$1.3 Game

sergiocornaga's picture
1point3.png

$1.3 Game (pronounced one point three dollar game) is the first completed sequel to $13 Game following a couple of aborted attempts. It was made for One Hour Game Jam #175 (Theme: Charge) but actually took me slightly over 2 hours to make. It uses one button: spacebar.

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Comments

Danni's picture

The beginning of this felt

The beginning of this felt like playing chicken to see how high I could charge a shot before brushing against the enemy's pixels.

21 on my first try.

sergiocornaga's picture

I feel that's a good

I feel that's a good technique for a whole playthrough!

thesycophant's picture

This feels so good. The

This feels so good. The design of the enemies is perfect. I've gotten up to 47. I like playing this a lot. Reminded me of Ziggurat. I really enjoyed all the choices about size and timing I had.

Also, my mind was feverishly writing headcanon about the mysterious enemies that appear at the edge of the screen only to walk away.

sergiocornaga's picture

Thank you! I'm curious what

Thank you! I'm curious what you mean by "the design of the enemies". The sprites were taken from a spritesheet I made in 2007 to save time, but I suspect you're actually talking about how different sizes of enemy providing differing challenges, which was definitely a happy accident.

Now that you mention it, it does feel a lot like Ziggurat (and presumably not Ziggurat). I think I have no choice but to embrace unintentional gameplay plagiarism as a recurring theme of this series.

My high score is 285, which strikes me as a "maybe it's possible to play forever" kind of score. I tried to make the spawn rate ridiculous after about 5 minutes, but I think I underestimated just how powerful a fully charged shot can be.

thesycophant's picture

I actually was referring to

I actually was referring to both aspects of the enemies' design! The sprite is utterly minimalistic, but scales remarkably well. Slightly cute, a bit ominous especially when huge, and decidedly alien. The sprite works well with the behavior/size variation, and the cute creepiness of them scales well with the size which scales well with the varying challenges they present. Imo.

After playing it a bit more, one thing I really love about this is how the size of your charge is invisible. You have to learn to feel it. It's kind of thrilling how quickly I, as the player, intuited the comparative size between my required shot and the length of time to be held, all without any precise measurements or in-game indicators.

Capt_hastings-Chrissy's picture

I'm currently up to 54. It

I'm currently up to 54. It took me a while to figure out the best strategy, but I have discovered that in a pinch I can just hold out and shoot off the biggest thing and kill everything around me, which is super useful. It's really satisfying to target a whole group too. All in all a satisfying game. On a side note,it goes well with Nicki Minaj in the background, which I usually don't listen to but was strangely playing in another window. It pumped me up so much for killing stuff that I had to replay the song for my second play through!

sergiocornaga's picture

You've uncovered the main

You've uncovered the main strategy, for sure. No idea if this will be helpful, but you can use Ctrl+M to turn music on and off, while Ctrl+S turns sound effects on and off. It's a lot quicker to restart if it's not trying to play MIDI files at all! Any particular Nicki Minaj song you were using?

Capt_hastings-Chrissy's picture

It was Chun li, but I

It was Chun li, but I skipped the first 1:13 of her talking before the song starts...now that I think about that number, is it coincidence? To be clear, though, it is not a good song that I'm personally endorsing or anything. I like the game sound, it goes with the other song too.

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