Monsters spawn from the bottom left, and try to path to your base in the top right. Move near them to shoot them with the turrets on your back, and block them with your body to stop them from getting to the base - they will not move through you. Occasionally small gears will spawn on the board. Eat them to grow longer, gaining another turret and more length for blocking the monsters. You can loop around the edges of the board, but don't hit your body or your own base, or it's game over.
Very cool. A lot of LD41 entries handled the theme by combining genres in an awkward way, which requires less inventiveness, your combination actually works well. One annoying thing is I couldn't see my exact score after death. Very nice graphics and music, as for sound effects I wished they are a bit juicier, but this is still much better than not having them at all. This could turn out a quality stand alone game, if you go for it maybe replace the gears concept with something cooler and add upgrades to individual parts or different types or parts to be collected. GJ!
Very well done. I agree with the other comments that you've found a great way to combine both the genres in a way that improves them instead of detracts from them. My only advice is that it's a little hard to see the power up against the background, and that pressing esc doesn't quit the game. Other than that great job.
A very cool concept. Very well executed, as well. I don't in particular have any criticism, although I have to wonder if it's possible to get so long that you can just form a continuous wall, blocking all enemies. (I didn't manage to do so).
I really like the music -- although I can't tell, given that you've disabled the audio category -- whether it was made as part of the jam or not.
@jimmothysanchez Thanks for the feedback. We planned to implement a pause menu where you could quit, but we ran out of time and directly using ESC to quit felt a little too frustrating(maybe you wanted to pause, instead you would have lost all your progress).
@theMonsterFromTheDeep There is a specific mechanic in place against this very thing you describe: when the enemies cannot find a path to your base(you are blocking them fully), they will take the shortest route and will eat through your body at that part, meaning you now have a small snake again :). But otherwise they will try to find a way around you, which means that you can build a snake labyrinth of sorts. In the earlier versions of the game, the eating through didn't work and at one point you had infinite farming capabilities.
The audio category is disabled because the sounds and the music were not made by us(found from net).
Snake is quite the classic. It is about avoiding the walls and the ever growing tail. Shmups in general are also about dodging things: enemies and bullets. Why then, when put together, there is no need for evasion?
After picking up a few powerups the best strategy becomes doing nothing. Automatically scrolling from left to right is enough; the enemies don't stand a chance!
The snake won't hit its own tail if there is no reason to turn, no reason to take risks. Nothing happens when hitting an enemy. Changing this would have been enough to incentivize movement. Actual walls at the area borders, but also inside it, would have helped tremendously as well. Force the player to move around, add in some challenge!
Spawning enemies from different positions is yet another possible solution to the same problem.
The graphics are somewhat inconsistent. The backgrounds and the entities being in a different styles, not that they look all that terrible on their own. Audio is a worse offender. The 10 second background loop is very annoying and the sound effects peak the volume in an ugly way when many effects play at the same time.
The potential of the idea is, unfortunately, not realized here. A for effort.
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I really like the music -- although I can't tell, given that you've disabled the audio category -- whether it was made as part of the jam or not.
@cool-summit Thanks!
@theMonsterFromTheDeep There is a specific mechanic in place against this very thing you describe: when the enemies cannot find a path to your base(you are blocking them fully), they will take the shortest route and will eat through your body at that part, meaning you now have a small snake again :). But otherwise they will try to find a way around you, which means that you can build a snake labyrinth of sorts. In the earlier versions of the game, the eating through didn't work and at one point you had infinite farming capabilities.
The audio category is disabled because the sounds and the music were not made by us(found from net).
After picking up a few powerups the best strategy becomes doing nothing. Automatically scrolling from left to right is enough; the enemies don't stand a chance!
The snake won't hit its own tail if there is no reason to turn, no reason to take risks. Nothing happens when hitting an enemy. Changing this would have been enough to incentivize movement. Actual walls at the area borders, but also inside it, would have helped tremendously as well. Force the player to move around, add in some challenge!
Spawning enemies from different positions is yet another possible solution to the same problem.
The graphics are somewhat inconsistent. The backgrounds and the entities being in a different styles, not that they look all that terrible on their own. Audio is a worse offender. The 10 second background loop is very annoying and the sound effects peak the volume in an ugly way when many effects play at the same time.
The potential of the idea is, unfortunately, not realized here. A for effort.