{"id":2271,"edition":12,"categories":3,"features":0,"size":11736,"name":"Spirit Hunter","authors":[{"name":"Aleksey Litvinov","url":"https://jsalterego.im/","login":"mightyaleksey","gh":5006221}],"description":"

With a fear of not meeting 13kb bundle size and passing multiple sacrifices and loses I’m happy to preset “Spirit Hunter”! It desktop and mobile friendly idle shooter with a hunter as a main character who brings peace to the suburbs.

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Fear nothing and embrace the adventure!

\n","source":"mightyaleksey/js13k-2024-spirit-hunter","stars":0,"dc":"https://mightyaleksey.github.io/js13k-2024-spirit-hunter/","post":"https://dev.to/myjsalterego/spirit-hunter-post-mortem-2np8","comments":[{"at":378886280,"author":"Mark Vasilkov","login":"mvasilkov","gh":140257,"url":"https://mvasilkov.animuchan.net","twitter":"mvasilkov","text":"

Nice music (the song is “I am back” from ZzFXM examples) and spritework! All the right choices.

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(Note that the characters sprite sheet seems to be licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 (Attribution-ShareAlike), so would be nice to include a reference somewhere in the repo.)

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Took me a bit to understand the shooting, and it’s an interesting mechanic: you have to stop and face the enemy, but this makes you easier to chase down, so there’s a strategy element to it.

\n","games":["Shoot 13 Nomsters","King Thirteen"]},{"typ":1,"at":379044600,"re":378886280,"author":"Aleksey Litvinov","login":"mightyaleksey","gh":5006221,"url":"https://jsalterego.im/","text":"

Hi, Mark! Thanks for the tips, I added license reference to the github readme (not sure if I can update description here).

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Yeah, well spotted! I was thinking about that you can’t shoot backwards and tried to build that behaviour in to the game to see how it will impact the gameplay. Also, I had a small issue with the enemies velocity making it constant and equal to the player’s speed. Will try to make it better off competition.

\n

Thanks for checking and for the feedback!

\n"},{"at":378961400,"author":"Cody Ebberson","login":"codyebberson","gh":749094,"url":"https://cody.ebberson.com","twitter":"codyebberson","text":"

Tough! I beat level 1 after a few tries. Pretty sneaky that enemies can go through obstacles, but bullets cannot. I like the NES style graphics. Congrats on submitting, nice job!

\n","games":["Phantomicus"]},{"typ":1,"at":379044308,"re":378961400,"author":"Aleksey Litvinov","login":"mightyaleksey","gh":5006221,"url":"https://jsalterego.im/","text":"

Hey, I just realised that I had a bug that makes enemies velocity constant instead of increasing gradually :) And I was planning to draw enemies as ghosts initially (which explains ability to float through the obstacles), however, did not found suitable graphics for that.\nI have plans to make a v2 version outside of competition and will try to address those issues.

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Thank you for the feedback and for checking it! :)

\n"},{"at":379028660,"author":"Jure Triglav","login":"jure","gh":238667,"url":"https://juretriglav.si","twitter":"juretriglav","text":"

This game is hard! :) Beat level 1, but I enter level 2 with like 1 or two lives. Congrats on your game, I really like the vibe you’ve constructed!

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As Mark has said though, if you’re using an asset that comes with a license, you should follow the terms of the license.

\n","games":["The Dandelion Wars","plusminus13"]},{"typ":1,"at":379045051,"re":379028660,"author":"Aleksey Litvinov","login":"mightyaleksey","gh":5006221,"url":"https://jsalterego.im/","text":"

Good job on the progress! :) I’ll try to adjust the difficulty as a follow up off the competition. I also updated my GitHub readme with the license link, so hopefully it should be good for now.

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Thank you for the feedback and for checking my game! :)

\n"},{"at":379226787,"author":"Michael M.","login":"Schnark","gh":17846729,"url":"https://schnark.github.io","text":"

Unfortunately, I could not play the game: I have “search as you type” enabled in my browser, so when I try to move the browser search suddenly shows up. You should call .preventDefault() on all keyboard events to prevent this.

\n","games":["Lord Balsekil's Lairs of Bad Luck"]},{"typ":1,"at":379313757,"re":379226787,"author":"Aleksey Litvinov","login":"mightyaleksey","gh":5006221,"url":"https://jsalterego.im/","text":"

Thanks! I totally forgot about this one.\nI just tested it and it helped me to address some issues on mobile with the “share” button.

