Welcome to Backfire! This is my game jam project built around a unique risk-versus-reward mechanic designed specifically for the jam theme: "The Enemies Are The Weapons."

🛸 Game Overview & Core Mechanics

In Backfire, you don't shoot standard bullets or lasers—your gun fires live aliens. These aliens are your primary tool for navigating levels, clearing obstacles, and solving puzzles. However, launching your ammo into the world creates immediate hazards!

Aliens as Ammunition: Use your alien-launcher to press far-off buttons, activate pressure plates, and trigger mechanisms to unlock the path ahead.
The 5-Second Grace Period: When an alien lands on the ground, you have 5 seconds where it is completely harmless. Use this brief window to let them clear puzzle elements.
Hostile Growth & Activation: Once those 5 seconds expire, the alien grows in size, activates, and turns hostile, immediately hunting you down!
Pre-Activation Immunity: You are completely safe while the aliens are in their 5-second dormant state. They will ONLY kill you and trigger a Game Over once they are fully activated and chasing you.
Resource Management: Every shot you fire turns into a new enemy. If you shoot recklessly, you will quickly get swarmed by an inescapable horde!

🧱 Block Types & Puzzle Elements

To survive the levels and mazes, you'll need to learn how the environment reacts to you and your alien ammo:

Fake Red Walls (Destructible): Disappear when shot, revealing hidden paths or shortcuts.
Real Red Walls (Solid): Permanent physical barriers that block both you and your aliens.
Pass-Through Red Blocks: Blocks with zero collision. You can walk straight through them without needing to fire a shot!
Phantom Doors: Doors with no collision that act as visual tricks or hidden passages.
Mazes: Later levels feature tricky mazes constructed from red blocks where testing paths before shooting is vital to conserving ammo.

💡 Pro-Tip: Always try walking through walls or blocks first before shooting. Conserving your ammo means spawning fewer enemies that hunt you later!

💻 How to Play & Platform Information

You can play Backfire right here in your browser or download it directly!

🌐 Web Build (Recommended for Convenience)

No Downloads Needed: I completely understand that people don't always like downloading random .exe files off the internet, so playing directly on the web is the easiest option!
⚠️ Leaderboard Note: Please note that the speedrun leaderboards may not work on the web build. Testing showed some issues with web-based leaderboards.

📥 Desktop Downloads (Best Performance)

If you want smoother gameplay, downloading the game will give you noticeably better performance!

Windows: 2 options available — an Installer (.exe) or a .zip file.
Mac & Linux: 1 downloadable option available for each platform.

📱 Future Platform & Release Plans

If the game moves forward after the jam, the plan is to release on itch.io or Steam, featuring full custom asset updates, bug fixes, and guaranteed post-jam updates.

Planned Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS.
Mobile Platforms: Porting to phones will be a lot harder since it requires creating an entirely new version. Android will take work, and iOS/Apple is the least likely / hardest to pull off, but PC/Mac/Linux support remains the priority!
Multiplayer: Multiplayer functionality is planned for future updates, though not 100% guaranteed depending on development time!

🛠️ Developer Note & Engine

This game was built using GDevelop! As someone very new to game development (with only a few days of total experience), GDevelop was the perfect engine for quick prototyping to get a full concept ready before the jam deadline. I hope to learn and move to other game engines in the future!

🐛 KNOWN BUGS & PERFORMANCE NOTES

Because this build was finalized right up to the jam deadline, please keep these quirks and performance tips in mind while playing:

💀 Delayed Game Over (Fixed / Improved): We think we’ve fixed the issue where touching an active alien took a second or two to trigger the Game Over screen! It happens far less now, and across most of our recent test builds, it has worked almost perfectly.
⚠️ Pathfinding FPS Drop (Level 5 & Speedrun Level):
- Why it happens: When aliens are spawned far away from you, every single step or movement you make forces their AI to continuously recalculate the shortest path to hunt you down. This pathfinding calculation can heavily strain the engine.
- Bug Fix Progress: Recent optimizations have made this issue happen much less frequently than before, but it can still crop up in larger maze layouts!
- HOW TO AVOID/FIX IT: If you notice your framerate starting to drop, SLOW DOWN YOUR WALKING MOVEMENT IMMEDIATELY. Giving your character a brief pause allows the AI pathfinding calculations to catch up, restoring your FPS to normal.
- Crucial Warning: Do not ignore initial lag! If you keep sprinting through the level while the engine is struggling, the framerate can plunge down to 1 FPS, at which point it becomes nearly impossible for the pathfinding to recover!
- Note: This performance issue only impacts 2 out of the 7 levels (Level 5 and the Speedrun Level).
🐛 Wall-Clipping Aliens: Activated aliens may occasionally clip or pass straight through solid red walls.
🚪 Inactive Multiplayer Button: The main menu features a Multiplayer button, but it is currently inactive.
⚙️ Settings Menu Cursor Bug: You may need to press Escape repeatedly in the settings menu to reveal your mouse cursor. The FPS counter toggle works, but resets when changing screens—it is recommended to just leave it ON.
🖼️ Blank Executable Icon: The Windows download executable may display a generic icon on download.

🌟 Feedback & Fair Ratings

Thank you so much for taking the time to check out Backfire!

Game Jam Rating: Please rate the game fairly based on theme integration, mechanics, and effort!
Feedback Form: If you have a minute, please fill out the optional Google Form linked on the page for general feedback and bug reporting.

See you guys somewhere in the future! See ya, bye-bye!