Ludum Dare #19compo

ancient codes

by acidninja

Overall★★★★★★★★★★2.93

Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.83

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.43

Theme★★★★★★★★★★1.90

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.43

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.97

Humor★★★★★★★★★★1.87

Community★★★★★★★★★★1.89

Coolness★★★★★★★★★★1%

ancient codes is a puzzle/shooter in which you try to crack an alien cipher. that's about all i am going to tell you here, because the point of the game is to figure out how to play the game. it's not really all that hard, and this ended up being more tangentially related to the theme than i would have liked.

hope you enjoy it regardless. i have included a kongregate link which has an online leaderboard.

Genres: puzzle

Comments16

recursor20 Dec 2010, 02:43

Hmmm...I kinda like this. I especially like the sound effects and the game over music.

stevejohnson20 Dec 2010, 05:16

I could only figure out the one very simple rule about adjacent symbols. Not much else...

Great audio. Even though you didn't make it.

acidninjaauthor20 Dec 2010, 06:12

Actually I did make all of the audio. I used Fruity Studio and a number of plugins..

Benjamin20 Dec 2010, 12:06

If you can only see the matchx3 rule, play a bit more to understand the combo rule, it's clever :)

Moops20 Dec 2010, 16:15

Music and sound effects were amazing

increpare20 Dec 2010, 20:32

Atmosphere (audio/visual) is great, the pacing is a bit weird though - it takes a long time to die.

Danik20 Dec 2010, 22:56

Top notch audio and atmosphere. Kind of hard to see if the yellow symbols were flashing or not.

Devenger21 Dec 2010, 13:59

Well presented and with a good core mechanic (I assume that horizontal and vertical colour or shape matching were the only ways to trigger destroying the shapes?) that forces you to think tactically - very nice. But yeah, not that related to the theme.

Sos21 Dec 2010, 17:33

I didn't actually get it but shooting around was fun and I got some points!

plams21 Dec 2010, 19:59

Can't rate high on theme, and I don't enjoy these kinds of combination games. But the audio is gorgeous!

Fififox21 Dec 2010, 21:28

The game is good, but for me the concept is not new, and there is no real discovery going on here: just looking at the game a few seconds let you tell what you have to do. The soundtrack is really good, though.

randomnine22 Dec 2010, 12:43

I like the atmosphere you created with the audio here.

Endurion22 Dec 2010, 15:50

Hmm.. The rules I could deduce are match-3 by color or shape. Also I have no idea what the charge-meter is for. I filled it but nothing happened.

alexlarioza31 Dec 2010, 19:39

Nice touch. =] The sound effects were awesome.

krangGAMES5 Jan 2011, 07:42

TOTALLY digging the audio, 5 stars on that front! :D

Took a little bit to get all the nuances of the gameplay, but it was fun when I did. Enjoyable game, nice graphics and effects.

Couldn't really find the discovery theme in there, pacing was a little slow and it wasn't exactly the most 'original' game I've ever seen. Also, it took FOREVER to charge the bomb, and when I finally got it charged I was a little disappointed with the result. It was useful, but I wanted something a little more spectacular for the amount of time I put in charging.

Fun though, good overall, nice job. Killed a good 20 minutes, and will probably play again sometime in the future :)

Ryan8 Jan 2011, 08:53

This was fun, I liked the sounds it made, and the cool glowing rune-like shapes.