House Cleaner - A top down fast paced slow motion shooter

Hello!

I just wanted to show you guys my latest project, something that I've been tinkering with over the last 2 weeks and is a summary of my ideas that I've been trying to do over the last year (in a bunch of failed projects and prototypes).

House Cleaner is a top down shooter in the vein of Hotline Miami/Nuclear Throne. It's fast paced, demands focus and fast decision making.
You play as this guyhttp://i.imgur.com/L7RsuV4.gifwho gets called in to clean out warehouses with adult-candy making baddies (super deep story I know).
Currently I have two kinds of enemies, your regular meth headhttp://i.imgur.com/IgWoaba.gifand your fat grenadier http://i.imgur.com/OQRyt8s.gif.

The core loop is you pick your shots to build your energy, you trigger slow motion, run in and dodge bullets while clearing enemies and get out before it runs out. The game shifts between being a shooter and at times a bullet hell game.
http://i.imgur.com/JdvvPJj.gif
(big gif right below this, please be patient :) )
http://i.imgur.com/yr903Dm.gif

Everything is based on this slowmotion function since it's the core of the game. when you hit that mouse button everything changes, enemies slow down and move different, bullets group up different, you the player move different. Depending on the amount of energy you have it all changes dynamically (even things as sound effects pitch up and down which I'm really proud of, too bad gifs don't have sound effects).

I've been working a lot on getting the feel of the shooting right, but now that I think I've nailed it I'm going to focus on polishing up it and making it look prettier. Here's what it currently looks like running through one of the levels
http://i.imgur.com/NhUH9Oa.gif

To keep this realistic I'm keeping a small scope and after I release it for free I'll see if there's a interest/inspiration to do a bigger version.
What I currently need for an alpha release is:

-A music track
-Better sound effects
-A third enemy (I might make it so the current enemies have a chance of shooting a different, much harder pattern when in slow motion instead).
-A couple of more levels (currently have 3).
-Polish graphics and add more props and decorations.

Thank you for reading and I hope you give it a spin when I release it (currently aiming end of march) :).

Code:

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One of the reasons I created this thread was to keep a sort of devlog. So I might as well add what I did today just before I  posted this thread

20170226
Added a lot of small things to make the shooting feel better
-Enemies flash
-more blood
-Screen flashes on hit
-Bullet screenshake
-Different effects on walls, floors etc
-Camera scrolls with the cursor instead of being set on the player
-Chance for crit damage.

Changed how the slowmotion works
-Instead of it automatically getting triggered when you shoot enemies, you turn it on manually
-A big effect blasts through the arena to show it
-Background turns into a disco
-You can keep it going by shooting enemies but since the gain is small it forces you to go in, shoot and then have a exit plan in mind.

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Looks fun! I want to play now!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G928A using Tapatalk

Cool, I really like the effects, and subtle screen shakes :)

Thanks for the kind words maxx and hamstermp!!

Small progress today, I made a mistake of not bringing the rest of the props and assets into the right perspective as the character, gone through and made them proper 3/4 perspective. How do you guys handle collision in this perspective? currently the "front" of the assets are seperate object that dont get pasted as obstacles allowing the player to walk over them.

http://i.imgur.com/JH3vTFb.png

Also changed the crosshair, small detail but apparently it annoyed a few testers for not being accurate enough. It's all in the mind since the the bullets arent pinpoint anyway but it seems to have worked.

http://i.imgur.com/nqiMvUr.png

I released an alpha if anyone wants to try it. It also hit me that the main gif in the first post was over 40mb... so i think I lost some views and people saw the first crappy one lol! Anyway i cut it up in pieces and hopefully it sparks your interest!

http://i.imgur.com/Amr7Hu1.gif
http://i.imgur.com/JdvvPJj.gif
http://i.imgur.com/wkiFAUx.gif

If you want to try it you can get it from the itch.io page right here! https://shotgun-anaconda.itch.io/house-cleaner

Crazy stuff!
Looks over-active and addictive :D
And very smooth-playing.
Also like the unusual setting.

Hope to find a good spot to try the alpha, keep on ;)!

Thank you so much schrodinger, I would love to get your feedback after you played it!

After this weekend i got some good feedback already:
First of all Thank you for everyone that played the Demo

Keypoints to fix:
The acceleration/deacceleration was there to give a bit of skill and punishment but annoyed more than helped. So movement will get tweaked to be more precise and responsive, inertia needs to go.

Enemy attacks need to be more clear especially in a none slowed world..

For certain people the game runs extra fast making especially the mouse camera way too sensitive, it seems to be for people with high end rigs. I'm thinking it's something with the FPS being too high or something with the screen refresh rate? I have to do more research on this. Should have made the whole game in delatime but no i was lazy. If anyone knows anything about this, i would love some info.

Started on the third enemy who's a shotgunner, who will be the final puzzle for the first version of the games game design
http://i.imgur.com/YbvK4SW.gif

The gameloop while handling enemies will be:
Pistol goon - Pushing the player to dodge and stay on the move
Grenedier - Allowing the player to build energy while in a crowd to handle crowd control
Shotgunner - Will force the player to kite enemies to dodge the spread and dispose of efficiently

Next up is adding some pathfinding to the enemies, something I've never been able to do but we'll see how it goes.

Devlog from today

Code:

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-Changed movement, there's no more astroid acc/dec, movement is much more responsive allowing more interactive dodging.
-Enemy bullet speeds slowed down when slowmotion isnt triggered, allowing easier build up of energy
-Enemy grenade enlarged 3x, making them big explosive green balls
-Fixed a bug with the animated HUD
-More screenshake when player takes damage
-Started on enemy 3, a shotgun guy. See giffor shooting animation

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http://i.imgur.com/hzxeC9b.gif

Implemented the Shotgunner. A fat, short guy that chases you down before he fires. Still needs some balancing and tweaks but works well for now :)

Code:

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20170315
Animated shotgunner walk
basic ai of chasing and shooting

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