Quantum Catburetor is a colorful and trippy bullet hell shmup with a procedurally generated world.
The world of Quantum Catburetor is extremely unstable. What you see is the only world that exists - if you go back where you came from - things aren't the same. The world canvas doubles as player health - shrinking down if you idle for too long or get hit by enemies. Refill your world by destroying enemies with a collection of badass guns and rushing for health drops.
A very small percentage of individuals may experience epileptic seizures or blackouts when exposed to certain light patterns or flashing lights. Exposure to certain patterns or backgrounds on a television screen or when playing video games may trigger epileptic seizures or blackouts in these individuals. These conditions may trigger previously undetected epileptic symptoms or seizures in persons who have no history of prior seizures or epilepsy. If you, or anyone in your family has an epileptic condition or has had seizures of any kind, consult your physician before playing.
This is pretty sweet, I like it a lot. My only suggestion might be to make it so that things you have seen persist a bit longer after moving out of your field of view, so you can swing back around and pick them up. Right now, I often find myself seeng a health pack or weapon upgrade appear and disappear at the edge of the world as I move by, before I can react to change direction and go grab it.
There were a lot of things in this game I didn't like but I say that from the perspective of REALLY liking this game! The gameplay is very solid and the art looks really pretty good.
As for the concept it is an amazing idea that your play space gets smaller and smaller but this is where I start disliking this game. As you lose more and more health the game world gets smaller and this is a really cool concept however at the same time the less and less health you have the harder and harder it is to stay alive. If a health item spawns I cant just go get it because I walked a single step away from it and now it has despawned. Need to kill more enemies for more pickups? Too bad you walked a single step away from the enemy and now it has despawned.
Like I said I really like this concept and overall there are several things that could make this concept work better. One of the most interesting ways this concept could be improved in the future would be to change the genre of gameplay from a twin stick shooter to something a little physical. Right now the game encourages you to keep your distance using that distance to give yourself more room to dodge attacks. However the problem of emphasizing keeping your distance is it puts a larger focus on the fact that items despawn. This problem only gets worse when your health is lowered where keeping your distance is not only harder but leaves more of a chance to despawn items and enemies.
If you wanted to leave the genre the same then I might suggest something that at the very least keeps pickups in your little bubble rather than despawning them (like maybe some sort of barrier).
Overall I really really liked this game but I feel it does have some design choices that alone are pretty solid but together need addressing.
@drazil100 thanks a lot for taking time to give us creative feedback! + playing the game on your stream!
> "As you lose more and more health the game world gets smaller and this is a really cool concept however at the same time the less and less health you have the harder and harder it is to stay alive."
Actually this also bothers us - and during the development, we almost considered dropping the idea and just keep the world "big" at all times. In the end we decided to go with it because we wanted to stay with the initial shrinking world idea + health system. We also wanted to try keep it true to the *small world* theme.
That's really a game worth playing. It took me some time to understand the controls, but once I got it I had fun playing it. The only problem is that the difficulty becomes high really fast which, at the same time, makes you want to play more and is discouraging.
It took me a moment to figure out that I was moving, but I got it. I'll echo the comments above about the STEEP difficulty curve, but I think some people will really like that (I'm more of a casual gamer myself).
The shrinking visibility mechanic is purfect design. It creates thematic mewments of tension and urgency aplenty. The purrty colors and mewsic fit like a mitten on a kitten.
Radical cattitude! More of this kind of thing, pawlease. :cat:
Great! I love the juicy pixel-y over-the-top animations and effects. And the colour palette. And the music and SFX. And the dynamic playing field. And everything else. :)
Telling you my best score would be embarrassing. I'll just blame it on my laptop's trackpad...
But, did you take the time to program custom shaders during the LD or are the deforming blocks some kind of postprocessing? Either way, it looks awesome. The game in general looks very good and plays super fluid.
Although looking at other comments my score of 6000 really isn't anything to brag about.
But does killing enemies really restore health? I thought it didnt and my demise was inevitable.
Getting triple shot was amazing though.
