Were you starting to lose faith that the event I promised would ever happen?
Thanks! I really appreciate that! I know that some people have felt like SG is slowly dying and I disagree. It all comes down to whether or not we all collectively want to invest the time into this great community! So, I try to inject a little originality and fun into our stuff whenever I can scrounge up some time. :)
Comment has been collapsed.
First time experiencing this halloween tradition and I loved it!
Great job on the game, simple but surprisingly fun - got overconfident with the Bat Gun and ended up dying, but I still made it to level 78
Gonna try again later and see if I can reach 100
And of course thanks a ton for the GAs!
Comment has been collapsed.
Thanks! And no need to post it right now (although clearly a lot of people have decided to obfuscate their train codes and go ahead and do that). If it comes up during my spot check or you win the grand prize, I'll ask, and then just throw a link to imgur or wherever you put it and we're good to go. :)
Comment has been collapsed.
Made it to 80, pretty cool little game :D Thank you and jesuswarjesus for this event!!
Comment has been collapsed.
Thank you for yet another fun event. Game was great. Very balanced, maybe even a bit too easy. My only gripe would be the screen not scrolling unless you're very close to it. If it weren't for those grim reapers slaming right into my face as I try to move sideways I could have played this non-stop :)
Comment has been collapsed.
Agreed on the scrolling...I'm new to working with cameras and views in GameMaker 2, and this is the default behavior. I don't want to change it in the middle of the event, but I may go back after it's complete and figure out how to make the threshold for scrolling a little bit wider to improve gameplay, as well as a few other things that will make the whole thing a bit less frustrating in case people want to play it more after the event is done.
Comment has been collapsed.
Comment has been collapsed.
Ha ha ha, thanks, but I don't feel like it's quite Steam Store quality. If I were going to do that, I'd definitely spend a little more time on it and improve some QoL things at the very least, and likely add more monsters, weapons, and boss battles. But I appreciate the love!
Comment has been collapsed.
Ha ha ha...so true. But I don't want to be part of the problem. :D
I have a couple of games that might be worthy of 99-cent Steam games if I work on them a bit more. We'll see. Maybe some day.
Comment has been collapsed.
Spiders, eh? <taps fingers together and chuckles evilly, Mr. Burns-style> I promise, no spiders in the next one, either...no, seriously, my fingers are totally not crossed behind my back...
π
π
Comment has been collapsed.
Quite the fun game to end the Halloween season. Reminded me of playing arcade games in the 80's.
Somewhat embarrassed it took me 3 tries to get past level 50. But as soon as I did, I sailed on up to almost level 70 i think.
Thx for the hard work, and the many giveaways. Horror isnt my favorite genre, but there were several games on my wishlist, and a few more i'm considering adding, as they push my comfort zone in a fun way.
Thx again! o/
Comment has been collapsed.
Awesome! Glad you liked it!
Yeah, I'm kinda old, so my first go-to when coding games is to go for something retro and arcadey. π
Comment has been collapsed.
I feel you on old school gaming. For me it was always a hard call between spending money on a new arcade game, or going for the old school pinball.
Just like cheese on pizza, i find the classics are always great fun!
Other than the graphics needing a bit more love, and a couple little tweaks, this game makes for a decent start to something you could actually sell. Add in a little seasonal comedy, and some achievements... and there goes several dozen more hours of your life that may or may not pan out to a fair rate of return. Anywho...
Fun to watch these games get put together in a time crunch, and get a better idea of the hours needed to expound on certain elements, while the core mechanics get done relatively quickly.
Comment has been collapsed.
Absolutely. It's things like...if I wanted for the bat gun to just shoot in a straight line, that would have taken me almost no time. Copy the exact behavior and code from the regular bullet (candy corn), slow it down, up the damage factor, and BOOM. Done. But noooo...I wanted it to be cool with swoopy bats that would arc back and forth...and hoo boy, did that add a lot of additional time to coding for that powerup. And there's the sound effect for it, which is two overlapping, randomized sounds with variable frequency adjustments (a colony of bats screeching from a cave, and an actual recording of fluttering bat wings).
