It Should be a Crime is a rhythm stealth game about queue cutting. As the villainous queue barger, you must get to the end of the queue in a very limited amount of time, whilst being careful not to overly annoy those behind you, and to not be spotted outside the line by the queue matron.
The windows .exe is not an installer. For now, Mac users are recommended the .love version. You have to install Love2D (found at love2d.org), but if you're into indie games you probably should have that installed anyway.
@singpolyma Ah, gosh, you're right! Sorry about that, I can't believe I didn't notice it. I'll fix that as soon as I can, in the mean time if you want to play the game there's a raw .love (requires LÖVE to be installed) version here: ystygames.com/ludumdare/SBAC.love
Ok, I've updated the 32bit Ubuntu version and it is no longer an empty file. I'm still shocked that I managed to do that in the first place, I guess I was just tired.
A very unique concept, and I liked the audio even if it was very confusing. Managed to beat the entire game without even figuring out what the queue matrons are supposed to look like or even which way they're looking.
I ran the 32 bit ubuntu binary here on Arch linux, it worked after installing libtiff and symlinking: sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libtiff.so /usr/lib/libtiff.so.4 You are right, people cheating in the line are really the everyday villains ;)
@agmcleod There shouldn't be any dependencies, but I don't have a mac so I haven't been able to test that version. If you don't mind installing Love2d, you can play the raw .love version (found here: ystygames.com/ludumdare/SBAC.love), and I'll see if I can do anything about getting the Mac version working.
@zenmumbler Yeah, that's an annoying issue (that luckily seems to only happen on a few windows computers). If you update your graphics card drivers it'll work (the game should tie itself to your monitors refresh rate). I'll have to remember to make the speed frame independent in future.
Hahaha! Though 1st & 2nd level is unbeatable due to frame rate issue, 3rd level is actually playable because there it got more objects so the frame runs slower!!
I was thinking is this guy deliberately make this so hard...? he must really hate some guy that jump queues.... Kudos!
J
Jiggawatt18 Dec 2012, 21:15
Weird game. I see what you're trying to do, but it doesn't feel challenging or rhythmic enough. You can kind of dash to the end, the queue mechanic is only superficially explored. These kinds of games need strict limitations to feel right.
Really liked the anting of the people you advance, and really cool that mechanics are based on sound and rythm. The problem is that for me it was impossible to finsih scenario number 2 :/ Others go at a feasible speed, but not too. Did you multiply the update of state by frame time? I think it could be running to fast due to higher framerate.
Despite of this, I enjoyed the game and it has been one of the most innovative games I played so far in LD :D
Very nice concept. It was a bit hard to know how to play at the beginning. People graphics instead of squares would have been nice. The game is fun, it fits well with the them and it's challeging. Very nice! thanks.
Gotta give you full credit on the theme. It definitely SHOULD be a crime. It took me a little while to figure out what to do, and the third stage got pretty hectic. Fun idea!
This was... pretty neat! Very stylish and a cool concept. "You were eaten by the queue matron" was a great death screen. This felt very scanty though, even for a LD game. Even on the hardest level I didn't really feel like there was any challenge. Certain elements just wound up not factoring because the difficulty wasn't high enough to put them in play-- the green "annoyance" level didn't really factor because it moved too slowly to run out before the level ended, and the matron "staggering" in the final level didn't really matter because that level had so much time you could play cautiously. (Also, with levels so short, not really paying attention to the matrons and just trying again was an option!) I'd encourage you to make more levels at some point :)
Another thing, I'm not sure about this but the game made me wonder-- You'd think the idea of a rhythm game would be to have the option of listening to the music instead of looking at the screen to determine correct behavior. But on the levels with "staggered" matrons this wasn't really an option because the "looking note" was different per matron. What if instead of the matrons all sharing the same piano loop, there were a few syncopated loops, each corresponding to one of the matrons? Like say instead of (A) (A) (D) (G) the music was something like (A) [G] (A) [A] (D) [A] (G) [D]) and the top matron was always looking left on (G) and the bottom matron was always looking left on [G] ? If matron behavior was to some degree predictable just from the music you could maybe get away with doing a bunch of rapid-fire levels of much higher difficulty...
Pretty tense! This is the kind of game that I suck goat's balls at, though, so I didn't make it past level 2. I think this could work well as a mobile game, too. Great job!
Remarkable game. It really opened spaces in my brain, so to speak. I like it when, after playing a game, I feel like my understanding of the universe expanded a bit, and this is one of those rare cases. The mechanics are very engaging, and the audio cues are a great touch. One of my favorites of this LD.
I feel that the game is wildly beneath its potential, however. Naturally, having made it in 2 days, you couldn't yet explore this direction as fully as you should. It should be a crime for you not to further develop it.
This is a cool concept. Pretty fun. Would be nice to see more levels. I felt like if I just rushed I could beat a level by chance without actually playing.
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You are right, people cheating in the line are really the everyday villains ;)
Overall it was a great little game, the sound effects and the whipsers were funny.
Didn't encounter any issues at all.
I was thinking is this guy deliberately make this so hard...? he must really hate some guy that jump queues.... Kudos!
Despite of this, I enjoyed the game and it has been one of the most innovative games I played so far in LD :D
The game was kinda short, but I liked it a lot. Maybe longer lines with more time to work on them would make the game more interesting :-)
Thanks for the game! And oh yeah, line cutting should be a crime!
Another thing, I'm not sure about this but the game made me wonder-- You'd think the idea of a rhythm game would be to have the option of listening to the music instead of looking at the screen to determine correct behavior. But on the levels with "staggered" matrons this wasn't really an option because the "looking note" was different per matron. What if instead of the matrons all sharing the same piano loop, there were a few syncopated loops, each corresponding to one of the matrons? Like say instead of (A) (A) (D) (G) the music was something like (A) [G] (A) [A] (D) [A] (G) [D]) and the top matron was always looking left on (G) and the bottom matron was always looking left on [G] ? If matron behavior was to some degree predictable just from the music you could maybe get away with doing a bunch of rapid-fire levels of much higher difficulty...
I feel that the game is wildly beneath its potential, however. Naturally, having made it in 2 days, you couldn't yet explore this direction as fully as you should. It should be a crime for you not to further develop it.
If you do, write me at [email protected]
Great job!