Also the generation depending on the canvas size, which in turn is depending on the health left is awesome design.
Isak played on keyboard and instantly yelled “The controls feel amazing” when he started playing. The aesthetics of this game is really nice and we like the idea to have the fog of war be the health.
Have an awesome day!
*(We'll be back again on Sunday when the judging starts)*
Really fun game, and I really love the art style. The music is also really superb. The concept is something a bit unexpected, but that's what makes the game so unique in the first place. Gameplay is super fluid, and the only thing I can complain about in terms of that is that the world seems a bit too predictable, I felt like there needed to be more variety in enemies, etc. Also, sometimes the collision with bullets wouldn't quite be there, and it would look like they were just passing through the enemy.
Still really nice and the cat being a cat adds so much to the game just because it's a cat cat cat cat adowogtewgno :smiley_cat:
Just a great game !! The graphics sometimes have small bug, but music is great , gameplay is very very addictive, my record is 8300. great Game and good job :D (sorry for my bad english)
@m-1 Oh no, too bad you didn't play with a controller!! I can imagine it's very difficult on using a track pad.
@elzach, @zhal was responsible of creating our custom shaders. There are no post-processing effects used in the game! Killing enemies does restore health - but it's a very small amount compared to picking up a health pack. Killing a single enemy doesn't affect that much, but after you pick up a good weapon which can quickly blast through groups of enemies, you can increase the health more quickly.
@joyfired, @querk (concerning graphics) Yup, you can see some weird shit happening with the graphics, especially in the upper part of the view frustum. Our world is kinda warped, like a bowl (see the gifs here: https://t.co/YKf0bLFVK9) and the camera angle is slightly tilted. It's something that can be improved I guess but we left as it is for the build.
This is a great idea but, like @drazil100, I found myself annoyed by some mechanics of the game. Once I lost some health it always seemed to be a downward spiral after that - the view shrinks which makes it more likely I'm going to hit something...and I do...and then the view shrinks some more...and so on.
I thought I had experienced a crash but I think what happened was - I died, I wanted to restart but I was pressing down on the controller and I chose Quit instead.
Oh my goodness, I absolutely love this one. The game feel is absolutely on point, and the only thing I could even think to suggest is implementing some controller rumble!
The controls are so responsive and fluid, the art style is very charming, the audio is great.
I think this entry is going to be one I keep coming back to even after the jam! :)
Wow, very nice entry. The visuals really work towards making the moving and shooting more difficult, but that is a good thing! Music and sound effects really do well to emphasis continuous movement and add a slight frantic atmosphere. Nice job!
What a wild ride! I love the splash screen, and the color palette used for this game. It was a bit difficult to figure out what the main character or enemies really were. And, I struggled to do well (but could be my own fault). Music was on point! I also like the concept that the world shrunk as your health. Overall solid entry.
Would love if you have the chance to provide feedback on my game:
Very addictive! I only got to 5600 though... I noticed that if you don't move at all when the level starts, nothing spawns and you can just sit like that. Bug?
@richard-michael-smith Yeah, those two things are something that would need to be addressed if we updated the game. It becomes quite difficult to recover when the world shrinks. We almost scrapped the idea (cos it bothered us too) and replaced it with more traditional health system, but in the end we decided to keep it to stay true to the jam theme. The best way to avoid the problem right now is to.. GIT GUD! :nerd:
@amnonlevi Nope, not a bug! The world will be only generated if you move (meaning enemies will also *only* spawn if you move) If you don't move, you will eventually die because the world keeps getting smaller.
This is a fantastic game! I love the music and gameplay, very original! This game has lots of potential, you should definitely continue working on this! Good job!
A really nice solid game, I love the perspective and the trippy feel, the art is on point, audio fits and it's not annoying, at some points, it was hard to keep up but still, had a lot of fun playing it :D
At least you gave a warning for the dizziness / epilepsy, I appreciate that as someone who gets dizzy easily, but I'm brave :D little diziness won't stop me from playing other peoples awesome games, so here's my feedback (the game didn't make me dizzy by the way, just worth mentioning this I think)
I loved the shrinking playfield and the amount of enemies on which you had to keep an eye and avoid as well as shoot.
