[WIP] Zombie Outbreak Arena

[dekman]

Hi,

This is my first time posting here. I hope i'm at the right place. So hello all!

It's been a long time since I worked on a game. So I'm a little rusty (ok a lot).

Last year I discovered Construct 2 and I thought I could revisit my top-down-zombie-shooter-obsession with it. So I started working on this game.

It's been a year now and the time I spend working on this game is getting shorter by each week. I really want to finish this game and somehow publish it somewhere. I think having some feedback would make this process easier and result in a better game. So far I'm the only one played and tested it. So I really need your opinions!

Here is the link to Game: https://frosty-haibt-5ee1e5.netlify.com/

About the game:

It is a top down shooter. Player is limited to a small area and has to kill zombies until he/she is dead. The game-play is pretty much inspired by Crimsonland.

I tried to keep the game as generic as possible. With a generic name and mostly generic guns and game-play. Although I tried my best to polish the graphics, sound (still working on most of them) and game play.

You can access Dev Menu by clicking Show Dev Menu button on top right of the game screen. There are several buttons that will allow you to spawn weapons and bonuses. Also on the left side of screen, you will see some shortcut keys to spawn zombies, NPCs and other bonuses.

You can press ESC to go back to main menu and start a new game. Also you can use Mouse Wheel to Zoom In and Out.

Use WASD to move player and mouse to aim and shoot. Q and E to cycle weapons.

For anyone interested in more:

I wanted a dark and creepy atmosphere with lots of zombies to shoot. So the darkness is part of the game. There are bonuses and upgrades that will help player see better in dark.

• Please tell me if it is too dark for you to enjoy the game play.

Player just runs around game area and zombies spawn, getting tougher and faster. I am still working on spawn algorithm but I think it works fine for testing.

There are 6 type of zombies, 11 different weapons and 13 bonuses that will spawn in time. Also NPCs will spawn every now and then and they will be equipped with different weapons.

There is an upgrade menu accessed by pressing Shift. Once the game is finished, upgrades will cost points to purchase. Still working on that. (also working on the UI part of it) But for testing purposes all of the upgrades are available without points.

• I would appreciate any suggestions about that. Currently red particles spawn when player kills zombies (like XP orbs) and they move to player when they are close enough. Then player will gain point (or XP perhaps). Then they will be able to spend them on upgrades. Those upgrades will only last until player dies. Much like in Crimsonland, player has to upgrade in each retry. (i'm seriously thinking about getting rid of those XP orbs and give points instantly instead... I think it would confuse players as the way it is now)

Right now there is a difficulty multiplier that goes up by small amounts in time. I use it to multiply health, speed, damage and of enemies and max amount of enemies in game. You can change it in Dev Menu. At 100 things get crazy fast.

• I would like to hear your opinions about the difficulty setting.

I still have some work to do with UI design, sound effects and need to find a fitting music. I'll keep working on them. In the meantime I would really appreciate any kind of feed back.

It would be especially helpful if you could tell me about the FPS value that is located at the bottom right of the screen. And tell me how the game performs on your computer.

Thank you all for your time!

[ShrewdPixel]

Play tested using Chrome on MacOS Mojave.

Top-down Zombie blasting action. Nice.

Kinda reminded me of both Smash TV(arcade classic) with a touch of the GTA2 aesthetic, but of course with the horror movie theme and the lighting engine. The fact that the enemy zombies cast shadows with the map being briefly illuminated by explosions and lightning helps a lot to deliver the panicked feel of the game.

From a technical point of view, I haven't seen any games before made with the Construct 2 engine before (I had to look it up - seems almost like Unity for browser games) so all I can say is that it ran with a solid frame-rate and didn't seem buggy. It pretty much held at 60fps with only momentary drops to 55-59 during major lighting changes like lighting, explosions or switches to night-vision.

As for overall feedback, I'd keep it dark and with the shadows - it adds a lot to the horror feel. The appearance of NPC's add a lot to the gameplay, and seems to suggest it could do well with a multiplayer addition/option. For upgrades, it may be better to have them automatically added, since as the difficulty ramps up over time, I can see having to decide what to upgrade getting players frustratingly killed while choosing.

I agree it could use some music for the soundtrack, so I've compiled a list of resources you could use to save you some time there. (It would be great to get several, actually, since that would add a lot more flavor to the game if it wasn't always the same track.)

Here's some resources on the web for getting audio tracks for your game, that have open-source or royalty free licensing:

http://dig.ccmixter.org/free (LOTS of songs that only need attribution licensing)

https://freesound.org/browse/ (Simpler beats, that go well for loops)

https://lifehacker.com/these-1923-copyrighted-works-enter-the-public-domain-in-1825241296 (If you want get really creative and vintage, basically anything written before 1923 is open domain now)

https://v-play.net/game-resources/free-music-for-games (And finally a whole page of links to similar resources)

I hope the feedback and links are helpful, and most all Good Luck. It's a fun game.

[dekman]

Thank you so much for your detailed feedback. It really helps a lot.

And thanks for all the links. I'll check them out right now. I think you're right, having a sound track with multiple tracks would change a lot.

I'll think more about the upgrades. I'm still confused about how to add them.

Thanks again. I really appreciate it.