Those Final Seconds is a poor attempt to make a shoot-em-up game. It could have been fun, but it is not, but I’m submitting it anyway to see how it fares.
\nThe goal is to gain as many points as possible before you run out of time. Killing those poor, innocent enemies will give you points, but dying enemies also drop clocks that magically give you more time.
\nPlay on Firefox or Chrome/Chromium to get the audio working properly. On Firefox avoid private browsing since it might cause graphics bugs for an unknown reason.
\n","source":"jani-nykanen/those-final-seconds","stars":5,"comments":[{"at":378809770,"author":"Ryan Tyler","login":"tyler6699","gh":50468,"url":"https://carelesslabs.co.uk","text":"I think it was fun, cute graphics, really polished look. I always love your UI.
\n","games":["The Fear Factory"]},{"at":378815004,"author":"Santi Herranz","login":"santiHerranz","gh":961911,"twitter":"santiherranz","text":"Very well done, nice graphics and very clean code
\n","games":["No Flight Zone 13"]},{"at":378826848,"author":"Rob Louie","login":"roblouie","gh":5448110,"url":"roblouie.com","twitter":"rob_louie","text":"I liked the mechanics quite a bit, and the art style is amazing as always
\n","games":["13th Floor"]},{"at":378833543,"author":"Matt McKenna","login":"mtmckenna","gh":361430,"url":"https://www.mtmckenna.com","text":"Love the look and the gameplay feels really polished!
\n","games":["Entangolf"]},{"at":378838503,"author":"xem","login":"xem","gh":1225909,"text":"The graphics are amazing, congrats for the multiple entries
\n","games":["O HIII BAD SKATEPARK","EMOJIPHOBIA","GREAT PLUMBER 65"]},{"at":378853800,"author":"Cliff Earl","login":"Antix-Development","gh":17822130,"text":"Pretty cool. Awesome graphics! Your engine is pretty tight. I felt the controls were a little sluggish though.
\n","games":["Badluck Butter Chicken Goes To Outer Space","Badluck Butter Chicken Flies The Unfriendly Skies"]},{"at":378859502,"author":"Lakshman","login":"LakshmanKishore","gh":61258323,"url":"lakshman.vercel.app","twitter":"Lakshman007bff","text":"Nice and addictive game, its amazing that you have pulled out multiple entries for this year!
\n","games":["Facing 13"]},{"at":378886151,"author":"Jesper Rasmussen","login":"repsej","gh":116525,"text":"Really nice graphics, good controls and ok sounds.
\n","games":["The Way of the Dodo"]},{"at":378886219,"author":"Jesper Rasmussen","login":"repsej","gh":116525,"text":"Really nice graphics, good controls and ok sounds.
\n","games":["The Way of the Dodo"]},{"at":378896321,"author":"Jasper Renow-Clarke","login":"picosonic","gh":26137750,"twitter":"femtosonic","text":"Wonderful graphics and presentation as a whole. The game plays well and is fun. The first time I played it I didn’t do any shooting and got past several enemies, but the score was zero, perhaps the longer you stay alive the more points you can get?
\n","games":["rollermaze"]},{"at":378904024,"author":"Jonathan Vallet","login":"jonathan-vallet","gh":5329099,"text":"277k scored.\nNice graphics for the size, it’s funny despite what you say in description.\ntimer item bouncing is sometime erratic, which add more intensity to keep the timer high
\n","games":["13 Steps to Escape"]},{"at":378911435,"author":"Jude","login":"Hude06","gh":40799876,"url":"judemakes.com","text":"Love the graphics on the game. You got so much crammed into a small 13K good job
\n","games":["The Last Bullet"]},{"at":378947039,"author":"João Lopes","login":"lopis","gh":2715751,"url":"www.jlopes.dev","text":"The game looks really good. I think it’s already fun, but also the difficulty level ramp up should be softer. I got frustrated too quickly. Also a game like this definitely needs music.\nNot sure how it fits the theme?
\n","games":["Thirteen Terrible Stunts"]},{"at":378959990,"author":"Federico Jacobi","login":"federicojacobi","gh":3521974,"url":"https://federicojacobi.com","text":"I think this is pretty great. Yes, it need extra work, and the control are a bit sluggish, but this is indeed A GAME! and a fun one too!
\nGood job on juicing a few things as well.
\n","games":["13s"]},{"at":378961569,"author":"aselitto","login":"aselitto","gh":17676172,"text":"Really well done. The graphics were very cool with a nice 3d feel, the controls were perfect and the game played really well! Great job!
\n","games":["Dekatria Mansion"]},{"at":378965159,"author":"Ryan Malm","login":"Rybar","gh":145812,"text":"Really beautiful pixel art! I love the faux-perspective effect on the ground. Visuals are super-polished. You’re too hard on yourself, I enjoyed this little shooter.
