Carnage Courier by DecrementedPalindrome
There is a lot of lag due to shader compilation on the web version so download it to get the best experience :)
A roguelite bullet hell game where you can salvage the parts of your enemies and use them to expand yourself.
In the not too distant future delivery robots are freed from their predefined paths and allowed to make choices on how to make the best delivery themselves. This immediately led to them making the conclusion that deliveries would be quicker if they could obliterate anything that stood in their way. With humans now driven off of the streets and forced to rely on the robots for all deliveries, you've been tasked with delivering weapons to the resistance in an attempt to free them from the scourge of the drones. The budget is tight though, so salvage what you can and don't let anything get in your way, the resistance depends on you!
Most instructions are in game, however the energy system isn't explained:
Your core produces ⚡Energy over time and has a limited amount that it can store. Weapons use this ⚡Energy to fire, if there isn't enough ⚡Energy available then the weapon won't shoot.
🔋Batteries can provide an additional source of ⚡Energy. They also generate it somehow.
Make sure you have enough ⚡Energy to sustain the weapons that you have equipped.

Ratings
| Overall | 229th | 3.929⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 102th | 4.048⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 244th | 3.762⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 903th | 3.524⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 723th | 3.476⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 249th | 3.786⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 574th | 3.556⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 20🗳️ | 9🗨️ |
Controls are a little difficult, I think I'd prefer if you _always_ face the mouse, and clicking is what fires, then maybe you can hold down the space bar to enter build mode and it pauses for you :blush:
Music is really catchy too! Love those 4 ride cymbals leading into each section :grin:
Thanks for the feedback!
The controls could have used a little work too, like others have said always facing the mouse would have been a LOT better, there's also no great indicator of how much energy you have.
Congrats on the game, and make sure you rate a lot of games so you get a score.
There's definitely a tactic to make defeating the first large enemy easier (hit the batteries on the sides first then it struggles to charge up for each shot) but other than that it is mostly pick up all of the pieces and dodge the bullets at the moment.
I'm pretty sure the stutters are due to the shaders on the parts that provide power (those two batteries on the side of the moving enemies are especially noticeable because they come in during the middle of the level). If I continue developing the game in the future I'll remove the desaturation effect that uses a shader from the individual parts and have a power bar at the bottom of the screen instead which should make the amount of energy you have left more apparent as well.
Fun game though! Reminds me a bit of Warring Forever. Makes you want to keep getting bigger and bigger.
I would say the controls are the weakest part of the game. The holding left click to aim was counterintuitive to me. I also wish some of the battlefields were larger and that you went to a station or something instead of just the edge of the screen to continue. A background would also have been nice, but the jam only allows so much to be squeezed in!
> I was initially going to have a key to enter build mode instead of doing it automatically whenever you picked up a part, but that would mean that you can have the game paused for ages to rebuild in the middle of a fight which would make it less frantic.
I don't know, I think it would give the player a bit more control to make the fights more managable, but I don't think it would take away anything from the frantic nature of it. Dragging new components mid-fight isn't a huge issue, so I don't think manual build mode would change it that much.
> It’s interesting to see that some people find it easy and others find it hard. I think that means I got the difficulty right for these first levels :).
I'd agree with that, as early levels feel pretty easy, but the difficulty ramps up pretty quickly. ;) Perhaps it would be a good idea to increase it a bit earlier, though, because of the upgrade system. I'd agree with raptor851 here, as I was in the same position - I went through a lot of levels before finally dying, so I discovered the whole rogue-lite aspect of the game pretty late. ;)
One more thing I thought could be changed, if you're going to keep developing this - pretty quickly I found myself playing levels where I got 5+ enemies on the screen at the same time, and at that point it was basically impossible to evade taking damage. Adding armor to the ship didn't really help with that. Perhaps as the game progresses, the playing area should become bigger to give you more space to move around?
I love the upgrade system. When I first played through several levels, it felt interesting having to choose carefully between carrying more cargo crates and more weapons, but I thought it would work better if you were able to increase the size of your ship. And then I died for the first time and discovered you can do just that. Perfect!
As for the controls, I think Tim Leach is right, and it would feel better if the targeting just followed the mouse, though it wasn't a huge issue for me. One thing I found awkward was trying to control my ship after installing the auto-targetting/auto-shooting core on my ship - for a while there I was wondering what was going on and if there was some bug with the controls. :P Though this is more a problem with the ship part, not controls themselves.
The sound part of the game is great as well. Sound effects are simple, but fit well with the design. The music is arcadey and adds to the frantic feel of gameplay.
@Nillard I think it's the problem with the WebGL version - I had the same freezes every time a new enemy spawned. The desktop version didn't have that issue.