VoidLoop

Note: For M1 Macs - command click on app > select 'get info' > check 'use rosetta' for app to run.

Simple arcade wannabe wave-based platformer/shooter. It was a game I started during the COVID-19 pandemic - I was a service industry worker with a lot of extra time for a few months and developed a majority of this project. It sat untouched for a few years. I pulled this project up a few weeks ago - the codebase is terrible (seriously, so bad), the gameplay has some huge flaws, but rather than let it sit idle I realized I could put it into a playable state much more easily than where my skills were at previously when I worked on this.

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Gameplay/Instructions:

Gamepad/Controller recommended.

Shoot, jump on, or dash through enemies to attack. Collect the energy they drop to level up your weapon and spend on upgrades at the end of each level. Getting hit will drain your weapon energy - get hit enough and the lvl will drop. Defeat 5 waves of enemies to proceed to the next level. Ammo only reliefs when landing on ground or jumping on enemies' heads. You can shoot/dash in whatever direction you are pressing/facing. Shooting downwards will propel you up like a jetpack. If an upgrade shrine is not lit up with the available upgrade above then you do not have enough to purchase, try to collect more through the next level. If you are shooting horizontally you will be locked in that direction - you generally might be backing away from waves of enemies while shooting towards them. Stop shooting to change the direction of your firing, or roll your aim up/down and to the other direction to change your weapon direction.

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Controls (Keyboard + Gamepad Support):

Move: (Keyboard) WASD - (Gamepad) Joystick/Dpad

Dash: (Keyboard) E - (Gamepad) R1/R2

Shoot: (Keyboard) Space - (Gamepad) A

Super: (Keyboard) Q - (Gamepad) Y

Purchase Upgrade (at Upgrade Shrine when lit): (Keyboard) F - (Gamepad) X

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1-1 to 1-3 have the same level type, then 2-1 to 2-3 have a different. After that it will randomly choose one of 4 level types.

New enemy patterns and types will appear through level 9-1, at that point you have seen all enemy types/waves.

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There is a lot more I wanted to do on this, but will likely not be updating much moving forward. The codebase is pretty unmaintainable, and I think there are some pretty large flaws with the design over. For instance, I dislike that the levels are so tall, but you play in a 16:10 aspect ratio - you end up frequently shooting enemies above/below that you can't see, and dodging attacks from offscreen enemies. The simple solution here would be to build levels that are not as tall, but much wider. I think I could also eliminate the ammo system then, as that was added to stop an overpowered/cheesy behavior. If there was no ammo, you could frequently just gun jetpack yourself to the top of the screen and shoot straight down at enemies below. This was largely why the ammo system was added in the first place, in that it encouraged you to jump on enemies or land on the ground to reload. I also worry the player character may be too small and everything moves too fast. I wanted a fair amount of difficulty requiring precision, and played a lot well developing so I wonder if I ended up out of touch with how difficult the game ended up being.

A good lesson I think I take away from this is to start building out the middle/average difficulty level of what the game should be mid-run when developing for a largely procedural game of this type. I mistakenly developed and designed from what I pictured the most basic start would be. I think it is more difficult to scale and balance from using that as a design point. You can scale the beginning and end game more accordingly if you find what you look for in an average mid-run would be, and balance from there. I also played what I figured would be the most beginner/easy enemies and the most underpowered character hundreds of times while building out enemy behaviors and levels, which was pretty tedious. I prototyped enemies on what I thought a midgame run might be, what player ability might be, but did this typically just by quickly running the game from the default start I had implemented - I did a lot of guessing on where the player might be mid run, instead of building out what I wanted the average run to consist of mid game and scaling the beginning accordingly from there to meet this goal.

Note: For M1 Macs - command click on app > select 'get info' > check 'use rosetta' for app to run.

Void Loop (m.veed) screenshots