Calamity Cobra in “A Sweeter Reprise” 🐍 (V1.1)

[ShweetMagnet]

Calamity Cobra in "A Sweeter Reprise" by ShweetMagnet

a game by ShweetMagnet (art, programming, sound) and Nebby (music).

Source code

Following the events of ‘A Sweet Surprise’, Calamity Cobra has spent days wandering through the Dessert Desert, vying to return home. Any of the “damage” she incurred from her last bounty hunt has since shed away. Tired, alone, delirious, Calamity Cobra is at wit’s end - until she stumbles upon a humanoid figure in the distance. Observing more closely, it turns out the feminine creature is made out of the same stuff those bastards who surrounded her were! Blasting it away without hesitation, all that’s left of the so-called “Dessert Elemental” is a beating heart covered in caramel. Calamity Cobra pockets it, thinking such an odd organ would have some buyers…but in a flash, the Dessert Elemental reforms, and is furiously hungry! Towering wafers enclose Calamity Cobra in a confectionery colosseum, as foes new and old surround her. It seems that they’re…out for blood, this time! Calamity Cobra’s task is to appease the Dessert Elemental’s rampaging hunger by battling these dangerous desserts and feeding her their remnants.Forming a symbiotic bond with the stalwart serpent, it seems that the Dessert Elemental can turn these goodies into upgrades, too. Calamity Cobra figures she doesn’t have much time…if she can’t restore the Sweet Heart back inside its proper owner, Calamity Cobra may be swarmed by the sweets…

Your goal is to feed the Dessert Elemental (ice cream lady) 1,000,000 of the game’s currency, Goodies, gathered by defeating enemies. You got an hour. Hurry up!

Left mouse button/space to fire snakes.

Right mouse button/R to redirect snakes, ricocheting them mid-air for more damage.

Q to lock snakes, holding them in place. Hover over the snake, and then point your cursor in the direction you’d like it to go. Adds a damage multiplier.

TAB to recall all active snakes back to you.

H to activate the “Sweet Heart”. Combines waves and increases enemy aggression. For every use, gain a Goodie multiplier; for every concurrent use, double your multiplier.

P to pause.

Overkilling enemies by dealing double their health in one hit will net double the goodies.

Upgrades are the following:

• Lifetime; increases time snakes are on the field.

• Ammo; increases snake count by one.

• Redirects; increases redirect count by one.

• Health; restores one health point, if you got hit.

• Feed; feeds the Dessert Elemental. She might get bigger with time…

The HUD shows the following:

• Goodie count.

• Current Sweet Heart multiplier.

• Game time remaining.

• Wave number.

• Time until next wave appears.

• Time when enemies will still spawn. If it hits zero and there’s no enemies present, you can buy upgrades with the Dessert Elemental.

Good luck, and have fun! I unfortunately had lots of ideas that could not meet the deadline…but, look forward to updates post-jam, maybe?

Known Issues

• General jank. I literally had zero playtesting with this game once again because I didn’t have time for it. Oops!
• I’ve received reports that this game may not run on weaker hardware; if your GPU supports OpenGL 3.3, you should be good…
• This game was very much rushed. I chose to undergo the task of writing my own engine, and it was pretty much from scratch (CC1 was not pretty), and this means a LOT of stuff had to go on the cutting room floor.
• The art isn’t finished! OOPS! Hey, some people like my lavender-canvased sketches, so here’s a whole game’s worth of them.
• Occasionally, the wave timer may read zero and there won’t be any more enemies, but the music won’t stop and the Dessert Elemental won’t come back. Really don’t know what is causing this, unfortunately - cheated and implemented a “mercy timer” that will force exit out of combat after about twenty seconds.
• Chippers (cookie enemies) and Crumblers (crumb cake enemies) don’t animate. Didn’t have time!
• Glitchiness of fired snakes; the redirect indicator, them not immediately facing the right direction…
• Sound issues; some sounds may easily overlap one another. Sort of a limitation with SDL2_mixer but probably a skill issue on my part.
• Not sure if this is still in the game, but you might be able to buy something from the shop despite the Dessert Elemental not being present. Oops!

Planned Features
I do want to continue developing this game after the jam! If you look at the Artbook, you can see that there was a LOT cut. I do need a break though because this game literally was my life for the past two weeks…

• Finished graphics, of course.
• Five new enemies: Rock Candy Micheal, Neapolitotem, EZ Ache, Creper, G.U.M. MK II
• A melee “swing” mechanic that can let you gain some distance on your foes.
• An intro cutscene explaining the story.
• Multiple endings, based on your performance.
• More stages of the Dessert Elemental getting fatter.
• A more in-depth results screen that grades you on your time.
• Dialogue mid-game, to further explore Calamity Cobra’s character.
• More frames of animation for everything (chiefly Calamity Cobra).
• More visual effects; “gore”, screen shaking, etc.

**
Artbook

Bonus!

All of this art is Calamity Cobra adjacent that has been made in the lead-up to this game’s development. If you’re wondering about the mantis girl…well, maybe for next year.

