Ludum Dare #33compo

Whoops was that alive?

by benjaminsen

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.17

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.13

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.26

Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.65

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.78

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.90

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.67

Coolness★★★★★★★★★★40%

How to play. Click and drag mouse or finger to shoot (Drag farther from the origin point to increase power)

HTML5 game written completely from scratch (Including engine), in less than 48 hours.
I got prematurely excited about an hour before the Compo started and wrote the game engine - deduct me points if you see fit.

The game works well on both web and mobile.

Sadly no sound or music, as HTML5 support for such is bad, and so are my skills in creating it ;) - Definitely give me a bad rating here!

Total time spend: 18h 47m
Engine: JavaScript + Canvas, written in ~30 minutes before Compo started.
Langage: Raw JavaScript
Art: PhotoShop (PSD included in source)
Licence: MIT / Do whatever you want with this :)

Work log
------------------------

Friday (1h 3m):
Fri - 20:15 > 20:48 - Wrote game engine
Fri - 21:00 > 21:30 - Drew globe + stars in photoshop, added to engine
[Being social at the Kayak kickoff party in boston, Sleep]

Saturday (9h 20m):
Sat - 08:30 > 09:15 - Wrote down game concept into notepad.
Sat - 09:15 > 09:22 - Tried to figure out how to connect to IRC on a mac…
Sat - 09:22 > 10:40 - Drew UFO, created dialogue template, uploaded first sneak preview.
[Lunch]
Sat - 15:20 > 16:52 - Wrote dialogue system, completed intro development.
Sat - 16:52 > 17:09 - Posted online, irc, twitter etc.
Sat - 17:09 > 18:50 - Worked on Level1 (Large drone, astroid, controls etc, physics)
Sat - 17:50 > 19:00 - Posted 04 update on game online.
Sat - 17:50 > 20:10 - Explosions + minor control updates!!
Sat - 20:10 > 20:20 - Shared explosions with the internet.
[Food + Sleep]

Sunday (8h 24m):
Sun - 10:22 > 12:06 - Worked on ending to game
[Lunch]
Sun - 13:30 > 15:00 - Completed ending and made scene transition system
Sun - 15:00 > 18:36 - Completed game setup & wrote level 2
Sun - 18:36 > 20:00 - Wrote level 2 & 3, verified Mobile support.
Sun - 20:00 > 20:10 - Submitted to website.

Comments19

highlyinteractive24 Aug 2015, 02:25

Took me a while to work out what I had to do, but once I got the hang of it, it was great fun. Really nice gravity sim & particle effects!

Techblogogy24 Aug 2015, 15:21

Nice and relaxing little game, but I've got stuck on "Tee hee" part

jsmars24 Aug 2015, 19:38

Really nice planetary physics and game progression with cutscenes.. as you say too bad no sound and music, really felt like it was missing. Nice overall game tho, but how come first and third shots are super easy and second one is near impossible? Took me like 30 tries :D

Benjaminsenauthor24 Aug 2015, 20:44

jsmars, basically ran out of time after creating level 2, so threw together what I could for the deadline, with some crazy messy copy paste coding.

pkenney24 Aug 2015, 23:57

Great graphics, the feel was really there. The click and drag shoot dynamic was a little tough to get used to, especially since it shot my single bullet no matter where I clicked. I also wished the retry time was shorter (when I accidentally clicked on the screen and lost my bullet, I wanted to try again immediately).

The game froze a couple times for me, once on the "teehee" screen, and then I refreshed and played again and it froze at the very end when the drones were returning to the mothership.

But again, I really liked the feel of the game!

Benjaminsenauthor25 Aug 2015, 00:26

pkenney, what browser did you play in?

Jimbly25 Aug 2015, 00:27

Apparently I kept on trying to shoot the wrong direction on the second level... was much easier when I finally shot along my direction of motion... =)

aberdeenphoenix25 Aug 2015, 00:31

That's really impressive. Freezes occasionally for me, though.

magenta25 Aug 2015, 01:55

Great for touch screen. Nice and polished! Really liked the second one :}

May have stumbled on a bug where I (clumsily) dragged the mouse twice fast enough which made the game halt on the first level.

sprawl25 Aug 2015, 03:59

I really like the feel of the game, the orbs animation is spot on. It's very impressive that you coded that from scratch without engine. Great job.

The game froze on me twice when the ship was gathering the orbs after the "Te He, Get it" level. I'm assuming this was the ending.

Benjaminsenauthor25 Aug 2015, 12:05

For all of you who have freezing games, what browser are you using?

mantis25 Aug 2015, 14:10

Liking it, but the difficulty spike between lvl1 and 2 is insane :D

demogorgon25 Aug 2015, 14:12

That was awesome... I hope you make more levels after the compo.

Mantlair25 Aug 2015, 15:20

Good take on theme!

leffe10825 Aug 2015, 18:35

Great graphics and level 2 was challenging (the first one where you should target the moon). Took me some time to figure out first which stone to aim at and second to actually succeed at it.

pkenney26 Aug 2015, 03:27

@Benjaminsen I played in firefox

ArchBang26 Aug 2015, 09:34

Got stuck chasing the moon! Nice work in such a brief time, the explosion effect is particularly impressive. Took me a long time to hit the first moon. Some odd directions some of the time when I tried to shoot. Good effort!

Frozen Fractal31 Aug 2015, 15:53

I have no idea what CHONMg is, but I had a good time collecting it. Also because I'm a sucker for Newtonian and orbital mechanics :) Too bad the game is short, but well done for getting an ending in anyway :D

For HTML5 audio, I strongly recommend Howler.js. Works flawlessly on all browsers/platforms I've thrown at it.

dalbinblue3 Sep 2015, 15:36

The graphics are very well done, and detailed; they are reminiscent of "Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet". The game is very solid as well, with the only complaint there that if a shot has escape velocity, it takes a while for the level to reset for another shot.

The biggest thing I would actually say to improve was the length of the game. It's a very fun concept, and only having two levels where the solution wasn't immediately obvious did make me crave more. Looking at your timeline, I can see why this was the case, as you only worked on the game for about 16~17 hours total, which is still impressive for how polished the game is.

Overall, excellent job, especially for your first entry.