Escape! A and D controls two boosters, wield them well to escape from the rolling inferno beneath you!
> Gather enough speed to gain escape velocity! > Rest your boosters to let them build their reserves! > Slack too much and the inferno will catch up with you! > Boosting together grants you a brief melee-range force boom! > Picking up Space Batteries to charge your boosters mid-burn! > There *is* an end, and I've reached it... It was VERY hard.
Ran out of time on what I wanted to include in the game, but what's new :) Especially considering I restarted my game 12 hours into the jam because the first idea was WAY too ambitious.
I had huge drama getting my build up - ran into a nasty and obscure Unity bug where my builds would complete successfully but would not run, on any platform. After many hours of frustration, I found the solution, it was obscure as hell and has to do with Canvas and materials. Check here if you wanna know, it may just save your life one day: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/950569/game-runs-in-editor-crashes-on-startup-after-build.html
Thanks to everyone who helped me find this nasty bug, and thanks for reading and playing! :D
Thanks to everyone who helped, I found what the problem was (it was obscure and nasty) eventually, fixed it and have uploaded everything again. You should be able to play it now. YAY! :D :D
a very dynamic and intense game. i really enjoy it. going to play more and it looks very nice. and i liked the music at the same time the game is challenging <3
the graphic/sound impact is very nice and professional looking the controls are original and functional the take on both the themes is good somehow the game is just a little bit messy
At first I tried to control the ship in little bursts, trying to use minute control to accurately dodge and destroy blocks but I realised its a lot easier just to press and hold both buttons... on most levels this will complete it almost automatically... In general though this is really polished and great fun! Congrats!
Thanks @sydan! I really wanted to hit a balance where twitchy movements are possible to avoid things, and drifty movements also give the player a sense of drifting... Like a car sideways, but still in control :)
I think I'm not *quite* there yet but it's a start! :)
This one is really hardcore, maybe it would have been better to bounce on the walls instead of loosing a heart.
Aside from that it was a great experience and I had a lot of fun playing it. The physic is really good and we have a good feeling of the ship. The concept is innovative and the real is top.
Easily one of my favorites. I remember first seeing your post about having build troubles and feeling bad because your screenshots looked so nice and I wanted to play your game. I'm really glad you managed to get everything sorted out!
Really nice buddy! I did find I kept reversing the controls in my head when I was trying to shoot a box that had gone behind me but that's just my idiocy!
Plays very smoothly! Although I am not the best at it. I just kept boosting through the levels. Couldn't get past level 3. Enjoyable graphics,great logo!
Cool! It feels really juicy and rewarding to keep moving upwards. The little warning signs are a nice touch. I would have preferred using left/right to A/D, but maybe that's just me ;)
Nice presentation and gameplay. I think the fuel mechanic isn't completely clear and I wasn't convinced by the use of primitive forms in the second and third level, but the whole look of the game is very tight despite that little detail.
It is fun, and have a clever control scheme. Being a lover of challenging games, I quite enjoyed this one.
How long does it take to get to the end? I felt like I was doing pretty well, but I ran into the wall one too many times. Cool use of the two-button theme!
Looking at the gifs for this I assumed that the ship would feel very difficult to control but this isn't the case at all. It controls very intuitively, which is a pleasant surprise.
Some nice polish here. The 'incoming' indicators are actually useful. At first I tried to collect the boxes that were coming down, but quickly realised I shouldn't be doing that.
I eventually realised that the thrusters were destroying things and that once destroyed they were dropping something but I'm still not clear what they're actually for. Where they recharging the thrusters? When I did playthroughs where I tried to collect all the things I found myself running out of boost power. Same with giving it full welly too.
All in all I thought this was a solid entry but, I think, rather like my own entry I sort of which there was slightly more to do :P
Great entry, although I found the controls hard to master. I felt like the "running out of fuel" mechanic was unnecessary as dodging obstacles while staying ahead of the wave proved challenging enough for me.
The game feels great though, and the controls feel solid. Congrats on a polished entry.
If you didn't run out of fuel, all you had to do was boost when a thing was coming down in front of you, kill that and keep moving up, there's no reason to go sideways at all.
The balance wasn't quite right in the compo build, I'm working on a post-compo, so that might make it better. Might :P
Once you get to the flow this game feels so great to play. The controls are nice and responsive and I think the difficulty ramps up very nicely. The boost up feels slightly overpowered. Considering you had to restart the project once, this is quite excellent. Good job!
Gameplay itself very fast and interesting, nut game mechanic seems broken. I plaing this game about 10 minues and can't adapt to the control. usually I need few minutes for adapting to new controld but this one is VERY confusig. Also with some luck ypu can pass first levels directly just holding both keys.
So idea of the game is good and I like how you made "shooting engine". But game needs more and more polish to come in playable state.