[coldsteelj]

Unfortunately even with my many years of playing video games skill it is very hard to play. This control where you need to shoot snake, then press Q, then move your mouse exactly on place where your snake locked, then waste a few seconds on changing direction of locked snake, because it don’t recognize direction instantly, only after that press right mouse button to release snake projectile. Making all this things is unbeliavable hard when you need to move and when enemies move. No matter how good you are on first two levels you don’t have anough currency to buy first update and on level three you just don’t have enough time to kill all enemies. It feels like responce of those things: pressing Q, then chose direction, then press right mouse button should work instantly, but instead each of those moves takes too much time.

[ShweetMagnet]

A quick little hotfix, just before the jam’s conclusion:

• Reduced all shop price exponent gains from 5 to 2. MUCH cheaper upgrades.
• You’ll now start with 100 Goodies, allowing you to pick an upgrade to make the oncoming early waves much easier.
• Set the timer to an hour, rather than thirty minutes. Plenty of time to get 1,000,000.
• New mechanic: Dessert Elemental fatness adds a flat multiplier to your goodies (i.e., fatness level 1 = 2x multiplier). Get her fat fast.
• Reduced snake projectile speed and reduced the offset from Calamity Cobra to the snake (slower, closer snakes that should be easier to hit things with.)
• Two new stages of growth for the Dessert Elemental~

I hear you loud and clear about the issues with locking. A good trick is to back up your mouse, and drive straight through the snake to where you want it to go. Something to be considered for when I make more drastic changes.

[testprofile80]

Haven’t even played it yet and I’m absolutely in LOVE with the TBOI looking enemies/UI

[ShweetMagnet]

I know this game is BORDERLINE infringing, but that’s fine with me. I’m a huge Isaac fan and I figured I should give my own game a huge dosage of that Edmund energy.

[SoftPlushie]

Ayyy I’m glad to see another entry of this game! I played a lil and enjoyed it! I could tell there was an inspiration from Isaac with some of the design lol, even the sketches alone. I look forward to future updates!

[eman006]

Very original concept/art. But I think it needs further tweaks. The level 2 enemies out range you with their projectiles by a lot and it makes dealing with them a chore. Maybe I just suck but I die each time.
I think upgrades are also way too expensive. 100 per is a steep price for the small amount of income you receive.

[ThatOneAlt]

No idea why but the game unfortunately runs terribly, sometimes it goes well for the second half of the intro, but once the first real wave starts it becomes unplayable. It doesn’t seem to be affecting the rest of my pc unlike most other resource intensive games, so I’m not sure what the issue is

[ShweetMagnet]

Me and my terrible programming, lol. Guess that’s my fault for testing exclusively on a 4070ti.

…okay, I opted to test the Windows build on my Thinkpad and uhh…seems to be running fine. If you can post your specs, that would be appreciated.

[obeast]

i had the same problem with this game and the first calamity cobra, not to mention this game is a nightmare to play if you dont have a laptop and are forced to use a trackpad

[ShweetMagnet]

Both games underperforming!? The first one should be very light on resources, I guess I’m just missing something. Again, post PC specs, if you can!

And yeah, this game does essentially require the use of a mouse. Sorry, I just designed it with one in mind!

[noneexpect]

I love the art and style of this game, so I stuck with it for quite a few attempts. But after managing a run that managed to reach 100,000 goodies fed after surviving half an hour, the amount it felt like I had to push the multiplier to even hope to reach the goal made it feel impossible. Spammed H and pushed it up to x1000 and died pretty much immediately to cupcakes hopping faster than I could slither and offscreen bullets moving way too fast to react to. Some thoughts-

The offscreen bullets feel completely unfair even when they’re not flying at warp speed.

I found it way easier to upgrade snakes to ~6, range to ~2, and just spam normal shots than even attempt to use the redirect mechanic. Which is a shame because the redirect mechanic is fun in the early levels, but later on I’m already struggling to dodge as it is without trying to do any fancy tricks. I think at least restoring a charge each time a snake returns, instead of only recharging them when you have no snakes on the field at all, would go a long way to making it feel better.

I expected health upgrades to heal me to full and increase max health by 1. Was quite surprised when it only healed for 1. Was even more shocked at the insane price hike for each heal. Maybe I’m a casual, but the game is unforgiving as it is and I don’t think health should be so crazy expensive if the heal itself is gonna be so small.

When you activate the sweet heart, the time until next wave is set to however long it’s supposed to be on its own, while the enemy spawn time remaining of the next wave gets added to the rolling total of all the waves you’ve combined. This can easily compound into the enemy spawn time being greater than the time till the next wave. Which effectively adds another wave to what you’re facing until the next downtime with none of the benefits of actually activating the heart. It feels like that wasn’t the intent, and that the next wave timer should have the value of the next wave added to it, rather than set to the value of the next wave.

[XxchristofferxX]

Hitboxes are horrible to the point that the game is unplayable.

[ShweetMagnet]

The offscreen bullets feel completely unfair even when they’re not flying at warp speed.

Will be adjusted in the next update (I do like the “OH SHIT” feeling as one soars across the screen though, lol). Additionally, as seen in “Planned Features”, I do want to add a spawn indicator to help show where enemies are spawning.

