BUGFIX: A loaded bitmap needed to be set to "null", which caused an issue with enemies spawning on the second level, this has been fixed in the "Flash" link.
I also made a version, uploaded to dropbox but not itch.io yet, which has slower chasing enemies, if you like the game I'd urge you to try that too!
=== Click to "boost," though you'll need faster reflexes to dodge at higher speeds. Survive long enough to make it to the core, extend your time by picking up the small green shards! ===
Reseed the corrupted stars, or become corrupted yourself.
Guide the star shard to the cores of fallen stars, click to boost briefly, and don't run out of light... pickup stardust to keep the light from going out.
Interesting ideas and graphics, but the game is too frustrating to play. The homing enemies are too fast, and when they get into your field of view it is too late and they hit you before you can do anything.
If you can balance that a little bit, this looks like an awesome game.
Nice idea, executed well. Only issue was the speed of the enemies was insanely difficult, and it's one of those games that isn't as fun with a trackpad :) Overall I enjoyed it
Nice musix/sfx. I have trouble getting anywhere because I keep getting bombarded by the skull things. I can't figure out how to 'reseed' the fallen stars. I keep dying for no apparent reason (I don't understand the meter)
Thanks everyone, I'm not sure why the second time playing always starts with more of the skulls... I spent my last half hour of the jam trying to fix that. I'm slowing them down though, and I might make the levels a little shorter to start with (the meter is a progress bar, your distance toward the core.)
I fixed the second level, which was basically a bugged win condition. For those interested, every time a glitch enemy was (trying to be) spawned, it tried to access a not-null-but-not-valid cached bitmap -- this caused the hitching, until some RNG condition was met and a skull was spawned instead. Thanks for dealing with that issue!
I really enjoy the visuals, and I like that getting hit had consequences beyond just losing health. I'm not entirely sure what was going on most of the time though :P The homing enemies are somewhat annoying, though
Is there any way at all to dodge those weird squid things? I started ignoring them after a few unsuccessful attempts. If those were friendlier, though, this would be excellent. Very simple and elegant in pretty much every way.
I uploaded an easier version in addition to the others, I feel like that level of balance is outside the scope of allowed bugfixes (the changes were only a constant variable, but regardless) so please judge based on the "Flash" link! Thanks everyone for the great feedback!
Well designed game with nice visuals and audio. Liked the glitchy feel to the star and rest of the objects and the black and white works really well. Also great font choice.
I liked the overall game mechanics, sounds and art, but enemies and healing really needs a little work. The first ones are too quick, and the latter "heal" too little of your sight. Fix those things and release this game for phones. :<
Interesting game. The enemies that appear and dash towards you were super fast and seemed impossible to avoid. I wasn't really sure how to tell if I was winning or not, sometimes it said "Core cleansed" and sometimes not, I had no idea why.
I can't seem to run this above five frames a second, which is strange seeing as my computer was near top of the line two years ago. Passing on rating for this reason - it isn't fair to rate based on my inability to play this.
I really like the whole corruption being represented by corrupted/glitch graphics. Reminds me of Space Funeral a bit. I have a soft spot for that kind of stuff.
The jam game is really difficult. I don't think I got past the second level ever. The fading light mechanic when you get hit is really cool. The only thing is it becomes super small pretty quick and it really pushes you into death at that point. Maybe a regeneration of it (besides collecting the teeny tiny green squares) would make the game funner and less hopeless when you've gotten hurt.
I had similar problems as other posters--had a hard time avoiding the meteor things that try to collide with your star. Aesthetically it looks really nice.
Thanks for all the feedback everyone, this is the best/most I've gotten yet! I made some changes to the health pickups to make them slightly larger and restore more health (time.) I'm working on some changes to hopefully improve performance too, I had to do a bit of hacky stuff to make the glitches look the way they do and I don't know the internals of Flash well enough (this was made in Haxe and cross-compiled) to automatically catch all of the chokepoints in the code. I'll keep working though!
I really enjoyed the look of this game and also the game play itself. Nice use of theme! I included it in part 2 of my LD29 compilation video series, if you'd like to check it out :)
Found this game on accident because my nick is "Makai" on IRC. I am pleasantly surprised by Stardiver. I think the trick is to draft behind walls to avoid enemies!
I like this, but yeah, the skulls in the compo version are way too hard. It felt like it was mostly up to luck if i'd be able to clear any particular level -- several times there'd be like three or four skulls coming at me in a row, each one almost impossible to dodge (specially with the field of vision reduced..). Just one skull wasn't too bad, but they had this habit of ganging up on you.
(The skulls in the post-compo version are a lot better, but they're almost too easy again.. not the skulls themselves, but i think they take off less health, or you get more health from the stardust, or maybe there's more dust? either way, you recover pretty quickly even after getting hit)
I wish there'd been more variety to the levels. Maybe i didn't play far enough, but they pretty much felt the same. I think there was a bit more debris in later ones, maybe? It was pretty subtle though, and as for skulls, i got a ton of them in level 1 a few times, and only one in later levels other times, so that seemed more up to the random number generator than the level.
I liked how some 1x1 corrupted blocks looked like corrupted skulls. I don't know if that was intentional or if i was just seeing things, but the first few times those went by i was wondering if they'd suddenly wake up and come after me. Would've been nice if some of them did! (Well, not *nice*, but, you know =))
There's something about the visibility shrinking that makes the gameplay of avoiding collision fun and interesting, for me. Also, thank you for turning me on to Bosca Ceoil.
If you can balance that a little bit, this looks like an awesome game.