18th July 2018

With so many games to play, there's oodles of feedback for each.

Let's see what RSKGames thought of this week's game!

@RSKGames

Overview: A fast paced circular bullet hell game. I liked it better than the ''Orbital Projections'' and ''The Trouble with Vents'' which till day I can never play properly.

(I had to look both of those games up! I've made too many games!!)

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Trouble with Vents was indeed one of the more difficult games to get to grips with. It's certainly a case of "Felt ok when I was building it up, but fresh eyes reveal a whole host of issues!"

Gameplay: I usually find it difficult to play circular movement games but felt a little better in this game.

For a while, I had it directional. eg, push up to move to the top, down for the bottom, etc. But it just wasn't precise enough, and you ended up always being in one of the 8 directional 45-degree angles, rather than having a more "analogue" style of positional movement.
That style would work better with a thumbstick, but given I do almost all my playtesting with just the cursor keys, it wasn't ideal.

The blocking of movement of the ship by the rotating paths and the bombs make the game very interesting.

That was one of the first things I implemented in the game. Microbes always had an issue where you could fly "through" the spawning microbes that touch the edge, so I wanted to be able to block off the player should enemies get too close.
Once I had the "door" mechanism in place, I realised it'd be interesting to use that to keep blocking the player from moving.
Seems to have worked out nicely.

It is easy to avoid head on collision with the enemies initially but when the bombs start blowing off it is difficult to avoid the enemies and keep track of where is the player ship is present.

Yeah, the bombs made one heck of a difference. A very late addition, and up until then, the game was just about dodging enemies. As you say, dodging them really isn't all that hard, so adding the bombs created much more danger for the player.

The powerups freeze enemies, faster bullets, two/three bullets at a time help in improving the scores.

I never realised until about half an hour ago, but shooting enemies doesn't give you any points. Only destroying enemies. This is noticeable when the larger multi-hit enemies appear. Oops!

I also tried to not kill any enemies and waited my time to get the powerup drops, it is an easy way to not die and get points but the probability of path switch and bombs from the enemies touching the circle far out weigh the powerups so not a great strategy.

What appears to be a running theme in most of my shoot-em-ups, in that if you don't shoot, the game kinda runs along without much happening!
This time, I wanted to try to add as much danger as I could, so the bombs still get planted occasionally, and the closing doors can make it tricky.

Graphics: Vertical score alignment and squares instead of hearts for life is difficult to read and get used to. The game is so frantic that I hardly noticed what is in the background.

I have to agree with that. Keeping my eye on the highscore, but also trying to read my current score.. It isn't easy!!
I'll not be doing that again!

Overall: A frantic fun bullet hell game with a smooth circular movement gameplay.

Glad it was fun, if a little chaotic.
I think next week's game should turn out a little slower paced, as this week's is a bit TOO frantic in places.

As always.. Thanks for playing!

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