The Aliens are back, and more mysterious than ever! Defend the Earth II  is a Top-Down Space Shooter where you must protect the Earth from endless waves of evermore powerful Aliens. To help you overcome the challenge, you will Research new Technologies that improve your ship, allow you to build satellites, grow the Earth and more. To win the Game, complete all missions and research all technologies on the "Victory" Technology Tree. Good Luck!

Contains Online Leaderboard. Submit Highscores on the Game Over Screen

Additional Game Link

Gameplay Images

Request for Help

Does the Online Leaderboard in the Game I just released work on your browser?

To check:

• Simply launch my game - Defend the Earth II - click on the Leaderboard Tab on the start menu, and let me know in the comments below if it loads scores.
• Optional: Play the game a bit and see if your Highscore Tag and Highest score save. Can either play until you complete the game, or click the Retire Button in the Settings menu

Game Description

The Aliens are back, and more mysterious than ever! Defend the Earth II is a 2D Space Shooter where your goal is protect the Earth from endless waves of evermore powerful Aliens. To help you overcome the challenge, you will Research new Technologies that improve your ship, allow you to build satellites, upgrade the Earth and more. To win the Game, research all technologies on the "Victory" Technology.

Defend the Earth II was originally made for Game Off 2024, a 30-day Game Jam. The theme was "Secrets"

Some Images of the Game

Glad to hear you enjoyed my submission!  I spent a lot of time on polish.

Regarding the Theme, I went for a scatter approach of adding stuff related to secret (main storyline is learning the aliens secrets, tech tree effects obscured until you reach a certain level), rather basing the game around the theme. Fair to say it's loosely based on the theme.

Cheers!

Extremely polished and creative! Well on theme too.

Good difficulty level. I managed to finish the game without needing any hints, although it took me quite a while and lots of thinking. I really liked the variety of puzzles you added. Makes or breaks a game like this.

Art style is simple yet effective. I like that the music volume/track changes depending on where you are looking.

For improvements, mainly just the bug fixing that you've already listed in the comments below. 

Awesome submission. Congrats!

Everyone in the jam should play this one IMO

Just gonna leave this here for anyone interested ;)

High praise! Glad you enjoyed playing my game. 

The aliens do put up a fight; To win you need to get the correct balance of Growth Techs, Weapon Techs and Completing missions in good time before you are overwhelmed.

Here's my submission. Its a 2D Space Shooter https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2024/rate/3148268

I'll play and give feedback on your game too.

Thanks, glad to hear you enjoyed my submission!

Yes, you are meant to get swamped at the end if you take too long.

Lots of potential in your submission. I liked looking around the world and seeing what recipes their were to craft.

Pixel art quality is top notch. It was very clear to see what each item in the game was based on its sprite. Final boss is very distinct (I remember you posting it in the discord and thought it looked interesting then).

I think you did well with the sound design. The mining/impact sounds are very satisfying and add to the Oomph feeling of mining things.

For improvements, the gameplay needs work. I feel like with mining/crafting type games it's quite hard to get right. The top three things I would suggest are:

• Adding some drag-drop functionality to the menu. This would include switching hotbar items and dragging into the crafting menu.
• Let the player hold down the LMB to mine, rather than having to mash click so much.
• Add some more feedback effects for when you hit an enemy/are hit. It felt like I died very suddenly to a Ghost, and I had trouble working out if I was hitting it or not.

Overall, solid idea and aesthetic, just needs the gameplay refining. Good job!

Love the stylised graphics. All creatures are easily recognisable and have lots of personality. The animations for the deer bucking and the swans dancing were particularly good. Music and sound design complement the graphics well. Very interesting and unique interpretation of the theme too.

For improvements, one thing I found a bit jarring was when the wolves spawn on-screen during the deer sequence, especially when they spawn close by. Maybe have them spawn off-screen instead.

Very strong submission. Congratulations!

Definitely nailed the retro feel. Found it cool that you managed to implement two seperate palettes and all the optional Wildcards. Impressive amount of enemy variety too, both in type and how they behave.