The game felt very engaging and fun to play. I really enjoyed it a lot. The controls were nice and smooth and I had no problems figuring out what to do and how to do it, and that's always a good thing imho.
The sound effects were nice and fitting as well, overall a great and fun game.
Sorry if my comment duplicates someone: too long to read everything up here.
Juice and feel.
A great game overall. It has that juice and feel everyone is talking about. And it's most important. You, guys, really know what to do.
Music and Art
I like the music and the art style. All these wiggles and shrinkes and colors are great.
Humor
...Though I loathe the cat topic pushed all over the internet. :(
Tiny little humble piece of advice.
About shrinking. Just limit it at some point. It will still be hard to play, but at least you'll be able can. And after that one hit causes death. That's all. And the game will be great.
Sum Up.
I really wish you continue this after the jam up to the Steam. This game worth it. Just get rid of that cat! :)))
Really cool concept! I love the idea that the whole world is your health meter. The music gave it a really fun feel. I like the art, but I think a different style might make it a little more playable/make it easier to tell what's going on. But I love it, FUN!
Super cool! My reaction speed just ain't what it used to be though. Made me wish I had a gamepad. As others have said I was a bit put off by the shrinking, I like the idea but it did't work for me in practice. Expand it as you lose health may work better??? ( although then it's not a very clear health meter I guess). Love the quantum weirdness, different weapons and overall smoothness, gameplay, look, and feel. Well Done!
Art and style are great. It's very challenging, maybe a bit too much on the WebGL version (keyboard/mouse) but i'll try with a controller when at home.
Excellent game guys! Your concept is very original and your execution is nearly spot-on.
You really nailed the cat controls. They're very responsive with just the right amount of momentum. The music is beautiful, worthy of a full game.
I'm a huge fan of the level-as-health mechanic! Don't compromise it! The death spiral is real, but its quick, and the few times you can claw your way back up give you a real sense of accomplishment. Once I started treating this as a 1-2 hit shmup with the possibility of tanking more hits my scores went way up. I do think, though, that the world should extend a bit further outside your view. The lack of object permanence is a great mechanic and adds a lot of unique strategy to the game, but I'd like to be able to juke and not have a wall spawn directly behind me on my way back, or constantly see powerups move a hair out of sight and disappear forever. Maybe increasing the persistence region like another 1/4 screen or so might fix a lot of that. I wouldn't increase it too much, though, as the strategy of purposefully manipulating the terrain through movement adds a lot of depth to gameplay.
A couple minor bugs: sometimes enemies spawn inside single tile blocks. Sometimes powerups appear to disappear in the middle of the screen. There's some slight mismatch occasionally between your actual score and the high score.
Don't let the above critiques fool you though, I love this game. It's super fun, super original, and my favorite LD game to date. Thanks so much for making it!
@jushiip Hey! Nice game, really solid and cohesive aesthetic with appealing visuals.
I noteced you had trouble running my game and I uploaded a fix, be sure to download the 64 bit version and possibly use compatibility mode for windows 7. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/ids-journey
Great music and sound effects. Really like the graphics and the visual presentation. What I don't like so much is that the visual area is closing to fast and let me die without touching a bullet or enemy. Very cool entry, keep up the good work.
Very polished game, if not rather simple~ Sound and graphics are pretty awesome, although the odd camera effects do make it rather nauseating to play after some time. Still, it's pretty cathartic fun, well done!
Very fun and polished game! One of the better entries I've played so far! The game had a really unique look and feel to it. BTW I played on web and my xbox controller worked fine (360 controller, Chrome, Windows 10)
Feedback: Like others, I wasn't a huge fan of the canvas decrease mechanic. But actually the thing that bothered me more is that I couldn't tell the "good" stuff from the "bad" stuff while playing. I couldn't tell what the upgrades were until I accidentally ran into one.
