Cozy Space Survivors
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
š¹ļøPlay Cozy Space Survivors Demo in Browser!š¹ļø
"Vampire Survivors in Space, but cozy."
- Simon, 2023
ā¤ļøBUY on Steam now!ā¤ļø
Controls
- Keyboard: WASD or Cursor-Keys to move
- Controller: Left-Stick to move
- Mouse:
- Point with cursor where to move
- Speed up/down via left/right mouse button.
Overview
A cozy time survival roguelite in space. You steer the shippy while the shooting happens automatically. Meet cute NPCs, solve small quests, and fight quirky enemies with satisfying weapons. A shorter experience for people who don't have much time but love playing (and finishing) games
My goal is to create a small game with ~10 Minutes playtime, some ships, some quests and fun shooting. Release most likely only here and maybe as Android PCK file.
After 10 months, I finished the game and released on Steam. It offers 2-4h playtime, 4 ships and cute quests!
Inspiration for the game:
- Vampire Survivors for the general Gameplay
- Binding of Isaac for physicality of bullets
- Halls of Torment for adding Quests to a VS-Like
- Fallout for the summary at the end of the game
- Into the Breach for the little Dialog Texts
Download
Development log
- Patchy 1.5.5: Bugfixes, TweaksJul 08, 2024
- Patchy 1.5.4: Guidance to Shop, BugfixJul 08, 2024
- Patchy 1.5.3: Fixed Mouse ControlsJul 07, 2024
- Update 135: Patchy 1.5.2: Bugfixes & Performance TweaksJul 07, 2024
- Update 134: Patchy 1.5.1: Bugfixes, LocaJul 04, 2024
- Update 133: Patchy 1.5: New "AI" ShipyJul 03, 2024
- Update 132: Patchy 1.4.1: Performance ImprovementsJun 24, 2024
- Update 131: Patchy 1.4: Shopkeeper, Mine-Tweaks, CatalanJun 23, 2024
Comments
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Sabes un amigo me recomendĆ³ este juego uno es una maravilla, me encanta su arte simplificado de enemigos, es muy agradable de jugar y unos simpĆ”ticos sonidos que le dan un toque personal magnifico. Me encantan los juegos Space Arcade yo estoy desarrollando uno tambiĆ©n y espero que lleves a cabo tu sueƱo y hagas una gran venta
What a great game, what an exquisite game graphically and what recurring sounds, I liked the experience, I wish you a great success in sales.
I actually just popped in to let you know that A. The demo is brilliant! B. The price is beyond brilliant! C. Which in turn, makes you quite brilliant yourself there, handsome! And D. Iām going to get it now (I would actually much rather get it through āitchy-tastyā, but (long story longer) I donāt use credit cards, and I donāt even know if you can get gift cards for here?
I was going to send you a message on steam, but thereās no point in using that crap factory for anything other than getting your games as quickly as possible, and getting TFO! I just end up getting enraged watching the good devs with games like yours getting buried under random 50Ā¢ shovelware, then end up stop making games because nobody finds what theyāre looking for (I have to go to either steamdb or steampeek to search for games because their search engines actually function, and WAY better than the company their site is based off of… How does that even make sense when Steam makes all the money?! Cheap bastards!š¬š
Hey Simon!? I'm having way too much fun with this :D
1 request: Can you make the background on the web version dark? Please? :)
And what happened to the fullscreen mode anyway?
Both fixed :) Thanks!
I just tried the steam demo and congrats! The game is great. I like the cozy aspects. I really enjoyed all the happy planets and doing direct quests to help them out. I also felt like the shorter time frame than a 30 minute survivors game made this feel accessible. I liked that HP increase and Regen upgrades were generous so it didnāt feel too stressful (until like, the last minute or two where things get quite hectic!)
I noted a couple of small issues / things Iād wish for
Thank you so much for the feedback! Really glad to hear that you liked it and I think you're right, I should add some nice counter in the end screen which shows proudly how much chocolate you collected. I need to check about the sound - maybe it's an issue in the web-version and maybe it runs better when being downloaded or played via itch/steam client.
thanks again for playing!
