Ludum Dare #39compo

Bolt World

by linus

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.08

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.12

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.50

Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.50

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.42

Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.23

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.04

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.71

SPACE TO ATTACK ROLL

A game created for LD39.

The concept is similar to agar.io but with a few twists and slightly simplified. In order to not run out of power you must eat other power cells to fill up your battery and keep growing for as long as you can manage. Beware there will be other bigger power cells trying to eat you as well so you must be careful to not come close to those bigger than you.

CONTROLS:

- mouse to control direction
- spacebar to attackroll
- M to toggle audio mute

The green arrow points towards the closest enemy that is atleast 20% smaller than you and the red arrow points towards the closest enemy that is atleast 25% bigger than you.

The objective is to gain as much mass as possible without running out of power. Compete with other players and try to top the leaderboard!

TOOLS USED:

- Unity3d
- Gimp
- Audacity
- Garage Band
- BFXR

I wasn't feeling too well this Ludum Dare and had a fever the day before it started so I'm happy I managed to complete the game despite this. Leave a comment to say what you think and what could be improved and I will do the same!

Timelapse: https://youtu.be/O8xq1Isejz4

Changed in 1.0.1:

- Fixed typo in code so enemy roll animation displays properly
- Enemy balls shouldn't spawn on other balls as frequently
- No longer pointing towards nearest enemy that is less than 10% as big as you

Tags: #arcade, #high score

Genres: action

Tools: Audacity, Bfxr, GIMP, GarageBand, Unity

Comments22

Jupiter_Hadley31 Jul 2017, 22:26

Trippy game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 39 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4BqGc9csNo

FurkanFS1 Aug 2017, 12:24

Well done! Its pretty laggy though, and there are not enough other players or something. But its fun to become bigger :)

Zeriver5 Aug 2017, 11:08

Ha, this game is quite addictive. It is really cool to grow so fast and just look for new prey. Spacebar adds this 'leap of faith' kind of feeling when you are almost out of power and need to fight something right now or just die. Graphics are simplistic but it's neat how background image gets smaller and smaller as you get bigger. In overall pretty simplistic game but can give a lot of entertainment to the player. Well done!

BTW: sorry for spamming your highscore board (Zeriver and Zeriver2), i had problem with saving my score after i already submitted one. Not sure if i did something wrong or is it a bug.

Badly Drawn Rod5 Aug 2017, 13:40

This is reminiscent of Osmos. I like the core mechanic and you've implemented it well, although, admittedly I would have liked everything to move just that little bit faster.

Willbl3pic5 Aug 2017, 18:54

I love it, but it feels like the AI don't move fast enough.

Geckoo13375 Aug 2017, 22:53

Addictive. Weird. Well done. A good entry ++

SimplePotential5 Aug 2017, 22:55

Seems like the ball should roll a little faster when not using space bar power but otherwise seemed functional and entertaining for a couple plays. The score submission was a nice touch.

gonutz5 Aug 2017, 22:58

Very cool game, at first I thought I was missing something - and I was: the space key. After that it was pretty easy to beat the first place.

Always when I grow very large then at some point I eat something and then I seem to blow up. Is that intended? Is there a maximum growth?

The graphics and music make it feel very psychedelic, nice mood therefore :-)

Very well done, keep up the good work.

PS: I have commented on your comment on my page

randomphantom6 Aug 2017, 09:18

Very trippy graphics. Needs to be more consistent in style though.
The game is fine as it is, but would prefer it to be a bit more zoomed out as opposed to having to rely on those arrows to indicate opportunity/danger.
Good job!

HuvaaKoodia6 Aug 2017, 10:49

This becomes trivial when using the attack roll. Agar.io has very subtle mechanics, splitting up and spitting mass, which you need to master to do well. Here you just need to roll in the direction of the green arrow.

On my third go I lost due to hitting a smaller ball and within the blink of an eye: expanding, eating another ball, expanding again, eating another ball, expanding again and touching a massive ball outside of the screen... That was a bit of an anticlimax. The ball should expand slowly, not instantly, is what I'm saying.

The AI opponents don't seem to care much for their survival. They don't flee or use the OP attack roll either.

It is functional, but the design requires some tweaking.

Freedom Is Slavery6 Aug 2017, 11:17

This game is great for a LD game. Checks all the boxes. Maybe, it was just me but when my size grew to about 5k IIRC, the enemy spawned almost right above me and I didnot have time to react. Moreover, the colours make it confusing, as the dots become quite small and difficult to notice.

smbe196 Aug 2017, 12:30

I really like this game! It might not look that pretty, but it plays great. It's fun to chase other spheres. At the end it gets really hard to not get eaten by a bigger sphere when you are dashing in direction of the green arrow.

Knowledge6 Aug 2017, 13:20

Nice game.

Biggest problem was that when I got bigger I small balls become invisible, but arrow still point at them (so basically there is no arrow and you don't see any balls on your screen). When searching for closest ball you should ignore balls smaller than some percent of your size.

gonutz6 Aug 2017, 16:02

@linus Strange thing that you were able to build my game on Mint but not Arch Linux. I think I might have to create an Arch Linux VM and try it out there myself for future compatibility issues. I actually have tested the game in an Ubuntu VM and there it worked. Mint is basically the same thing but I have never tried Arch Linux. Thanks for telling me about this, maybe I will include Linux builds and test on these two OS for the next LD.

Mars6 Aug 2017, 19:55

Nice little game! Reminds me of those popular web games with the same premise of eating to grow larger. I wouldn't say there's anything particularly good or bad that stands out about it, it just works at a familiar and base level. My only gripe would be how my hitbox did not grow proportionately to my size, making it hard to eat smaller balls when I was much larger than then, since I had to guid them to somewhere around my middle. Otherwise, I liked it!

Linusauthor6 Aug 2017, 21:20

@Mars thanks for the feedback, the hitbox is a sphere since balls usually are spherical shape :p So because the smaller balls don't touch you when you are much bigger you have to basically roll over them. Maybe I should have made the hitbox a square instead with the same dimensions as the sphere's diameter.

jekstrom7 Aug 2017, 04:22

Pretty fun. The roll seems a bit out of place or too powerful.

Pandakipu7 Aug 2017, 23:06

Great game, it was fun and addictive :D

simonhutchinson11 Aug 2017, 23:29

Hey! This reminds me of my entry for LD38! ...and of course I mean that as a compliment! I'm not sure if I love or hate the graphics. At first it seems like they're clashing, but I actually think it might be right in line with your aesthetic goals, though. Great work for 48 hours!

Belga5412 Aug 2017, 14:44

This game is so *funny(5/5)!* The idea is so cute, just like agar.io *innovation(4/5)!* The *theme(3/5)* fits your idea also! and I liked the *graphics(3/5)* , even if they are so simple! The *audio(4/5)* is nice also! Great game at *overall(4/5)!*

Somnium12 Aug 2017, 20:54

The game is quite addictive!

It was not always clear why I died, but I assume I grew large enough to hit a larger sphere, but too fast to see it. The acceleration attack was a interesting trade-off between risk and reward.

A suggestion could be to introduce some kind of "breaking" attack, which would break up a larger sphere into smaller spheres (with a limited amount of activations) - so that if you are quick enough, you might survive a collision with a larger sphere.

>Roll. Absorb. Repeat.
>Hunting, Preying, Dodging: Spheres.
>Largest always wins.

Ellian13 Aug 2017, 11:57

You grow so quickly I was almost expecting it to have a twist or something ahah
Also the gamejolt link doesn't work for me. It stays in loading forever.

Other games by @linus

★2.83

★2.81

★2.90