I might just replace them with their own enemy type rather than reusing the Chipper projectile. Maybe a jelly bean or something.

I found it way easier to upgrade snakes to ~6, range to ~2, and just spam normal shots than even attempt to use the redirect mechanic. Which is a shame because the redirect mechanic is fun in the early levels, but later on I’m already struggling to dodge as it is without trying to do any fancy tricks. I think at least restoring a charge each time a snake returns, instead of only recharging them when you have no snakes on the field at all, would go a long way to making it feel better.

Good idea. I think this might’ve been in CC1 but I forgor . Will be added in the next update.

I expected health upgrades to heal me to full and increase max health by 1. Was quite surprised when it only healed for 1. Was even more shocked at the insane price hike for each heal. Maybe I’m a casual, but the game is unforgiving as it is and I don’t think health should be so crazy expensive if the heal itself is gonna be so small.

I don’t really like max health upgrades, as I feel like that might trivialize the game by repeatedly stacking on them. I have tested having the player start with 5 HP and I think this would be a good compromise; you can make more mistakes.

When you activate the sweet heart, the time until next wave is set to however long it’s supposed to be on its own, while the enemy spawn time remaining of the next wave gets added to the rolling total of all the waves you’ve combined. This can easily compound into the enemy spawn time being greater than the time till the next wave. Which effectively adds another wave to what you’re facing until the next downtime with none of the benefits of actually activating the heart. It feels like that wasn’t the intent, and that the next wave timer should have the value of the next wave added to it, rather than set to the value of the next wave.

Will be fixed in the next update; the wave timer will have the current combat timer added to it, so you should only be fighting as many waves as you heart’d for.

[ShweetMagnet]

Which ones do you think are too small/big on the player or on the enemies? The shadows represent roughly what your hitbox is, if that helps.

[XxchristofferxX]

The snakes that I shoot dont hit the enemies more than half the time + it is very difficult to pick up drops

[ShweetMagnet]

Two changes for you, in the next update:

• Will mildly increase the snake hitbox size.
• Dropped goodies will now have a radius in which they will hone in on the player.

I’d like to have all of these changes in a more substantial update; one that hopefully “completes” the game, per se. Look forward to it!

[ShweetMagnet]

Ah, I couldn’t help myself. I guess I want the game to be free of these flaws before I really go ham into development.

Calamity Cobra in ‘A Sweeter Reprise’ V1.2: The “Now Playable” Edition

• New enemy: Beanie (replaces the Chips that spawn, but looks different and drops goodies).
• Spawned Chips (now Beanies) were stupid fast at high levels; this is now lowered.
• Added new alert icons showing where enemies spawn.
• Calamity Cobra now starts with 5 HP instead of 3.
• Changed formula for Sweet Heart multiplier: (Uses + (Concurrent Uses ^2)) * Dessert Elemental Fatness
• Increased size of Crumblers and Custarpedos.
• Decreased the mercy timer (stupid bandaid solution to an issue where if the countdown timer is zero and if there SHOULD be no enemies on screen, you go back into calm mode with the Dessert Elemental) to 10 seconds. Will try and fix the ACTUAL issue later.
• Originally, the delay between enemy spawns was supposed to decrease with level increases (Sweet Heart uses), but this was bugged. This is now implemented; at maxmimum, enemies can spawn every half second.
• Increased hitbox size of projectile snakes and Cuppers.
• Goodies will now magnetize to you within a small radius around them, allowing them to be collected easier.
• Crumbler health increased from 10 to 15. Use locks and redirects!
• Recall (returns snakes to you) is now on TAB.
• Recall now has a 1 second cooldown.
• Recall now has its own dedicated sound.
• The Dessert Elemental’s last stage of fatness was broken; fixed.
• Locking and redirecting snakes now deals a 3x damage multiplier instead of a 2x (note, for now, snake spamming is probably the most effective strategy, but when I add more enemies, they’ll be much tougher than the fodder you fight now and encourage their use).
• The Dessert Elemental, uh…let’s say she gets bigger in more ways than one, now.
• Minor graphical changes.
• If the million run wasn’t possible before, it is now. A YouTube video as proof!
• Probably some things I’m forgetting.

Download on the itch.io page or here.

The old Gain Jam version remains downloadable here.

[noneexpect]

I have to admit, making the offscreen bullets cute was not the solution I expected to making them feel better, but it works really well. That and them being the only colored enemy really helps them to stand out.

And indeed, the game is definitely possible now! Still had a few moments that were a little hairy, but managed to clear the game with 10 minutes to spare.

Also things getting bigger as they get fatter is exactly up my alley so that particular change for the dessert elemental is very appreciated. Only complaint is that there isn’t a final size for the victory screen.

[ShweetMagnet]

I have to admit, making the offscreen bullets cute was not the solution I expected to making them feel better, but it works really well. That and them being the only colored enemy really helps them to stand out.

The whole sketch style is not an intentional choice, it’s a holdover until I actually spend the time polishing everything!

Also things getting bigger as they get fatter is exactly up my alley so that particular change for the dessert elemental is very appreciated. Only complaint is that there isn’t a final size for the victory screen.

A proper ending is something I will also be working on when I get around to it.