\n","games":["Six And Seven"]},{"at":379137484,"author":"Eoin McGrath","login":"eoinmcg","gh":96340,"url":"http://eoinmcgrath.com","twitter":"eoinmcg","text":"Awesome cutesy style pixel art.
\nLove the general mayhem, although enemy bullets can be hard to distinguish. Nicely paced, too.
\nAn excellent, polished entry. Well done!
\n","games":["Gecko Blaster"]},{"at":379198406,"author":"Jonas Olmstead","login":"sanojian","gh":428082,"text":"A well-crafted game. Very nice visuals and UI design.
\n","games":["Wendol Village"]},{"at":379256473,"author":"Richard Chung","login":"gregwoodsfrontier","gh":80141657,"text":"115832
\nThe graphics are really nice. Is this really 13kb jk.\nHowever I cannot see the element of 13-phobia or any elements of 13.\nAnyways it is a fun shoot-them-up game.\nThe colors in the background should be a bit dimmer or desaturated to make the foreground pop. They are a tad distracting.
\n","games":["Wands of Triskaidekai"]},{"at":379261338,"author":"Cody Ebberson","login":"codyebberson","gh":749094,"url":"https://cody.ebberson.com","twitter":"codyebberson","text":"My high score was 213741. Amazing work, as always. Quintessential Jani game 😁 Beautiful pixel art. The parallax scrolling, and the 3d effect on the ground made the game feel very “big”. You did a great job of making use of space, going up high feels different than staying low close to the ground. Nice enemy variety, multiple pickups with distinct purpose. All around, just a great job. Well done!
\n","games":["Phantomicus"]},{"at":379276601,"author":"FoumartGames","login":"foumart","gh":3528138,"url":"https://www.foumartgames.com","twitter":"FoumartGames","text":"Fun game and nice pixel art. The controls however feel a bit weird.\nit feels the game registers only two keys from keyboard at the same time - for example when I move up and hold the left and right keys at the same time (this happens a lot while maneuvering) - player should move straight up - missing the left and right negation in that case.
\n","games":["Odyssey"]},{"at":379321520,"author":"Lewis Nakao","login":"lewdev","gh":1469960,"url":"https://lewdev.github.io","twitter":"lewdev","text":"I absolutely loved the parallax background and 3D side-scrolling grid! It looked so awesome! I was hoping to achieve similar action-packed gameplay; it was chaotic and satisfying.
\nIt might be just me, but my own character’s bullets seemed to visually get in the way of enemies. Like it’s harder to see enemies when bullets are standing out more than it needs to. Maybe change its color.
\nI recall reading somewhere about “Enter the Gungeon” and how they chose its enemies’ bullet color. I can’t find any article about it, but I thought it was interesting to think about and how it really matters given the color pallet of your game.
\nMy score was about 417,000. Thanks for making a great game!
\n","games":["13attle TanKs"]},{"at":379370809,"author":"Alex Delderfield","login":"AD-Edge","gh":3481465,"url":"www.delta-edge.com.au","twitter":"Alex_ADEdge","text":"An impressive amount of graphics and gameplay here, it looks and plays great - great entry!\nI also like that there is a little bit of extra vertical space, thats a nice element to add in which otherwise a lot of devs wouldnt add in, and just makes the game feel a bit roomier and smoother. I like the 13s timer integration as well, a good use of the theme and nowhere near as stressful as just having a straight 13s countdown constantly.
\n","games":["The Anti-Poker Protocol"]},{"at":379485048,"author":"Homer Dilpleu","login":"HomerDilpleu","gh":66157330,"text":"I don’t agree with you, playing this game is very fun! The graphics are amazing and everything is so polished!
\n","games":["Unloved 13"]},{"at":379580832,"author":"Christoph Schansky","login":"DerBenniBanni","gh":5499976,"text":"Gorgeous pixelart, and pretty 3d-ish ground-effect! Also a pretty flawless SHMUP gameplay.
\nThe stop-the-time-powerup is a great idea.
\nnice game, fun to play (a bit short maybe…)
\n","games":["Aargh! Triskaideka attacks!"]},{"at":379705749,"author":"Quinten Clause","login":"Quinten","gh":449902,"url":"https://quinten.github.io/","text":"Great graphics, animation and sound! I would remove the mushrooms in the background or make them blend more with the clouds by making them light blue. Atmospheric perspective could really benefit your art style. In the same way you can make the eyes and mouth in the sun lighter, perhaps a darker variant of the yellow instead of the hard contrasting black. This will make the sun appear very far away, but also really big!