\n"},{"at":379242487,"author":"Ryan Tyler","login":"tyler6699","gh":50468,"url":"https://carelesslabs.co.uk","text":"

I like the main hero sprite and graphics, nice chip tune music. The fighting is really tough.

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Am sure that could be easily improved!

\n","games":["The Fear Factory"]},{"typ":1,"at":379555627,"re":379242487,"author":"Aleksey Litvinov","login":"mightyaleksey","gh":5006221,"url":"https://jsalterego.im/","text":"

Thanks!\nYou are totally right! I tried to make the game less challenging in the post-compo version, so it be better :)

\n"},{"at":379287863,"author":"kennyfully1988","login":"kennyfully1988","gh":181469182,"text":"

I enjoyed the game, but I think the enemies are a bit too fast. In games like this, it’s okay to make the enemy a little slower than the player so that the player can have time to properly run away from a bad situation.

\n"},{"typ":1,"at":379555781,"re":379287863,"author":"Aleksey Litvinov","login":"mightyaleksey","gh":5006221,"url":"https://jsalterego.im/","text":"

Thank you for the feedback! I realised it late that I had a bug that was setting enemies speed equal to the player, which makes it more challenging.\nI will improve it in the post-compo version.

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Thanks for checking!

\n"},{"at":380021991,"author":"Jasper Renow-Clarke","login":"picosonic","gh":26137750,"twitter":"femtosonic","text":"

Love the pixel graphics and soundtrack. The game has a really nice aesthetic.

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Did other enemies appear away from you initial spawn point? I didn’t ever see any, plus if I could escape them and just keep walking the level seemed to go on forever?

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The game was pretty hard, because there was no way to shoot - you almost needed to just run away and occasionally point at an enemy and hope the character would shoot for you.

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It’s a good job you start with quite a few hearts, perhaps you could have more hearts awarded to you after battles.

\n","games":["rollermaze"]},{"typ":1,"at":380489807,"re":380021991,"author":"Aleksey Litvinov","login":"mightyaleksey","gh":5006221,"url":"https://jsalterego.im/","text":"

Hey, you noticed interesting things! To save some effort on level design I decided to go for the infinite map idea, which I implemented through the scrolling behavior. In a nutshell, it relocates tiles from an existing pattern when you go beyond the screen. And as you spotted the enemies appear around the player, so when you go far in one direction you quickly lose the track of those. A bit late I realised that this behavior can be confusing and may block players, so in post-compo version I decided to apply this behavior to all entities: tiles, enemies, hearts and it believe it should be better now :)

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I totally agree that the game is hard, mainly due to velocity bug (enemies should be slower). And I like the idea to award extra hards on the level completion!

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Thank you for the thorough review!

\n"},{"at":380090114,"author":"Markus Fisch","login":"markusfisch","gh":485246,"url":"http://www.markusfisch.de","text":"

This looks so adorable, and the music really sells it for me! Well done!

\n","games":["Lost City Of S"]},{"typ":1,"at":380244584,"re":380090114,"author":"Aleksey Litvinov","login":"mightyaleksey","gh":5006221,"url":"https://jsalterego.im/","text":"

Thanks!

\n"},{"at":380102399,"author":"João Lopes","login":"lopis","gh":2715751,"url":"www.jlopes.dev","text":"

The art is really cute, I love the minimal style. The illusion of pixel art gets ruined by the emoji hearts and non pixel text though.

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However, I couldn’t really understand how to survive. I can’t control the shooting, and had to constantly run away, until I eventually died. Tried a few times and couldn’t understand the way to survive.

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No apparent connection to the theme. Well, I can give you the “phobia” part because it’s a scary game in a cemetery?

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The sound was too loud but the music was fun.

\n","games":["Thirteen Terrible Stunts"]},{"typ":1,"at":380500554,"re":380102399,"author":"Aleksey Litvinov","login":"mightyaleksey","gh":5006221,"url":"https://jsalterego.im/","text":"

Thanks! I try to add hearts into the assets as a follow up.\nI agree on the theme topic, the connection can be improved.

