I am currently participating in a game jam where the goal is to improve one of your old games.

For this occasion, I chose to pimp Loop Survivors, a game I created for GMTK 2025, whose theme was loop.

In Loop Survivors, you play as a gyrosphere pilot who must fight a horde of enemies in a loop within a set time limit until you defeat all 100 enemies. Between each loop, you can upgrade your weapons or stats or increase the time limit using the money you have earned during combat.

Balance the game and enrich the experience

I started by calibrating the rate at which enemies appear and the amount of crystals dropped by defeated enemies to allow players to access powerful weapons more quickly and avoid having to repeat loops for the sole purpose of earning enough money before being able to focus on the objective: defeating 100 enemies.

I also worked on balancing the weapons and player stats to prevent the game from becoming too easy towards the end, while avoiding slowing down the player's progress.

The overly powerful laser has become the most expensive weapon. The uninteresting shotgun has had its stats improved. Sticky gun bombs explode instead of disappearing when their carrier is killed. Etc.

Then, I added two new mobs with different patterns to create more varied situations and confrontations in the game. There's the charging seahorse and the jumping spider turret, which correspond to two archetypes of mobs: those that charge into melee combat and those that attack from a distance.

Visuals and Feedbacks

Visually, I changed the lighting in the level to a three-point lighting setup for a more realistic effect. For the level itself, I opted for less contrasting and garish colors, as suggested to me during GMTK 2025. I also opted for a starry sky (shader found on Godot Shaders) which reinforces the impression that the scene is taking place in the middle of space.

A strange character resembling Thanos watches your battles from his flying throne...

I also added animations and particle effects for the appearance/disappearance of enemies, projectiles, and items (muzzle flares, spark effects, explosions, etc.), as well as camera shake when the player is hit.

UI and Menu Navigation

As for the menus and navigation, I couldn't work miracles. But I did make several notable improvements, such as:

- allowing players to navigate between different shops (weapons, stats, time) to make the most of the money they've earned before starting a new loop

- allowing players to adjust the volume of music and sound effects

- adding fade-to-black transitions between the action phase and the phase where the player makes upgrades

- adding gamepad navigation

BOSS Battle!!!

If you defeat all 100 enemies, you will be rewarded with a boss battle after one last upgrade session. This is a pattern-based boss. 

I won't say any more...

For later..

If I still have time to devote to this game, I will implement the following:

- a higher difficulty level, with traps in the arena, for players who have defeated the boss once

- the ability to choose your gun at the start of the game

- a mobile-friendly version

- and lots of other things

Thank you to those who take the time to play this game and share their comments!