\n","games":["The Tridecomino Coral Reef"]},{"at":379913342,"author":"Antti Haavikko","login":"anttihaavikko","gh":2298536,"url":"https://anttihaavikko.itch.io/","text":"Awesome art, knew it was yours straight away from seeing the cover picture. Even background parallax effect, nice! But all that great looking art has a downside too, it gets very very busy later on in the game and it becomes near impossible to try to read the situation and see incoming bullets and so on.
\nThe sound effects got quite repetitive. Obviously music would have helped. Or even some slight variation on the sounds.
\nDon’t know if it was just my machine but the controls seemed a bit laggy for some reason. Not sure if I’m just delusional but felt like using arrow keys was laggier than WASD too. And it seemed worse later on when the action got hectic. I didn’t notice frame rate dipping though so maybe not just a performance thing.
\nThere was really no point not shooting all the time that I noticed at least. I’m of the school of that a mechanic like shooting should always have some reason to not be doing it all the time (stamina systems, ammo, moving slower while shooting etc) or it should be just automatic. No point forcing the player to just keep holding a single button 100% of the play time really.
\nMechanic wise it was very solid. Multiplier makes the scoring a lot more interesting pacing the time pickups introduced some more skill ceiling instead of just brainlessly going all shmup mode. I see that you’re not too happy with it yourself though. My biggest issues were the lack of visual clarity and the laggy controls. Without those, it could have indeed been very fun. I’d also maybe either slow it down a bit or zoom out some to give more reaction time. Might be just the visual clutter making it slower to react in time but I felt like those quick spread shot bursts were just too much for my old man reflexes.
\nMy best ended up being 611k. At some point I changed to play on a quite small window which for some reason made it easier for me to see what was going on. And the scoring does maybe give too much weight to the multiplier. A huge portion of the score always comes from the initial hitless streak.
\n","games":["Coup Ahoo"]},{"at":380060553,"author":"Benjamin Boyd Austin","login":"bbaustin","gh":18755168,"text":"I thought this was fun!
\nAwesome graphics! Solid shooty gameplay! Good retro sound effects!
\nMy high score was 112,547.
\n","games":["PicoBuddy"]},{"typ":2,"at":380170870,"author":"Emanuele Feronato","login":"triqui","gh":389551,"text":"What a bad description, you should be the first to believe in your game!
\nGraphically it is well done and all the sprites move fluidly, there are lots of objects on screen and parallax scrolling as well, although the clouds placed in the background should move slowerametne than the mushroom platforms, which doesn’t seem to be the case.
\nIn any case, I found it a fun score attack.
\n"},{"at":380242682,"author":"Almar Suarez","login":"wololoa","gh":10622012,"twitter":"repunkgame","text":"Unbelievably solid game! The core game loop is simple, but everything feels right: the parallax / 3d effect, the movement, the sound, the sprites - everything fits together. A solid little game, well done :)
\n","games":["DECK 13"]},{"typ":2,"at":380437055,"author":"Matt Hackett","login":"richtaur","gh":24601,"url":"https://valadria.com","twitter":"richtaur","text":"A side-scrolling shooter with amazingly good graphics at under 13k! Plays great, sounds good, and looks fantastic. My only complaint is I feel the gameplay would benefit from a reason to not simply hold down the shoot button, and I would have liked the theme integrated more. Still, an impressive game, great job!
\nAlso, regarding the description, please be kind to yourself :)
\n"},{"typ":2,"at":380503382,"author":"Richard Davey","login":"photonstorm","gh":164476,"url":"www.photonstorm.com","twitter":"photonstorm","text":"Easily one of the best-looking js13k games I’ve played this year. The pixel work alone is glorious. The sprites are clear and well defined, the parallax effect is lovely, the effects are nice - it’s just all really good to look at. The gameplay has a solid core loop as well: Shoot, avoid and collect. Simple enough and fun enough too. You definitely tried to add variety and things become more challenging as you progress, so kudos for that. There’s absolutely nothing in here that is on-theme though, not even slightly, which is a shame. With some small tweaks to the gameplay (and a relevant theme!) this could have been a real serious contender.
\n"}],"results":{"theme":{"rank":88,"min":1,"score":2.46,"max":4.2},"innovation":{"rank":101,"min":1,"score":2.6,"max":4.47},"gameplay":{"rank":20,"min":1,"score":3.77,"max":4.29},"graphics":{"rank":4,"min":1,"score":4.63,"max":4.76},"audio":{"rank":52,"min":1,"score":3.06,"max":4.34},"controls":{"rank":20,"min":1,"score":3.6,"max":4.24},"primary":{"rank":29,"min":6,"score":20.13,"max":24.47},"label":"Overall"}}