Booster

by fhoenig
Overall★★★★★★★★★★2.69
Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.06
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.38
Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.29
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.62
Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.94
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.56
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.09
Coolness★★★★★★★★★★72%
In this game your goal is to evolve a depressed city into a culturally vibrant one by spreading new ideas.

You control the Booster, who can give ideas to fellow citizens. Citizens can also share ideas between each other as they walk the paths in the city.

You win by raising the entire level of personal values and excitement that the citizens hold. You lose if the citizen turn hopelessly negative.

ARROW keys + NUMBERs + SPACE bar for controls.

NOTE: We've tested this in Chrome and Firefox. There are some glitches in Safari and IE-behavior is undefined.

Comments23

Shmarah
Shmarah28 Aug 2012, 04:05
Kind of hard to play; I don't entirely understand how to win. It's a fantastic concept, though!
wlad28 Aug 2012, 16:52
The loading bar stops at about 70%. And, well, the versions have all the same link. Can’t download a mac-version. Schade, klingt sehr spannend.
fhoenig
fhoenigauthor28 Aug 2012, 19:23
wlad: thanks for commenting. It's a browser game we only tested it on Chrome and FF. Any chance you could have a look at the javascript console of your browser to see what error it throws?
fhoenig
fhoenigauthor28 Aug 2012, 19:55
Firefox issue is fixed. The hosting webserver did not have a mime type for OGG, which was used in firefox.
kato9
kato929 Aug 2012, 03:16
Hey! Hey! Hey! Dude! Check this out! Yo! Hey! Check this out! Hey! Yo! Check this out! Check this out! Hey! Yo! Hey! Hey! Check this out!

In other words, it was weird and interesting but kind of hard to understand. The rapid fire sound effects were brain melting so I had to quit.
fhoenig
fhoenigauthor29 Aug 2012, 03:39
@kato9: Thanks! :) I appreciate that comment very much.

It is a bit hard, admittedly.
gbellgames
gbellgames29 Aug 2012, 04:28
You just keep walking around picking up the right ideas for the citizens?

In paper the concept looks great, but in execution the game felt really boring. Don't want to look too negative, the game is very polished, looks good and sounds good... but the gameplay is very "meh".
mes
mes29 Aug 2012, 06:01
Interesting concept for sure, but a bit unclear as to how exactly to progress. I didnt see what looked like a progress bar at the top move despite motivating tons of citizens.

I like the pixel art a lot and the sound effects + music were definitely enjoyable as well.
csanyk
csanyk29 Aug 2012, 06:03
What Shmarah said.
eyehawk29 Aug 2012, 06:43
Cool graphics, but on the web it seemed to slow down to a crawl
zx81
zx8129 Aug 2012, 12:42
I've been, I've seen, I've played...(firefox)
zx81
zx8129 Aug 2012, 12:43
I've been, I've seen, I've played...(firefox)
Nothing more to add.
wlad29 Aug 2012, 14:03
Yeah thanks for fixing the bug (if it was the one you mention). I'm really enjoying Booster. The citizens should stop walking or give direct feedback. The idea spreading becomes uncontrollable and from a certain point on I do not understand how to influence the whole thing. Nice graphics and colour application. The sound is improvable :)
fhoenig
fhoenigauthor29 Aug 2012, 19:28
Cheers wlad!
Actually they should stop and give feedback. Maybe you need to clear the cache. We had some issues with the mime types in the web server config and some filenames has case problems. When we submitted the game, we did not take into account that the webserver is running FreeBSD and we developed on OSX (case-insensitive FS). I always keep forgetting that part about the mac :)
nseward
nseward29 Aug 2012, 21:18
The graphics are top notch. It was hard to figure out. Love the idea.
sebwolf30 Aug 2012, 07:31
@nseward Thanks! We're continuing on a post-compo version to iron out the game play
gnx30 Aug 2012, 08:14
A fellow impactjs entry :)
Very cool graphics, could say downright beautiful.

The concept is also interesting and would probably flesh out if pursued further.

Also your visual effect is really impressive, I'm guessing it uses webgl?
fhoenig
fhoenigauthor30 Aug 2012, 19:27
@gnx: Thank you.

I think we'll post a more finished version as a separate link soon (outside of ratings).

As for the visual effect, this is canvas, plain vanilla impactjs.
I figured out a way to do a desaturation map with pixel operations that are fast enough. Basically draw into an offscreen canvas (circles around the people), then let the engine render cycle draw tiles and entities. After that go through each pixel and apply a simple desaturation "shader" based on the offscreen canvas. Then put it back into the visible canvas. Done.

Are there any webGL plugins for Impact? I thought of writing one.
AdventureIslands
AdventureIslands2 Sep 2012, 09:38
Idea was good but I didn't really understand what I was supposed to do, I walk around, give people ideas and uhh, they continue their merry way? This could perhaps be a good game with bit more polishing.
evilseanbot4 Sep 2012, 04:45
I like the concept, but I didn't get good enough performance to play it (Chrome)
sev_inf7 Sep 2012, 05:31
Cool idea, coll graphics and sound but really slow and quickly becomes boring.
monsieur_nez12 Sep 2012, 00:06
Weird, I don't understand, but great visual and the music remind me Dr.Mario!
Adhesion
Adhesion13 Sep 2012, 02:23
Great presentation (sound, graphics) but a bit hard to understand - needs more feedback as to whether I'm doing things right or wrong. Also saw some z-order issues (Windows, Firefox 15.0.1)

Other games by @fhoenig

Found a bug?
Tell us on Discord