Arcane Outlaw

by jordantanner

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.87

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.83

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.13

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.09

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.09

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.76

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.78

Play Arcane Outlaw!

Post-Jam Version w/ Leaderboard

Jam Version

#### Welcome to Dodge City! As an Arcane Outlaw, you wield the power of fire-breathing hydras as well as your trusty Colt Magnum in this 2.5D bullet-hell shooting gallery.

🕹️ Controls

- WASD - Move
- Space - Jump
- Mouse - Shoot
- Hold 'S' Key - Summon Hydra

🎲 Game Features

- Survive as many rounds as possible in the Dodge City Shooting Gallery
- Summon Hydras to deal explosive fire damage to targets while you blast 'em with your Colt six-shooter
- Western-themed rock soundtrack
- Play in color or vintage black & white mode

✨ Tips

- Hydras shoot fireballs at your target when they're off cooldown
- Hydras last for 45 seconds or until taking fatal damage
- You can use Hydras for cover
- Hydra fireballs deal AoE damage, so waiting until they're ready and then targeting a central target is a decent strategy
- Since you can't move while summoning, try to move to an area free of bullets in order to have time to safely summon

⚙️ Extra Controls

- Hold Keypad +/- to progress the day/night cycle
- Press Keypad 9 to freeze frame -- great for taking screenshots
- Select Color or Black & White mode from the Pause menu

💥 Bugfixes

- Fixed issue with the Round Controller where rounds were overlapping and/or not completing, leaving the game in a stuck state
- Fixed issue where you could get stuck in the summoning state
- Fixed issue where Hydras were getting hit multiple times per enemy bullet, almost instantly dying
- Fixed issue where Results screen was not showing the correct data

Thanks for playing and feel free to follow me on Twitter if you like!

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Genres: shooter

Tools: Unity

Comments19

the4thcircle17 Apr 2024, 11:21

I like this, but it's very punishing. If I stood still to summon a hydra, I was getting shot. There never seemed to be a big enough gap in the action. Seemed to take a LOT of bullets to take the targets down.

EasilyDistracted19 Apr 2024, 04:58

This game is amazing, its got a really satisfying core gameplay loop and the balance between having to summon hydras and not take damage is really clever. All up brilliant!

LDJam user 37416819 Apr 2024, 05:05

This was really fun, I liked the gameplay of trying to dodge as many bullets as I could and shoot down the cowboys. Summoning the hydra was a neat twist too, like trying to balance hydra summoning with dodging and shooting. I agree with the above comment generally that most targets felt like they had a lot of health, what didn't help was my accuracy being quite low. Also I think having some kind of rapid-fire mode would help, cause my hand starting hurting shooting bullets. Overall though, very fun entry!

Castitatis19 Apr 2024, 05:36

I love the concept, the game is pretty polished. The difficulty curve is pretty well balanced imo.
The only criticism I have maybe is the UI which doesn't really fit well with the art style, other than that, solid entry :D

Irex19 Apr 2024, 06:28

Great game. Graphics are really good too. And I love this double jump animation ^^

hatmajaster19 Apr 2024, 06:38

Very very good. I don't have much too say, you obviously know how to expand on it (moving enemies, better enemies, bosses, explosives, some upgrades etc).

The only thing that maybe i would fix is use AI for the summons. AFAIU if you have multiple summons they all shoot at the target you shoot if they're charged. I think they should shoot at will. Now having 10 summons is kinda useless because they fire at one enemy and just destroy it.

Got to 5th round. Great job

freso19 Apr 2024, 07:27

Well done in just a weekend! Overall, very polished with intro, stats, menu!
* \- I really don't like clicking the mouse button all the time. Auto-fire would have been nice.
* \- I had some issues clicking the "continue button", but managed by clicking everywhere.
* \- Hard to know what differs the target. The bad was easy to kill, but
* \- The summoning mechanics was the weak point, and could have been more integral to the gameplay
* \+ Cool to let us change day-night, even if the night was pretty black :)
* \+ Double jump. Always have a double jump. :)
* \+ Nice music loop and movement controls.

zablas19 Apr 2024, 08:24

Very fun game. The action was spot on. Graphics and audio were perfect! Good job!

Weine19 Apr 2024, 09:44

Well polished game with a perfect moody setting. I did find it a bit repetitive aftera while, though.

WouterK1219 Apr 2024, 19:38

Really clean UI and fun statistics at the end haha. Had fun playing it, nicely done! :D

Alexis Brochec19 Apr 2024, 19:45

Really cool game very polished.
The game play is a lot of fun, audio is on point as well as the graphics.
feedback: -The hydras are not really usefull especially with the enemies on top lane
-I would have prefere more enemie repop but with less health.

Great job dude.

ryusui20 Apr 2024, 04:17

Very stylish! My only gripe is there's no death animation for the player character; I was a little surprised to see them simply vanish at the end. ^_^;

Also "S" for summon makes a kind of sense, but it feels too easy to accidentally hit it when I'm moving, resulting in me standing stock still while I'm trying to dodge.

One question: is it a glitch that rounds will sometimes end before I've destroyed all targets?

jordantannerauthor20 Apr 2024, 04:31

@ryusui Glad you liked it! Yeah I totally ran out of time before I could make a death animation -- it slipped my mind and then never got back to it before time ran out! It does look weird just disappearing, I agree. And yes, the rounds have been a bit buggy, I was able to fix them a little bit but sometimes they still overlap. I'm currently working on a post jam version with better rounds, better hydra functionality, and a leaderboard. Thanks for playing and for the feedback, I really appreciate it!

GettingRekt20 Apr 2024, 09:56

A really juicy game with the music, screenshake and graphics. Also plenty of nice small details like the double jump and the boxes in the corner. Seemed a bit buggy with the enemy target counting. Getting more and more out of sync. At level 30 the next wave spawned while almost all the targets were still up (and I think many of them were multiple at the same spawn location).
Still, extremely well done entry. Great job!

jordantannerauthor20 Apr 2024, 13:20

@gettingrekt Thanks so much for the lovely feedback! Can't believe you made it to round 30 -- that's incredible! Looking at my back end analytics, it appears you had 70% accuracy too, which is really great.

And yes, the Round Controller is still a bit buggy. I'm currently working on a post jam version that fixes those issues, improves the UI, improves Hydras, and adds a leaderboard. Thanks again for playing, I'm really glad you liked it. :)

ColeSlaughter22 Apr 2024, 23:40

Thanks for submitting your game to stream!

Might wanna fix that "sentience" bug we discovered. :wink:

jordantannerauthor23 Apr 2024, 01:53

@coleslaughter It was a blast hanging out and watching the stream! Thanks so much for playing my entry and for the link/timestamp to the playthrough. And regarding that bug, a Post Jam version is up now and has all kinds of improvements and fixes. Please give it a playthrough and put your name on the leaderboard if you'd like to "sign the guestbook," as I like to think of it. Thanks again fellas, I'll be back to hang on stream sometime for sure!

lima victor28 Apr 2024, 14:20

kinf o liked it ngl. Felt nice and interesting to play because of difficulty and time progression. Hydras were hard to use after like stage 10 and game didn't seem to change much up to stage 20 when I gave up.

Liked the idea and would like it more more powers, levels or some kind of a boss

Quinnster3 May 2024, 23:56

Nice entry! Felt polished and satisfying. I was confused about the hydra at first, but realized pretty quick. However, some more enemy variety or ways to spice up the gameplay was definitely missing. Overall great job!

Other games by @jordantanner

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★3.15

★3.50