Keyboard controls
Move - Arrow keys
Shoot - Z or X
My first Pico-8 game following the Game Jam...another shooter, and a very basic side-scrolling one. Time limit style to try and get the most points.
This is also a very real "lessons learned" type of game where I took all the things I learned from the jam and applied them here. I also tried to push myself in a few places to get better.
My first goal for this game was to get better and making sprites. My original theme for this was not a flying lumberjack but it turned out that way, so my sprites are squirrels, trees and jet packs...all in all, not too shabby. I at least proved to myself that making my own sprites is not that far off. However, while my art abilities got a shot in the arm, my sound making skill is totally non-existent. No music and the sounds are horrible. If anyone cares to fill in the blanks, please let me know!
Technically, this game was my chance to practice something that wasn't just a bunch of randomness. All the waves, routes and patterns were chosen and defined. I feel I got the concept down but still need to work on architecture to make things efficient...I think I wasted a lot of space/overhead but hey, it's working. I also made use of saving a high score and it's very easy.
I'm happy with this game in that it shows a lot of progress since my last game, Mass 360, for the jam. Hopefully I can take everything here and parlay that into my next game.
Few things I learned for next time:
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Libraries are great but expensive. I knew this already from my daily job and it still applies here. I used the particle library for the explosions and blood I know it's overkill.
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Think about bosses and milestones first. I spent a lot of time planning out the waves, patterns and sequences but not a lot of time on the end boss (and it shows). Thing is, by the time I got to the end, I was kind of anxious to get done so I rushed. I was ready to be done so I chose to be and I probably shouldn't have.
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Splitting sprites into parts is nifty. I was looking sprite sheets from other games and noticed how they would split up their sheets into parts. Like legs moving was it's own sequence, separate from the top half so you could animate them independently.
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Timers are a bitch. Seems like you need a lot of them...or at least, I needed a lot of them. It feels wrong needing them so much, so I'm probably making them poorly.
- I can do pixels but not a sound. I have an art background so learning how to paint in pixels is just a matter of time. But poking around with the sound editor is mind-numbing. I'm not a sound/music guy, I'm just not. Boops and beeps for me, so I need to find collaborators for that stuff.
So please give it a play and see how well you can do. It's not a difficult game by any means. Even shooters aren't your bag, give it go.
Any and all feedback is appreciated. Thanks to everyone here for sharing their knowledge. I used snippets from various posts for various things...from timers to particles to large numbers. I really just assembled all these parts into something with flying squirrels.
Cool! Some powers or a smart bomb would be nice.
I like the bullet patterns and the theme and sprites.
Some manic music would really step this up a gear.
I finished it, beat the boss, with 5 seconds remaining. but then skipped the game over screen because I was still auto firing so I can't give you my score, sorry!
Thanks for playing. Good call on the button overflow...I'll add in a delay on the last screen or something. Maybe a Z+X thing to restart.
There are a lot of things I would have liked to see/add to make things more interesting but I just got anxious/bored and took a quick way out. Not happy with the boss fight at all.
Pico-8 caters well to my "finish it in a weekend" attention span but that also makes it hard to actually finish anything before my mind races off to another idea. I guess if I'm wanting to rush a game to get it done, must mean I'm not that into it in the first place, huh?
And if anyone wants/needs a game to practice their music and sounds on, let me know - please do!
Added more waves to extend game time along with better boss patterns. A few new visual features like smoke, etc. Better enemy health balance and player shot power.
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