Battery Licker coming soon!

8bitninja

Hey, everyone -
Here's a little sneak peek at one of my latest games!
It's called Battery Licker.
The name came to me during a late night dev session
and is most likely the result of too much coffee and not enough sleep.
Thanks! Hope you guys dig it.

Socks

Looks and sounds excellent, like the name and the Defender-esque logo too !

Icebox

The game looks great , i love the style

jay2dx

Looks awesome man, when's this out?

8bitninja

@Socks @Icebox @jay2dx
Thanks, you guys!
@jay2dx - Should be anytime now.

neoman

Looks great! Good luck with it

Braydon_SFX

Looks amazing! Always love the small things you pay attention to in order to push the game over the edge. Nice!

owen_dennis

This is great! I love how it feels kinda punk somehow?

Two.E

Looks great @8bitninja A great expansion on Machine Gun Hero. All the best!

gingagaming

Love the name! Not sure how it fits in the game but it got my attension! Best of luck upon release.

Terrellort_Gaming

Woww that is very real mechanic. Like that game vanquish!! O want to play on IOS!!!!

8bitninja

Thanks to all you guys, I really appreciate all the positive feedback!

Thanks, @Socks - I didn't really have Defender in mind but I was definitely inspired by that era. Robotron was definitely in mind during development though.

Thank you, @neoman - I hope so.

@Braydon_SFX - Coming from you, that means a lot. Thank you!

Thanks, @owen_dennis - It's funny that you say that. I've recently decided to take a more punk approach to development and art in general. Not so much in aesthetics but just the attitude. For too long I've been trying to emulate the structure of popular games. Now I'm like F that, I'm gonna make what I want.

Thanks, @Two.E - It's like MGH off the rails.

Thanks, @gingagaming - Well, the player is destroying big battery-ish things!

Thanks, @Terrellort_Gaming - It is coming for iOS only, for now.

Thunder_Child

Lol...I love the look of this game...as simple as they are, I love the little blast waves and particles.

8bitninja

Thanks, @Thunder_Child - I think those fx layered over each other help make the game seem more alive.

8bitninja

Battery Licker is now live. iOS Appstore here

Two.E

Congrats - it's a very entertaining game. So many little effects that help bring it life. Hope your work pays off!

8bitninja

Thanks, @Two.E

owen_dennis

Pretty fun! Suggestion though: I would change all your controls to be "if touch is inside" instead of "if touch is pressed"

Because we're using a touch screen, we can't just feel where the buttons are. I found myself constantly sliding my thumbs between left and right instead of pressing left and right. The problem was if I start my thumb on the left button, then slide it to the right button so I can quickly change directions, it continues pressing the left button instead of pressing the right button. If it's switched to inside instead of pressed, that problem will be mitigated quite a bit.

Same thing with the jump button and shoot direction. I found that I was sliding my thumb from jump to shoot, but it wouldn't activate.

BigDave

@8bitninja

freaking love it, it looks alive
all the particles when they die are made so lovely

a few things that I just thought watching the trailer:

Tweaks:
+the number in the background is cut at the upper top
+the enemies are a bit to high shooting them in the torso will look/feel better than shooting at /between their legs

Perfect:
+Colors and blinks perfect..
+Screenshakes perfect..
+movement,impact particles perfect
+soundtrack perfect
+speed of bullets perfect

For gameplay related feedback I would need to play it. Which I will once my girlfriend with the iPhone is back from work.

8bitninja

@owen_dennis , @BigDave
Thanks you guys, I will definitely consider your thoughts in the next update.

jollydo

Looks great indeed, congrats. Question, how long did you work on this game? Just curious :-)

I'm working on my first GS game. I love GS!

Thunder_Child

Great game. Luv the dark music. Colors are sweet. Gameplay is nice also. Controls are a little hard to get used to. Almost wanted to tilt my phone to move left and rights vs trying to make sure I hit the correct button.

I would love a tilt to move and just tap screen to fire. Tilt down and fire tilt up and fire...left and right and fire and there would be no buttons except jump Love it anyways.

