Star Buffs

by majk-fl
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.22
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.14
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.41
Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.61
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.65
Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.92
In Star Buffs your goal is to destroy as many enemies as you can, using hostile ships and various buffs.

Scr2.png
CONTROLS:

• W and S to fly up and down

• A and D to fly left and right

• SPACE to buff

• SHIFT to boost

• E to take control over enemy

• MOUSELEFT to shoot

Scr1.png
HOW TO PLAY:

After every take over you get 3 buffs. By pressing SPACE you are using 1 buff and healing yourself, but also your enemies get higher max hp, full health and random buff to statistics.

To take control over enemy you must have enaugh points. By taking control over hostile your old ship destroys itsfelf, and you get as many random buffs as you made in past.
Also all of enemies instantly explode and loose all buffs.But be careful. After taking over your health falls faster and enemies are spawning more frequently.

So enjoy playing. But remember - better way to defeat your enemy is to *keep it alive* and take control over it!

Comments45

Alex Mulkerrin
Alex Mulkerrin19 Apr 2020, 22:30
Challenging game, reminded me of geometry wars. I really like the neon lighting the ships and the bullets have. I managed to kill 18 enemy ships but I suspect I was playing it wrong as I never switched.
MAJK_FLauthor19 Apr 2020, 22:36
@alex-mulkerrin Thanks for your opinion! I added that lightening and post processing to hide my terrible art skills :)
BJakubowski
BJakubowski19 Apr 2020, 23:36
Yeah, game make some cool neon effects, but it's kinda too easy
K4V0X20 Apr 2020, 01:16
Really love the idea. Would be nice to see what kind of buffs you gave. The boost doesnt seem to be doing anything tho. Really great lighting as well.
ReDDarKwh
ReDDarKwh20 Apr 2020, 01:44
Gotta say, love the effects. Only downside is that the ai is a little too in your face for my tastes.
Galgris
Galgris20 Apr 2020, 01:59
Nice effects! Too hard for me, though.
rickzyYT20 Apr 2020, 02:26
Fun and nice effects and sprites! Maybe add some healing item or something in order to make it a bit more interesting.
Electric Blue20 Apr 2020, 02:28
Fun game and I like the neon effect.
captainlazer120 Apr 2020, 02:30
This game is tough. I had fun though. I like how shooting direction and movment are not tied together. Like the art style too.
Stevis9320 Apr 2020, 02:56
Fun game, very good looking too. Although i couldn't work out how to use E to "take control of enemy".
Also, is there any reason why I couldn't just hold down boost forever?
RNGames
RNGames20 Apr 2020, 02:58
👍 Nice lighting effects
👍 Lots of particles that add game juice
👎 Enemies can sometimes come out of nowhere since there are so fast and the camera is zoomed in
TheseusInABottle
TheseusInABottle20 Apr 2020, 04:00
Enjoyable. I feel like more could have been done graphically. While I always love the geometry wars aesthetic of glowy ships I feel like you should have gone whole hog with it by making the walls of the arena light up and maybe even darkening up the floor a bit as because of the light circle on the floor it kind makes it seem like there is just a spotlight above the player.
Inka McAtee
Inka McAtee20 Apr 2020, 10:08
The Power of Love ! :3 Like the HeartShape
MAJK_FLauthor20 Apr 2020, 10:27
@inka-mcatee Fun fact - In the beginning there were hearts instead of ships. :) This is first enemy/hearth sprite
Ruoyu
Ruoyu20 Apr 2020, 11:25
The gameplay is a bit too hard. But I like the lighting and effects (seems the new 2D lighting in Unity works really well) - they add a lot of polish to the gameplay
Fictions
Fictions20 Apr 2020, 11:32
The game is amazingly difficult xD I absolutly dig your UI Animations on the menu - nice touch. Hope you had a great LD. :smile:
MAJK_FLauthor20 Apr 2020, 11:34
@ruoyu Yep, I agree. New Unity 2d lighting is awesome
MAJK_FLauthor20 Apr 2020, 11:50
@fictions Thanks. I see that I have exaggerated a little bit with difficulty. I will try to add difficulty levels in post compo version
justalocalhero20 Apr 2020, 12:14
Looks really good. Feels smooth. Pretty fun after the initial learning curve.

It felt like almost all of the danger was in the first moments after an enemy came on screen. Maybe a farther camera angle would help. I guess I could have stopped to check the map constantly to dodge things off screen but that feels against the spirit of the game.

Maybe the heal should be disabled while you're at full health. I used it up quite a few times at first because I wasn't sure what it was for.

Spamming click to shoot isn't the most fun mechanic.