The game turned out to be a lot more than I thought at first sight!
I didn't expect any characters, quests or long term progression!
I enjoyed all the names you gave to each character, it made them and their little quests more memorable.
I like the sounds, they are much higher quality than I would've expected
I also liked the details like each individual weapon showing up and animating on the ship, character eyes looking at all the moving ships and the disintegrating Unity logo in the background haha
Here's some of my feedback and suggestions after playing for a little while:
The camera in my opinion feels pretty disorienting and bad. It moves way too much. I often want to know how many enemies are following me, but I can't see any of them because the camera moves too far forward. The camera is just very jumpy in general and I think a more static camera would work a little better here.
The friendly mines are large and cover the player ship. In combination with the moving camera it's easy to lose sight which sprite is Shippy.
The controls can get a bit confusing, I think it's a bit glitchy when the mouse is also on the game screen. It's almost like the Shippy can't decide who to listen to, the directional keys, or the mouse.
I also experienced a few performance issues and hitches in browser at first, but it was okay after a bit of playing.
Recycling an attached weapon should probably also immediately take the weapon from the picked up box, since you're most likely trying to replace it, saves a click!
Instead of automatic targeting, a mouse controlled mode would be fun to try, twin stick style! Moving with the directional keys and shooting towards the mouse.
But I suppose that would make the range upgrades a bit pointless, unless they limited how far a projectile can travel...
Maybe also a fire rate upgrade? I think that one was missing.
Overall It's a charming little game inspired by the survivors genre, it's fun, addicting and easy to get into!
Thank you SO much for taking the time to play my game and also write such a detailed Feedback! <3
About the Camera: There are some weird issues. I've tried in Firefox/Chrome and it runs very fine but a friend of mine showed me a video where the Camera jumps extremely back and forth and it almost feels like an extreme form of Camera Shake. I have no idea what's happening there :( I hope I can reproduce and fix it one day.
About the controls: You're right. I usually move the mouse away from the Screen to play with controller/keyboard. Maybe I should only activate Mouse-Controls after the user clicked a button instead of having just moving the mouse activate the controls. Also interesting: While controller was working well in Firefox, for some reason, it didn't work for me in Chrome. :(
I understand the suggestion for Twin-Stick-Style Gameplay but I think I'll keep it simple and Survivors-Like. For me, focusing solely on position and not having to care too much about the shooting direction is sooo cool. I love it <3 But I will think about your suggestion regarding the firing frequency and the size of the mines (or how to improve visibility of the shippy).
Thanks again!
Simon
Haia, I saw you had some bugs when using Lerp & Delta Time and I just wanted to give you a tip on how to use lerps more accurately!
The correct formula to have framerate independent Lerp is:
Mathf.Lerp(B, A, Mathf.Exp(-speed * Time.deltaTime))
notice A and B are reversed!
This should also stay within a 0-1 range as long as the contents of Exp stay negative!
There's more written up with graphs here: https://www.rorydriscoll.com/2016/03/07/frame-rate-independent-damping-using-ler...
Nice, thank you! I love, when being open about problems, people come and help out! I'll take a look at my code later.
coming back to it almost every week, like it a lot Simon!
one missing kind of confused me at first as it might others: "find laser" made me think I had to trade in one of my own lasers and confused me when I couldn't, it was only later when I found out this was an Item you could find.
Thanks for the feedback! Indeed, it was like that a while ago: You had to donate a laser when you found it. But I changed it later so that it's now a unique quest item. Maybe I need to make the (i)-Icons appear with a nice effect so that you immediately notice, that the quest points somewhere...
p.s. thanks for playing ! :)
Hey Simon,
A very nice project you are currently working on. I enjoy very much the pixel graphics and especially the VFX are on the point ;) Good and rewarding gameplay!