For improvements, I did find Jumping a bit janky (I am Gen Z, so maybe thats a retro thing). I would prefer if you could hold a directional key, and then jump to jump left/right.

Very polished submission. Nice one!

Ahoy, thanks a bunch matey!

Thank you for the kind words! I spent a lot of time on polish, so I'm glad it showed in the final product.

An Auto-Shoot Toggle sounds like a good idea. I will implement that in a Post-Jam release of the game.

Cool to hear you enjoyed the difficulty level and Tech Tree!

Happy to hear you liked my progression system! Spent a lot of time on it.

Thank you for the kind words and feedback.

Nice to know that the effort I put into the UI design was noticed and appreciated. I spent way too long tweaky it and the Tech Tree ;)

The movement system is a bit like Marmite, you love it or you don't. I will probably add an alternative movement system once the Jam is over.

On the alien death explosions point, I think it would get too overwhelming later in the game. However, I might make it so that bigger ones explode, or its say a 10% chance.

Cheers!

Neat game. I enjoyed playing it through to completion. Fighting pirates was fun, the squid completely destroyed me (but I got my own back eventually). The fishing/crane injects some variety into the gameplay.

Good choice of tone/palette. I liked the little animations such as when you rescue Alice and they spin around. 

For improvements, maybe add the velocity of the ships to where the Cannon is firing at. Also, it would be funny if the Squid and the Pirates could start fighting each other sometimes, rather than teaming up on you.

Well done!

A very good little puzzle game you've got here.

Jazz is relaxing, art is polished, gameplay is solid.

Only thing I could suggest to improve it is maybe have a counter with the round number/number of cases solved within the actual game, rather than just at the end screen.

Smooth entry!

Very visually impressive game. Shooting was rather satisfying as well.

Level is lit well, the terrain/map models are clean and simple. Enemy model looks quite creepy too.  I have played a few FPS Jam games before, and this is by far the best looking one I've played. Especially impressive you've got it running so well and looking so good in the Browser.

The music adds to the overall atmosphere, and the SFX you have are high quality and fit in well.

For improvements, I'd recommend adding an aim down sight, or add a crosshair. It could be awkward to aim at enemies further away.

As some other comments have mentioned, some feedback for when you take damage would be good. I felt that there was a couple of places where a SFX would be helpful to give some feedback to the player.

Overall, a strong submission. Well done!

Thank you for the positive and detailed feedback!

Glad you appreciated the time I put into menu design and the tutorial.

On the controls aspect, I think I might add an option to change how the thrust direction works; I'll keep the current one and add one where Thrust direction is always in the same direction (i.e. W always up).

Now that you've mentioned it, removing the long description of Techs from tooltips, and just keeping it on the Unlock popup might be a good idea. Makes it easier to see what Techs do when browsing.

Happy to hear you enjoyed it overall!

Very artsy game. Reminds me of some early 2000's platformers in a way. I found it enjoyale exploring the map. The Puzzles seemed the right level of difficulty for me.

For improvements, maybe add 8-directional player animations instead of just 4. It could look a bit janky at times.

Great job!

Fun game. Really liked the creative creature shape design you used. Gave each of different types of unit some character. Lighting effect looked great, as did the actual cards themselves.

For improvements, I'd suggest adding some way to counter clumps of ranged enemies. I found that if one side could get 3 ranged enemies up and running, it was game over for the other side. Maybe add an AOE creature/ability to counter this.

Overall, great submission. Well done!

Cool take on the old-school Text Adventure games. Good use of the 4-colour limitation, I still found it easy to see what the command options were for each situtation despite the colour limtations. Nice boot up sequence too.

For improvements, I would suggest auto-focusing on the Text Box after every action. You can do this in code by invoking a method like this:

using TMPro;
[SerializeField] TMP_InputField inputFieldName;
public void FocusInputField() => inputFieldName.Select();

Similar code if using legacy Input Field too.

Nice job!

I really appreciated the Art direction you took with this game. Cool use of the Parallax effect when looking around the rooms. Dystopian world felt very intriguing and made me want to explore more.