*drools over the shader efects* This is super polished and fun - well done! The level-as-health mechanic feels very organic too! Reminds me of this VR game - Spacecats With Lasers (just by theme similarity, heh). Good stuff!
ERMAHGERD THIS GAME IS AWESOME! Easily one of the greatest artstyles I've seen in a jam game, and maybe even in general! I loved the colors, the models and the whole aesthetic, as well as what you did with what I assume was some weird and interesting shaders. The gameplay, while simple, was really well implemented and fun! And the music was in absolutely perfect sync with the whole game. Ridiculously good job, maybe the best I've seen in this year's LD! Well done!
Twin-stick shooters are always fun. I find it interesting that as the blue world shrinks, the enemies become less and less present on the screen. This actually makes the game very hard if your health is low. The graphics are some of best I've seen this LD; probably was a lot of hard work. I can't help but wonder what is the difference between the red enemies and green enemies?
Comments45
As for the concept it is an amazing idea that your play space gets smaller and smaller but this is where I start disliking this game. As you lose more and more health the game world gets smaller and this is a really cool concept however at the same time the less and less health you have the harder and harder it is to stay alive. If a health item spawns I cant just go get it because I walked a single step away from it and now it has despawned. Need to kill more enemies for more pickups? Too bad you walked a single step away from the enemy and now it has despawned.
Like I said I really like this concept and overall there are several things that could make this concept work better. One of the most interesting ways this concept could be improved in the future would be to change the genre of gameplay from a twin stick shooter to something a little physical. Right now the game encourages you to keep your distance using that distance to give yourself more room to dodge attacks. However the problem of emphasizing keeping your distance is it puts a larger focus on the fact that items despawn. This problem only gets worse when your health is lowered where keeping your distance is not only harder but leaves more of a chance to despawn items and enemies.
If you wanted to leave the genre the same then I might suggest something that at the very least keeps pickups in your little bubble rather than despawning them (like maybe some sort of barrier).
Overall I really really liked this game but I feel it does have some design choices that alone are pretty solid but together need addressing.
> "As you lose more and more health the game world gets smaller and this is a really cool concept however at the same time the less and less health you have the harder and harder it is to stay alive."
Actually this also bothers us - and during the development, we almost considered dropping the idea and just keep the world "big" at all times. In the end we decided to go with it because we wanted to stay with the initial shrinking world idea + health system. We also wanted to try keep it true to the *small world* theme.
I liked the music a lot.
It took me a moment to figure out that I was moving, but I got it. I'll echo the comments above about the STEEP difficulty curve, but I think some people will really like that (I'm more of a casual gamer myself).
Great interpretation of the theme!
The shrinking visibility mechanic is purfect design. It creates thematic mewments of tension and urgency aplenty. The purrty colors and mewsic fit like a mitten on a kitten.
Radical cattitude! More of this kind of thing, pawlease. :cat:
Telling you my best score would be embarrassing. I'll just blame it on my laptop's trackpad...
You all did a great job, congratulations!
But, did you take the time to program custom shaders during the LD or are the deforming blocks some kind of postprocessing? Either way, it looks awesome. The game in general looks very good and plays super fluid.
Although looking at other comments my score of 6000 really isn't anything to brag about.
But does killing enemies really restore health? I thought it didnt and my demise was inevitable.
Getting triple shot was amazing though.
Also the generation depending on the canvas size, which in turn is depending on the health left is awesome design.
cheers~
Isak’s highscore: 9000
Isak played on keyboard and instantly yelled “The controls feel amazing” when he started playing. The aesthetics of this game is really nice and we like the idea to have the fog of war be the health.
Have an awesome day!
*(We'll be back again on Sunday when the judging starts)*
// Rasmus & Isak (LiquidBrain)
The movement is smooth and the perks bring extra fun.
Congratulation to such an successful Ludum Dare entry!
And I LOVE the cat! :smile:
Purrrfect character
Still really nice and the cat being a cat adds so much to the game just because it's a cat cat cat cat adowogtewgno :smiley_cat:
@huvaakoodia, @samurai-spark & @joyfired MEOW!
