😈💀 Grez Presents: Halloween Blaster! 👻🎃 2021 Halloween Event - Level 1+ - ended

And with that, another Halloween event is over! I hope that everyone (or almost everyone, at least 😉) had a good time with the game.

As described in the original post, I am checking screen shots for the grand prize and some of the more premium games, as well as spot-checking some other random ones. And so, I need to see screen shots from the following players:

ILux (our Grand Prize winner!)
AgentQQ
TomyDrack
cybernet343
Ouokl
elGeorgio
Mileworg
Thac0
Katr4n
Spanx
Acierate
ant123
read0nly
KornKage
sunmi
threeupyouya
Pestarzt

You can put them on imgur, dropbox, whatever. Just leave a link in the thread here, and as I check them I will cross your name off of the list. Once everyone has been checked (and I know that I don't need to do any re-rolls), then I'll send out all of the keys! So, please confirm your valid entry ASAP so that everyone can get their games!

Congrats to the winners, and Happy Halloween!

Grez

I'm baaaaaaaaaccccccckkkkk!!!!

Sorry that I couldn't jump in here sooner, but I've been a busy boy. Lots going on at work, my awesome custom pickup truck was stolen (in broad daylight no less) and I've had to deal with insurance and stuff, and I'm preparing for a friend's big show (annual event) in which I'm actually performing this year...oh, and the afterparty for all of the musicians, sponsors, and crew is at my house on the 29th. So yeah, phew.

But I couldn't let Halloween sneak up on us without handing out some Steamgifts love. So, I spent a few hours here and there the past couple of weeks compiling games (101 of them) and coding a new SG Gameflip™ game to give them away. 🤘😎🤘

Ok, Ok, enough about you -- what's the event?

So, this year, you get Halloween Blaster, a completely mindless, fairly grindy shoot-em-up. Here's your two-line background story: The evil creatures of darkness are descending upon your town, filling the sky with their terrifying presence! So you jump on board your trusty knife-flinging Pumpkinship® and prepare to send those interlopers back to whence they came! PEW PEW PEW!

Based upon your performance in the game, it will reveal the codes for trains. The way this works is very simple:

Train 1: 250,000 points
Train 2: 500,000 points
Train 3: 1,000,000 points
Train 4: 2,000,000 points

Each train has 25 carts, and all of the games have some thematic relationship to Halloween. The quality of the games in each train gets better as you move toward the higher scores. The 4th train has a few premium bundle games, plus a couple of non-bundled games at the end. No, it's not that hard to get 2M points, and you'll easily achieve this before the last level.

There is also a GRAND PRIZE. This is a non-bundled, released-this-year, scary-ass, overwhelmingly positive game. To be able to enter for this game, you must beat all 20 levels of the game. If you do this, you'll get a special winner screen that will give you the entry code for the grand prize.

How do I use these codes to enter for the games?

Wait...what? Really? Ok, n00b. 😜

When you see the 5-digit code for a train or the Grand Prize, you just add it to a URL that looks like this:

steamgifts.com/giveaway/XXXXX/

Where you replace the XXXXX with the 5-digit code. Yes, case matters, so get that right. The final slash matters, too.

How do you know that I got the code by playing the game and didn't just get it from a friend?

Hey, that's a great question. You're going to need to take a screen shot of your winner/game over screen. Samples of these can be found at the bottom of this post. You should take the screen shot of the game (the window is pretty small) in front of your browser with Steamgifts in the background and your SG profile or something else clearly displayed that identifies you.

I'm obviously not going to check all 101 of these, but I will definitely check the Grand Prize and all of the premium giveaways. I will randomly pick 10 other GAs to spot-check. If you cheated, you will be one of the very few people that get added to my blacklist, and you're never, ever coming off. I took the time to write the game, so you can take the time to play it. No. Cheating. 😏

Don't forget to save your screen shots! You don't need to post them anywhere...just have them available in case you win and I ask. I'll post a list in this thread of the players that need to give me a screen shot. Also, the game doesn't save any score data (more explanation of that toward the bottom of all of this text), so don't forget or you'll have to play it again.

How do I play the game?

It's really, really simple. If it moves, shoot it. Don't get hit by stuff. Things start slowly and get perpetually more hectic as you progress.

Your Pumpkinship fires automatically. All you have to do is move. With a mouse, you need to click on the Pumpkinship and drag it around. If you're on a touch screen, just use your finger.

When you earn enough points, a power-up for your knife-flinger will float down the screen (it looks like a pair of crossed knives). Grab it, and you'll increase your knife power (there are seven levels in all). Eventually, you'll add sideways and even backwards-firing knives! Whoo-hoo!

After spending enough time killing baddies, you'll face a Skullboss at the end of each level. The firing pattern will change a little bit over time. If you make it to level 20, the Skullboss will bring a demon buddy who will shoot at you from behind. Survive this, and you win the game!

