Pest Control
A downloadable game for Windows
Welcome, new recruit!
Your the new spawn coordinator for the game Pest Control! A shoot-em-up (or, from your perspective, an up-em-shoot?) about a Flytrap who ate the King Fly and now the Bug Kingdom is out for revenge!
Remember, killing the player is not your goal! Give them a hard-but-fair experience to keep them engaged. However, the boss fights in this game are famously unfair, so when the boss fight rolls around, pummel them into the dirt!
Technical Support
- If the game is showing a black screen on launch, try running it with the flag `--fullscreen=false` from the command line.
- You can find the game's full source code here.
Tips & Tutorial
The game should tell you everything you need to know. But if not, here are some helpful guidelines. If you want a "spoiler-free" playthrough stop reading, go play.
- You "complete" a level when the player dies and the boss has been spawned.
- You spawn the boss by maxing out the Boss Meter
- The Boss Meter goes up whenever The Player is in the "Flow" state and there are enemies on screen. (Flow without enemies doesn't count).
- Tip: Some enemies are good at raising the intensity, while others are good at keeping it level.
- Tip: Each time you "win," you're playing against a new Player, with different skills and preferences. What works for one Player might not work for another.
- Tip: Once the boss has spawned, your goal is to kill The Player, feel free to go nuts and just press every button!
Credits
Made in 48 hours for the GMTK Game Jam 2023
- Composed by quarkimo.
- Illustrated by CreatiFish and The4thAD
- Programmed and Designed by NotExplosive
Download
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
honestly a very fun game. the reverse theme worked pretty well. it just needed a bit more content.
there is lack of variety in the gameplay. centipede is an instant bomb on all opponents. for all opponents you use the same strategy. two units at once is often too much, the small bug swarm is great to keep the meter in the flow state, along with the top left bug.
there is an uncontrollable variable that will stress opponents out: getting hit. if an opponent gets hit, the stress from a wave will massively increase, most likely leading to a bomb. now that makes sense. getting hit causes stress. the problem is the randomness and lack of counterplay. when facing a good opponent you need to send out stronger waves to get them into flow. these waves can snowball with a hit into a bomb. you have no way to bring down their stress by cancelling a wave or giving them a powerup. without a way to counteract the hit, there is a risk in each wave, one that you can not counteract. counterplay would be fun. you would have to react quickly to stress to prevent it, adding another layer to the gameplay.
greyed out icons make your units hard to differentiate. with a longer game there would be room to get used to them, but with three opponents there isnt enough time for that. it just makes the game harder to play for no real reason. also showing a wave size on the icons would be helpful.
the final opponent is weird. we are introduced to them in a way that implies them to be horrible at the game. they are however the strongest opponent in the game, so what gives?
also can the boss be killed? like i let the regular pummel the boss, yet it didnt die. it wouldnt be good to have the boss die, but i could have seen it being a fail. like killing an opponent too early and letting them beat the boss is supposed to be a fail. so why not let us fail in that way? this could make for a harder opponent, one who you would struggle to get into the flow and one who you must strategise against in the final boss. currently the strat is just to start spamming, as soon as the boss meter pops. having an opponent use a missile at the start to weaken the boss and decimate spamm would be a great counter and challenge. strategy in the boss battle is lacking without opponent counterplay and without them being able to kill the boss.
all in all a fun game. the premise is cool. it is however very short and lacking in variety.
now i dont mean to be that guy, but you seemed mighty proud of the "smart player ai" in your blog. now for the most part players are somewhat smart. there are just a few issues:
getting stressed while in no danger, because an enemy is at the top of the screen.
the powerup that gives aimbot not stopping the player from going into the line of fire, rather than camping in a safer zone.
and then, the smartest move. players will move into the boss and die. this isnt an isolated thing that happened once. every time the player will send it into the boss, even multiple times if they didnt die the first time. now this may not even be unique to the boss. other bugs just die too quickly for such behavior to be noticeable. this could have been done on purpose to make the boss unbeatable, if it even has health, but it just makes the player look kinda dumb.
so yeah. the ai isnt braindead and the smarter players play pretty well, but it isnt flawless. im sorry.