Arrow keys, WASD or gamepad d-pad to change directions.
Objectives:
Shoot the pink blocks while avoiding them and your own bullets. Build up your combo with every kill. Your combo resets when hit by your own bullet.
Collect the power ups to extend time, restore health, build combo and increase score. Moving off of one edge will wrap you to the opposite edge, but be careful - your bullets do the same!
Watch the gameplay video below for an example :)
Update: The web version runs best in Chrome - there seems to be some sound bugs in other browsers.
@Muton - thanks letting me know. I hadn't tested it in Firefox, unfortunately. Or Safari for that matter (in Safari on a Mac the sound effects plain don't work apparently). If I ever update this for my own purposes, I'll be reworking the sound for sure.
Best graphics I've seen so far (and I've seen some good looking games already) It feels smooth too. I'm really bad at isometric controls, so it was a bit hard to play for me, but if I was better I bet it would have been a lot more fun, so that's my problem.
Oh those graphics! Such a great entry, really impressive for 48 hours. My only criticism would be to make the left and right arrows rotate your direction, instead of switching to fixed direction. It seems more intuitive to want to rotate left when you hit left, rather than face isometric left. Otherwise, amazing!
Really nice visual style and nice mechanics too! Very polished style. The controls really confused me and much of the difficulty to me comes from pressing wrong direction. It could be a good idea to make alternative controls set for keypad? Then you could use 1,3,7 and 9 for more accurate directions :)
Thanks again to everyone for the comments - I really appreciate it! Obviously the controls are the biggest problem, and I had hoped to have time to put some alternate control scheme options in there but what can you do, right?
@Detocroix - great idea to use the diagonal numbers on the keypad. I will definitely use that idea in the future!
I like the concept, the style and the sound a lot.
But I have difficulties controlling the box due to the isometric view, so I don't know if there were more levels or anything - I kept dieing pretty fast.
@Kvisle - Thanks for playing and for the comments. There aren't any additional levels so you're not missing anything by dying quickly. To be honest, I die pretty fast in it too ;) It's mostly a survive-for-as-long-as-you-can-and-get-a-high-score type of game.
Hey pretty neat graphics, I like the subtle reflection on the floor.
As everyone else said, controls are indeed a problem and I've never really came across a good solution for isometric control. So I usually refrain from using isometric representation when controls are so important. I would have probably settled for frontal iso. But yeah it's less graphically interesting (:
This is awesome, having never played an iso game before the movement learning curve is quite steep but once you get there is a totally awesome game!
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_Rilem30 Apr 2013, 13:18
Cool and simple style, i like it alot. Gameplay wise, it's pretty brutal, or I just suck at it. xD
WASD + an isometric grid takes some time to get used to. And the grid might have a bit too many blocks for me, I take the wrong turns all the time (just before or after the one I was supposed to take).
For a non gamejam game it might be nice to let the player start out on a small grid, or to slow everything down a bit.
Loveley graphics, animations and audio. Great job! ;)
Very simple, but very cool. I loved the style of just about everything. It took me a little while to get acclimated to the controls, but that didn't take away from my enjoyment of the game. My only complaint is the sound rubbed me a wrong way, but overall, excellent job!
Sound wasn't working for me in Safari, then I read your note to use Chrome and it worked. Arrow keys for isometric movement has always felt 'wrong' to me, but that's not really specific to your game.
The sharp graphics, animation, sounds and music impressed me! If you continue to develop this, I had trouble remembering which arrow key mapped to which diagonal direction.
P
Pokemonsta3 May 2013, 11:54
how do you actually play it (I'm very very new. 10 seconds is how long my account has lasted.11, 12, 13... you get the point)
I really like the graphical style of this one. Audio is cool as well, it fits perfectly. Gameplay wise it was a bit difficult to get used to the movement. But as we say, practice makes perfect.
Thanks to everyone for the comments and feedback :) @Pokemonsta - I believe in order to see the entries, you had to participate in the event. Here's a direct link though: http://roguenoodle.com/Arena/
My team member already commented above, but I wanted to add that I really enjoyed this as well. I think the graphics are a perfect example of how to do minimalism well
An isometric arena shooter with a bleepy 8-bit soundtrack? It's like you made a game out of all of my favourite things. Except beer. Put some beer in there and it'd be perfect ;)
Nicely realized! Very polished art style and animation. I had a hard time mastering the isometric orientation mapped to the arrow keys, but that might come with more play time.
In your input handler javascript, you need to call .stopPropagation() and .preventDefault() on key events that you're handling to keep them from bubbling up to the browser and triggering other functions. WASD were triggering my typeahead find, which takes away focus and eats all further keystrokes.
My head is permanently stuck at a 60 degree angle - I hope it was worth it, rogueNoodle! :p
Seriously though, there are some really good ideas here but, as slick as the presentation style is, I'm not sure it justifies the confounding control scheme.
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@Muton - thanks letting me know. I hadn't tested it in Firefox, unfortunately. Or Safari for that matter (in Safari on a Mac the sound effects plain don't work apparently). If I ever update this for my own purposes, I'll be reworking the sound for sure.
It's really fun though, but I only managed to get 14,000. :P
@Detocroix - great idea to use the diagonal numbers on the keypad. I will definitely use that idea in the future!
But I have difficulties controlling the box due to the isometric view, so I don't know if there were more levels or anything - I kept dieing pretty fast.
As everyone else said, controls are indeed a problem and I've never really came across a good solution for isometric control. So I usually refrain from using isometric representation when controls are so important.
I would have probably settled for frontal iso. But yeah it's less graphically interesting (:
Anyway that's a pretty well done game o/
Gameplay wise, it's pretty brutal, or I just suck at it. xD
WASD + an isometric grid takes some time to get used to. And the grid might have a bit too many blocks for me, I take the wrong turns all the time (just before or after the one I was supposed to take).
For a non gamejam game it might be nice to let the player start out on a small grid, or to slow everything down a bit.
Loveley graphics, animations and audio. Great job! ;)
just get killed too fast, but balancing would be a good idea! ;)
Sound wasn't working for me in Safari, then I read your note to use Chrome and it worked.
Arrow keys for isometric movement has always felt 'wrong' to me, but that's not really specific to your game.
Really impressive. Great job!
@Pokemonsta - I believe in order to see the entries, you had to participate in the event. Here's a direct link though: http://roguenoodle.com/Arena/
Dodging my own bullets was a bit annoying but the controls were easy to get used to.
In your input handler javascript, you need to call .stopPropagation() and .preventDefault() on key events that you're handling to keep them from bubbling up to the browser and triggering other functions. WASD were triggering my typeahead find, which takes away focus and eats all further keystrokes.
Seriously though, there are some really good ideas here but, as slick as the presentation style is, I'm not sure it justifies the confounding control scheme.
Controls can be quite difficult to grasp though, but I guess most isometric games with a similar control scheme has the same problem.