HR Commander

Shoot down incoming Space OSHA ships and recruit their crew to work in the corporate mines!

...it's not like they have the choice anymore :)

Small bullet-hell shooter made under 3 hours for Trijam #300

Theme: Evil Corporation

======================================================

Year 2724. Humanity spread out to the nearby stars. Rapid advances in faster-than-light travel brought upon a scientific revolution, and with that, the dawn of megacorporations – corporations so powerful they use military ships to battle for control with other megacorporations and the United Earth Government.

You are a new hire of HonestGood interstellar megacorporation. You’ve been hired as Human Resources Commander for mining outpost HD 20794 c – a rocky world that’s orbiting around a main-sequence star 82 G. Eridani, 19.7 light-years away from Earth.

Your job is to expand and maintain operations on the planet. You must find new people who’d be willing to sign up the contract to work in the mines, and you must also ensure Space OSHA does not catch wind of what's going on on the surface. If even a single ship lands, they'll shut down your entire operation in an instant!

======================================================

Controls:

W,A,S,D - move

LMB - shoot

Space - blink (unlockable ability)

1,2,3,4 - select upgrade to unlock

======================================================

Assets used:

FFF-Forward font https://www.1001fonts.com/fff-forward-font.html

Tools used:

aseprite - graphics

UltraBox - music

bfxr - sound effects

Source code & design doc: https://github.com/olanti-p/hr-commander

Personal best score: 1670 (upgrade order: pod magnet -> armor -> blink -> synchronizer)

The game was made in a single morning, total production time was around 2h57m (not counting 3 coffee breaks). MVP that I planned for was done in 2h30m, with the extra time being used to draw and implement a background, code in the upgrades system and test the balance.

Some aspects of the game ended up quite rough. In particular, I feel I could've done a better job with the background, ship outlines and the music loop, or maybe added an intro screen that'd tie together gameplay and lore. There were also a few bugs (like sounds missing for some actions, or text misalignment), and the balance could be better (in later stages, combined HP of all enemies overwhelms the player's DPS, so it's impossible to go on endlessly).

But I'm also glad I managed to fit into the time limit, and that the game looks half decent. There were also a few small details that were not planned for, but emerged organically: for example, how the escape pods spawn heading away from the planet (literally escaping), and the different attack patterns of player ship vs enemy ships, and even the small engine animations that reflect the ships' speed.