As a stone, turn into a squid. As a squid, turn into a bird. As a bird, turn back into a stone. You get points through daredevil tactics, flying and swimming as close to your enemies as you can without getting hit.
Worked solo, and created all art and sound myself, BUT some of the graphics and sound were made before the compo so I'm opting out of those categories.
How to get points:
You start as a stone. When you're a stone, you have to be fully submerged before you can become a squid.
As a squid, you can get points from the Marlins in two ways. One's really dangerous, and one's only *pretty* dangerous.
It's pretty dangerous to wait for a Marlin to randomly charge its attack at you, and then let it narrowly whiz by while it's still going fast enough. Think of it as being kind of like a bullfighter. This gives you two points.
It's REALLY dangerous to be close enough to a Marlin when it thrusts at you, but that gets you five points.
Keep in mind: you ONLY get points from Marlins when they are either going above a certain speed, or right when they start their thrust at you. The rest of the time it's not worth it to be close to one.
You have to get at least one point underwater to transform into a gull. Your background will be red when this happens. Swim to the very top of the waterline and click outside the waterline to become a gull.
When you're a gull, you get a point by flying in front of a pelican. You can do this to the same pelican again when it bounces off the side.
Ack, bounding box collisions with diagonal movement! A small tweak there and I would enjoy the challenge even more. Interesting game, took quite a few tries to figure out how to become a bird. I'm a worse seagull than I am a squid!
This is a fun and addictive game. I'm the kind of player who rushes heads first into danger and the game.It feels rewarding to dance on the edge of danger. The reward for managing it is that you can choose to go to an even more challenging area with more upside. I didn't pay so much attention to the points but how quickly I could become a bird and then how long I could stay up there (not very long usually xD).
If you update the game post-jam, consider adding an easy mode where you have circle colliders instead of bounding boxes. :)
Fun, little addictive game. Took me a while (and a couple of re-reads) to understand what everything means.
Gets a lot better when I realised it's like most bullet hells but with a much larger bounding box. (and I like those games too.)
For a post jam version I'd reduce the boxes to a few pixels instead (but not reducing the close calls radius). Would make the close calls feel even better.
T
tsjost20 Apr 2016, 08:59
Glad you were able to fix the mp3 problem!
This game is extremely hard. It took a while to even figure out what was going on, but then I realised red background means I can shapeshift. However I have yet to advance past the squid stage.
I keep doing near-hits (a few pixels) on the fishes but I never manage to get the red background. Usually I get red background when they crash into me. Once I whizzed past a fish and nothing happened; it stopped a distance away, and just when it started charging again the background turned red, even though I wasn't close.
I managed to get red background without dying twice. First time I reached the surface but was unable to transform into a bird despite clicking. The second time I had to play Frogger to avoid the fishes, but failed.
It's an interesting idea but the mechanics aren't very intuitive unfortunately.
interesting concept, was pretty difficult though. and the text was very hard to read, i spent like 2 minutes just trying to start the game. nice sounds though
That is extremely difficult. Not really my kind of thing, but it does remind me of Burnout and that is always a plus. The retry text needs to be brighter. I was skeptical of click controls, but it works pretty well in this context and I get why you used them.
wala!~ this game is really fun and unique! these icon have really great designed and full of interesting. acitong have great rhythm, easy/clear and meaning enough. sound also fit them very good. only the text in mainmenu could be more clear. totally i think this is a solid entry with great idea,and worth to play~
Comments20
Reminded me of the shmups where you get bonus points for grazing bullets.
If you update the game post-jam, consider adding an easy mode where you have circle colliders instead of bounding boxes. :)
Like other tester I recommend to use circular collider if you want to improve the game feel :)
Otherwise, good job I had fun :)
But others have already elaborated on that.
Gets a lot better when I realised it's like most bullet hells but with a much larger bounding box. (and I like those games too.)
For a post jam version I'd reduce the boxes to a few pixels instead (but not reducing the close calls radius). Would make the close calls feel even better.
This game is extremely hard. It took a while to even figure out what was going on, but then I realised red background means I can shapeshift. However I have yet to advance past the squid stage.
I keep doing near-hits (a few pixels) on the fishes but I never manage to get the red background. Usually I get red background when they crash into me. Once I whizzed past a fish and nothing happened; it stopped a distance away, and just when it started charging again the background turned red, even though I wasn't close.
I managed to get red background without dying twice. First time I reached the surface but was unable to transform into a bird despite clicking. The second time I had to play Frogger to avoid the fishes, but failed.
It's an interesting idea but the mechanics aren't very intuitive unfortunately.
:D
these icon have really great designed and full of interesting.
acitong have great rhythm, easy/clear and meaning enough.
sound also fit them very good. only the text in mainmenu could be more clear. totally i think this is a solid entry with great idea,and worth to play~