(warning: contains some flashing lights)
(Fake08 support added)
SUMMARY
Survive 50 micro bullet-hell levels set over more than a dozen environments to face the final boss.
CONTROLS
Player 1: Arrow keys to move, hold Z,X,C,V,N, or M to slow your ship down for maximum control
Player 2: ESDF to move and Q,TAB,SHIFT, or A to slow.
Pressing Q/TAB/SHIFT/A at any time will enable player 2 to join at the start of the next level.
GAME MODES
Standard: Survive each of the 50 ten-second levels. If anything hits your cockpit you'll need to restart.
Invincible: Experience the game without having to restart. See how few times you can get hit.
Pressing Right on the main menu will take you to a level select screen. Every level is unlocked from the start to make it easier to resume a game, or skip past any difficult levels.
Pressing Down on the level select screen will change game modes.
Pressing Left on any menu screen will turn off background music.
If you complete the game playing all the levels in order then your total number of restarts will be recorded on the cartridge as a high score (single/two player and each game mode count as separate high scores). High scores can be reset in the cart menu.
STORY
THANKS
Huge thanks to Krystman from Lazy Devs Academy for his excellent tutorial series that were instrumental in getting me through this game.
Also big thanks to: SlainteES, Heracleum, SmellyFishstiks, FReDs72, Thelxinoe5, and everyone on the Pico-8 Help Discord.
And thanks to my son Matthew for his invaluable playtesting and encouragement.
DESIGN NOTES
Truly phenomenal. For a first game, this is certainly a great job. To me, more than a bullet hell game, it was a musical journey. This game is meant to be played with music, it elevates the experience.
I've basically lost 1/3 of total at lvl 48 (I think) look at the bar going up offscreen 😅
A suggestion: the transition from fast moving to slow should be gradual or smoother (see 'lerp' functions).
I really loved the 'minimap strip' idea as visual progress at the bottom 👌
This was surprisingly fun, the patterns were unique and with the short levels weren't too overwhelming.
I loved the little story of traveling across Earth, the moon, and mars to a black hole. The music and background changes were great too.
And of course the death chart was cool to see:
I found it annoying how many of the levels just come down to going to the correct spot before any enemies arrived. I also didn't like how often shots came from enemies that were barely ever visible. Even a lot of the levels that I beat in one try felt less due to my skill at dodging or analysis and more due to me guessing a good spot to start from.
Thanks for the feedback. I did deliberately makes sure there were no random elements in the game, so that it would be consistent between tries, and if a level was too hard, it could just be the case of finding a correct path. Though as I went through the levels it was a struggle not making them too easy, so I added more and more targeted attacks from the enemies.
I am planning for a future game to go the other way and add more randomness and make it more skill based.
Also great score! I can't get that and I've done each level a million times :D
[Please log in to post a comment]