Hey SaintHeiser, I would agree that the early levels are too easy if you just boost through them. The nature of the game is such that the difficulty is a balance between how fast the inferno rises and how fast you get away. And of course the enemies. The first levels are there to let people understand the controls, most people only figure out the boost after a while, so the first few levels would be murderous if it were any harder, with more enemies or something. Once you understood boost, yes you just cruise through the first levels.
I don't think I solved it perfectly, though :/
Can you elaborate on the issues you have with the controls? Did you want to go left but keep going right? Was it too slippery and you couldn't go where you wanted to go? Could you not react in time to what's coming from top? I'd like to know the kind of trouble you have so I can iterate on it :)
And I agree the game definitely needed more polish!
Pretty cool! It feels good play and looks very nice! I do think some of the bottom screen space taken up by the cloud could be traded for some more screen space at the top to see obstacles. Still, very solid entry :)
@Tuism The problem is that if I lost balance it's impossible to restore it. So it fells like I press the needed direct key but ship flight in oppisote side. Meby this happens because inertion but it's very hard for me to flight away walls when I've smashed into it.
Also confuses the fact that you shoot by the A,D keys. So I don't ready to move beacuse usually I can control movement and shooting separately. And there is the situation: I want to fly right and press D key and I'm moving right. But if I switch my attantion on enemies I tried to shoot them and moves to reverse-direction.
Maybe another problem that single engine using is TOO fast move ship left/right.
Hey, yo! First, I really liked your game's visual style! It's simple and pretty, so it looks nice! Gameplay is interesting, but I think there needs to be some sort of tips. Like what you need to do and what everything on the screen does. Like I still dont really understand what these 1's gave me :) Some sort of ability to fly straight upward? Or just points? So yeah,I give you top rating, because I really enjoyed it, but man, make some sort of tutorial for the first launch :)
interesing twist on the asteroid shooter demo that came with Unity!! I like it better than what they showed in the demo games because you get a top and bottom enemy spawn and the diagonal faced boots you placed when you move left or right was a pretty awesome touch. did you mess with the laser shots in the original game lol because to see a laser drop instead of shoot was pretty funny ahaha.
Hm? Asteroid shooter? I haven't actually seen what you're talking about, this was made from scratch and not based on any demo games or such :) if anything there were a few bits influenced by Downwell :p
Very competent arcade game with nice controls. It took me a while of playing level 1 to realize that it is in fact a very short level I you just fly fast. I was flying carefully just above the death-cloud collecting all that came at me. So maybe add a level-progression meter somewhere. I didn't really get what the collectibles were, but once it felt like I ran out of juice, so maybe that was it. The second level was very much harder than the first for me. And though several attempts, I failed to get past it. So maybe have fewer balls in the second level. To build up the feeling in the player that 'maybe I could get a little longer next time'. If the thruster-meters have some problem-state (e.g. out of fuel), it probably needs to draw even more attention than the current version since the game is rather stressful and I at least didn't really have much over to notice what was happening to them.
I did have a very good time playing it. Great entry!
Btw now we have a Mac version up an running of out game if you want to give it a try.
Oh damn it. Really fun game with easy controls, but I am having a hard time with them because in my game I control the thrusters and not the direction, and now my brain falls back to playing inverted all the time and I end up dead :|.
Simple game concept packed up in an overall great entry. It's fun to play and addictive. Sometimes it's possible to just press both buttons and fly through a few levels without doing anything else. So the game generation could use some work.
Beautiful game, very fun to play! I included it in my Ludum Dare 34 compilation video series, if you’d like to check it out :) https://youtu.be/w1ddlauRQRk
Well that shit ain't easy :p Nice one, it really feels dynamic, art and music are cool, controls are easier than I thought but energy management makes it harder x)
Interesting and very polished entry! Took some time to get the hang of the controls, but then they felt good. It was challenging though, and I would have liked to restart on the second level instead of starting from the beginning. Nevertheless, one of the most polished entries I've seen during this Ludum Dare. Soon ready to ship!
The game looks nice, and I really like the graphics. I think the camera could be tweaked to make it way more interesting, because at the moment I end up with the player always at the top of the screen with absolutely no visibility of what is incoming. Having the big blue clouds almost at the center of the screen takes a lot of screen space for no actual benefit.
This is great, the audio and graphics work really well. I think it was slightly frustrating to have to get the fuel as you could't see that far ahead, I feel like just avoiding things would have been enough of a challenge. The controls were great though, maybe needed tightening a little. I think this would be a cool mobile game with a touch button on each side at the bottom of the screen
The moving to left or right is floaty and easy to over-correct. And it's hard to tell which enemy or bullet you can just charge through vs you get killed doing so. Regardless, had a good chunk of fun with it. Nice and frantic.
