Sparks Of Light

by barwani
co-authored: @hyperspace, @cqnpvr, @purpl
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.35
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.26
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.18
Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.90
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.26
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.21
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.29
​Wield the Sparks of Light to pass the perilous trial that lies ahead of you! These Sparks are your only offense and defense, sacrifice them at your own risk!​!

SparksOfLight.png
As a Spark wielder, you are able to control the mystical Sparks of Light at your own free will. These sparks are your greatest offense, and your greatest defense. However, they are not resilient, and will dissipate after being hit. Can you keep yourself alive along with your Sparks of Light? Or will you sacrifice them to protect yourself?

Credits:

Sprites: CQNPVR

Music: HyperSpace

Gameplay: Barwani

SFX: HyperSpace + Barwani

Level Design: PurplDude

Tileset: Mythical Dungeon Tileset by armisius (https://armisius.itch.io/multi-size-mythical-dungeon-tileset)

Comments17

cqnpvr18 Apr 2020, 12:55
wahoo
Ugghmaster21 Apr 2020, 12:45
I appreciate seeing more people build games for Linux, however you seem to have a bug in the Linux build that prevents players from progressing to the second level(screen goes black, but location does not change).
Despite that, what little i have seen from this game looked really good.
Nice art, fitting music and good explanation of player controls.
~ ugghmaster from @WeAreDev
rk3Omega
rk3Omega21 Apr 2020, 13:31
Nice job on the game! I love the music, it's has such a great feel to it, and the character sprite is very interesting. It's a lot of fun to run around hitting enemies with my orbs.

Light2Ds in Godot are a massive performance hit, I found the game to be a bit laggy because of it. You don't seem to be doing anything fancy with the lighting (occlusion or shaders) so it would be a lot more performance friendly to fake a lighting affect with shaders.

My biggest issue is that enemy projectiles are extremely fast. So fast that I actually didn't realize that they even shot projectiles until several levels into the game. Enemy projectiles are typically a lot slower and very noticeable to allow the player the chance to dodge them. I found it almost impossible to dodge the projectiles and thus gameplay was mostly a matter of luck.

Because of this I found the 7th (I think) level to be too difficult. There's not a lot of room to manuever around and with the projectiles, I eventually had to give up.

Collision with enemies is also a bit odd. There's a lot of empty space between you and the enemy.
Barwani
Barwaniauthor21 Apr 2020, 15:25
@ugghmaster I've fixed the issue!
@rk3Omega Thanks for the review! the collision thing isn't actually collision, I've programmed the enemies to try and make distance from the player. The projectiles should definitely be slowed down. I'm probably going to get rid of the light2d nodes If i make a new build.
Thank you both for playing!
Gonzako21 Apr 2020, 15:28
Can you make a WebGL build?
ForgeronStudio
ForgeronStudio21 Apr 2020, 15:37
Amazing game! I really loved the music in particular, and the feel of the game was really coherent and well thought out.
My main comment is that the most viable strategy was to keep the sparks far away from you all the time so that they never get hit. Having to dodge the enemies was still a lot of fun, but I never had to worry about moving the sparks. I think you could have more types of enemies to force the player to vary their strategy throughout the game (like maybe enemies who teleport close to you and encourage you to bring the sparks closer).
Whismirk
Whismirk21 Apr 2020, 15:54
Quite a clever concept ! Didn't really find a defensive use for the sparks though, as it was always way more worth it to try to dodge or take a few hit in order to save them. Though quite short, it was a pretty fun game, and I really enjoyed playing it. Of course, a few more enemy types would have been a great addition !
Metju21 Apr 2020, 16:02
Loving the visuals!
VaizAragorn
VaizAragorn21 Apr 2020, 16:12
Ooh man this was nice to play, it felt smooth and juicy. Also liked the idea. Keep up your good work!
Barwani
Barwaniauthor21 Apr 2020, 17:50
@metju thank you! I'll pass it on to the artist!
@vaizaragorn Good to hear! Thanks for playing!
@forgeronstudio Thanks for the criticism! I'm definitely considering continuing this project, so I'll take this into consideration.
@whismirk Thank you for the comment and for playing! I'll consider it when I continue the project.
@gonzako i made an HTML5 build but it runs too slowly.
DocGeraud
DocGeraud22 Apr 2020, 13:12
The game was cool! It was easy to rush to the end in each level, but I still had a lot of fun playing it. Good job.
Antti Haavikko
Antti Haavikko22 Apr 2020, 14:42
Neat idea. But the actual mechanic might need some more work. It was a total gamble who wins a "battle". The fish could sometimes just easily shoot between your sparks and there was nothing you could really do about it. Also was quite frequent to soft lock you out when running out of recharge spots because of the forementioned crapshoot with the fishes.

I usually don't like to just tell that the mechanic isn't very fun and doesn't work without offering some solutions. I pretty much think that any mechanic can be made work with enough tweaks and fine tuning. But I'm kinda drawing blanks here. Well first of all, it needs to be slowed down a lot so you can actually try to time things correctly. I think just slowing down the spark rotation and enemy projectiles would do the trick here. Or are my old man reflexes just too slow for this kind of game? And yeah, as someone already has pointed out, enemy variation would be good too. But you can't really just do cookie cutter enemies (like the current fish kinda is) in a mechanic driven game, you need to design them around the mechanic to compliment it and pull forward fun/clever different uses for it.

The tutorial straight up lied few times...

"Use a spark and you lose it..."

"You must kill everything to go to next level..."

There was this minor visual glitch where the low health flashing didn't reset properly...

But yeah, it was quite a fun little game. Of course as I already mentioned, the mechanic isn't really encaging and doesn't have enough depth in it but it did have the wings to carry through those few levels of content that the game currently had quite easily.

Anyways, good job! :thumbsup:
GOD COLO
GOD COLO22 Apr 2020, 14:46
First Godot Game I'm playing for the jam!
The hit effect felt impactful !
The sound effects were also on point !
Greato Jobu!
Tomyomy22 Apr 2020, 14:59
The game was quite interesting, it had a unique concept but I could run straight to the end in some levels and the projectiles that enemies threw my way were hard to see (and there wasn't much of an indicator for when you take damage). Still, the gameplay was enjoyable and the sound design was pretty neat, so well done!
Duskel22 Apr 2020, 15:21
Great job !
cheesepencil
cheesepencil22 Apr 2020, 23:25
These dadgum starfish keep zapping my orbs! I hope I get to say that in a real conversation one day. It was difficult, but I liked the mood and music. Swirling orbs count as innovation in my book!
AndideBob
AndideBob3 May 2020, 13:30
A neat little game, but I don't know if I found a cheat or not. If you press Space the sparks orbit around you in a bigger circle giving much more range, and they also do not dissapear after being hit anymore. Like this it was a breeze to get through the game. Either way the game looks nice and has a pretty cool idea behind it. Well done!
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