Really like the design, but it's really hard to get a proper attack off - the cooldown between spawnings are quite long.

Quite addictive game. The IA is technically impressive and makes the game challenging, while upgrades are a motivation to continue playing until you can beat that stupidly clever spaceship :)
I never managed to hit it before a boss fight though.
Nicely done.

Now this is what I wanted to see get made with this theme! A classic game idea turned on its head. Lovely retro gameboy graphics and sounds. Not certain what the use of sending little ship was the Boss was much better at overwhelming the spaceship.

I'd be fascinated to know what algorithm the ship was following and what causes it to mess up, really neat :3

Very well made, I like the strategy involved in planning how to overwhelm the player ship to make it lose all its lives. I hope you expand this to give some more level and boss varieties, since I managed to beat the player after three rounds and the game just looped around.

really challenging but a great great idea and lovely colour palette

This game is very nice! It took me a moment to understand the gameplay, but it was literally only a moment. I love the graphics and the sounds; they're great!

Thanks for the comments guys!
I'm aware that the minions don't do a lot at the beginning. In fact, the first round you are better off just gathering resources and killing the player yourself (as the Boss).
However, if you upgrade your cooldowns and costs you can spawn a lot of minions early on the next rounds and overwhelm the ship before it reaches you ("you" as in...the boss), which gives you extra points.

You can also upgrade boss-related stuff if you prefer to save your resources.

In the end it's pretty much a resource-management game where you have to figure out the best "decision path" that will eventually lead you to defeating the ship (normally happens after 3-5 rounds). There's no "congratulations, you win!", because I thought it would be more fun to just keep upgrading stuff and taking sweet revenge on the ship ('cause MAN it's annoying!).

Wow, amazing game. This whole theme made me realize how much I like classic games mechanic but twist around to make you the enemy... Too bad I didn't do that :P Really polished, really complete. And I thought the game was pretty challenging!

This is one of the best games I've played this LD. I want to learn to write games like you. The ramping is fantastic. Only thing is I totally maxed out my powers, and got to the point I could destroy the player in seconds every level, but the game never finished, I just racked up more and more dough! Amazing work, though! A+

It had a simplistic style, yet played nicely and had a good concept, well done with the AI.

I had some troubles running the desktop version(not an openal thing), anyways I really liked your take on the theme. I would really like to see a more fleshed out version.

I appreciate the feedback guys :)
I added a Post-Jam version with a victory screen.
@orion_black, I also removed the SDL dependencies of the PC build, it *may* run on your computer now? What version of Windows you are running?

what a well thought out and beautiful game!

Very cool game! Great take on the theme, nice graphics and sound, and fun to play with the different choices. I managed to get built up enough to completely wipe out the attacker after about four times around.

If I could change one thing it would be that instead of the mouseover popup that blocks the on-screen action, I would have the information be in that empty area on the lower right. It was kind of a drag that this twitching text box was jumping around and interfering with the game screen.

Man, real nice. Simple twist, but I'd honestly play a full game based on this.

Too bad the challenge disappear after a couple loops.
Very impressive AI work here, and cool execution altogether; nice art, nice music, cool stuff man :D

Great genre deconstruction, although a bit too hard - I think having minions making at least some damage early in the game would make it much more rewarding.

Very clever reversal of the shmup genre. I really appreciated what you were doing here, and the piloting AI seems surprisingly competent! Fun, nice tunes, and fairly challenging. The addition of a Game Over screen to the post-compo gave it a nice sense of completion.

A really solid entry. Thanks for sharing this!

This is great! I'm a huge fan of these types of games, had lots of fun with it! Nice one!

Interesting project. R-type reverse :)
I like it. Thank you ++

This is a typical "You are the villain" game, but it's great! I would have played more levels with pleasure. The boss fight was especially interesting, trying to "trick" the ship was a big challenge.

Cool idea! Didn't read the description before, so I was trying to control the ship for a while. Stupid me :D

Wow, cool game. Graphics are great and it's one of those "shop games" that would fit really well on newgrounds or the app store. My strategy initially was to spend all my points on cooldown/price then just cream the player with my Beet army.

Why are they called beets? That goofy name really makes me smile for some reason.

a neat idea, but the gameplay feels like it takes too much control away from the player, and the upgrade system feels more like padding than anything else. I think that a shorter game that starts the player out with the full capacity they need to take out the player would result in a vastly more enjoyable experience.

Super cool. Ship AI was awesomely challenging. Good tunes and great visual aesthetic too.

Neat concept, could have been more fast paced.

That was pretty awesome. I would love to see a longer game with this type of concept. The artwork and sound fit each other well. Nice game entry!

Thanks for the feedback guys!

@El Cabaro: They are called Beets because of their Beetle-like jaws and shape! (also; old-school games had really silly names for enemies. It's part of the homage)

Greatentry from start to finish! I really dig the concept idea, and would have loved to have more options all around.

Also, thank you very much for the profound comment on my entry!

Innovative and cool

Such art is wonderful. Simple and effective. The names of the attacks are very funny, I love it.

