I thought it would be fun to attempt flying some kind of plane or airship that was running out of power. So you'll be flying an airship that needs constant attention, cranking up the engine and gun alternatively in order to survive!
Controls ---
[A] and [D] will move you (the squid) around your ship.
Power the engine by moving all the way to the left and rapidly clicking the Crank Engine button.
Fire the gun by moving all the way to the right and rapidly clicking the Crank Gun button. Ludum Dare 39, 48-hour Compo: Running out of Power
Advanced tips ---
- Finesse is key in many situations! You may want to let the ship drop unpowered and let the birds fly over you (they move predictably), or only give it one or two clicks to bump over a bird.
- If you fly too high, your engine will give out on you. Try to stay around the beginning height to give yourself room to maneuver.
- The boss is hard. It is possible to win and make it to the end! Try to fly over the arcing birds, and take advantage of the rest periods to put as many bullets into the boss as possible.
Thanks folks! @rijnswand -- 100% agreed, I found it pretty challenging to create a backdrop that both fit the theme of the game and gave some indication of your position and speed. I added some particle effects in the final minutes, but I don't think it was enough either. I also added a trail to the ship, but it disappeared by the time I compiled the game-- I think in my final hour rush, I added it in Play mode like a dingus :P
Interesting game idea. But I just don't know why the engine can't keep powering up even after I stand all the way left and keep clicking on the button. Not sure if this is a bug or I am playing it wrong ?
@trulyspinach: Hmm, can you give me some more details? Are you playing the Windows, Mac, or Linux version? Are you using a laptop with a touchpad? Do you have a normal looking framerate, or is it choppy? What graphics settings/resolution did you set in the launcher?
The ship is docked at the beginning, and needs to be ramped up to about 75% before it launches-- you need to click CRANK ENGINE button pretty quickly (do not hold, click multiple times) to get it to go up, and you should see the green bar fill up the button. If you are flying and have it continually cranked to max speed, you are moving upwards and rightwards, it's just hard to tell because I didn't have the time to implement more visual effects to show motion.
*"rapidly clicking"* oh dear... There isn't that much clicking thankfully, but, ah, not the most pleasant design that rapid clicking.
Neat and funny idea. Is it fun though? I'm not so sure. There seems to be a solid yet boring strategy which works well. Stay above the birds, crank up the engine, crank up the cannon, swoop down a bit, repeat. I guess you'd eventually get too close to the sun for real, but I didn't get to test that.
Instead I tried the courageous route. *Have at them, full speed ahead, man the cannons, en garde!* My ship went down pretty much immediately, there are that many birds.
The tutorial should be skipped when restarting. It is a good tutorial, but I don't need it a second time. The text sometimes skips forward before I could read it too, unfortunate.
Ok job this. Funny to say the least. The graphics aren't bad either.
Fun little concept, took a little while to get the hang of moving around and then clicking the appropriate button. I wonder if just moving to either the the propeller crank or the gun crank and then tapping an "action" button would be more approachable? I liked the cloud effect but it was slightly disorienting due to the direction they moved (sometimes I felt like I was moving backwards, visually). Overall though, nice job!
Its very fun but it was confusing at first with the controls but once I got the hang of it, it was amazing. The graphics are good (the cloud effect especially). All in all it was a good, fun game to play. Keep it up!
Nice graphics, liked the design of the ships. Did find the controls a bit difficult to get used to at first as it wasn't what I'd been expecting. Good how you eased the player into the game though as I think this allowed me to learn how the controls worked.
It is really hard. I haven't managed to take down Big Bird yet.