A Shot in The Dark

"After an injury, the firefly is unable to fly away from predators. It'll have to use its glow to its advantage.".

I made this game for a game jam to fill some small amount of spare time I had in the Summer holidays.

The game was made in Godot 4 with C#. This is because I wanted to get used to Godot 4. In hindsight, it would have been better if I had just used Godot 3 so I could have used web exports..

Formula Overview

I used the same formula as described in the page on Robots Hate Rain, except I used two colours here. This is where I first started the formula and this is because the limitation of the game jam to use only two colours made me realise the ease of adding a progress system this way.

Gameplay Overview

The gameplay has the player constantly having to switch between two mode: light and dark.

• Light: The player is extremely slow but can see all around them
• Dark: The player is very fast and can shoot but cannot see very far

As you may already notice, the player has to balance these two modes in order to surivive for as long as they can. This game gives a larger point bonus to time than defeating enemies as the main priority should be to keep alive.

As described in the formula, the three enemies in this game are the following:

• Worm: Basic shooting enemy. The bullet pattern is made in such a way where it is almost impossible for the player to dodge without having to light up. This is because there are 3 bullets in a spray where the player has to move out of the way but an extra bullet wider so the player cannot move too far.

• Beetle: The tank. This enemy tries to charge into the player with a bigger hitbox. This means that the player must move perpendicular in order to dodge, which can prove tricky when doding other enemies.

• Ant Hill: This walls off sections of the map using ants. This means that the player will have to keep a mental note that they cannot move in certain directions.

Criticism

Unfortunately, while I still think these are all good ideas, the game is just too hard. This is for a majority of reasons:

• Shortened play time: When I was making the game, I felt that the player would likely only want to play for less than a minute. I don't really know where I got this idea from, because an extended play time can make suriving more thrilling as the player has more to lose.

• Wrong Modes: The functions of each mode is off. I believe that light mode should have been the one to move faster as switching modes has such a huge punishment from stopping the player in place. Therefore, the player will always have to blindly dodge attacks, which feels very bad, even if that's the point of the game.

• Skill Ceiling: I wanted the game to have some sort of special technique for players to learn to get an advantage. If the player switches modes quickly, it vastly increases their fire rate. While this is cool, I had to then balance the whole game around this, making the game feel pretty relentless if you cannot use this. It is the culprit of most of the game's problems.