SyntheticDroneWars (PirateJam 16)
Win the drone war by killing all enemy drones and capturing their territory.
Participation in 2025 Pirate Software GameJam 16
As the drone, you are the weapon that defeats all enemies and rules the world.
You control a drone who tries to overtake the world by killing all enemies and capturing their homebases (the tiles). For this, the drone has multiple laser-cannons attached. Shooting bullets will come with a cost - in this case the consumption of energy.
Killing enemies and capturing tiles will gain energy and the player can recharge its energy by staying near the center of controlled tiles.
The game is inspired by typical 90 arcade shooting games, thats why it is quite hard to master - compared to most nowadays games.
Controls
- WASD for movement
- Mouse for aiming + shooting
Sorry, gamepad support was not doable for me as a single dev in the short amount of time.
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive:
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Comments
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Hey, that's short, but awesome! The so-called 'game juice' really made this for me - the explosions, camera shake, the pumping music and neon visuals.
Real solid, if this was longer I would consider this being worthy of being a full commercial game. I really liked stuff like Resogun and Geometry Wars, and this is really close to the standard set by those games!
Thank you for the feedback and your kind words 😊 glad to hear that the work in juice can be felt
the controlls were a bit clunk for movment, but once i got the hang of them it was a really fun game. even though i sucked at it. the visuals are top notch though! great job!
Thanks for your feedback :)
Really enjoyable! Tank controls I think are a good choice to make the game more difficulty, but they do throw you for a loop at the start. Maybe add a time out on the heal or give bullets a timeout so you can't just camp a hex and clear the one next to it?
Thanks for your feedback and glad to hear that you enjoyed it :)
The movement is definitely something that could have been better and I also saw the problems (clear and camp) during the development. However, I did not have enough time to implement more mechanics - plus: I did not think of a heal-timeout (damn!). Thanks for your feedback :)
Either I am too bad or this is too difficult for my level of skill.
Thanks for your feedback and sorry :D The game is intended to be a bit harder because it is inspired by typical early 90s arcade shooter games. However, I might have gone a bit too far this time.
Fun game. That movement based on player rotation really threw me off. Ended up only pressing W and steer with my mouse.
Thanks for your comment & feedback :) The movement is definitely something I would have improved when I had more time.
Can't seem to move and shoot at the same time, but that could be my laptop mouse. Looks great!
Hey, thanks for your feedback! Sorry to hear that the shooting mechanism did not work for you (strange..). Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to implement proper gamepad support - although I tried to in the last few hours :/