On some levels, a glowing purple ring of energy will appear. Grab it -- it's a shield upgrade! It won't make you invincible, but it will greatly reduce your damage when you are hit. While it's active, you'll see a countdown timer, and smaller purple rings will continue to drop from the top of the screen. Each time you grab one of these, it adds a bit of time back to your shield countdown.

Things that I know kind of suck/game dev background

Yes, yes, I don't like the movement control, either. Having to hold down your mouse button is not convenient. And, if you hit the sides, you can move your pointer off center of your Pumpkinship, and then you have to release and re-click on it. But the template that I based this game off of (more on that below) was intended for touch screens, so it's unavoidable unless I wanted to re-code the entirety of the movement logic in the game, and I honestly didn't have that kind of time this year. So seriously, don't be a big baby about it. I played through the entire game and beat it multiple times holding down the mouse button, and it really wasn't a big deal on this one (because the movement is fairly easy).

No, the game doesn't save high scores or anything. There's a longer story here, but the short one is that I made this with AppGameKit Studio, and its file handling is freaking atrocious. I'm brand new to this development environment, but wanted to try it out since I just got it in one of those Fanatical bundles. After fiddling with some things, it just wasn't worth spending the time on messing with this code if I wanted to crank this out on time for Halloween. So, you're gonna have to go old school and play through the whole thing at once. Hey, I grew up doing that, so I don't want to hear about it. At least you can pause this thing, unlike my Atari. 😜

There's not specific resolution control. That seems to be kind of challenging in AGK too. If you're on a 4K screen, this thing is probably pretty small. I get it. But just change your resolution for 20 minutes to 1080p. It's like three mouse clicks. I promise that you can change it right back when you're done. 😉

We've also found out through discussion that AGK doesn't automatically adjust for screen refresh rates, so this will directly affect your play speed. If you're over 60Hz, I strongly suggest you tweak your display refresh rate temporarily so that you're not playing in super-fast mode.

The game is kind of grindy, and by the end, yep, you're kind of ready for it to be done. I get it. If I were trying to make a Steam-ready game, there would be a lot more variety in baddies, specific attack patterns, different wave types, a lot more bosses and firing patterns, etc. But even doing a template-flip game takes a lot of time if you do it right. These reviewers on Steam that say that some asset-flip house threw together a game in an hour are almost always wrong (I mean, there are cases where that's likely true, but it's really rare). In any case, I really don't need to hear anyone complain about it. It's a fun little one-time-use, throwaway game. Just love it for what it is, enter for your free games, and get on with your bad self. :)

If you're wondering how AppGameKit Studio compares to GameMaker, well, it's not nearly as robust. It's purely a code-based studio (other than being able to drag in some game assets, but there's not any editing capability in the software). GameMaker handles editing, allows you to custom-parse spritesheets to get animation frames, allows you to handle some events with config instead of code, etc. AGK won't even let you pick an icon for the exe. I had to use ResourceHacker to replace the runtime icon, but the file icon is still the generic one (it can be changed, but it required jumping through a lot of hoops). In any case, if you're going to invest in one IDE or the other, I'd pick GameMaker in a heartbeat. AGK isn't bad (and is definitely faster than writing purely from scratch), but it's definitely not on the same level.

In the "credits" section, I said all of the sound was from bundles, which is pretty much true. That doesn't mean that I didn't do a ton of sound editing (I did). I mixed things together, re-leveled sound files to keep anything from being too ridiculously loud in comparison to the other sounds, shortened or looped things, etc.

The graphics are either free, fair-use graphics or ones that I made from scratch (like the title logo). Many of them were modified as well, and this was mostly done in Powerpoint (which does a gazillion things that most people don't realize it can do) and MS Paint 3D (which is way better than you think it is).

I also tweaked a lot of logic and added a lot more variety to things like the backdrop and soundscape. For instance, the original template used two random noises for background sounds, and hoo boy did that ever get old. I have an array of eleven, which I spent some time trying to get properly sound-balanced as well. You get the idea. There are just lots and lots of little things that were done to make this more of a playable game than what came out of the box in the template.

As for the template: yes, it's totally ok that I used it. That's literally what it's there for (it's packaged with AGK in the community pack).

Ok, ok, enough already. How do I get started?

First, Download Halloween Blaster from my Dropbox.

It's just a zip file. Just create a new folder wherever you want and unzip the game into it. Double-click the exe to get started. No installation necessary.

When does this event end?

The whole thing is over as of midnight that borders Halloween/All Hallow's Day...specifically, 12:00 am November 1st, Pacific time (which, other than Alaska and Hawaii, should be the "last" midnight for everyone on SG).

Ok, I know that was a lot. No more reading for you. Just go fling knives at spooky critters. Any more questions, ask away in the thread.

As promised, sample game over/winner screens:

Game Over
Winner