One thing: Sometimes I was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of text on the screen and was distracted from the current action around my ship. Maybe this is just an issue for me.. ;)
Keep on working! I am very curious where this will lead.
Regards,
Noxlor
Thank you so much for playing and your feedback! I've just made an important update: The controls are different now. Hope you like it! About the text: Yes, I'm struggling a bit with communicating information. It's just so much happening on the screen...
Haha, I did everything but re-hydrating earth.
It is fun, and way less vampire survivors that you might think.
I like it a lot <3
Thank you very much for the nice reply, but why do you think it's less VS? I mean yes, I don't have so much content and I can not offer the same amount of enemies, but the basic idea should resemble VS quite a bit..at least it was my goal :D I'm really interested to hear your perspective on that!
Hey Simon,
I hope I did not come across like I have been disappointed with the difference.
Number of enemies or amount of content is not a differentiating factor for me at all.
There are a few key differences for me though:
1. You have quite some quests going for you that are more than some things in an achievement/quest table that you can go and stumble upon. There is direct interaction with quest givers. That has a way more RPG-ey feeling than some "find/rescue mystery person in map XY" -> I think that's one thing this genre can really profit from. Some more interaction with the worlds and NPCs to make it all a bit more immersive and believable.
2. controls: I think while it may be a flavor for some, it is a key element for me as well - as it's basically the only thing you really do in VS. You have acceleration and braking and then steering instead of a simple "move on two axis with WASD". That creates a way more intricate interaction with the game. In combination with the "cozy" aspect this seems fine, if it was a bit more nail bitingly arcade-ey, I'd say I'd prefer the regular WASD two axis style movement.
3. the time constraints are not limited by an unwinnable boss battle but simply by the timer that runs out. I guess that's something you'll eventually change in development anyways, but it changes the whole prospect of "you die every run" vs the cozy version of it where you "either die or the timer runs out". -> I obviously only did a few runs of CSS yet, but having the timer being the limiting factor in combination with the quests I wanted to fulfill put a bit of stress on my experience. (It also added some replay value, because I never got it all done in one sweep... :) ) In comparison in VS I have a way different approach to a run where I have the overall progress to slowly work towards and in reverse I have the time I have put into a run as a stress factor as my gaming time is very limited ^^
Now That I have written it out, I think the third point will probably solve itself over time and during development, when you are going to implement some overarching run-independent progression. The second point will probably not affect the experience too much, as the focus is on the cozy-ness and thus the urge to be overly competitive with it does not get into the foreground anyways.
The first point will remain a bit though. And can be a differentiation that you can happily build upon :) It is a bit harder to develop and scale than simple "achieve X amount of damage" style quests/progress barriers. It will definitely add to the player experience though. In a very good way.
Pretty fun playing the web version, but when I download the windows version I can't load the levels. I click on one and it just is stuck saying "loading..." at the top :(
Weird...do you download it manually or via Itch-App?
Hey sorry for the late reply, I figured it out. Downloaded the windows version through the itch app and it worked, and now the windows version web version works now that it's been updated. Thanks :)
Thank you so much for getting back to me. I hope it was a one-time-glitch. Would be sad if people can't play the game over this weird bug... I pray to the game dev goddess :)
I just tried and both work on my side. Very weird that it does not on your side :,(
That was really fun! The setting in space is really cool and the backgrounds are very well done, I want more like this!
The sound effects and visual effects are all really well done and very satisfying to hear and see.
Looking forward to this game's updates, you're doing a great job!
Lionel Bell
Thank you a lot! I'm working on VFX right now, and later I might go over some sounds again. They are taken from free sound packs. I did not create them by myself.
Really a delightful game! Just had some troubles sometimes gauging my remaining health, but for the rest it's incredibly polished!
Thank you so much for your nice feedback! May I ask, what do you mean with "troubles sometimes gauging my remaining health"? Did you have issues reading how much life you have left?
yep: i was focusing just on the ring that appears (appeared?) around you when hit and what was going on around my ship, and didn't even see the counters up top xD