Wow great game mechanic. Quite addictive! The AI of the spaceship feels very human.

Is there an end to the game? I stopped playing when I would easly beat the four spaceships within a few seconds.

@ZYXer: The post-jam version has a victory screen for when you finally defeat the spaceship. The jam version simply keeps looping endlessly, which is not THAT terrible, but I guess is less than ideal.

I loved this. Great art, fitting music and a neat idea greatly executed. Top entry :)

Very cool looking -- absolutely love the art

Really cool mechanic. And great job with the retro aesthetic. I'm a sucker for upgrades and this didn't disappoint. It was fun exploring the different ways we could take advantage of the different minions and powers. The boss fight was awesome! It's so satisfying to finally play the boss in those bullet hell-esque games. Great job!

Played this over my morning coffee, which ended up overrunning considerably as I was having too much fun playing this to stop :) Love the polished art-style and catchy game-play (which has a suprising amount of depth and challenge to it). Superb job and great entry.

I've played enough to make my review. I hate games like this, the ones where I feel I should be better at them, and give me upgrades so that eventually I will be! Great take on the theme, enjoyed playing this, going back to beat it!

Loved this game! In the end it becomes a bullet hell >:D

Argh that ship is just to agile! It was a lot of fun to hunt the ship but it's just a little bit too hard to hit. A shorter cooldown would have helped.
Maybe instead of the cooldown you could have implented higher cost for shots in rapid succession? That way I wouldn't be able to spam either but had the freedom to plan my attacks better. Would have given the game more depth.

Also I would have liked to fire my weapons with the keyboard (maybe using the keys 1, 2, 3).

Still a good entry, well done!

One of the best games I've played in this LD. Congrats. I liked your write-up on the AI as well. The cooldowns do feel just a little too long, but maybe I just need to get better at the game. ;)

Really neat idea, and well done entry. Good job. :)

Nice twist, hard to be evil :-) , very cool entry!

This is a great game, but I think it would have been better for the AI to have less momentum in exchange for higher starting ability. It would also be interesting if the enemy ship powered up over time. The boss fight felt a little bit too long and awkward.

I love the graphics and sound!

Very original but quite frustrating.
Nice grafics and sound!

Very neat and innovative. Was a fan of the presentation. I wasn't nearly as found of figuring out the AI movements such that I was willing to spend more time to get higher rank than an A. It's a good enough for me!

Felt like a lot of the game boiled down to timing and resource management. It's a matter of taste, but I wasn't especially fond of that combination.

Really polished, especially graphics, ai is interesting, sound (helps mood a lot especially on boss fight). Catchy upgrade tunes.

Gameplay is a little slow to me. I guess you're supposed to figure out its pattern and cleverly plan a retaliation.. but I'm too dumb and just upgraded until I could hammer it with lucky strikes.

I liked thinking about having to save up money instead of spending it as you get it (so good job on that aspect).

Pssst - You've been featured in todays Ludum Dare to Believe! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUCBlrR9qzA

It's sort of weird that this is the first game I've played this ludum dare with this mechanic. I was hoping there'd be more! I'd have preferred it if the cooldowns were a lot shorter by default and the ship was a bit dumber.. but this was still really good.

OH MY! Thanks @ButtonMasherBros! You just made my day!

The enemy ship has way more manueverability and options than you have ability to trap it, at least in the minion phase, so most of the time you just feel like you're relying on the AI to be an idiot.

All-around very good game. Loved all the Portal references, and while I eventually got enough upgrades to make every round a cakewalk, the game still remained enjoyable. Only thing I was disappointed in was occasionally buttons wouldn't work (I assume this is because the ship was spawning at the time) and the minions only spawned from 3 locations (ignoring the Discus).

looks great :D

Nice graphics and colours, also, lovely idea. The only thing bad was that I felt like my monsters and "projectiles" were too "dumb".
Overall, awesome entry =)

Excellent game! It's fun watching the AI maneuver, and the difficulty of tricking the AI makes successful shots feel really satisfying.

nice inverted gameplay. very hard to beat.

I would love to see this game expanded. It is really fun.

Great idea and amazing execution!

The game looked very nice. The music was very repetitive, however. Understandable, though. I really like the concept. The AI for the ship was very clever and the delay on the attacks forced you to have quite a bit of strategy and timing. I do feel that the minions felt useless, since I never managed to hit the ship with them. Other than that, good entry!

I see somebody loves Portal :) Smashing all the buttons on a touchscreen with everything maxed out was pretty fun :D

You Monster! XD This game is so much fun! I spent some nice time playing it here and forgot about work to do. :P

Really dig the graphics, the soundtrack, controls, everything! That's some great work you've done for the Jam! :P +1 for the upgrade system! :3

The only bad thing is that is short, but it's a damn good game, sir! :D

Nice game! I included it in part 31 of my Ludum Dare 33 Compilation video series, if you would like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/ZV7CU8j_StI

@Jupiter_Hadley Thanks! Just saw it :) Loved it.

Fun little game! I wish you develop it further (more bosses, etc.)