Operation Animal Defense, PowerPoint game for October 2022

Hello people from PowerPoint Creative, I have arrived here with this post to showcase the sixth PowerPoint game I have developed with my friends. We present you Operation Animal Defense, which came out this 24th day of October. Even though this game came out a little later than expected, I believe it was fitting to release the game around this time as we get closer to half a year of PowerPoint games (Our first game release was back in May 6).



Pretty sure I'm gonna use the following format to explain the games as of this one, I believe things will feel more organized...

Backstory

The story that surrounds this game might seem bizarre and quite absurd, but this is what came out of a couple ideas and an old concept my friend had; The main protagonist, only known as Astronaut 2016, is sent on a mission to space as beams and machines land in planets to corrupt everything in them. Our protagonist travels in a spaceship to discover the source of the very harmful objects, but one of the beams hits the spaceship and it stops working, landing in a planet that the spaceship was passing by. Astronaut 2016 comes out of his spaceship without any serious injury, finding out that he landed in a planet that looked like Earth, but things were more colorful and the planet was inhabited only by animals. This animals-only planet is being affected by all the corrupting objects, and 7 machines landed in it, so Astronaut 2016, not having something else to do, decides to deactivate the machines and defeat the already corrupt animals, receiving help from 5 animals that have volunteered to assist him in his new mission.

Game

You are greeted with a title screen showcasing our main protagonist and the 5 secondary protagonists, clicking in the Play button will lead you to two skippable slides that show some of the game's plot.

Basics & Playable Characters

Having the game in a top-view perspective, Astronaut 2016 will appear in each level, and will be accompanied by 2 out of the 5 helper animals. The pair of animals will change after each 2 levels, until you reach the seventh level where you will see all of them. In the first 6 levels, the astronaut and the pair of animals will defend the corruption machines in different paths, enemies will try to reach our characters through these paths, your objective being to shoot all of the enemies that will come, divided into 4 or 5 groups.

The playable characters are the astronaut, a sheep, a quetzal, a pig, a rabbit and a pug. Most of the aforementioned characters have what we can consider to be different abilities when it comes to attacking the enemies, here's how:
- The astronaut, who appears in every level, uses his shotgun to sleep his enemies. The amount of damage he does is 1 hitpoint.
- The sheep shoots yarn balls to his enemies, he does pretty much the same as the astronaut. The amount of damage he does is 1 hitpoint.
- The quetzal initially shoots by himself, not requiring control. Due to his slowness in doing the task by himself, he will later require of your help. The amount of damage he does is 1 hitpoint.
- The pig has a very limited amount of use, only being used in each 2 groups of enemies. He releases a very explosive attack that can defeat all the enemies on screen.
- The rabbit digs holes to trap land enemies and will throw dirt balls to flying enemies. He can defeat 2 entire land animals, no matter their amount of health, and will do 2 hitpoints of damage for flying animals.
- The pug releases a explosive attack, but not as large as the pig's. The amount of damage he does is 3 hitpoints.



After checking what the characters do, you may ask how do you shoot the enemies, so here's how: In the bottom-left corner of the screen, green rectangles will appear as enemies also appear, you will see a glowing area that is constantly moving in these rectangles, so what you need to do is to press said glowing area to shoot the enemies. If you shoot in the dark zone of a rectangle, you will lose your opportunity to shoot, allowing enemies to reach you and result in a failed level screen.

While I'm not sure if this is really gonna matter, the place where the characters are will change each 2 levels; The first 2 levels take place in a green forest with round trees, levels 3-4 are the ocean surrounding tiny islands, levels 5-6 happen in a turquoise forest with pine trees and level 7 is in a desert.
With the variety of locations that the game takes place in, enemies will also vary, so here's where the enemies section comes in.

Enemies

The enemies are simply the animals that were corrupted.

Levels 1 - 2

- Sloth bears: Land enemies, they have a low speed and their health is 1 hitpoint.
- Proboscis monkeys: Land enemies, they have a medium speed and their health is 1 hitpoint.
- Opossums: Land enemies, they have a high speed and their health is 1 hitpoint.

Levels 3 - 4

- Jellyfish: Water enemies, they have a low speed and their health is 2 hitpoints.
- Piranhas: Water enemies, they have a high speed and their health is 1 hitpoint.
- Sword fish: Water enemies, they have a medium speed and their health is 2 hitpoints.

Levels 5 - 6

- Armadillos: Land enemies, they have a low speed and their health is 2 hitpoints.
- Crows: Flying enemies, they have a high speed and their health is 1 hitpoint.
- Vultures: Flying enemies, they have a high speed and their health is 2 hitpoints.

Level 7

- Rattlesnakes: Land enemies, they have a high speed and their health is 1 hitpoint. Note that they don't appear in the Help section of the game, so they are surprise enemies as they only appear in 1 level.

Now that all the regular enemies have been explained, I'm moving on to what goes on in the levels...

Levels

- You are using the astronaut, the sheep and the quetzal in levels 1 & 2. Level 1 introduces the sloth bear and the proboscis monkey, level 2 introduces the opossum.
- Levels 3 & 4 have you using the astronaut, the sheep again and the pig. Level 3 introduces jellyfish and piranhas, level 4 introduces sword fish.
- You will have the astronaut, the rabbit and the pug for levels 5 & 6. Level 5 introduces armadillos and crows, level 6 introduces the vultures.

