A fleshed-out version of Battle Khromatica, originally submitted for Mini Jam 111.

Controls (on QWERTY keyboard):

  • Arrow Keys: Move around
  • Z: Fire shot
  • X: Angle shots backwards (Level 2+ only)
  • R: Reset the game

How to Play:

  • Let yourself get hit to change colors.
  • You can damage enemies of the same color, but not ones of differing colors.

Reading the HUD Information:

  1. Area: Tells you which level you are currently in. (In this build, there's only one level, so not very helpful)
  2. Score: Gain points for shooting down enemies. You get an extra life (extend) at every 100,000 points you earn.
  3. Remain: The amount of lives you have left.
  4. Weapons: Has your collected weapons (only shot in this build), which goes up from level 1 (straight forward) to level 3 (two wings of weaker shots on each side). You power up your shot by earning XP, which you get from shooting down enemies.
  5. Rank: The dynamic difficulty level. The better you play, the higher it goes, and the harder the game gets accordingly.
    1. Formations (small triangle icon): Keeps track of the formations of enemies you have shot down this loop. 15 is a perfect, which awards a 25k bonus at the end of the level.
    2. Loop (small turning icon): If you score well, the game will go directly into the 2nd loop once you finish, which is harder. This keeps track of which loop you are in.
  6. Enemy: When a boss appears, the timer will display how much time you have left to fight the boss until you time it out. In addition, the amount of health it has left will be shown in a gauge.

Tips, Tricks, and other Strange Mechanics:

  • Just like in the game jam version, a "colorless" run where you do not change colors is possible. For the 2nd loop, however, I'm not sure...
  • Rank goes up the more formations you shoot down... but you get more lives the more you score. Is it worth it to ignore formations if you're just trying to survive?
    • Speaking of rank, powering up your weapon ALSO gives you additional rank -- is that Lv.3 shot worth it either?
  • Hover over "funnyman" spots to rapidly gain points. You will gain LOTS of rank though, so judge for yourself if this is a fair trade.

Additional Info:

Battle Khromatica is not a complete game by any means -- consider this a rough beta for the first level. Found an annoying bug? Let me know in the comments.

Patch Notes:

  • v. 1.01: Fixed a race condition bug where the player wouldn't be sent to the 2nd loop.
  • v. 1.02:
    • Homing bullets now have a directional sprite and have a nerfed hitbox.
    • Loop 2 now has requirements; meet any to get to the 2nd loop:
      • Score at least 300,000 points.
      • Obtain at least 50% rank before beating the last boss.
      • (Hidden) Do a colorless run.
    • Dying in Loop 2 brings you to the congrats screen. Either reload the page or hit "R" (physical) to be brought back to the bootup screen.

Development log

Comments

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This looks really neat! The decision between getting hit to be able to shoot down more enemies is a very interesting one. But it was lagging pretty badly for me on my laptop, which made an already hard game harder. I wonder if that's because it's in the browser? Would a local Windows version help?

You should add a graphic that explains the controls since Z is NOT the shoot button on my keyboard (I have a german QWERTZ keyboard -> Y and Z are swapped compared to QWERTY)

Ahh -- in Godot I set the keys to be physical keyboard mappings, thanks for reminding me to watch out for other keyboard mappings!

In terms of accessibility this game is kinda a nightmare (ESPECIALLY if you are red-green colorblind) so I've got to figure out how to deal with that too.

Lots of fun! Really felt like I had to rewire my brain with the color mechanic. Cool retro feel.