A lot of people are complaining because the game it's too easy, we didn't have time to balance it, so we added a cool feature in the settings menu. You can tweak the difficulty and create crazy rules. Most people are missing it, so be sure to check it out.
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A super villain is trying to take over the world and a sidekick is the only one who can get in his way. But you are trapped in your lair and your nemesis is throwing fireballs at you. The worst part is that you only get one shield to deflect his attacks while you try to save the day. Being a hero(or a sidekick) is never easy.
Controls:
Player 1- Arrow keys to move, jump and use tools.
Player 2- WASD to move, jump and use tools.
Misc- Z to zoom in/out, ESC to pause and P to advance text.
Features:
-Tutorial
-Single Player mode
-Coop mode(which is fun even with just one player, try moving two characters at the same time)
-VS (not available right now, we'll add it in a future version)
-We set up a few difficulty modes but you may change everything as you wish(settings menu) and create crazy rules
To be fixed:
-Music (Due to tech issues just one song was added, the game will feature more tracks in a future version)
-Climbing animations
-Minor bugs
-During the tutorial, when the computer tells you to press "return" it means the down key
-We didn't have much time to balance difficulty; If we upgrade the game we'll fix this
Notes:
-Linux and OSX versions will be uploaded as soon as possible(DONE)
-We recommend using the desktop version instead of the web version
This is really fantastic, and I'd love to see it fleshed out into something bigger. Graphics are gorgeous, music is awesome, and everything feels really smooth and fun to play with. Really nice to see more 2-player hotseat games too.
nice style and gameplay. it's more fun in 2P mode ;)
C
Cake&Code17 Dec 2013, 15:41
Haha, this is pretty cool. The art is fitting and the dialogue is good, although it felt like a really relaxed game while the premise sounds like it'd be tense and high stress.
The first time was lucky and I just sat on the hacking computer while the fireballs mostly missed and I managed to win with around 20% health, while never touching any other controls.
Pretty cool, I liked the micromanaging mechanic and the art looked pretty sweet. Although I thought the shield might have been a little useless since you can just win by hacking and repairing. Still nice anyway, good job.
It's much more lasting with the newly discovered difficulty settings! I should try playing it with someone else and not alone on higher difficulty, though even standard Hard is to easy for me alone. :D
If you plan to make it into a bigger game, I would love to see a bigger ship, much more space to go into, maybe a split-screen for two players so you can go farther apart from each other than one screen could allow. More threats types of course and more devices to counter those threats. Maybe some dangers that you won't be able to figure out before you go yourself to the corresponding block of a ship, like, you get an alarm that says there's something wrong in some area, but you won't know if it's a fire or enemy troops invasion before you go and check it for yourself (it starts to sound more like FTL now).
Anyway, it's just my vision of one possible expansion and it won't necessarily be same as yours. Good luck in any case!
@mortus: Thanks for the feedback and playing again. If we decide to make a post-jam version we'll spend a lot of time redesigning the gameplay, I'm considering many options (like turning it into an arena game where one ships fights another). We appreciate your suggestions a lot.
Hey there! Graphics are great, mechanic is really cool and the take on the theme is original. I found the game to be somewhat buggy :/ I got stuck in the tutorial twice (and I was called stupid!), and then some animation frames didn't display correctly. But when I got to playing it, I found it quite enjoyable. Good work!
Very cool mechanics, great visuals, and I loved that you made a 2 player game. There's a lot of potential in this.
D
drnick20 Dec 2013, 00:24
Linux version said: ./thesidekicks: error while loading shared libraries: libnss3.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory libNSS is an cryptographic key management library, why does it even use it? Couldn't test.
Really nice. Great visuals and an amusing tone throughout. I'm not sure if you're looking for feedback, but I found the game to be a little passive. It might have a little more engaging to add an element of skill to each of the computers, i.e. the health computer could involve mashing the space bar, hacking could be typing a series of words that are prompted by the computer, pumping the power could be alternating between the left and right arrows, etc. Just a thought.
Oh and you say that hitting Enter will interact in the tutorial, whereas I only managed to get the down arrow key to function this way.
@drnick: Sorry to hear that, we used construct to develop the game and I'm not sure how it makes the linux port. I'll check it.
@Sean Noonan: I thought about adding some challenge to the tools you can use but I decided not to in case it distracted the player, sugggestion noted. We'll experiment with it. And respecting the "press Enter" thing, it was just a mistake due to a change made in the last hours.
Hi, I made the pixel art, so I'm happy that you like it ;)
@drnick -> we used construct 2 to make the game. It uses node-webkit to the Linux import. I think that the error is in it's chromium layer. You can play the game in any browser that supports html5
I tried it only as and in single player mode. I guess it's more fun in two players since you have to co-operate and one player can focus on the lower side of the lair/hacking whereas the other will focus on defense.
I like the ideas that Sean Noonan is proposing, to add a bit more challenge/action to the fact of hacking/defending the lair.
The graphics and music are sweet and nice overall ambiance on the game.
Good job and congratulations on making it during the jam !
I think the concept and the mechanics had a lot of promise, but I think the ball may have been dropped with clearly identifying the goals. Great art look, and thumbs up for 2P co-op controls.
Comments43
The first time was lucky and I just sat on the hacking computer while the fireballs mostly missed and I managed to win with around 20% health, while never touching any other controls.
This reminds us a lot of a game called Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime which was a GDC/PAX favorite of ours: http://www.asteroidbase.com/dangerous-spacetime/
Right now we want to get as much feedback as possible, in a month or so we'll se if we end up developing this idea further.
I know it can be an easy game, we didn't have much time to balance difficulty; If we upgrade the game we'll fix this.
Thanks so much for letting us see your source <3
Top marks for this, I had such fun! The sidekick sprites are SO impressive in their tiny detail!
I like the atmosphere. Poor sidekicks only having one small shield!
Maybe you could see one of my previous games for some ideas about the ship and items to defend/repair it, it's based on the "You're the villain"
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=8175
If you plan to make it into a bigger game, I would love to see a bigger ship, much more space to go into, maybe a split-screen for two players so you can go farther apart from each other than one screen could allow. More threats types of course and more devices to counter those threats. Maybe some dangers that you won't be able to figure out before you go yourself to the corresponding block of a ship, like, you get an alarm that says there's something wrong in some area, but you won't know if it's a fire or enemy troops invasion before you go and check it for yourself (it starts to sound more like FTL now).
Anyway, it's just my vision of one possible expansion and it won't necessarily be same as yours. Good luck in any case!
./thesidekicks: error while loading shared libraries: libnss3.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
libNSS is an cryptographic key management library, why does it even use it? Couldn't test.
Just a thought.
Oh and you say that hitting Enter will interact in the tutorial, whereas I only managed to get the down arrow key to function this way.
@Sean Noonan: I thought about adding some challenge to the tools you can use but I decided not to in case it distracted the player, sugggestion noted. We'll experiment with it.
And respecting the "press Enter" thing, it was just a mistake due to a change made in the last hours.
Thanks for the feedback!
I made the pixel art, so I'm happy that you like it ;)
@drnick -> we used construct 2 to make the game. It uses node-webkit to the Linux import. I think that the error is in it's chromium layer.
You can play the game in any browser that supports html5
I guess it's more fun in two players since you have to co-operate and one player can focus on the lower side of the lair/hacking whereas the other will focus on defense.
I like the ideas that Sean Noonan is proposing, to add a bit more challenge/action to the fact of hacking/defending the lair.
The graphics and music are sweet and nice overall ambiance on the game.
Good job and congratulations on making it during the jam !
You can play the web version in safari.