Gravity Blade

by chainedlupine

co-authored: @sindri

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.31

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.36

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.50

Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.64

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.36

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.36

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.02

"Take Flight - Gravity Blade!"

"Eliminate enemy forces who have forcibly mined away your planet's energy crystals to use against you! Using Gravity Blade's powerful Graviton Generator, fire particle beams, capture enemies and siphon their power using a Graviton Snare, and charge up energy to release captured enemies in a wide barrage of junk with the Graviton Launcher!

Wipe them out, collect crystals, and save your world!

- - - KNOWN ISSUES - - -

- Win64 build crashes if you lose all lives. Use Win32 for now.

- - - CONTROLS - - -

Keyboard controls only for now due to time constraints:
* X (tap): Fire Particle Beam
* C (tap): Fire Graviton Snare at weakened (flashing) enemies to capture them and power up / fill your Graviton Loop gauge
* X (hold & release): Charge up a powerful junk shot with the Graviton Launcher. Kills with these projectiles drop better crystals, but power down your Particle Beam!

- - - ABOUT - - -

Gravity Blade is a scrolling shoot-em-up inspired by many classics of the genre, such as *Gradius*, *Axelay*, *R-Type*, and so on. We decided to interpret the theme "Caught in a Loop" a little differently by having the player use the ship's Graviton Generator to capture weakened enemies within a Graviton Loop. This uses enemy energy to power up the player's own weapons.

The player can either decide to keep their upgraded weapons, or to hold fire to charge up the Graviton Launcher. Upon release, the player will fire a wave of captured enemies as junk, which deals high damage and grants better loot on kills, but also powers the player's Particle Beam weapon back down again. This allows for a gameplay loop of fighting, capturing, powering up, releasing, collecting higher points, and repeating!

This is a project we both got really into, and will likely continue pursuing after the fact - both being big fans of the genre, this prompt was a great kick into gear to get started on something that could shape up to be extra cool!

Tags: #2d, #shoot 'em up, #side scroller

Genres: shooter

Comments24

Jag5 Oct 2020, 21:41

I dont see a download link for your game :o

Sindri5 Oct 2020, 22:21

Download link will be posted very shortly! The final build came in juuuust under the wire because of the final push to get the boss working. It's on the way, and will definitely be done before Submission Hour ends!

chainedlupineauthor5 Oct 2020, 22:41

Go me, I decided to use custom code in the Godot engine and now I am stuck waiting for it to compile the 32x and 64x versions for Windows.

Linux builds will -- come later. Maybe tonight?

UPDATE: Win64 version uploaded! Compiling the others, now.

Sindri5 Oct 2020, 23:08

In case folks didn't see, the download link is up and running!

AdrianKrawczyk5 Oct 2020, 23:18

Very colorful!

snowinn6 Oct 2020, 00:55

I’d love to play if you port it to Mac/Web!

Adil6 Oct 2020, 06:39

It's a good game, but mechanics are simple and i didn't find there something ambitious. But overall it was funny and relaxing

Hakro6 Oct 2020, 17:57

Lovely game. Really liked the graphics and colors.
Well done for this entry.

Cheers

Thygrrr6 Oct 2020, 19:09

I fired up the game and so anyway, I started blastin'!

A nice horizontal shmup with a clean and crip style.

This game does well:
- :medal: great minimalist r-type revival
- :medal: cool, driving music
- :medal: crisp sprites and very crisp collision checking
- :medal: butter smooth scrolling
- :medal: the snare mechanic is pretty interesting

Could make this even better:
- :heavy_plus_sign: X / C may be ok to shoot, but on a gamepad, the buttons are mapped to the right hand
- :heavy_plus_sign: I was crabing gamepad support
- :heavy_plus_sign: add some explanations and teasers, screenshots etc. to your game page on LDJam
- :heavy_plus_sign: more juice could make this a real winner

All in all a very nice throwback to my horizontal shmup days. Thank you :)

ovrbi6 Oct 2020, 19:17

I really like how although the enemies are basic, they each require a different approach. Also, didn't expect a bossfight but once I found out I was really hooked!

The graphics were also very nice, especially the projectiles; the sound was alright, but I would've liked it if it changed according to the level of your weapons.

Edalbung6 Oct 2020, 21:29

Nice shoot'em up game!

Here are my feedback:

_Positive points
- Good art style
- The ship is really responsive
- Cool SFX and music

_Negative points
- A bit simple in term of mechanics

Overall: gg for your work!

frances8 Oct 2020, 04:59

It took me a while to figure out how to use the Graviton Snare mechanic, but eventually I figured it out. Music is okay.

chainedlupineauthor8 Oct 2020, 05:04

@snowinn Okay, here you go: https://chainedlupine.itch.io/gravity-blade I don't have access to Apple equipment but I can always do an HTML5 build!

@thygrrr A lack of gamepad support really killed me! I wanted to have it playable with my Xbone controller but we ran out of time to implement button binding. Or implement any kind of options at all, really. XD But I am glad you enjoyed!

@ovrbi @edalbung The lack of enemy variety was disappointing to me. There were ideas for different kinds -- particular, a simple enemy that would attack while you were fighting the boss, so you would have a chance to power up your attacks mid-fight -- but all of that had to be left on the cutting room floor.

Thygrrr8 Oct 2020, 05:30

@chainedlupine Two words:
New Unity Input System.

And the PlayerInput class. Really makes it easy to bind buttons and actions and even Interactions. (You can also easily implement it in pure code instantiating a InputAction set and wiring its .performed delegates.

Hasa few pitfalls, sure, but... Especially the hold to charge and tap rapidly actions would be trivial to get and bind to the player.

snowinn8 Oct 2020, 05:32

Great job! The music was good, the gameplay was fun, and I loved the graviton snare mechanic. I think you had enough enemy variety and the controls felt good. Nice work!

chainedlupineauthor8 Oct 2020, 06:19

@thygrrr I'm not using Unity, though. :grin: I do have a very customizable input system that I built for my current big project, but it wasn't jam-ready. Next time!

Thygrrr8 Oct 2020, 06:22

@chainedlupine Lol and I was thinking "this prolly isn't Unity, tiger, what are you doing." Yet I hit send like a ~~champ~~ chump.

Edit: and I think I even took note that this was a godot game when I played it...

Kaiomoi8 Oct 2020, 15:57

the game is cool :)

+ I really like the mechanics of absorption, it works well and makes you want to take risks.

- The respawn deserves to have a time of invincibility or clean the screen to be safe. The projectiles can be hidden by the enemies that we absorb which gives unfair situations.

The project is simple but it is fun and the problems mentioned are simple things so the game does not depend on it.

bravo.

TennoTako8 Oct 2020, 23:08

nice game ! everything fits well together and it was fun!
good job

Eugenik9 Oct 2020, 18:56

so polished!

Annie Owl9 Oct 2020, 19:37

Interesting game mechanics, but I feel like you should work on the responsiveness of the Graviton Snare. Maybe it's just me, but I kept killing enemies by accident and wasn't able to charge up my gun much. Besides that, it's a nice side-scrolling shooter with original mechanics :slight_smile: Good job!

Sindri11 Oct 2020, 21:41

@annie-owl Thanks for the feedback! More intricate controls on the snare mechanic are actually directly on our list. We tried to refine them a bit more, but really had to crunch working on the boss first. Glad it's a requested feature!

Sindri11 Oct 2020, 21:55

@kaiomoi Thanks for the feedback! Unfortunately instant respawn was something we had to tolerate to get the game in on time - we actually wanted to do a more classic Gradius "return to checkpoint" respawn system, but just couldn't implement it in time. That's definitely on our list!