Since this is our first participation in a Ludum Dare event we are not really sure how to actually submit a game. Thus, I will just try it through here, let's see how that goes...
Anyway, about this game... In "Atlas", you own a small house ontop of a turtle that is surfing through the milky way. But, as life goes, you soon find yourself under the attack of Aliens, Meteors and other invaders from outer space, all trying to destroy your precious home. Try to survive as long as you can!
We thought pretty long about if Atlas was the right idea or if it even fulfilled the theme "A small world" in the first place. But ultimately, we decided to go along with it. A turtle is relatively small after all, is it not? Imagine this as a metaphor about you having to defend your own small world, like a room, a workspace or your circle of friends against all the dangers from outside. Changes, your boss, your parents trying to get you to clean up that beautiful chaos you have grown to love so much. Or, you know, hust imagine it as a turtle surfing through space. That works too.
Developing this game was not easy at all. Inexperienced as we are, we completely overloaded the concept, not really realizing our mistakes until Sunday evening. But hey, that's why we participated in the first place, now we (hopefully) know how to prevent this in the future. (Inb4 I type the exact same text in my LD#39 Entry...). Also, I really need to learn how Quaternions work...
CATEGORY OPT-OUTS We did not create the sound files used in this game. Therefore we will opt out of any sound-based voting categories.
IMAGES
LINKS
You can find both a Windows and a Mac Build in this Google-Drive folder:
Where do I find a turtle like that? I want one. The game is really nice, I LOVE the graphic, amazing sprites and love the art style, maybe it' just a little bit confusing at the beginning. And it's not that clear that you are repairing stuffs when something is broken, because he just stands up there. Really nice the idea of managing a small world to fight the enemies :) good job
I really like the pixelart in this game. The turtle just looks amazing, even though the UFOs seem to not really fit in. You quickly understand how the gameplay works, but the enemy's appear in so great numbers and speed, that i could not really use other features than the machine gun. Otherwise, this is a great and creative way of implementing the Theme "A small World". Nice work ;)
Fun game, many great ideas, theme suits very well (reminds of discworld :D) and pixel art if very nicely done.
All functions work well with no obvious bugs but some action indicators would of been nice, lack of time makes it hard to incorporate these sort of things but they would of made it a bit more intuitive.
Very fast paces making me feel like I had to man the gun all the time, maybe making it 2 player for someone to do all the turtle shell stuff would of helped :D.
All in all a great Ludum Dare game, maybe a bit ambitious for such a short time span but if you continue its development I would be interested to see where it goes.
The art style here is very good, although I think if the background had moved it would have given a much better feel for swimming through space (as opposed to sitting stationary in space). Also, yes, it felt a bit too hectic, with a bit too sparse a UI - some UI showing how many rockets you had left, how much damage the individual turrets had taken, etc, would have been good.
Also, your Mac download was a little messed up; there was a double-layer of .app wrapper (that is `Atlas_Mac.app/Atlas_Mac.app/Contents` instead of just `Atlas_Mac.app/Contents`, and the actual binary in the MacOS folder didn't have it's executable bit set when extracted from the RAR (this could have been an issue with the RAR extractor I used, admittedly). I was able to get the game to run without too much trouble regardless, since I'm used to this sort of thing (particularly for jam games), but other users may not have such an easy time.
All in all, this feels like a great start, I would definitely play more of this.
Goodness me this is bonkers. xD Love how this looks, lovely art on the turtle, there's a lot more to do on him than I expected! He really does feel likE a little world in himself.
I think what is majorly needed is more feedback for the player. Sounds and visual effects to show that you've hit enemies, been hit in turn, are repairing things etc. Since there's alot to do that would be super handy and go a long way to making this feel super juicy. Also some UI for your rockets.
Love that rainbow beam out the turtle's mouth, that's wonderful.
Man the art is spot on! Would have loved to see some more animations on the turret other than just the regular rotation. I had a good time! Didn't think I was going to shoot me some laser sharks when I woke up this morning! My highscore was: 1935!