For improvements, I think you need to tighten up on the writing a bit; the cleaning you room section felt about right, with lots of options for mental resistance being presented to the player. However, the amount of text and descriptions for the Elevator and Punks cornering you felt excessive, making me want to skip some reading to get to some story progression.

I would recommend working on it more. Cool game and interesting world that needs some refining. Good job!

I enjoyed playing your game a lot. Managed to find all 12 endings (with some generous help from the hint giver you provided). I think I also found the secret ending too.

I really liked how you made subtle variations on the same Music track for each area. Transitions between areas were really well done in general. As was the art style, particularly the underground area with its mood lighting.

Only improvement I can think of is maybe adding a reset button. Sometimes I would explore parts of the Underground and get stuck, forcing me to complete a load of jumps just to reset the game.

Very polished and well made game. Congratulations!

Neat little game. Impressed by how much variety and little hidden areas you crammed into such a small space. Cool that you reward exploration and finding the secret areas too. The game ticks the Theme Interpretation box very well.

I like the very bold and opinionated Art Style and Music choices. Adds to the games uniqueness.

The fastest time I got was around 6.65 (possibly 6.55?) seconds. It involved lots of button mashing.

Nice submission. Good job!

Enjoyed playing your game!

Art style is visually appealing, particularly the little Terra Tos. Music fits well with the visual art. The game fits with the Jam theme well too. Good game design and a decent amount of variety/strategising involved. Feels like it must've been a nightmare to program some of the stuff.

For improvements, I'd say it could be a bit unclear who was getting the points, and for what, as the Scoring textboxes flashed up quite fast. Maybe add a different coloured box for the opponent when they get points.

Overall, a very good submission. Well done!

100% agree.

Even if its just 24hrs to check the top 25 entries or so, it would go a long way to make the Jam fairer.

Lightspeed in 114 words (696 letters)!

Very strong submission. Well done!

Thank you!

THANKS

Thank you, glad you enjoyed my submission.

Speed is Key if you want to get onto the leaderboard. When you pass through a Speed Trap, you get score added based on how much your balls' speed differs from the Speed Traps' listed speed.

You can complete all levels without paying attention to Speed in this version though.

Happy to hear you enjoyed it despite the difficulty!

Glad you enjoyed my interpretation of the limitation!

The Leaderboard was implemented using Unity Gaming Services. It basically involves:

• Setting up a Unity Account
• Creating a Leaderboard on their Gaming Services website through a Dashboard (simple step-by-step process)
• Download the Leaderboard package inside your Unity Project
• Linking the leaderboard to a Unity Project (Should have an option at project creation to connect to Unity Cloud, makes this easier)
• Writing some code to handle basic functionality and display the leaderboard (couple dozen lines of code)

Hope this helps!

Thank you for the kind words on the presentation and gameplay. 

It does indeed sound like you broke the final level ;). I will try and fix that for the Post-Jam update.

Cool take on the theme. Mechanics and level design felt well thought out in general.

Very striking aesthetic. Lighting effect for each level of speed looks really good when combined with the Greys of the rest of the level. I liked your choice of character model, very intriguing appearance. Music Bops too.

For improvements, I found the orbs that let you jump more clunky to use. Maybe allow the player to hold spacebar to move upwards, instead of having to mash the Spacebar. That was the main reason that I stopped playing (I got stuck on level 3 I think).

Strong submission. Congratulations!

Cute memory game. I liked your art style, and in particular the player character. Very pleasant to look at. 

A nice interpretation of the theme too. Shame the timer did not work, would've added another dimension to the game.

For improvements, I'd second SpooceJuice and Over-Dramatics comments. Maybe add some Lego bricks for the player to step on as an obstacle too.

Well done for submitting a game within the timeframe!

Neat little interpretation of the Theme. I managed to complete the game with one second to spare!

Well done for getting a randomly generated level working in the time period.

I did notice a bug that sometimes guards would spawn in the wall.

Very nice interpretation on the theme.

Took me a while to work out how the controls worked and what the aim of the game was, but once I did, I played it until completion. Having to work out what was going on actually added another level of satisfaction to playing it.

Nice job on creating a game with a new engine! 

Well done.