This and machine gun hero are great pixel games.

jtadeo

Some game inspiration there! I love it. Good work.

frd

Love it!

8bitninja

@jollydo - Thanks, the initial game took about 3 weeks and I put a few more hours in this weekend on it's first update.

@Thunder_Child - I just submitted update 1.01 which changes the controls from when touch is pressed to when touch is inside. hopefully that helps some.

@jtadeo - Glad to hear it, thanks!

@frd - Thanks! New update on the way to make it even better.

Socks

Great fun ! Love the design / colours and the general look, the music and sound effects are working really really well too. Played on an iPad Air 2, and resolution looked great, super sharp.

Gameplay related feedback:

The controls didn't quite feel right to me, most of all I didn't like the fact that tapping any of the 'fire' buttons doesn't immediately fire, instead you need to press the button and wait a fraction of a second, so natural actions like rapid pressing or one-off hits don't register - this does, after all, somewhat fall into Twitch gameplay, so the player character ideally needs to shoot the very instant the player hits the 'fire' button . . . at the moment you can rapidly tap the fire button and have it flash each time while no bullets are being fired.

I'm going to make a hopefully educated guess here, the fire action triggers an 'every' timer when you have the button held down ? If this is the case it might be that you've not added in the first shot as a separate spawn ?

For example, if I had a rule that said . . .

When touch is pressed (or touch is inside)
--Timer: Every 0.1 seconds
----spawn a bullet.

. . . then when the player presses the button there is a 0.1 wait (just like using 'After' instead of 'Every') before the first bullet is spawned. The way to avoid this delay is to set it up like this:

When touch is pressed (or touch is inside)
--spawn a bullet.
--Timer: Every 0.1 seconds
----spawn a bullet.

. . . . . . . . .

When you jump (using A) - while facing right - and during your jump you hit the left button, it really feels like you should then face left (and land facing left / and shoot left), but jumping and hitting the left keeps you facing right. I was constantly jumping up and while in the air hitting left/right to shoot at one of the pods on the wall.

. . . . . . . . .

A bunch of small details.

The screen shake might be nicer if it were a little more random, at the moment the camera always travels up and right at 45° (sending the scene down and left), you could shake that up a little, I'd even make the screen shake more pronounced.

P.S. BigDave's point about 'the number in the background is cut at the upper top' - I thought that a was deliberate design move, I quite liked it.

The left button is 2 (Retina) pixels higher than the right button, and the alignment on the A / B buttons is a little all over the place, B's outer circle is 3 (R) pixels higher than A's outer circle, while the letter 'B' sits 4 (R) pixels lower than the the letter 'A' . . . the result is that the letter 'B' looks like it is sitting too low in the circle, the letter 'B' also sits too far to the right within its circle.

All these little misalignment issues might only be noticeable on the larger iPad screen, I'm sure you'd get away with it on an phone sized screen.

Also there's a single blue pixel on the back of the player's head ! But I'll let you off with that one

8bitninja

Dang, @Socks - you don't miss much. I really do appreciate all the feedback though. I just cancelled the review of the update in order to address these issues. Thanks again.

Socks

@8bitninja said:
Dang, @Socks - you don't miss much. I really do appreciate all the feedback though. I just cancelled the review of the update in order to address these issues. Thanks again.

One other small thing, if you - for example - mute the music, and then start a game and realise you would rather have the music back on you cannot pause or exit the game in any obvious way, you need to get yourself killed (three times if you have three lives) to get out of the gameplay scene, it might be good to have a pause button or an exit/home button, so you can switch the music back on - or otherwise go back to the home page.

8bitninja

I was gonna add that at some point but somehow it didn't make it on my list. Thanks again, @Socks

8bitninja

Update 1.01 is now live. Thanks to everyone for all the awesome feedback. You have all helped in making Battery Licker a better game. Hope you all enjoy the improvements. Maybe next time I should do a bata before releasing. Thanks again!

flappyattack

I will be downloading this now.