Fateful Cavern

Our review:

PROS

• Intuitive twin-stick shooting
• Balanced difficulty
• Fitting soundtrack that reminds of Mario 1

CONS

• "Hey, I'm gonna get you, too! Another one bites the CURSE!!"

As per our IRC conversation, here are my thoughts on how progressive improvement could go:

• There are the obvious character control improvements, such as shooting diagonally, acceleration rather than immediate full speed walking, etc. which are obvious and understandably get overlooked in the time of a jam, as well as other obvious finishing touches like enemies spawning with a poof, or raising from the ground, dropping from above, which is purely cosmetic effect
• Enemies can spawn in waves rather than continuously. This gives the player time to rest, is a common strategy in game pacing, allows to easily fine tune enemy type combinations etc.
• Obstacles, specially those which the player can put down, or make the enemies solid and allow the player to freeze them. Also requires enemy pathfinding
• Since the floor is already on a pool of lava, imagine moving platforms… Can be great fun as it can separate the player from the enemies, as well as get the player stuck with them. Could make flying enemies meaningful as they could fly over the lava. Overcooked, is a quite different game but is still a great example of moving floors
• Together with the above, could either have set levels or procedural generation of them. Instead of changing level completely, the level can morph into the next, things come out the ground or drop into the lava
• Coop multiplayer of course - easy to implement for this kind of game, great fun

I spent a good amount of hours playing Boxhead, specially 2play rooms with a friend - that is a cool twin stick shooter.