It'd be nice to know a summary of your buffs. Mostly the ships I took over felt similar to the one I started with, but maybe I never got far enough to notice.
MAJK_FLauthor20 Apr 2020, 12:31
@justalocalhero Thanks for being honest. I will try to fix this issues in post compo version
munkkeli
munkkeli20 Apr 2020, 13:46
Love the looks and style! The gameplay is also very fun and action packed. I do feel like the buffs are not noticable enough though, could not feel any difference myself. I think the difficulty is good, not too easy but also not extremely difficult. A very solid entry :)
MAJK_FLauthor20 Apr 2020, 14:49
@munkkeli Yeah, current buff system adds from 0,01 to 0,03 to fire rate, damage, speed, or projectile speed. I will change it to something bigger in post compo version, at least for enemies
LouieJams
LouieJams20 Apr 2020, 22:04
I really like all the effects and style, I found it quite hard to back away from the enemies once they've gotten close enough and my health was just zapped away! Fun little shooter :D
bmacintosh
bmacintosh21 Apr 2020, 01:09
Great job communicating when enemies are spawning with the audio and particle bursts. I'd have liked to be able to hold down the mouse button to fire rather than just mashing it all the time.
slimabob
slimabob21 Apr 2020, 01:36
Very tough but I enjoyed the art style. Could use some background music to elevate things to an entirely new level!
MAJK_FLauthor21 Apr 2020, 07:20
@louiejams Thanks. I"m considering introducing dash instead of boost, which would prevent the situations like you described

@bmacintosh Thank you. I was wondering how to communicate the existence of an opponent, one of the ideas was to add arrow in his direction, but I decided that glowing particles would work better with map

@slimabob I agree, but unfortunately I can't create music :(
Mungo_
Mungo_22 Apr 2020, 14:17
Nice work, I like how snappy the movement is
Untitled Studios
Untitled Studios22 Apr 2020, 14:42
Fun, snappy, and quick! Very polished and fun, although it could use a little bit more love as far as sound goes. The mechanics took a second to figure out, but once I did they were pretty intuitive.
BlackOpsBen
BlackOpsBen22 Apr 2020, 14:47
THat was very difficult. I couldn't tell if the boost was even doing anything. THe graphics look good, but I would go for more visual feedback.
Ridde22 Apr 2020, 14:47
really fun game nice work!
Vivoubos
Vivoubos22 Apr 2020, 14:49
Nice work, the movement is great also the difficult. Congrats
Grizley22 Apr 2020, 14:52
Great game no bugs or anything bad nice mood with the everything is darkness and only u and the enemies and projectiles are lighted would like a bigger aim on the mouse tho but overall great!
DataGreed
DataGreed22 Apr 2020, 14:52
Fun twin-stick shooter with nice graphics! I wish you could hold the fire button to shoot though :)
fabula_rasa22 Apr 2020, 14:55
Very, very challenging. It's a cool take on the theme! Some background music would add a lot to the atmosphere. Great job on the game :)
colan
colan22 Apr 2020, 15:02
Really nice art and lighting! Good job
bemmu22 Apr 2020, 15:02
I liked the glow effects. It was very hard at first, until finding that circle strafing around an enemy works pretty well, until another enemy comes along to mess up your circle :)

Wasn't so into having to click all the time to fire.
MAJK_FLauthor22 Apr 2020, 15:13
@blackopsben Thank you for opinion. In upgraded version will be dash instead

@ridde Thanks!

@vivoubos Glad to hear it because I hate making movement :)

@grizley Thank you! I love playing with light :)

@datagreed Great Idea! I will add it to post compo version

@fabula-rasa Thanks! Sadly I can't create music :(
MAJK_FLauthor22 Apr 2020, 15:22
@colan Thank you!

@bemmu Thanks! I'm glad you found the most optimal tactics :)
fabula_rasa22 Apr 2020, 15:57
@majk-fl I can't create music either. But there are some nice free assets out there that you may consider looking into for the next jam. I can, in particular, recommend https://freemusicarchive.org/ (for the actual music) and https://freesound.org/ (for music and sounds). Most of the assets there are on CC 0 license or on attribution license - so you can use them for jamming easily, as long as you give credit to the authors.

For this jam, we made our own sound effects but we still can't do music to save our lives :wink:, so we took the music track from freemusicarchive and it works very well. Just a tip :)
fabula_rasa22 Apr 2020, 16:30
@majk-fl Aaaa, you're compo! Disregard everything I said in my previous post :wink:
MAJK_FLauthor22 Apr 2020, 16:41
@fabula-rasa Thanks for your help! I'm afraid I couldn't use it in compo, but I will definitely use it in the future :)
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