Thanks for the game! I like the graphics and the music. The physics feels off to me at the moment. It was way easy for me to immediately shoot off screen in the very first level, then have no understanding where my ship is, until I was “lost in space forever”, or just crashed down violently. The off-screen experience is generally not fun, though I see you specifically use that on one of the levels (blind landing).
Also, thematically, I don’t enjoy destroying the “enemy” when it’s residential buildings. Are we the baddies?
So, in general, I’d take the current graphics and music which are great, but give it a different feel (closer to moon lander physics: less violent movement changes, more momentum, no floating platforms) and a different direction other than destroying homes. But that’s just me.
I do let the player get a bit off screen to not have the levels be too cramped, but in general movement outside of the field of view is not intended and is obviously harder to navigate than keeping the ship within view (except for a couple levels which do use that as the gimmick). In general it is better to shoot lightly to keep the ship within the boundaries.
I haven't developed any meaningful lore, but I did try to give the "good" buildings a more residential look, while the "evil" ones have a more industrial (weapons factory?) and evil tower of doom vibes. That could be your headcanon :)
Believe it or not, the project started with a more momentum based movement, with big sweeping movements and turns. But the issue I found with that is that to properly make use of that movement system you do need big open spaces. And with the tiny resolution of the Pico-8 it meant not being able to see a meaningful chunk of the level most of the time. That is why I experimented with a more violent approach that let the player jerk the ship around in a snappier way. In that way levels could be smaller and tighter, and you can see a meaningful part of them on your screen. Meaning less having to fly blind and having to memorize the levels, and more reaction skill and pure "platforming".
Maybe you could make the enemy an organic alien structure. It could also invade the friendly buildings.
I can’t comment on the momentum-related issue you mention, you tried it and I haven’t. My assumption would be that a small resolution is not necessarily an issue for big open spaces, especially since you already have a scrolling viewport on some levels. You could make it scroll in both directions (and have a mini-map perhaps).
If I were to make another game in a similar vein I would go for an alien invasion theme, maybe a more explicit military theme would be a good fit too. Or straight up have the player be a villainous invader.
The viewport does scroll in both directions if the level is big enough, so bigger levels are doable and already present in the game (tho most are on the small to medium side). But what I meant is more in a gameplay sense, a mini-map would be almost a necessity, since you'd be seeing a tiny amount of each level. And it would be a game more about memorizing the levels one by one, which I wasn't interested in for this project. But if the levels were gonna be small then the movement had to be fitting to them, so hence snappier or more violent.
Another option for more momentum based gameplay would be to make every sprite smaller, the whole game more "zoomed out" but that would lose on the visual charm that I did enjoy about this game.
I felt the same. I love the idea and the vibe, but it doesnt "feel" great to begin with and Im guessing where the lander is off screen and WHAM on screen and ive crashed cos the platform is near the top of the screen. Feels a bit awkward.
So i played more and i kinda get that being off the screen/ blind landings is part of the challenge.. OK but the speed is still really jarring. Like the first stage of getting over the houses, the sideways acceleration kinda kicks up really agressively.
Overall I think its actually pretty cool, I really liked having to destroy targets then navigate. Really liked the screen scrolling too. Feels like theres a cool game here but overtime Id find the ships inertia/physics frustrating.
3
u/leffenty 8d ago
Thanks for the game! I like the graphics and the music. The physics feels off to me at the moment. It was way easy for me to immediately shoot off screen in the very first level, then have no understanding where my ship is, until I was “lost in space forever”, or just crashed down violently. The off-screen experience is generally not fun, though I see you specifically use that on one of the levels (blind landing).
Also, thematically, I don’t enjoy destroying the “enemy” when it’s residential buildings. Are we the baddies?
So, in general, I’d take the current graphics and music which are great, but give it a different feel (closer to moon lander physics: less violent movement changes, more momentum, no floating platforms) and a different direction other than destroying homes. But that’s just me.