Substance

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.79
Fun★★★★★★★★★★4.03
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.16
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.84
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.05
Audio★★★★★★★★★★4.75
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.40
Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.65
Collect Coins while avoiding dangerous obstacles, and be sure to get out before you die!
The More coins you collect, the more dangerous it gets and the more that it is at stake.
You only collect the coins you get if you make it back out.
You must decide whether to keep going or to save what you have.

There are various power ups that you can buy to help you out, but they may have some unwanted side effects.
The more you have, the worse it is.
Works best on Chrome
https://niborious.itch.io/substance

WASD or Arrow keys
M to mute music.

Music taken from free domain.

Factory Time by Visager
http://freemusicarchive.org/tag/video_games/

*Edit since deadline
- fixed a bug that caused held arrow keys to scroll the page
- fixed a bug that caused the rare spinners to instantly kill you if spawned on top of you
- fixed the price of one-time items not disappearing after you buy them

Comments18

eerongal
eerongal4 Dec 2017, 04:25
This is a fun game! Really well thought out, and it gets pretty tough. I also really like the art.
RNGSilvercraft
RNGSilvercraft4 Dec 2017, 05:36
The gameplay is simple,but it works.Like the Atari style artwork!
SammyB
SammyB4 Dec 2017, 05:41
The pacing of the game and the increasing difficult of waves made this a nice little roguelike esque game. Had a few "screaming like a little girl" moments while racing back to the exit!
Xacur
Xacur4 Dec 2017, 05:48
I have a problem with the page, when press to go down, the page scrolls down and I lose the game. Maybe you checked the option for enabling that in itch.io, but I don't know.
Nammflow
Nammflow4 Dec 2017, 05:49
This game was a lot of fun to play around with! I could definitely see myself spending hours playing this game. It's that mixture of rogue-like and bullet-hell that makes this game work really well!
mightymarcus
mightymarcus4 Dec 2017, 05:55
Yes. The scrolling is irritating. The game is nice to play.
niborious
niboriousauthor4 Dec 2017, 06:23
@xacur, @mightymarcus
Thank you for your feedback! The scrolling issue has been fixed!
(I had to double check the rules to make sure I could bug fix after the deadline)
niborious
niboriousauthor4 Dec 2017, 06:32
@bradleysmith
I agree about the music, but I can't take credit.
I took it from the public domain, and I realize now that I should opt out of Audio ratings.
Which is unfortunate because I did put effort into recording original sound effects.
sbarrio
sbarrio4 Dec 2017, 11:22
Nice game, I liked the music and graphic style. Gameplay is well balanced as well. Nice job!
bradur
bradur5 Dec 2017, 08:11
What cool game! I really enjoyed the controls and the idea. It was hard but fair. Tried all the upgrades, the wheelbarrow was cool :). The music was very well done!
mgsx
mgsx5 Dec 2017, 17:04
Simple and efficient ! i always want to collect more ... and then dying so often AHHHHHHH !
The music worth at least 5 stars so bad it's not yours ... :-(
(IMO the mute music option isn't necessary)
I found the font not readable enough.
But the overall is good, nice job !
tomer_cool
tomer_cool5 Dec 2017, 20:17
Great game, fun and addictive.
grostonton
grostonton5 Dec 2017, 20:29
Yes fun and addictive are the words, and i'll add pile in the theme !
GastricSparrow
GastricSparrow6 Dec 2017, 13:07
Brilliant! Simple yet well executed graphics. Really enjoyed the hoarding. One problem I had was a split second freezeframe every couple seconds, not sure if any other had this problem? If not for that this game would have been perfect for me.
randomhuman
randomhuman6 Dec 2017, 21:41
Really fun, but I'm not sure there's anything to keep me in the arena rather than just collecting a few coins and then depositing them. Similarly, the wheelbarrow didn't add much for me.
Thomas Molby
Thomas Molby6 Dec 2017, 21:42
So fun! I actually went back and played some more after closing it. Especially love that the background is just random rects
neontropics
neontropics6 Dec 2017, 21:45
Nice game! Simple idea but the gameplay is well-tuned and it it immediately fun. Pretty great music as well - I like that it goes almost semi-dissonant for a little bit and then gets really funky afterwards.

As a shmup player I feel like the player's hitbox is waaay too big though - you don't get get those exciting close calls and most of the times I die I'm more "really?" than "welp gotta do better next time". It's less of an issue after buying a speed upgrade or two, but the hitbox could easily be cut in half I think.

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