[Prototype] The Alpha Team
Do you remember when you were a kid, right after watching a kung fu movie, going outside and flying kicking everything. So right after coming back from Amaze, I started prototyping something :D
The Alpha Team is a twin stick shooter plaformer, with a heavy emphasis on action based combat, and a secondary focus on exploration. The tone is meant to be wackey, with strange weapons and strange enemies (Think Rick and Morty).
Controls:
W A S D - Movement
Q E - Pickup and equip weapon in Slots 1 or 2
Spacebar - Enable/disable flight thrusters
F - Swap weapons
LMB RMB - Fire weapon 1 or 2
Aim with mouse
There are 5 secret areas (behind walls) where some of the weapons and upgrades are hidden. Enemies flying in walls are a clue (but sometimes they are just a glitch :P).
Weapons include: Disco Death Ball, Samurai Bee Rifle and the Nuclear Chicken Launcher.
I tried to apply a lot of what I've learned from other gamedevs over the past year. From chatting to people at the MGSA meetups, feedback on this forum, Extra Credits episodes and the numerous talks at GDCs and of course Amaze. For this prototype the main focus was game feel, and getting something that was just fun to play.
Feedback is encouraged, and please be honest, I can take it ;)
Download link below
The Alpha Team V1.0.2.0
The Alpha Team V1.0.1.0
Movement:
Thrusters Disabled:
You can move left and right on platforms, and if you press diagonally up or down near a wall, you can wall slide up or down them as well.
While standing on the ground you can press up to jump.
Thrusters Enabled:
Free movement in all directions.
Resources:
Heat:
If your thrusters are turned on (Spacebar) and you take to the air you will start producing Heat. Once your Heat Capacity has been reached, your engines cut out and you fall towards the ground. Standing on the ground, or Wall sliding cools you down. All weapons produce varying amounts of heat as well.
Energy:
All weapons consume varying amounts of energy to fire. Energy slowly recharges naturally.
Shields:
When hit, your Shield points decrease by one. Has no effect yet.
The Alpha Team is a twin stick shooter plaformer, with a heavy emphasis on action based combat, and a secondary focus on exploration. The tone is meant to be wackey, with strange weapons and strange enemies (Think Rick and Morty).
Controls:
W A S D - Movement
Q E - Pickup and equip weapon in Slots 1 or 2
Spacebar - Enable/disable flight thrusters
F - Swap weapons
LMB RMB - Fire weapon 1 or 2
Aim with mouse
There are 5 secret areas (behind walls) where some of the weapons and upgrades are hidden. Enemies flying in walls are a clue (but sometimes they are just a glitch :P).
Weapons include: Disco Death Ball, Samurai Bee Rifle and the Nuclear Chicken Launcher.
I tried to apply a lot of what I've learned from other gamedevs over the past year. From chatting to people at the MGSA meetups, feedback on this forum, Extra Credits episodes and the numerous talks at GDCs and of course Amaze. For this prototype the main focus was game feel, and getting something that was just fun to play.
Feedback is encouraged, and please be honest, I can take it ;)
Download link below
The Alpha Team V1.0.2.0
The Alpha Team V1.0.1.0
Movement:
Thrusters Disabled:
You can move left and right on platforms, and if you press diagonally up or down near a wall, you can wall slide up or down them as well.
While standing on the ground you can press up to jump.
Thrusters Enabled:
Free movement in all directions.
Resources:
Heat:
If your thrusters are turned on (Spacebar) and you take to the air you will start producing Heat. Once your Heat Capacity has been reached, your engines cut out and you fall towards the ground. Standing on the ground, or Wall sliding cools you down. All weapons produce varying amounts of heat as well.
Energy:
All weapons consume varying amounts of energy to fire. Energy slowly recharges naturally.
Shields:
When hit, your Shield points decrease by one. Has no effect yet.
Thanked by 1konman
Comments
@pieter You have nailed it with the tactile feel of the weapons. It feels satisfying firing a salvo into an enemy. The drum-n-bass track also adds to the overall experience in a positive, frenetic way.
I am not a huge fan of the wacky and strange feel (rainbows, disco balls etc ), but that is just my personal taste? :-P
I really liked how the weapons are really different which encourages experimentation and customization.
The main character reminds me a bit of the character in Thexder too which is a good thing.
The mini-map, wall walking and limited fly capabilities (until your energy runs out) are all interesting mechanics that add to the complexity and fun factor.
I like how the weapons all show their rate-of-fire in a loading animation on the weapon pic too. I am doing something similar, but have opted to go for a circular progress bar to indicate fire rate instead. Yours looks way better, grrrrr :-)
I found the 4 slot upgrade inventory thing very user-friendly too. I like how you can move items between slots etc.
I had lots of fun with this prototype and it's a real shame more people aren't giving it a go and providing valuable feedback.