Now for the seventh level, it's a boss fight! You will have to defeat a giant ostrich! First of all, waves of rattlesnakes will approach you, you will have to take all of them down. Being done with the task I mentioned before, the ostrich will stop hiding his head and will load his attack (You can see he is charging it in his mouth). When the ostrich is showing his head, his only weak point, you will have to shoot with the astronaut first to hit it and then you will have to quickly shoot with the pig to cancel the ostrich's hazardous attack. This is something that has to be done very quick, and you might find it very hard, considering what you need to shoot in this game, but it's not impossible to do so. Once you shoot the ostrich, he will hide his head again and rattlesnakes appear again, so the pattern keeps repeating until you manage to remove the ostrich's entire health (5 hitpoints).

Tips & Cheats

- Due to the dark zone of the rectangle being clickable for you to press on it and lose your opportunity of shooting enemies, it can be hard to try to aim for the glowing zone. For most enemies, you can just wait until the rectangle's glowing zone gets to the other end of the rectangle for you to press it, this makes things easier. However, to not remove entirely the point of this shooting mechanic, enemies like sword fish, vultures and the ostrich boss himself will require to be shot quickly.

Ending (SPOILERS)

You manage to deactive all the machines and you don't have to worry anymore about the corrupted animals. However, Astronaut 2016 can't return since his spaceship was ruined, leaving him in a situation where he has to find out how to leave the planet and continue his mission. Could there be another person that can go in the journey to find out what's behind the chaos?

Pretty sure I'm done explaining a lot of the game here.
If you want to try this game, you can download it here: https://estudioskotsbek.github.io/juegos-en-powerpoint/operaci%C3%B3n-defensa-animal/operaci%C3%B3ndefensaanimal.ppsx

Any review or tip on this game will be appreciated! As for now, have a good day, afternoon or night! 

I played up until the pine wood level, and then the birds came. I can't kill the birds, so I got frustrated and gave up.

Graphics are real pretty, as always from studio Kotsbek, keep up the good work fellas. Gameplay is alright, but becomes too repetitive when it is the only thing to bother with in this game. The different powers each character has gave a sense of surface-level richness in terms of mechanics. But not much else, it would have been more exciting if players could choose which powers to use and then have them have cooldowns. I would've saved up our pig's power to kill that stress-inducing warm-blooded missile with-a-beak. 

I know that sounded like a real hassle to implement, but dwam, just imagine how much exciting the game would've been if it has more stuff for players to tinker with.

One more game nicely done in line with all previous - the music, the graphics, the gameplay. Estudios Kotsbek have a consistent and recognisable style of their own.

One more thing you accomplished with your consistency - by now you managed to force-teach me some words in Spanish!

One little thing I missed - no sound and nothing special happens when the enemy reaches me. Maybe an explosion or a flash or something else?

One of the things I admire is your perseverance in getting new games published on a regular basis. An excellent job.

One question out of curiosity, Diéresis - who do you think, or maybe even know, is the largest target group of players of your games?

Waiting for yet another game.

!C8Hypela/M!!fN+hj5w wrote:I played up until the pine wood level, and then the birds came. I can't kill the birds, so I got frustrated and gave up.

Graphics are real pretty, as always from studio Kotsbek, keep up the good work fellas. Gameplay is alright, but becomes too repetitive when it is the only thing to bother with in this game. The different powers each character has gave a sense of surface-level richness in terms of mechanics. But not much else, it would have been more exciting if players could choose which powers to use and then have them have cooldowns. I would've saved up our pig's power to kill that stress-inducing warm-blooded missile with-a-beak. 

I know that sounded like a real hassle to implement, but dwam, just imagine how much exciting the game would've been if it has more stuff for players to tinker with.

Hi and thanks for coming back to us for another review. I understand that the stuff can get quite repetitive for 7 levels, we were actually considering ideas such as yours when it comes to using the characters but really couldn't do much about it at the time, I had placed the pig at the half of the game as I wanted things in level 5 and 6 to be actually difficult. I'm however glad you liked some other aspects such as the graphics & certain gameplay aspects like the character variety, we will take into consideration the repetitiveness aspect and other parts of the review for the upcoming games.

Jarek wrote:One more game nicely done in line with all previous - the music, the graphics, the gameplay. Estudios Kotsbek have a consistent and recognisable style of their own.

One more thing you accomplished with your consistency - by now you managed to force-teach me some words in Spanish!

One little thing I missed - no sound and nothing special happens when the enemy reaches me. Maybe an explosion or a flash or something else?

One of the things I admire is your perseverance in getting new games published on a regular basis. An excellent job.

One question out of curiosity, Diéresis - who do you think, or maybe even know, is the largest target group of players of your games?

Waiting for yet another game.

Hi Jarek, glad you have grown interest in Kotsbek Studios' PowerPoint games style and liked this game. As for any possible alert for enemies, I really didn't consider one as the shooting zones pop up when one comes, they even appear slightly early when fast enemies come.

As for publishing games on a regular basis, thanks, through we are not really using to 100% the monthly schedule you might notice with our releases, maybe one game is gonna break it in the future, we just do those games for fun and when we truly have more concrete ideas.

For the target group question, we are going for kind of a family-friendly path? We don't make these games specifically for kids, despite the art styles, and we might make games with rather darker tones in the future, who knows. Can't be sure about which group has the largest amount in terms of those who have tried our games, I think it's kind of mixed (probably pre-teens, teenagers and a few adults?).

And finally, yes, the seventh game is starting its development, I believe it's coming this same month (November).

Very cool game. The graphics remind of Earthbound for the SNES. I don't have enough hand-eye coordination to play this game though. : (

matto wrote:Very cool game. The graphics remind of Earthbound for the SNES. I don't have enough hand-eye coordination to play this game though. : (

Glad you liked our game, Matto!

You should make an RPG.