Sadly there was a tiny bug in the final version of my game – the line “state = STATE_LEVEL;” was missing, so no pause screen would be shown between levels (although the code for layout and mechanics of that screen was already in there, as can be seen in the source).
I have fixed this and uploaded a new version to my site as both zip and webstart. I realize that this may not be taken into consideration when judging the entry, but I thought I should at least upload the entry as it was meant to be (and as I was certain it was!)
Okay, here’s the final version of “Sky Upon Us!”, my entry for LD14.
I tried to upload the zip file containing launch files for Windows, Linux and OSX to the blog. Sadly, WordPress wouldn’t accept it even if I changed the file extention. Meanwhile, the game can be downloaded or started from all the following links:
* SkyUponUs.zip (Including Windows .exe and Linux/OSX .sh files)
It's a neat concept and fun to play. The only thing that is really lacking at the moment is content - I wish the layout would change between levels. The level of control over the direction the stars go could also be a tiny bit tighter but I am really not one to lecture anyone on that topic. ;)
That was fun. Great concept, very unique. You should totally port this to DS homebrew, that would be perfect. I found it a bit slow paced and monotonous... some more wall types, which move in different ways, would be welcome. I wonder, did you play around with having more walls onscreen at a time and giving them just 1 hit point? That might (or might not) help.
I'd have liked a larger window though, as I keep ending up losing focus to windows in the background when trying to maximize the length of my arrow strokes :D
I'd love to do more with this mechanic for sure as it is quite enjoyable to sling the stars around. The sounds worked well to provide tangible feedback of damage vs not. The graphics are a lot of fun as well. As mentioned gameplay in current version grows quite tedious. I managed to play till the end of level 5 where the doom finally killed me. I think that you could add more variety in here and that would make it a lot more fun for sure. I like this drawing of arrows to control projectiles on the fly. Very fun.
Rather unique concept! Have to agree that it gets repetitive fast, though. Still lots of fun for a while. Pretty graphics, and feels reasonably polished overall. Good job.
Very nice graphics and presentation overall, I would have liked some more variation in the background so that you can more easily tell, if the camera is moving to the left or to the right.
The arrow drawing was awesome, but sometimes I would click out of the window. Some mouselocking/fullscreen would be nice.
I loved the concept of this game. It's really nice to play -- almost relaxing. Some more variety would have been good, in the enemies and perhaps the falling objects too. Graphics are great, I love your magnified pixel art.
This was fun. At first it felt a bit pointless since there didn't seem to be any way to lose, but then I noticed the minimap =). It does get a little repetitive after a while though.
Also, like others have said, clicking outside the window is a problem. Would've been better in fullscreen because of that.
Btw, I lost on level 4, but then progressed to level 5 anyway. Bug?
Also also, the little terminal window doesn't close when you quit the game (windows exe). It insists that you press a key. =)
Just like shrt says, it's possible to lose focus, which can be a little annoying :P The game was pretty fun, though a little repetitive. More gameplay elements would be cool, and more kinds of enemies.
Level 5. Kind of interesting idea with the star-flinging, but it doesn't really work out in practice. There's a feeling of stuff slipping between your fingers, which isn't satisfying. It's also a bit annoying that stars can pass right through walls if they come down from above. Maybe they should have bounced to give a better sense of solidity? Kind of dull that all levels are more or less identical. No real sense of challenge or strategy to the gameplay - just swipe the same old arrows across the screen and hope there's enough stars to kill the walls before it's too late. Perhaps it would have been possible to do a different kind of slinging mechanism where you could swirl up a large number of stars using circular mouse movements and then hurl them all at one target? I dunno, I think the main failure here is that it feels to "slippery" and unpleasant to control. Graphics are ok.
Ah, the tuning is much better in this version! It's a lot more fun now. I don't know that I'm quite sold on the game concept, but there are some very interesting things at its heart.
I'm glad to have seen this turn into an actual playable game, and it's been a lot of fun brainstorming with you.
One gripe, that bugged the hell out of me though - losing focus when clicking outside the window.
Well done :)