@m-1 Oh no, too bad you didn't play with a controller!! I can imagine it's very difficult on using a track pad.
@elzach, @zhal was responsible of creating our custom shaders. There are no post-processing effects used in the game! Killing enemies does restore health - but it's a very small amount compared to picking up a health pack. Killing a single enemy doesn't affect that much, but after you pick up a good weapon which can quickly blast through groups of enemies, you can increase the health more quickly.
@joyfired, @querk (concerning graphics) Yup, you can see some weird shit happening with the graphics, especially in the upper part of the view frustum. Our world is kinda warped, like a bowl (see the gifs here: https://t.co/YKf0bLFVK9) and the camera angle is slightly tilted. It's something that can be improved I guess but we left as it is for the build.
I thought I had experienced a crash but I think what happened was - I died, I wanted to restart but I was pressing down on the controller and I chose Quit instead.
The controls are so responsive and fluid, the art style is very charming, the audio is great.
I think this entry is going to be one I keep coming back to even after the jam! :)
(high score was 13400 :p)
Would love if you have the chance to provide feedback on my game:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/sling-ship-search-for-a-small-world
Cheers!
@slimabob, @elykyevrah, @quoclon, thank you for the kind words! :)
@amnonlevi Nope, not a bug! The world will be only generated if you move (meaning enemies will also *only* spawn if you move) If you don't move, you will eventually die because the world keeps getting smaller.
I loved the shrinking playfield and the amount of enemies on which you had to keep an eye and avoid as well as shoot.
The game felt very engaging and fun to play. I really enjoyed it a lot. The controls were nice and smooth and I had no problems figuring out what to do and how to do it, and that's always a good thing imho.
The sound effects were nice and fitting as well, overall a great and fun game.
My game: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B13g3FsdXQ4MUGp5anQzb20zams?usp=sharing
Juice and feel.
A great game overall. It has that juice and feel everyone is talking about. And it's most important. You, guys, really know what to do.
Music and Art
I like the music and the art style. All these wiggles and shrinkes and colors are great.
Humor
...Though I loathe the cat topic pushed all over the internet. :(
Tiny little humble piece of advice.
About shrinking. Just limit it at some point. It will still be hard to play, but at least you'll be able can. And after that one hit causes death. That's all. And the game will be great.
Sum Up.
I really wish you continue this after the jam up to the Steam. This game worth it. Just get rid of that cat! :)))
You really nailed the cat controls. They're very responsive with just the right amount of momentum. The music is beautiful, worthy of a full game.
I'm a huge fan of the level-as-health mechanic! Don't compromise it! The death spiral is real, but its quick, and the few times you can claw your way back up give you a real sense of accomplishment. Once I started treating this as a 1-2 hit shmup with the possibility of tanking more hits my scores went way up. I do think, though, that the world should extend a bit further outside your view. The lack of object permanence is a great mechanic and adds a lot of unique strategy to the game, but I'd like to be able to juke and not have a wall spawn directly behind me on my way back, or constantly see powerups move a hair out of sight and disappear forever. Maybe increasing the persistence region like another 1/4 screen or so might fix a lot of that. I wouldn't increase it too much, though, as the strategy of purposefully manipulating the terrain through movement adds a lot of depth to gameplay.
A couple minor bugs: sometimes enemies spawn inside single tile blocks. Sometimes powerups appear to disappear in the middle of the screen. There's some slight mismatch occasionally between your actual score and the high score.
Don't let the above critiques fool you though, I love this game. It's super fun, super original, and my favorite LD game to date. Thanks so much for making it!
:star: Starshot Master Race :grin:
I noteced you had trouble running my game and I uploaded a fix, be sure to download the 64 bit version and possibly use compatibility mode for windows 7. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/ids-journey
Feedback: Like others, I wasn't a huge fan of the canvas decrease mechanic. But actually the thing that bothered me more is that I couldn't tell the "good" stuff from the "bad" stuff while playing. I couldn't tell what the upgrades were until I accidentally ran into one.
Exceptional game!