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The shooting works in a simple way: you need to face an enemy to be able to shoot it. And after each shot there is a small cooldown for the reload. I guess it is worth to think about some visual feedback for that. Regarding survival aspect, the enemies speed a higher than it should be in the released version by mistake, that’s why it is so challenging. I improved it in post-compo version.

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Thanks for mentioning the sound as well. I try to think about how to provide a way to adjust it.

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Thanks for the thorough review!

\n"},{"at":380273021,"author":"Christoph Schansky","login":"DerBenniBanni","gh":5499976,"text":"

This has a very retro-feeling (Commodore 64), nice!

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The music is really fun to listen to (hm… oh… just found it in the examples of ZzFXM…)

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The gameplay is pretty hard, as the enemies are quicker than the player, and the player has to face them to hit them.

\n","games":["Aargh! Triskaideka attacks!"]},{"typ":1,"at":380490235,"re":380273021,"author":"Aleksey Litvinov","login":"mightyaleksey","gh":5006221,"url":"https://jsalterego.im/","text":"

Yeah, I was learning how to apply the music and went for one of the existing examples :D

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You are right on the challenge and I made it better in the post-compo version! Thanks for playing and for the review!

\n"},{"typ":2,"at":380275046,"author":"Victor Debone","login":"debone","gh":763457,"url":"https://javascri.pl/","twitter":"javascripl","text":"

Hello! Thanks for your submission to js13k!\nI’m sure you’ve worked hard on your game, but I’m not aware of how much time you spent on it, so excuse me if things I mention were in your mind, but got left out in the rush of the month or just because you hit the 13kb limit :)

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Great work on having a working game for the jam! Also the graphics are a nice and consistent.

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I liked that you added music and sound effects, these add to the experience.

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I couldn’t finish the first level. Allowing enemies to not collide with the map while blocking me made it really hard to create a strategy to kill them all. A minor mistake and they were over me – I couldn’t shot them and they just ate me :P

\n"},{"typ":1,"at":380490938,"re":380275046,"author":"Aleksey Litvinov","login":"mightyaleksey","gh":5006221,"url":"https://jsalterego.im/","text":"

No worries and thank you for the feedback!

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Yeah, the idea was that you can position yourself properly while enemies are slowly engaging you, however, I had a bug with the velocity making enemies run at the same speed as a player.

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Will make it better in post-compo version :)

\n"},{"typ":2,"at":380499871,"author":"Noël Meudec","login":"Noel-FB","gh":71314518,"url":"https://facebook.com/instantgames","text":"

It is a good looking game, with music and SFX. Great job!\nI don’t understand when my character is supposed to shoot. There is no indicator of a cooldown (or did I miss it?) and I couldn’t identify a pattern that triggers shooting. Also, when I lose, it tells me to do better next time. But, what is there to do better? The enemies run faster than me, and I have no control over my ability to shoot them. That’s confusing, because I really want to do better next time! Thank you for submitting it :-)

\n"},{"typ":1,"at":380501063,"re":380499871,"author":"Aleksey Litvinov","login":"mightyaleksey","gh":5006221,"url":"https://jsalterego.im/","text":"

Hehe, sorry for confusion :)

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The shooting works in the following way: you need to face an enemy and it will shoot automatically at the distance of ~3 tiles. After that the will be a short reload. So the challenge is to position yourself properly to be able to shoot the target. From survival aspect, the enemies supposed to be slower, however, I had a bug in a released version pushing ppl for an extra effort.

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I’ll try to think about how to improve visual feedback. Thanks for checking and for the feedback!

\n"},{"typ":2,"at":380539951,"author":"Dann Sullivan","url":"https://bigbossbattle.com","text":"

Solid music and I really like the graphics style that you used. It’s an impressive accomplishment considering the restrictions.

\n"}],"results":{"theme":{"rank":138,"min":1,"score":1.89,"max":4.2},"innovation":{"rank":153,"min":1,"score":2.04,"max":4.47},"gameplay":{"rank":119,"min":1,"score":2.44,"max":4.29},"graphics":{"rank":65,"min":1,"score":3.37,"max":4.76},"audio":{"rank":44,"min":1,"score":3.19,"max":4.34},"controls":{"rank":138,"min":1,"score":2.33,"max":4.24},"primary":{"rank":108,"min":6,"score":15.26,"max":24.47},"label":"Overall"}}