Also, I could have saved a ton of time if I didn't want for so many of the characters to be animated (I mean, the ghosts don't have to wave their arms up and down or open/close their mouths for them to look ok floating toward the player). But I wanted everything to feel a bit more alive, even if it's really a lot of cobbled-together graphics.
You get the idea. As soon as you go past the basics and want to do any detail work, or want exceptions to rules or special scenarios, the code gets exponentially harder. <shrug>
Comment has been collapsed.
Comment has been collapsed.
16,567 Comments - Last post 6 minutes ago by zosky
532 Comments - Last post 4 hours ago by nhahtdh
1,075 Comments - Last post 4 hours ago by Lugum
224 Comments - Last post 6 hours ago by sosich
30 Comments - Last post 14 hours ago by alberto64674yt
1,254 Comments - Last post 18 hours ago by Hogan09890
112 Comments - Last post 19 hours ago by JMM72
91 Comments - Last post 37 seconds ago by Cjcomplex
61 Comments - Last post 21 minutes ago by Akuburanir
13 Comments - Last post 24 minutes ago by Myklex
848 Comments - Last post 27 minutes ago by CultofPersonalitea
253 Comments - Last post 30 minutes ago by ToatsMcGoats
17,292 Comments - Last post 31 minutes ago by Agaster
52 Comments - Last post 31 minutes ago by Myklex
Please note that there is an updated version of the game! Please see notes at the bottom of this main post!
Alrighty, folks! Welcome to the super late 2022 Halloween Event:
Back To The Darkness From Whence Ye Came!
This is another video game event (since everyone here should be a gamer!), similar to the previous couple of Halloween events! This event has 101 giveaways in it! There is some trash, but a whole lot of treasure! All of the games are horror/scary/extradimensional-evil-being/Halloween-themed.
So, the last couple of years, I've done game-flips, which weren't just straight-up asset flips. I mean, I did go get new assets and replace ones in existing games, but I also ended up adding a lot of additional code to make those games better/more focused/the right length/whatever for our events. This year, however, I wrote a whole new game (similar to what I did back with the 1954 game for the PEW PEW PEW train a couple of years ago). I did start with some GameMaker template items to accelerate things a bit, but it's primarily all custom code. I also was using GameMaker 2 for the first time (since I got a 1-year subscription in a bundle somewhere), so there were a few things to learn there as to what's changed from the original one that I already knew at least fairly well.
Alright, alright, that's super...tell me about the actual game, dude.
Ok, fine, fine...I'll get to the good part.
Totally made-up, conveniently-timed background story: Halloween is over, but somehow all of the ghosts and monsters haven't returned to their own purgatorial dimension of darkness! Nope, they've decided that it's way better to stay here and just continue to terrorize the creatures of this dimension all year long. You, the never-rotting jack o' lantern hero, have to step up and blast these baddies back where they belong. That's right, strap on your weapons and scream toward the evil creatures of the night, "Back to the darkness from whence ye came!!!!!"
Basics
Gameplay
So, the game is an endless arena shooter and completely uncomplicated. Shoot everything that moves, and get as high of a score/level as possible. You can grab powerups to make this easier (more on that in just a bit), but otherwise you just need to run around, keeping yourself from getting hit by the monsters and kill as many of them as possible. You start with 3 lives and lose one each time you get hit. Also, when you get hit, you'll turn red with a glowing ring around your jack o' lantern, and you'll be invincible for 3 seconds -- move away from other monsters fast!
Levels and Scoring
This is super easy. For the first 20 levels, you'll level up for every 30 points you earn by shooting monsters. After that, it'll take 50 points per level. There are seven different types of baddies, and they score as follows:
Enemy spawns are pretty well-paced up through level 50...and then the gloves are off. Expect a pretty continuous onslaught at that point, and it will get slightly worse every 10 levels above that. π
Enemy Movement
Weapons/Powerups
Controls
This is easy. Point the crosshair mouse cursor where you want to shoot and hold down that left mouse button. To move, you can use either WASD or the arrow keys (to support both lefties and righties). Nope, sorry, you can't redefine the keys. Didn't have time to code that.