I highly recommend checking this out guys ,its good :-)
K
The chicken launcher was my favourite by far. It was kinda funny, it had pretty explosions (and feathers), the explosions had camera shake, and the audio was nice. It felt pretty great. Compared to that, most of the other weapon pickups felt disappointing to me to use. (Never mind that I always seemed to be able to kill enemies faster with the chicken launcher anyway.) The death one and the disco ball were fine for the novelty, but they weren't that practical to use. Death seemed to fly pretty randomly, and the disco ball shot pretty randomly too; in practice I felt I could always kill things faster with aiming at them than by dropping the "random" weapons and hoping for the best.
I kind of expect to be able to jump when I press up. Falling seems to happen linearly, which makes the character feel as if it doesn't have gravity.
There didn't really seem to me to be any reason not to have the thrusters on all of the time. If you're in the air and generating heat, then you just hug a surface, and you cool down. If you turn your thrusters off, you fall and touch a surface anyway, so whether you're on the ground with your thrusters on or off doesn't seem to make a difference, and it seems to me as if you might as well leave the thrusters on all of the time.
I really like the idea of fighting as a gundam/mech. I think it's a really strong fantasy with a great feeling to pursue. But I felt as if I had too much freedom of movement; it was really easy to dodge bullets (even before getting the two movement upgrades), so that dodging things didn't really feel like it was something that was skilful to do. The flying felt pretty weightless. I don't know if adding weight using air momentum and gravitational acceleration would be better or just frustrating. One of the things I think feels really good in anime fights is when characters do dashes, or when they slam into the ground after some epic jump. I think these are feelings that would be great to capture. Perhaps you normally move quite a lot slower, but you can dash to move faster, so that you have to time your dodging more precisely. Perhaps there just need to be far more enemies that shoot more bullets.
I don't know if what I've got in mind is just super different to what you have in mind, but I think there's still a lot you can improve with the feeling of moving, flying and gliding around as a gundam, and I'd be pretty keen to try it again. :)
The Alpha Team V1.0.2.0
I will be tinkering on this prototype until the end of the week before moving on to the next project, so if anyone has some feedback they would like to see implemented, let me know and we'll see how it plays.
* New *
- Added a new spider drone enemy that only moves on walls. (Hella chuffed with this one)
- Added 2 big enemy types that spawn drones.
- Big enemies count as objectives and must be destroyed to open the portal.
- Added portal that can be entered when objectives have been completed (which just restarts the stage).
- Destroying big enemies now drops weapons (They're not lying around the stage anymore).
- Shield and Energy charges will now drop for destroying certain enemy groups.
- Added visual and sound effects.
- Reduced gravity so mech is more floaty.
- You can now jump when standing on the ground with thrusters disengaged by pressing "W".
Will be adding some more juice towards the weekend.
I agree a lot with what @Elyaradine said for earlier version. Especially on the Chicken Gun and the Flying.
Update feedback: (typing as I find things while playing)
Game play's a lot better after the update, and I actually did die, but I'm not aware of my health going down while I am playing. I feel this user feedback needs to improve. Once I died just as I killed the spider boss, and thought it was a bug when game restarted, a simple game state message will suffice, and a more prominent health indication at player (wish: overlaying damage marks to mech itself, fire, oil leaking, sparks).
Immediately the jump feels more natural and pleasing, I still think game can be played without flight. Or it should be a limited pickup, which could be used in specific scenarios like traveling between worlds of you had long platform running like tunnel stages. Not all the time, it still is basically on all the time, and when it runs out in mid flight it is not that enjoyable. I'd much rather not have it there, and learn via skill to traverse the walls with jump and tackle or climbing which you already have.
New enemies looks great, and a lot more fun. Making the enemies stronger and it more difficult to get new guns and upgrades was a good call, but obviously in the first game it was just to demo easier.
Font is difficult to read, please put a dark alpha sprite behind it or make a basic HUD for now.
The "Radiation" was a nice surprise! But I could fly through the whole level, without firing a shot and survive it. Time to balance, or add energy zapping fly traps which is balanced by killing enemies?
Overall game is too easy! Guns are strong, but keep that. So make enemies more difficult or interesting (like you did with update). Just more.
I was surprised how powerful Gun Gun is.
When I realised I can shoot LMB + RMB simultaneously while on a wall (infinite), game was double as easy.
After testing, note I only so far played twice for real to have fun and then I always die after killing all but one boss, but felt frustrated since: I felt invincible, but yet was too aggressive. I think it is because I do not know what my health measure is in the game, not obvious as stated.
In future would like to see randomized levels and more content. I do enjoy where this game is going! I'm keen to see development go further on this.
I like the time it takes to play. Afterthought, maybe you should only be able to upgrade after an objective is reached, since then I wont next time be tempted to just fly first and go pickup upgrades, this must rather come from enemy kills.
Please add more gifs to this topic, of your progress, and would love to see your art process for prototyping so fast..