I may be somewhat hysterical right now, but Stuart Andrews’ Space Office Fight increasingly amused me as I played. It’s a really simple Asteroids-esque arena shooter, but with a Working-in-an-office theme where you take down Managers, CEOs and similar. While its seemingly never-ending power-up system – meaning you can get progressively enormous weapons – is fine, what caught my mood was the sound effects, which are seemingly created by Stuart just saying the word in office buzzword in question into the mike. Odd to begin with, the cacophany when the game gets going is actually a sonic abstract joy. The problem is that it takes about 5-10 minutes for it to do that, and really could do with amping up quicker. Anyway – it’s here if you fancy gunning down your boss. And who doesn’t?
Related Stories:
Kieron,
Wow! Thanks for the pimpage. And may I give a hearty thanks for you being in the somewhat hysterical place.
Kudos!
whoah whoah whoah you have got to lose that god awful beeping advert. The one that plays the Windows XP Error.wav over and over again about once a second. I was going crazy trying to figure out wtf.
Also, this looks neat.
Clayton,
Hmmm. Not sure what you mean about the beeping advert? The code itself doesn’t reference any XP wavs.
Oh. Wait. You mean the sound when an Enemy dies? Cause that I understand.
I played it for ages without ever seeing more than the 3rd tier bad guy. I liked it, but it really does need a faster progression.
You just broke my ears.
Stu, he’s referring to an RPS ad, not your game.
Clayton; just refresh the page when you get one of those incredibly irritating ads, you’ll then get a different, and hopefully less irritating one.
Pace: Ahhhh. Excellent.
Mister Hands: Sometimes an awesome sound does that :)
hydra9: Thanks for the suggest. I’m working on getting Space Office Fight 2 into gear. It will actually go through testing and balancing and wotnot.
Perhaps I need to update the manual. The Enemies come at you based on your Level, which is based on your experience. Which is increased by killing enemies, and decreased by dying and shooting.
It’s magic!
Stu: I killed a few hundred enemies, didn’t die at all, but I certainly shot a lot. So if I conserved my shots, I’d level up faster?
hydra9: Not by _that_ much. The idea (which may have been bogus) was to make it something to notice in the first couple of levels, but after that, you can pretty much shoot with wild abandon.
I guess, in it’s current form, conserve until you hit level 3 or 4, then go nuts. Also, Damage and Multi-Shot powerups for the most excellent win, heh heh.
It seems that experience is proportional to how fast you’re going when you shoot something. Try it — sit in one spot, shoot stuff, and you’ll get zero experience and few powerups. Move very slowly, and you get about 20. Move as fast as possible, and you get 100.
Since you always fly forward, you can’t thrust-and-drift, meaning you’re always flying straight at whatever you’re shooting. I assume that since shooting while moving is more difficult, it’s designed to be more rewarding. (Also gets you to the powerups that much faster.)
It also explains why there’s a “stop” button. Most asteroids-style games require you to manage your momentum, and a button to just stop on a dime would be unbalanced — but if experience depends on speed and you can’t drift, stopping is just a normal tool.
Finally, it could help explain why some people find it progresses so slowly. If you do a lot of stationary shooting, you’re just burning experience points with no gains. You can easily take yourself back to zero experience, especially if you have a few multi-shot powerups.
I can’t find the “experience varies with speed” rule anywhere on the page. You may want to mention it. Or maybe I just gave away some super-secret gameplay aspect, I dunno…
Also, is it a bug or a feature that the boss doesn’t go away if you die and start a new game?
On the one hand, it means the game will eventually end, since enough stray shots will hit the boss to eventually kill it. On the other hand, it becomes a perpetual source of player deaths until you get enough health to survive touching it.
Wisq: Aha! Right on all accounts.
Experience is proportional to Speed, and yeah, 0 means 0. Will put that in the Manual.
Starting a new game and the boss continuing is a bug. Will have to get it fixed.
Ah! That explains it, then. I was moving pretty damn slowly most of the time, particularly when shooting. I’d swear I played about 20 minutes and only got to level 4.
It’s because I’m really bad at anything that remotely resembles Asteroids ;)
hydra9: Apologies, and to all others who were confused.
I’ve updated the manual, in the tips it gives a simple/clear explanation (hopefully).
When things ramp up it becomes downright musical. Although it ended somewhat abruptly when the boss spawned right on top of me.
Arathain:
Heh heh. Nice.
You can actually finish the game after dying to the boss. It’s just REALLY hard and probably just about the satisfaction of going from almost-square one again.