That sounds good, but you still haven't told me how I can win games
Oh yeah, that's kind of important. So, there are four trains with increasingly higher requirements to enter, but the games get increasingly better as well. All of the trains require you to have given at least something on SG before, and thus require a measly level 1 to enter, but this should help filter out at least some of the bots and extra-bad leechers.
FYI, this is honestly pretty easy to do. First "real" playthrough of the finished game, I made it to level 87. Second playthrough, I made level 138. 50 should be a piece of cake.
Once you've achieved any/all of these things, the code to enter that train will be available on the game over screen, clearly labeled along with your score.
In case you're not familiar with it, every giveaway on Steamgifts has a five-character code, and that's what's listed as the start of each train. All you need to do is write down your train codes, and insert them into the URL in your browser as follows:
https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/ABCDE/
All you have to do is replace "ABCDE" in the string above with your five-character code from the game, and POOF! MAGIC! You'll be looking at the first cart in that train. There is a sample graphic of what this looks like at the end of this description with obviously fake codes in it.
Important street cred for keys
The game in the last cart in each train, as well as the grand prize, were all donated by jesuswarjesus. So please take the time to say thanks to him, as he got me over the hump to get this from 96 GAs to the 101 that I wanted to make it.
Unfortunately necessary note about cheating and proof that you actually played
Don't do it. Play the game. It's not that hard, doesn't take that long, and should be at least some degree of fun. Anyone caught cheating, whether giving or receiving codes from the game without playing it, will get added to my blacklist. My blacklist is short...but once you're on it, you're probably never coming off. So, just resist being a douche canoe and play the game that I worked hard to bring you, ok? Alrighty. Enough about that.
The game doesn't save the high score to a file or anything (another thing that I ran out of time to do), so you'll need to get a screen shot. Please get a screen shot of the game over screen that shows all of the trains for which you're qualified, and have your profile up in Steamgifts in the background (I've provided a sample of what that should look like at the end of the instructions here). Please do not post it in this thread and show other people the train codes! Just keep it handy or go ahead and upload it to Imgur or something. I'll be spot-checking wins and all of the most valuable ones, including the grand prize. So be prepared to prove that you played or be ready for a re-roll.
Things that I would do if I had more time (and especially if I were going to release this game)
First and foremost, there would be some basic graphic options, key reassignment, and saving of settings/high score to at least a local file. I would also design specific waves of baddies with more varied patterns, as well as adding at least 4-5 more of them. I'd add at least a couple of more weapons. And most importantly, I'd have boss battles every 10-20 levels or so. But I was coding an entire game in a week of free time (while I was trying really hard not to let my super-busy life schedule fall off of a cliff), so I had to keep things pretty simple and focused for this go-around. Maybe I'll crack it back open later and enhance it. We'll see.
Ok, let's get going!
First things first: Download the game
Install the game (on Windows...sorry, no time to attempt multi-OS support here) and fire it up! Now, your browser and probably your anti-virus may complain that they don't know this file, that it's unsigned (or whatever other malarkey they come up with), and start panicking and tell you not to install it. It does not contain any trojans. The game does not communicate with any external servers or attempt to contact anything over the internet. It just runs on your machine. It's safe, I promise.
FYI...if you want to make the game full-screen, just hit alt-Enter to switch between that and windowed mode. You can also drag the corner of the window with your mouse to resize it manually.
Other stuff
The trains end at 11:59 pm on November 14st - Central Time, US, so you have time to finish up. And this year you have no excuse that Halloween got in the way since I delivered this so late. π€£
A couple of these keys (especially in the lower-level trains) are really freakin' old. So, please be cool and agree to a delete if they don't work for some reason. Being the swell guy that I am, I'll find some kind of replacement game for you of roughly equal value, so you won't go home empty-handed if you were supposed to win something.
EDIT 11/11
So, I just uploaded an updated version of the game (you can still use the link above). It is totally ok if you've already finished with the original version! I just made some minor convenience updates -- but nothing that will change anyone's ability to get a higher score nor change the difficulty level. If I tweak any of those things, it'll be after the event is done so that everyone was playing the same game at the same difficulty level. :)
Little things I added/changed:
Comment has been collapsed.