Bolt Collector (Working title)

Lol.. yeah.  all them crunch-time definitely helps.
I'm in an industry with a tight deadlines too previously (I'm on my own now), fourteen hellish years, but not the game industry, advertising.

Maybe I should start gung-ho-ing on my game project, after I wrap-up on all these freelance job I'm on right now.

I've made it to 2-2 a couple of times but no further. A level select screen would be useful.
The scoring system is a nice touch. That intro is really exciting! It's interesting to see how adding some storyline can make a game so engaging. Thanks for teaching me this.

Cool demo!
Here are some things I've found that I'm wondering about:

1. The spinning bolt animation seems a bit of place sometimes, when the head of the bolt is facing you it spins way faster than when it's not facing you. The animation also seems to be skipping frames randomly sometimes (perhaps a flash issue?). Perhaps give them different starting frames so they don't all jump up and down at the same time.

2. On level 1-3 where the spinning spiked poles are introduced, the right one is nudging  sideways, one pixel to the right, each time  the animation is looped.

3. On level 1-4, the two pair of spikes down in the first pits seem a bit off since one of them are inside the wall.

4. The bee death animation seems to be a bit "floaty". At first I thought it was supposed to be some parallax effect, maybe it is?

5. Are the sound effects yours? If yes, are they final? They seem to clip at the end, also the frequencies are a bit off on some of them.

6. Instant death is, at least to me, very frustrating. Especially when it's not really your fault. For example level 1-5 where you're going to jump over some pits halfway through, where there are some bees lurking. The don't come up letting me shoot them until I've jumped, and then it's too late, I'm already dead and have to start over from the beginning. Level 1-5 is as far as I've come due to this. It's too bad I'm not motivated more to continue, because I really like the game, but the frustration gets the best of me

Anyways, good luck with Bolt Blaster, looks like it can be a really nice platformer!  

Thanks Ohlin..

I'll look at those spike and bolt animations... and that shifty spike stuff you mentioned..

The sound is being polished now.. Most of whats in there will be changed.

The "bee" death is just it sparking out.. nothing clever to it.. maybe I'll look over it.

There aren't any buzz bots or "bees" in 1-5 .. you might be thinking 1-4 (hopefully its labeled correctly i'll look at that as well, although they are set to always simulate so they should be moving around before you get there.. there movement is random.. which may be biting me in the butt and I might need to do something a little more structured. So I'll look at that too. Thanks

Dying instantly.. well.. that was the trade off to me gameplay wise.. infinite lives, but at cost of losing your score.. however if you do complete an area's five levels that score gets saved.. all the areas are tallied at the end and a final score is dropped.. that way, if you arent as interested in a score and want to simply beat the game, you can have as many chances at it as you want.. however, if you are a score hound.. then it's extra incentive to become a master at the levels.. but honestly.. I still am doing a lot of shifting of things in levels to balance them out.. so at the moment someithng may be ridiculously unfair and if I spot it I will change it be hard but fair.

Thanks so much for the feedback.

xcmn: I've purposely left out a level select screen because I grew up on almost impossibly hard NES games.. and this is sort of homage to that.. however like I said above, if something is stupidly unfair I'll do my best to even it out a bit.

I just wanted to update and say I've tested the levels searched for bugs and the only thing left is one tiny bug thats really irritating me.

http://community.stencyl.com/index.php/topic,38167.0.html
(In case you haven't seen my question.)

Other than that all that remains is to add the music which my brother is actually working on now. I'm thinking of putting it up on itch.io for 1.99 and see how well it does.

All in all a really good experience.. I've already begun pre production on my next Stencyl game.