Cool game, nice graphics, awesome tune. The game looks totally fair, I just can't get the controls working like I would like them :-P Totally my fault.
OTOH as sydan noted pressing both keys together from the start clears the level immediately. So a little finetuning is still needed ;-)
@zyow you'd have to be really lucky to make it through all 6 levels by just holding it down! It hasn't nearly happened to me yet! I do admit the earlier levels are too easy once you know how the game works, so the difficulty definitely needs tuning.
Perhaps you could explain a bit more in the introduction of the game how it's supposed to be played. I had a hard time maintaining speed, and couldn't get past the third level.
Comments88
ur OSX build still crashes! :)
Game crash in the desktop.
Thank you guys! You're the awesomest! :D
and it looks very nice. and i liked the music
at the same time the game is challenging
<3
the controls are original and functional
the take on both the themes is good
somehow the game is just a little bit messy
the graphics are great i liked the thrusters and ill be checking out other games you done :)
Well Done!
I think I'm not *quite* there yet but it's a start! :)
Also gameplay is very addictive.
This one is really hardcore, maybe it would have been better to bounce on the walls instead of loosing a heart.
Aside from that it was a great experience and I had a lot of fun playing it. The physic is really good and we have a good feeling of the ship. The concept is innovative and the real is top.
Check out Digicross, playable in solo/multi/coop :
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-34/?action=preview&uid=46758
Cool and challenging take on the theme, slick visual style and great sound, too. :D
Had no issues at all playing it on windows.
Enjoyable graphics,great logo!
Great job!
Though the core game design really should be shifted to give more tension between boosting and dropping back down to collecting stuff.
Try to add more feedbacks on "how high you get" and it would be PERFECT!
Nice graphics, easy to understand but pleasable gameplay, cool music, good job !
It is fun, and have a clever control scheme. Being a lover of challenging games, I quite enjoyed this one.
Some nice polish here. The 'incoming' indicators are actually useful. At first I tried to collect the boxes that were coming down, but quickly realised I shouldn't be doing that.
I eventually realised that the thrusters were destroying things and that once destroyed they were dropping something but I'm still not clear what they're actually for. Where they recharging the thrusters? When I did playthroughs where I tried to collect all the things I found myself running out of boost power. Same with giving it full welly too.
All in all I thought this was a solid entry but, I think, rather like my own entry I sort of which there was slightly more to do :P
There you go, lovely detailed feedback :)
The game feels great though, and the controls feel solid. Congrats on a polished entry.
The balance wasn't quite right in the compo build, I'm working on a post-compo, so that might make it better. Might :P
The graphics, music, and gameplay all complement each other very well and are really fun. Good job!
Also with some luck ypu can pass first levels directly just holding both keys.
So idea of the game is good and I like how you made "shooting engine". But game needs more and more polish to come in playable state.
I don't think I solved it perfectly, though :/
Can you elaborate on the issues you have with the controls? Did you want to go left but keep going right? Was it too slippery and you couldn't go where you wanted to go? Could you not react in time to what's coming from top? I'd like to know the kind of trouble you have so I can iterate on it :)
And I agree the game definitely needed more polish!
The problem is that if I lost balance it's impossible to restore it. So it fells like I press the needed direct key but ship flight in oppisote side. Meby this happens because inertion but it's very hard for me to flight away walls when I've smashed into it.
Also confuses the fact that you shoot by the A,D keys. So I don't ready to move beacuse usually I can control movement and shooting separately. And there is the situation: I want to fly right and press D key and I'm moving right. But if I switch my attantion on enemies I tried to shoot them and moves to reverse-direction.
Maybe another problem that single engine using is TOO fast move ship left/right.
First, I really liked your game's visual style! It's simple and pretty, so it looks nice!
Gameplay is interesting, but I think there needs to be some sort of tips. Like what you need to do and what everything on the screen does. Like I still dont really understand what these 1's gave me :) Some sort of ability to fly straight upward? Or just points?
So yeah,I give you top rating, because I really enjoyed it, but man, make some sort of tutorial for the first launch :)
I did have a very good time playing it. Great entry!
Btw now we have a Mac version up an running of out game if you want to give it a try.
Great job overall :)
So cool!
Nice one, it really feels dynamic, art and music are cool, controls are easier than I thought but energy management makes it harder x)
gj :)
The game looks totally fair, I just can't get the controls working like I would like them :-P
Totally my fault.
OTOH as sydan noted pressing both keys together from the start clears the level immediately. So a little finetuning is still needed ;-)
UI is not center on widescreen and if you keep A & D down you can rush 6 lvl easily without losing a life.
But it's very hard for me. I can reach level 3 maximum.
Great job on the music and graphics as well, very crisp and colourful!