Starfighter: Demo and Greenlight

Hi All,

I'm almost done my latest game, it's called Starfighter. Please check it out and if you like it, please vote for it on Steam Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=784103244

Youtube Trailer:

Demo: https://gordgames.itch.io/starfighter

Cool looking game. Is it a mobile game? Your screen layout is very odd for game on Steam. There's so much wasted space to the left and right.. it's a shame, why not fill up that space? even stretch your sprites a bit?

The graphics look amazing!

Yeah I wanted to keep a tight vertical shooter layout... which sucks on widescreen but that's that. I do need to fill the space up on the sides better! Thanks for the feedback!

well it's certainly interesting being able to see so far in front of the ship...

perhaps you can put lots of stats and moving bars etc on the side? almost like debug info.. might be interesting..

you could even have a window of the enemy boss - like a read-out of their strength health, guns - when they are ready to shoot - and an animation of the pilot or something... yeah don't waste the layout space...use it to your advantage! but you obviously can't overwhelm the player.. but done tastefully I bet it will work.

I found it so difficult, from the way it's designed with the auto-fire and you just move left to right. Killing the first load of enemies before they go off screen was kinda frustrating as you don't control the fire rate. Also what's the cursor for in game? Maybe that becomes evident when you get past the first load of enemies, which I couldn't do

I found it so difficult, from the way it's designed with the auto-fire and you just move left to right. Killing the first load of enemies before they go off screen was kinda frustrating as you don't control the fire rate. Also what's the cursor for in game? Maybe that becomes evident when you get past the first load of enemies, which I couldn't do

You're supposed to die, rather quickly. Take the research points you earned, go buy some new equipment!

Body guns fire straight ahead.

Wing guns are cursor aimed (or gamepad right stick).

Orb weapons are turret tracking.

Also a few body parts in, you get full directional movement.

well it's certainly interesting being able to see so far in front of the ship...

perhaps you can put lots of stats and moving bars etc on the side? almost like debug info.. might be interesting..

you could even have a window of the enemy boss - like a read-out of their strength health, guns - when they are ready to shoot - and an animation of the pilot or something... yeah don't waste the layout space...use it to your advantage! but you obviously can't overwhelm the player.. but done tastefully I bet it will work.

I've had enough people ask that I decided to try a wider layout and it's pretty nice!

Check it out here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/updates/784103244

nice.. using more of the screen looks more natural. Game area now looks about 4:3 or so..

are the sprites stretched? or is there more screen? if the latter, does that change the gameplay at all? by making it easier or harder? and I guess more importantly does it impact performance?

I just played the demo, it's pretty good so far but I have a number of comments.

-screen transitions to get to actually playing the game is not intuitive. It's not clear that you have to keep hitting the ship icon. When I first started, I could not figure out how to start the game. Then I thought, oh maybe it's just a demo to show the interface? I closed the game a number of times, went back in.. clicked everything.. still could not figure it out. Then I clicked the "ship" icon again and realized it brought me to a new section. So really you need a NEXT button, flashing or arrows >>> swelling in size essentially saying "CLICK HERE NEXT"

-the menu architecture is very cumbersome. I should just have the ability to go to any screen from anywhere and not have to drill down. I should be able to launch whenever and not have to keep hitting the spaceship icon. When I was on the area where I can add body type and wings. I would try to load out from there, but then realized I was in the wrong section, but couldn't remember where it was. Then I realized I need to hit the Space Ship again... not intuitive.

-fire button does not work on gamepad - when I play your game.. I definitely want to play with a gamepad

-fire button for missiles is strange.. I have to hold the button in.. I can't hit the button and fire. Actually all the shooting feels like that. I want to shoot when I hit a button

-when I played with a mouse the cursor is still a pointer when I'm aiming.. that should be a crosshair + or target box. Looks very wrong with a mouse pointer.

-when shooting asteroids, at one point they all blow up which seemed weird? But the not so good part was you triggered the sfx for each one at the same time making a super loud clipping overlapping sound. I literally jumped. I would definitely make 1 sound effect for that. i.e. a sound effect of many asteroids blowing up at once.

-the beginning of the game is probably a little too hard. Once you get more body parts and you can aim it's A LOT easier.

-You could have a little more rewarding parts to the gameplay. Since it seems you do an endless run each time and keep your RP after you die. A tally screen or some sort of indication you made progress would be good. I thought for sure when I beat the big ship after the asteroids I would go back to the menu but it just kept going. But yeah, important to give the player some feedback here...after dying.

keep up the good work! I love the ship upgrades and body parts... the interface art is nice and clean, colors are great, ship assets cool to look at.. bullets and explosions, screen shakes all good stuff!