I guess I should add that you play the game with the mouse, clicking on buttons to spawn ships to attack the hero ship. Press SPACE to pause/unpause (although sometimes flash seems to lose focus, so if keyboard input isn't working, just click in the flash player again). Also you can use 1-5 as hotkeys to launch respective ships.
Clicking on one of your ships brings up the upgrade menu. You can spend money to increase your ships' abilities. You can also access the Customize Loadout menu before each level to customize the default loadout for each ship, so you you don't have to pause the game and add perks to each ship that you launch. Be warned that changing the default loadout of a ship makes each instance of that ship more expensive to produce!
All combat is done for you, so you can focus on resource management. I tried to add a lot of variety to the ships, upgrades, and perks to keep gameplay interesting and allow for a modicum of divergent play.
Unfortunately I didn't get to add audio, which really hurts the game's appeal. Anyways, I hope you enjoy!
I think the game could have done with a few sounds like pew pew, or kapow for explosions and bullets. But other than that the game was really solid and worked well. I liked the short back story it was pretty funny, and I enjoyed the game, I was trying to minmax part way through, but couldn't figure out a good solution.
Pretty cool. For some reason the upgrade menu kept being skipped after the first few waves. I could see it for a split second then it was gone, even if I had not touched anything.
@Deril It absolutely best not to go overboard with the custom loadouts, they get way too expensive early on. :) But you're right that the game definitely needs more time being balanced. Thanks for playing!
@dalbinblue The upgrade menu will skip if you lose a level (or if you have all of the upgrades). Thanks for playing!
I like the idea of playing against the hero, it's quite clever and matches the contest's theme well. It's a highly enjoyable game and equally as good as some of those anti-hero type games. Great job!
Your have strategy though. And I love how I can upgrade my ships. Who cares about sound =) Main thing is getting gameplay working first. I realise there wasn't strategy late into the compo, and I didn't have time to change it.
Pretty cool! As one small constructive thing to think about, I think it would've been nice if you prevented players from being able to buy an upgrade if it means they won't be able to buy a ship next round. I had to wait for some cash to float down in space before I could spawn a drone, and wasted valuable time. Definitely was still pretty fun though.
Nice, seeing quite a few of these reverse SHMUPs and this one is quite well done. Good work.
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Cake&Code30 Dec 2012, 01:56
A fun reverse-shmup! Bullet-hell games are always so difficult for me, despite my loving them, so it was good to turn the tables and be the one dishing out the pain for a change! :)
Also, thank you for including the number key bindings! Absolutely indispensable.
Found myself playing this for quite a while. I've seen developers approach this concept before and come up short, whereas this had just the right amount of progression to keep me playing.
Damn, I really found myself loathing that nasty hero ship.
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I did not expect this at all.
Its a bit like a tower defense but the other way round :)
Thx for the game.
@dalbinblue The upgrade menu will skip if you lose a level (or if you have all of the upgrades). Thanks for playing!
and badass music and you got a really well polished game !
Also, there might be a small bug where the yellow ship is on the right edge of the screen and psychos hit it from behind but don't do any damage.
Also, thank you for including the number key bindings! Absolutely indispensable.
Damn, I really found myself loathing that nasty hero ship.