slow motion but also make it something that needs to be managed).
The graphics were really cool too. I've NEVER seen a pixel vignette before so I love that you went all in on that style. At this point I can just tell from a gif that it's your game, which is a good sign. You're getting better and better at the presentation, the motion lines when dashing were a nice touch ...even though I didn't actually need to dash that much. Well done.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/depth
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1007237865
Here's my playthrough: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1007430228?t=1h23m48s
I feel like the game could use a little extra something in the mechanics/enemies/levels or something, idk. (you know, if you had had infinite time - nice work making this as fast as you did!) The length of the game as-is seemed perfect, and I had fun playing
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1008781774?t=01h59m56s
Can you play and rate my game too, would be really nice :D .
VOD is here, if you want to watch my playthrough again: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1006662463?t=3h24m32s
I wish there was sensitivity and look invert options. Shooting *ONLY* happens on a full click, it feels odd. Games have taught me I can knock an arrow by holding shoot, and fire with a release of the button. Once I got over that, the game opens up!
The feedback I've seen about the Slo-mo being OP is def true, but I'm not sure you'd need to nerf it at all; maybe create situations where you'd rather not use it? Maybe some enemies ONLY move during slow mo? So you're trying to juggle and manage 2 sets of enemies? Maybe some enemies are easier to hit but can't be slowed?
BUT...
**I** really enjoyed having all the time in the world to plan my attack. Since its not as much about accuracy, as making the right decision for each enemy. Especially because I was playing with the Y-invert the opposite of my preference. Occasionally, I'd hit an enemy, and want to dash into them, but if I tried, then I'd fly right into a bullet, so I had to release the slow mo, move out of the way, and THEN dash! I found those moments to be the most fun! The whole arrow-to-dash+jump mechanic was super fun. The air speed, momentum, all of that was great.
The feedback/juice on the arrow hits could have been a little better, and maybe needed better hitboxes. Sometimes misses felt like they should be hits.
This thing has a lot of potential. It's super short. I wish there were more enemy types, and more interesting area design.
Audio is probably the weakest part of this. (besides not being able to change my Y-inversion LOL :eyes: )
Anyway, very good job! Congratz!
Super solid entry. Keep it up :)
The main thing I see that could be improved is the physics of the arrows, that seem to be different when you are in bullet time mode, they are way faster, making the game way easier. After I discovered this mode I just spent all my time in bullet mode, because it is really hard to evaluate distance properly, and therefore hit long distance shots with slow arrows.
While everything felt very nice, some extra graphical effects and juice when hitting enemies would elevate it even further as it is a really good core gameplay loop.
Glad we could finally get around to playing it with you in the chat! :smiley:
This game was surprisingly fun to just mess around in. Normally I don't really enjoy 3D first-person traversal, but the way all of the mechanics seemed to work together on this one made it endlessly fun to just zip around and kill everything without touching the floor.
I'm extra impressed that you were able to do all of this by yourself as well. Mad jealous of your skills. :thumbsup:
The main mechanics were really nice and felt quite satisfying though it could be perfected on some points imo. I'm not a fan of how shooting work by starting to draw the bow once you click, and would feel better imo if you started drawing upon holding the mouse button & release the arrow when click is released as that would allow to start the animation while aiming instead of the current aim - click - wait for animation. Also, i felt like slow-mo was too mandatory to stay in the air, slowing the pace a bit too much. Another point would be having no cooldown or whatsoever on dash & slow-motion that can be easily abused and make the game too easy.
Graphics also are pretty original, having an old school fps vibe (doom & such) while still keeping its own visual style.
On the audio part, sound effects worked well but the music was too simple & repetitive.
Still an unique game with a lot of potential if you plan to continue it. With some more polishing on the game feel and some diversity on the gameplay through enemies with different mechanics, maybe 'platformer' parts using the main mechanics (using several enemies in a row to go from point A to point B), etc... it could make for a good commercial game.
Could be interesting to add some more difficulty though as the slow-mo made you so powerful that you could just keep it on and never get hit.
The art worked really well in keeping things looking clean and easily readable which helped when looking quickly around.
P.S. seems like falling out of arena crashes the game, so that teaches to stay airborne pretty well.
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I would like to thank all of you for playing the game and for your feedback. I've also taken your feedback into account for the post jam version which I'm currently tweaking.
If you'd like to see more of what I do,
Follow me on twitter : https://twitter.com/BadPiggyproduc1
Join our discord : https://discord.gg/RNGVq63
Here's a glimpse of the game right now and what I've added so far :

Not sure when the post jam version will be uploaded since I need to design new arenas as well and add atleast two new enemy types and also make some actual use of the new aim and kick move.
And of course, balance the slow-mo somehow lol. I've also taken into account that a lot of you found the game a lot more fun when you could get a few shots without slow-mo, so I've also slowed the enemies down a little, and added some aim assist. The bow is also a lot more responsive and faster now and the slight delay which was in the jam version is no longer present.
I'll be tweaking the game more for the post jam version. As of now, we'll see what happens ig lol. Thank you all for playing :)