Damn guys, I have never expected so much positive and honest feedback, I - no WE really have to thank you for wasting your time on our unfinished game.
Good job on your first LD entry, it turned out pretty good! I was glad you had a tutorial, but since it was plain text on a still image I forgot about half the things I had read when I started playing. The game itself is pretty quirky, which is cool. When in doubt, add character. :) The game probably could've been stripped down feature-wise, with rockets downstairs and lasers upstairs things got a little confusing.
The graphics were nice, but there were some different pixel scales happening. The main character was scaled a little smaller than the turtle and its surroundings, and especially the wrench icon indicating repairs was pretty HD compared to the rest. The rotating laser looked a little odd, as the whole thing came off its foundations.
I really like the pixel art, and great idea with the turtle and the palmtree platform :D had fun playing your game :)
A few things if you keep improving your game (which you probably already know), sometimes i had the problem that i couldn't move anymore? was this an exhaustion mechanic? because it wasn't really clear to me. One other thing at first (even with the tutorial) i had a bit of an hard time to figure out what exactly i could do where, if you keep working on it a maybe if you show small overlays with the button to press once your standing somewhere where you can interact :) And also a parallax scrolling background would have been nice to give the sense of moving around :)
Overall you did a really great job with your game and i hope you continue working on it and notify me if you need someone to test it :D
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You quickly understand how the gameplay works, but the enemy's appear in so great numbers and speed, that i could not really use other features than the machine gun. Otherwise, this is a great and creative way of implementing the Theme "A small World".
Nice work ;)
All functions work well with no obvious bugs but some action indicators would of been nice, lack of time makes it hard to incorporate these sort of things but they would of made it a bit more intuitive.
Very fast paces making me feel like I had to man the gun all the time, maybe making it 2 player for someone to do all the turtle shell stuff would of helped :D.
All in all a great Ludum Dare game, maybe a bit ambitious for such a short time span but if you continue its development I would be interested to see where it goes.
Great work.
Highly rated by me.
Overall, I like the game. Keep it up! 👍
Also, your Mac download was a little messed up; there was a double-layer of .app wrapper (that is `Atlas_Mac.app/Atlas_Mac.app/Contents` instead of just `Atlas_Mac.app/Contents`, and the actual binary in the MacOS folder didn't have it's executable bit set when extracted from the RAR (this could have been an issue with the RAR extractor I used, admittedly). I was able to get the game to run without too much trouble regardless, since I'm used to this sort of thing (particularly for jam games), but other users may not have such an easy time.
All in all, this feels like a great start, I would definitely play more of this.
I think what is majorly needed is more feedback for the player. Sounds and visual effects to show that you've hit enemies, been hit in turn, are repairing things etc. Since there's alot to do that would be super handy and go a long way to making this feel super juicy. Also some UI for your rockets.
Love that rainbow beam out the turtle's mouth, that's wonderful.
Nice job!
My highscore was: 1935!
The graphics were nice, but there were some different pixel scales happening. The main character was scaled a little smaller than the turtle and its surroundings, and especially the wrench icon indicating repairs was pretty HD compared to the rest. The rotating laser looked a little odd, as the whole thing came off its foundations.
Overall, nice job on your first entry!
I really like the pixel art, and great idea with the turtle and the palmtree platform :D had fun playing your game :)
A few things if you keep improving your game (which you probably already know), sometimes i had the problem that i couldn't move anymore? was this an exhaustion mechanic? because it wasn't really clear to me. One other thing at first (even with the tutorial) i had a bit of an hard time to figure out what exactly i could do where, if you keep working on it a maybe if you show small overlays with the button to press once your standing somewhere where you can interact :) And also a parallax scrolling background would have been nice to give the sense of moving around :)
Overall you did a really great job with your game and i hope you continue working on it and notify me if you need someone to test it :D
Congratulations on your first Ludum Dare, it's a great way to learn. Looking forward to seeing something awesome from you next time!