Hello everyone!

I am currently on solo development of my very first game - 99999 - using Gamemaker studio.
A demo is available on the game page!

To put simply, 99999 is a fast-paced, high-score arena-shooter/platformer inspired by Super Crate Box.

Most stages are small and compact in order to keep the action flowing. Weapons will spawn randomly on the map and must be collected in order to earn points (thus changing the weapon, like in Super crate Box). Unlike SCB, I've decided to add a countdown timer too to crank up the urgency of collecting your newly spawned weapon drop.

However, I think all these needed to be better communicated to players in the game itself. From feedback I've received thus far from the alpha-demo, I think the most obvious mistakes would be the following:

- I mentioned Super Crate Box as 99999's primary influence and wrongly assumed that people would just 'get' the system of earning points by collecting weapons without mentioning it in-game.  Also the score is just a small figure below the health so it was not obvious enough when you scored a point.
- The countdown timer. Many did not get the connection between the timer and the gun. Some were confused about why they died when the timer reaches zero. Again, that is because I did not mention it in the game itself.
- Not being clear enough about the 'goal' of the game. I plan to have 4 Worlds/themes in the game. Within each World are multiple stages. For example: To unlock stage 1-2 (World-1, 2nd stage), you have to score 28 points in the previous stage, 1-1, a 'Stage Clear' will appear and stage 1-2 will be unlocked. Do the same on stage 1-2 and you'll unlock stage 1-3, so on and so forth. But to unlock World-2, you need to have an accumulated score of over a certain points from ALL the stages in World-1. At this point the game switches over to a high-score game because the stages have already been 'cleared'. So if you need 100 points to unlock World-2, you can do that by earning that score in just a single stage if you're good enough. Again, this should have been something that is more clearly indicated within the game itself.

I'm thankful to all who have downloaded and tried out 99999, especially those who have provided feedback :D

I still have a lot of work to do for this game, but priority number 1 would be to communicate the goal and system of the game better and to make the game more intuitive as a whole.

That's it for this post, bye for now, I'll be back again soon!