Critical Mass

awesome game

It looks awesome but it'd be more fun if you could move faster

You get bottlenecked by own fixed speed so it's not a whole lot of fun

@purplesage99 you know what, i have 45 minutes, so i updated the file with a faster player

A lovely entry - beautiful to look at, and enjoy how the motion and health can be inferred up just by watching the particles.

For a moment, I thought some enemies hitting you also added mass - which also seems like a cool idea to explore if you are doing anything similar in the future. The player would then have to balance bleeding off mass, and a sudden cluster of one type of enemy or another could have you pivoting from running towards pickups, or running away - just a thought.

Enjoyed the aesthetic and bold colors, great job

Hope that gifs play in here.

I love that it is simple, yet visually attractive. Nice choice on the colors and very well suited for a game jam like this, where most reviewers do not have time to play complex games.

As @ugly-robot said, the health can be inferred by watching the particles.

That is very well done!

@mordrick i just realized something, your version doesn't have any background... hmm maybe that's a glitch, and there was also no title screen, do you have a "graphics" folder inside your rar file with the corresponding images?

Really enjoy the particle effects, has a lot of weight behind the motion.

31 Points on second try. I love the aesthetic of the game. It's interesting to play but I felt like the game just was too difficult at some point without my character being better. Maybe you should have and more movement possibilities?

The idea is really interesting though, surely a game you should continue post jam!

@ratogodoy Hmm, lazy as I am i started it directly from the rar. Let me try it when unpacked.

I got 21 then 25, the difficulty curve is great. Though, my version was missing the background too, not that that effected gameplay

^^ @ratogodoy MyFault. Unpacking helps :)

love the graphics! I was just staring at it. Gameplay is fun too. I think the if the gameplay gets much faster and faster then it will be more challenging and fun.

anyone know how to rate games. the categories dont pop up for me even after ive played them

@shootboots me too, i think ratings aren't enabled yet, you should wait a while

Hey mate, very nice looking game. The effects are very nice.
Game loop got pretty old for me pretty quick but I like the presentation.

Extra points for using the OLC engine, love it!

@shootboots @ratogodoy The ratings are up for me, just under the download links!

Really love that you've used the OLC engine, the pixelated look reminds me of QBasic games.
I got 20 score the first try.
I really like that you slow down and the game gets harder.

@c64cosmin hahaha indeed, my friend even commented something along the lines of "i would download the shareware version of this game through my bbs" although it's related to DOS era, when i made the logo i was thinking of the CGA colour pallete

Great game! Very good looking. Also impressive that it's only 108kb.

@myles-doupe thank you, it was fully made in c++, the only library i used (OLC PGE) is only a single header file, so there was no bloat and that kept the file size down by a lot

I love the visuals here, they're simple but the colors pop and give a lot of life to the objects. The dodging gameplay is fun, and the varying size of your hitbox keeps you on your toes. When I started I focused on dodging, which incentivizes staying in a low health range to be more agile. The enemies that dart will quickly dogpile you at the edges of the screen, so the center feels safest. By level 20 the darting enemies are dastardly quick. Very fun, well done!

Cool!

I got to level 23, really fun and i enjoy the catchup mechanic where getting hit makes you smaller, and therefore harder to hit in the future until you get more mass! I'm always a sucker for juicy particle systems like this, it looks great! Would have been really cool with some nice sfx as well.

Really liked it, like a free-form version of snake with enemies!

Was confused at first thinking I had to just build up the critical mass but then realised its about balance. Was a really cool idea and I liked the simplicity of it. Those darting enemies get so quick though in the later levels. Felt like NEO!

very aesthetic experience! I especially liked the visual effects when achieving critical mass :D

I liked the game feel and the vsf with the particles and everything.
I tried to dash sometimes to avoid the attacks. SO I think is something that many players will try as well. Maybe is a good feature to implement.

The effects are just soooo cool, the gameplays really cool too, kinda like snake. I just wish it'd had some sound effects, some cool fizzling sounds would've added a lot to it

The graphics are looks really special. Sound effects or music would make the game even better. The idea is great. My best score is 37. Good job!

A cool concept and a good aesthetic. Sound effects would have been cool. But it's still a fun experience, nice job :)

Excellent use of dithering and particle effects! :-) I also really dig the title screen.

It's a fun idea as well. However, it seems to me that, the higher the level is, the more dashers there will be to disrupt you. So unless I misunderstand the game (which is possible) it will form a certain point onwards always be beneficial to focus on _gaining_ mass, which loses the balance concept in the noise.

Speaking of noises ... (Please ignore if you already know this and there was just _literally_ no time or something like that) Basic SFX is one of the easiest things to make during a game jam: After all generators like these are legal even for Compo entries.

@remco i didn't implement sound mostly because i didn't knew how to use the PGE sound header, and there were no tutorials, i didn't have time to learn about it from the documentation, it's not like gamemaker or unity where you can just drag and drop a .ogg file and type a command like "playsound", but i wish i did, even a few beeps would have increased the quality by a lot

Simple and fun gameplay. IT is really beautiful though! Stunning effects. You really showed off some programming mastery to get that done in c++. Really nice.

Pretty fun gameplay with simple yet appealing visuals! I had a lot of fun playing it :D

simple but fanny. cool

Nice Game! i got 34 points, and at this point is really hard jajaj

Getting lost in space? Do not fear! Just balance your mass through the universe and you will find a balanced way. Congratulation to your entry!

Really quite nice little game, I do like the juggling between needing to avoid and getting hit by those bullets. Pretty decent overall and such lovely particle effects! Great stuff :)

(Just to note though, the rar file seems damaged/corrupted if opening using Winrar, just thought I'd point that out.)