As this is my first entry ever for Ludum Dare (or any other game jam) hello everyone :).
Game I created is as simple as it can be. I did not remember that ludum dare starts this weekend so I had only few hours to code :(. Graphics are atari 2600 like and music is procedurally generated. But it is still first game I have ever finished so I'm happy :)
Instructions:
Main objective in game is to score as many points as possible. Ship controlled by user changes shapes periodically. When it touches other ships of the same shape user scores a point. When ship will touch other ship in different shape user will lose on life. User ship can also shot projectiles, but they hurt only ships of the same shape.
Controlls:
w s a d -> ship movement
k - fire projectile
Game was created using java8 and processing and it was tested on Windows 8.
The shape-matching thing is an interesting idea, but in practice the enemies move too fast to be able to chase them down before the next change. Not bad at all for a first game jam, though - keep it up!
@asobitech thank you :) @mechalis at first I wanted to exclude shooting but without it was almost impossible to kill an enemy so I finally added it. I hope I will not miss start of next jam and will have a little more time. @Random crash is kind of weird because it started to occur after I added splash screen, but it was hard to pinpoit exactly what was going wrong. Generally on the next game jam I will probably try Unity, because writting everything myself using java and proessing generates a lot of overhead.
I like the music. Can you point me to good literature about how to procedurally generate music? The music and graphics style fit good together. Interesting game concept with the shape matching. But I don't understand why you can (only) shoot the enemies that give you score. Because of the speed of the enemies when fleeing from you, it's actually quite hard to score.
Overall: nice game for the short development time!
@xaedes I have been playing guitar for some years so rules applied hear are my own and to be honest I don't know about any literature about procedural music generation besides the one paper I saw yesterday on reddit -> https://www.academia.edu/9696759/Computoser_-_rule-based_probability-driven_algorithmic_music_composition but from what I see this paper covers most fundamental topics. And yes I agree that I should do something with shooting because currently game ends too fast too hard :P
It was a great idea, although almost impossible because by the amount of enemies that would be on the way throughout the small time spawn you're given when having the same shape as another enemy in attempt to catch them, on top of that they were very fast, but great attempt :D
Man, I must really emphasize how cool this idea is! I love how audio and gameplay work well together and I really only wish that shooting is a bit easier! Good job!
@crazyrems Unfortunetly the game won't start in java older than 8 because I used stuff like streams api etc. so porting it to older versions of java would require code changes.
As said, the shape change is pretty much unpredicatble, but overall this is a nice work. Music is really relaxing, graphics looks good. I think the projectile are a bit messed up, their initial speed depend of your own seep, which is not handy. Good job though, keep making games!
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