Protect the land

Interesting approach to the theme. I now wonder if you could make a Snake game about colonization, or Tetris... Pretty straightforward gameplay otherwise, a pretty good entry :)

Thank you very much! I tried to maintain the simple gameplay of space invaders (including the predictable movement pattern of the enemies) and added a little difficulty, specially on the stage right before the boss. The boss fight also tends to be relatively long to make up for the short amount of stages.

I wish I could have made more worlds, but there wasn't enough time.

Anyways, for my first miniLD entry I'm pretty satisfied with the results :)

Looking forward to participate in the next one, if the circunstances allow me.

Thanks again for playing and for your feedback!

I'm too bad at these kind of games :D... But really well done (even though I didn't even reach the first boss)...

Thank you.

The third stage of each world is supposed to be very difficult and the fourth one is the boss.

I'll tell you a little secret. I left something on the code for anyone that was having trouble beating the game, so that they could see and test all the worlds: if you press "P" on a stage it should take you to the next one.

Consider this as the shortest "beat the stage secret code" :)

Thank you for playing!

I like your game and how it fit with the theme.
Maybe you should decrease the health of the shooters. They can shoot pretty fast and take many damage.
And sometimes the collision with enemies has glitches, but in general feels very polished game.

About how to change the icon of Game Maker you can see the option in Global Game Settings->Windows(tab)->General(tab)->Game Icon.
And I recommend you save the app as "Single runtime executable", I preffer don't install games if i can only click and play.

I hope you forgive my enlglish and see u in next LD!

@Kotev Thank you very much! I managed to change the icon as you said and also saved as Single runtime executable, the download link is already updated.

Can you tell me more about the collision glitches? I am not having this issue here. Maybe it's because if an arrow is beside an enemy and he moves to his side and touches the arrow he gets destroyed. That might feel kinda glitchy. Is that it or is something else I'm missing?

Thanks for your help and for playing, of course!

Too hard for me XD I liked your idea of adding a cheat code especially for LD players, I might use it myself in the future ^^
(I certainly used it myself here)

I liked the variety of styles for your sprites, it looks really cool!
Also, the idea of having the little enemies protect the bigger and harder ones without attacking themselves was a nice touch.

you do feel the lack of music though, maybe try to add even just a simple tune next time?
another improvement can be by using the mouse for the menus, or using traditional menus with "up/down/enter" controls. I found all the keys a bit of a hassle (but not a big one).

Thank you for your feedback! Everyone is talking about the game difficulty... I wanted to make it somewhat challenging and it ended up quite hard. If I had the time I could try to make a difficulty selection option.

Music and sounds in general was kind of a problem for me, as I had no audio most of the time I was working on the game. Also, I don't know many free music websites (I might be a bit lazy on this subject ._.'). All of the sound effects I got from bfxr.net.

You're also right about the menu. I would prefer the "up/down/enter" over mouse, but I went with the little I knew for this one (it felt simpler to assign an action to different key-presses). I will try to learn more and keep improving.

I'll keep your feedback in mind for the next LD! Thank you for playing!

That control scheme had me walking my fingers all over the keyboard just to navigate the menus. It's not such a big deal, but a simpler control scheme (something like a standard up/down to navigate, enter to select menu system) would be nice.

I agree with Kotev about the installer - stand-alone executables are generally more convenient for Ludum Dare, that way people who play a lot of games don't have to go through and uninstall them one by one when they're done.

And thanks for the cheat code. I actually think it's pretty cool when people leave things like that in for judging, so people who suck at certain game genres (like me) can get a better idea of what the later game is like.

Thanks!

I changed the installer to a stand-alone executable earlier today, the download link should be already updated. Gotta work on that menu issue.

I made the cheat code for testing and debugging and planned to remove it before submiting. It was my girlfriend's idea to leave it there :) credits to her.

Thank you for playing!

Really nice and strait forward game. Nice sprites. Really enjoyable and nostalgic for the old retro-gamers! :)

Thank you very much. That's exactly what I planned. Short game, easy mechanics, still challenging and enjoyable :)

Thanks for playing!

It was an interesting concept, and would love to play a more polished version, however in the end it is a galaga game. Would love a more tohou-like game!

Nice game! I agree with most of the people here: I like the art and sound design, but I do believe that the game is quite challenging, and the menu is a bit difficult to traverse when my left hand wants to stay on the spacebar and my right hand on arrow keys.

I think the main reason that this game is so difficult is because it doesn't have the high DPS that you have in Galaga, or the shelters in Space Invaders. If you either increased how quickly the player can shoot without a power-up or increased the players capability to take damage through shelters or health, I think the game would be more balanced.

But overall, nice entry!

Cool game, I am also terrible at it, but good work nonetheless.

Sorry for the delay.

Thank you all for the feedback. Indeed it's a galaga or space invaders game. I thought about giving more health to the player at first, but then, since the game is short and I wanted to make it challenging I decided to leave it this way. If I included more lifes for the player I would probably make it so you have to go back to the first stage of the current world if you lose all lifes.

About the DPS, I think it's a nice differential to have the player shoot one arrow/bullet/shovel at a time without the powerup. Makes you think more about waiting to get the powerup at the right moments and make the game less "bullet-hell" (it's really not a touhou game, sorry :/). I was actually thinking about Titan Souls and the lonely arrow thing when I decided to do it this way.

Anyway, it's really great to read your thoughts and I was thinking maybe the game could have different modes incorporating different suggestions in each one. Unfortunately I won't be able to work more on it anytime soon... :/ but maybe someday, right? :)

As always, thank you all so much for playing!!!

Well made game! I included it in my compilation video series of all of the MiniLD 69 games, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/fqpIvqrRLGw

@Jupiter_Hadley Thank you! It's a really nice thing you do playing all the games :) May I ask you too play again at least to see the other worlds? If you press P on a stage you can skip it, even the bosses, this way you can open Worlds 2 and 3. Consider it the shortest cheat code ever =]

Thank you very much for playing!

I also submitted a game called "Neon Ghosts" for the One Button Jam on Itch.io , here's a link in case you want to check out the jam: https://itch.io/jam/one-button-to-rule-all-jam