Shāshǒu the Panda is an arcade-style game where you play as a insane hunter defending a panda bear from other hunters. Try to beat your own high score in this addictive pixel-art shooter!! Feel free to leave your most terrible, horrible feedback! (Or positive feedback, I like that too.) ScreenShotHunterGame.png
EDIT: This is the first game jam I've actually completed. I'm so happy to see so many people complimenting the music and graphics. I'm even more happy to be getting some feedback on the shallow game play. I intended to add more features, like different enemies. However, I had to cut back so that I could finish in time for the comp deadline. (Funny, I ended up missing the comp deadline anyways. ) Maybe I'll come back to this game on a later date. For now, thanks for the feedback, and for the ratings!
Amazing artstile and music! Blasting the enemies feels really satisfying. Different enemies or the game gradually getting harder over time would make a great addition.
I really liked the game! I like snappy movement and gorgeus graphics. I had little issues to get used to fast enemy moevement but finally I figured it out and got even score of almost 4000! Cheers :D
I liked that you put in some juicy sound effects and screenshake, but honestly, good graphics and audio cannot fix a fundamentally... simple game. Games are most fun when you have to make meaningful decisions, and when the best decision is not obvious. Currently, it feels more like a sort of 'test' than a game. You basically have to walk left or right to the nearest man and shoot him. That's it. Maybe if you included other pandas to save, or some other thing to do at the same time, the player could get stuck in a loop of "do I save the panda, or do I use that machine?" A game I just played called Save the Earth Initiative manages to pull this off. It's very simple, but also very fun.
Jonas Tyroller has some good videos on decision making:
Killer sprites and subtle animation, really satisfying game speed and feel, simple and addictive. The choice to majorly reduce the range of the gun was extremely smart. The game got a bit easier when I discovered that I cannot, in fact, accidentally shoot Shashou myself. A neat feature would be for bamboo to grow a tile or two away and cause Shashou to become uncentered, heightening the danger from one side or the other. Also an aerial enemy or two would help justify the jump button, but these are just ideas; in the end I really enjoyed the game.
@myles-mccoy I love the bamboo idea! Aerial enemies would really help the game too. (And be extremely easy to implement, honestly.) Thanks for the feedback!
@nnnikki Thanks for the great feedback. You're absolutely right. I originally planned some different types of enemies and such to vary the game play, but I had to cut them due to scope. (I'm pretty busy, despite everything going on right now.)
As for the Jonas videos, I've watched both already. (I love that dude, he's always so full of energy. ) That being said,
I'm still glad you found the art and music to be nice. Thanks again for playing and rating my game!
Love the dithered vista art and the happy bouncing panda! The music is catchy and sets a fun mood. I started it up again while writing this and was happily surprised to see my high score preserved! Well done.
Very fun game and the screenshake was a nice touch. I liked the graphics and I loved being able to see a cute panda to remind me what I was fighting for. PS you adding that the player character is an 'insane hunter' made it really funny lol
Loved the panda sprite :) Well done on finishing! I found you can just sit inside the panda and shoot from there and got a really highscore, I think one more enemy would have been nice or perhaps a gun that could shoot further as a power up? I liked the simple controls and the ui for them :)
Really liked the retro art and music style and as said above would be nice to have more variations of enemies or other things to do. But overall really nice game
The graphics look really nice but I would have liked a more complex core game loop. Maybe a different enemy type or some kind of weapon powerup. Other than that, well done!
The level of polish surrounding the title screen brought a smile to my face.
The range of your weapon unclear, it worked better when I pretended it was a knife and just ran up to the hunters (this managed me a hi-score of 3880).
The speed & difficulty is high enough that the repetitiveness doesn't really matter _that_ much (for the amount you play a jam game anyway), but I can imagine that, combined with the simplicity of the basic gameplay, will get quite boring after extensive periods of play.
I was very confused at first because I was attempting to stay near the panda and fire. It seems weird that the gun has such a short range. Nice work on the camera shake and illustrations!
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I had little issues to get used to fast enemy moevement but finally I figured it out and got even score of almost 4000!
Cheers :D
Jonas Tyroller has some good videos on decision making:
A neat feature would be for bamboo to grow a tile or two away and cause Shashou to become uncentered, heightening the danger from one side or the other. Also an aerial enemy or two would help justify the jump button, but these are just ideas; in the end I really enjoyed the game.
As for the Jonas videos, I've watched both already. (I love that dude, he's always so full of energy. ) That being said,
I'm still glad you found the art and music to be nice. Thanks again for playing and rating my game!
Yeah, it's a bit simple but it's just a 2 day game and the world is on fire. Don't take it to heart!
PS you adding that the player character is an 'insane hunter' made it really funny lol
The range of your weapon unclear, it worked better when I pretended it was a knife and just ran up to the hunters (this managed me a hi-score of 3880).
The speed & difficulty is high enough that the repetitiveness doesn't really matter _that_ much (for the amount you play a jam game anyway), but I can imagine that, combined with the simplicity of the basic gameplay, will get quite boring after extensive periods of play.
cool game