Thanks everyone for your thoughtful comments and reviews.
I would have liked maybe a tad bit more time, maybe a laser charging animations worth of time
I agree entirely, and We'll get a little laser charging bit added in the Post Jam version so you know exactly when that laser will shoot. I was in a rush, and hoped the sound would be sufficient, but it definitely needs a graphic to let you know the beam is coming...
in the moments leading up to the boss fight there is wave after wave of the same enemy - could have been mixed up a bit. The score, visible at the top, doesn't seem to end up being used for anything? I was hoping for online highscores but I realise that's a lot of effort in the jam timeframe especially if you don't have a web developer on your team!
Yeah, we were trying to get a bigger variety of wave patterns, which would have softened the blow of having less enemy types, and we put the burden of making these on
@EvanSki, who worked his ass off nonstop. We're going to have a cleaner wave system that will produce a better "flow" of enemy spawning in a Post Jam Version. The high score table is on our wishlist. We're looking at our options, but no guarantees yet, mainly because we have both Standalone and Opera GX versions playing now, and these will have to be handled according to platform.
End boss needs some phases or enemies added to it, maybe a visual que as to how much damage you have done, like broken armour or something.
Yeah, there was so much I wanted to do with this guy, and it was the second to last day we got him hooked up and working at all. I'm going to be adding some more attacks to this fight, and we did talk about having him summon backup enemies that could spawn smartbombs in between his attacks. I also want to put a red tint on him when he's about to die. I'll see what I can do. These are all great ideas!
The boss fight could use a lot of work. Only being vulnerable for such a short time meant there was a lot of down time. And as soon as you take out the gun, the boss is almost instantly dead. I think changing the vulnerability period and adding some other behaviours could have made this an amazing boss fight.
The balance on his health before and after the tail destruction was a decision made due to the fact that we only had either laser or a single bullet hell pattern that played. So because of this, we gave him almost ho health once the tail was destroyed. Once we beef up this fight, we'll look into giving him less health on the tail, and more aggressive behaviors once his tail is destroyed, including flying at the player, to be more consistent with classic arcade shoot em ups. This was my first use of Spine with Gamemaker, and I learned a lot, but also we barely made it work on time. I'm all in on improving this boss's behavior. (Fun Fact: The boss was going to have wasp legs hanging off the sides of its torso, but with the tail pointing at the player, it look like a big schlong, so we took them out.)
I think your game's greatest offense is that the elements are not only unnecessary for the boss fight, but some of them literally do NOTHING to the boss,
Yeah, this was due to us running out of time, and to
@EvanSki's credit, he did get certain smartbombs harming the boss, but we will definitely address this issue soon.
Unfortunately, it grew repetitive well before the boss came in
Totally agree, and the lack of patterns and enemies was definitely something we were pushing for, but took a backseat to getting a finished game loop.
I forgot who else said (maybe it was
@TehPilot ) that the ship should indicate when it's invincible by either being transparent or flashing on and off from frame to frame, and we'll get that addressed as well.
Again thanks to all who took the time to play and point out the things you liked and didn't like, (and for the votes!
). Starship Elemental will return in some form or another, and we will address everyone's issues, as they are also our issues!! Cheers!