Dear Leader's Love Powered Peace Bomb

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.38
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.56
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.44
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.46
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.02
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.32
Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.63
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.00
The time has come for Best Korea to bring peace to the world! Guide Dear Leader's Love Powered Peace Bomb through waves of American fighters to strike at the heart of the Imperialists!

Your missile is fueled by the will of your adoring citizens. Make sure to to collect their Love or the flight will end prematurely!

I've been teaching myself game development for about a month now and figured Ludum Dare would be a good intensive learning opportunity. This is the end result. It's crude and it's basic, but it's my first playable game. I done a thing!

Instructions:

Space to start.

Arrow Keys to move.

When your score hits 3000, you win! The missile at the top of the screen shows you your progress.

The energy bar in the bottom right constantly depletes. Pick up the heart shaped DPRK flags to top it up.

If you get hit by anything or run out of energy, you lose.

Tools Used:

GameMaker Studio 2

Piskel

Bfxr

Ableton Live 9

Audacity

Changelog:

1/08/2017:

Fixed a bug where hearts would spawn outside of the playable area.

Fixed a bug where player could be destroyed after winning.

You can now start the game with the spacebar.

screenshot

Comments43

HoldMeImScared
HoldMeImScared31 Jul 2017, 15:51
My best score was about 2200. Cute graphics, nice audio, interesting take on the theme. I felt like I didn't always really have time to react to enemies, but that's a minor balancing issue (or very likely a skill issue on my part), the game itself is well-implemented :) Welcome to LD, and congratulations on your first game!
colozz
colozz31 Jul 2017, 16:41
Your game was excellent, I actually managed to finish it, good amount of difficulty, nice graphics, nice audio, funny, good mood: best game I've played so far.
Please keep making games.
peremily31 Jul 2017, 16:54
Well put together, I enjoyed it. Might've liked an end screen with high score but that's not much of issue
Rushar31 Jul 2017, 18:25
I played around 10 times and I failed the dear Leader each time. I think my best score was around 2,500. It's a really fun game and the music is really nice. The theme was implemented well; it stopped me from trying to hide in a corner the whole time.

I'll probably come back to this because I know I can beat it and I want to beat it. Wanting to come back to the game is a good testament to how challenging and fun the game is. Great work!
Taffaz31 Jul 2017, 18:35
You are obviously part of American propaganda as I kept dying and the missiles of the glorious leader can not be stopped! All joking aside a nice effort with a good style and the music was good too. Couple of the flags spawned where they couldn't be reached but other than that spot on.
Hephyrius31 Jul 2017, 18:38
I liked the voxel style graphics which works all to well with the gameplay. The game reminded me of old lego games!
Gulyasarni6631 Jul 2017, 18:40
Game's great! I enjoyed it, and to be honest, i kinda underestimated the difficulty :) For a first game, it is especially great.
(hate to advertise, but if you have time, you could rate my game too. Link)
Goloso Games
Goloso Games31 Jul 2017, 18:40
SO I destroyed the capitalist dogs after 4 ou 5 tries. I have to say game is great, difficulty increases when it should be. Music was awesome too ! And I almost forget : the theme choice is original, well done !
EX3D0
EX3D031 Jul 2017, 18:42
Pretty nice game you have hear. The game's rather simple but it doesn't need to be super complicated. The one thing I wish is that when you fail instead of jumping right back to the title screen if there was an end game screen that showed your score because many times I wasn't paying attention to my score so I didn't know it after I died.

All in all a pretty good game!
notime4games
notime4games31 Jul 2017, 18:57
Avast recognized this as a virus, I hope it's not.
It also has a really fishy executable; ${dllppb}.exe
Avast didn't let me start it
Zyzzyzzyzauthor31 Jul 2017, 19:14
@notime4games thanks for letting me know, I'll see if I can do something about that. I've been getting the same thing with some other people's GameMaker executables to be fair. Avast doesn't seem to like them.
Freedom Is Slavery31 Jul 2017, 19:39
Proud day indeed. I destroyed the capitalist dogs! The champion of people, Kim Jong un prevails :joy:
HakunaMacouta
HakunaMacouta1 Aug 2017, 00:15
Didn't make it to the end but I definitly enjoyed sound effects and the music !
zchen
zchen1 Aug 2017, 02:24
Neat little game, my highest score would be around 2500. It would be good to let players see what they scored after they lost since I'm so focused on dodging in the game I won't actually keep track of the score. Good job!
drprettypatty
drprettypatty1 Aug 2017, 02:39
Lmao, this had me cracking up all the way until "Didn't have time to animate America exploring... Oopsies". It's been years since I've touched Gamemaker, but is it possible to export without the installer? Regardless, I was especially impressed by the music and sfx, and the game was challenging and engaging enough to keep me interested until I beat it. Fantastic work comrade, keep it up!
PeculiarCarrot
PeculiarCarrot1 Aug 2017, 02:45
Hey, nice game! The art is alright, the music is pretty good, the story is funny, and the gameplay is fairly solid. My heart was definitely pounding near the end. So many jets! My biggest complaint would probably be that sometimes the hearts spawn down at the bottom where I can't reach them, and if too many in a row spawn down there, I get pretty close to death through no fault of my own. Good job overall ^-^
gnerkus
gnerkus1 Aug 2017, 11:38
Great graphics and awesome music. I especially liked the 'death' explosion.

I'm sorry for the short comment but I desperately need to reach 3000 points or I'll be bothered all day.
TheFlyingKeyboard
TheFlyingKeyboard1 Aug 2017, 11:46
Fun, simple and easy. Overall nice old styled game with simple graphics and mechanics.
Rocketship
Rocketship1 Aug 2017, 15:33
First of all, congrats on finishing a game, these things are HARD to do especially if you only have a weekend! The game is nice, it's basic but does all the basics pretty well. The name of the game and the fact that you collect north korea-flag hearts is great. The gameplay, while done well, could have had something a little more engaging, maybe some powerups for a glorious shield to protect the fatherland! Anyways, great job finishing this thing, hopefully we'll see you in #40 too!
morphine
morphine1 Aug 2017, 16:27
Victory! (Spoilers alert)

Great job! I really enjoyed playing this and it kept me engaged enough to want to see the end!
Zyzzyzzyzauthor1 Aug 2017, 17:33
Thanks for the feedback guys! Today I fixed the issue with the unreachable hearts and another bug I noticed myself where you could be destroyed after winning. I'm not sure if adding a score screen at this point would be ok, so I decided to leave it for now. My plan is to polish everything up a little more and host an improved version on itch.io or something after the rating period ends.
Badly Drawn Rod1 Aug 2017, 20:06
This is reminiscent of 1942. The music was great, and I liked the shadows beneath all of the main sprites. Your sense of humour is interesting: I wonder how well it would translate to North Korea!
Rushar1 Aug 2017, 22:44
I finally came back to this game to beat it, and I did after my 4th try. I can die happy now. Once again, great game!
KRP2 Aug 2017, 00:53
Very fun game! I really liked the mood and sound with it. The graphics were very cutsey, I just wish you had a full picture of Our Supreme leader throwing the missile at the capitalist bastards himself!!

Very good entry!
kevinworkman
kevinworkman2 Aug 2017, 01:06
Saw your changelog. Note that you aren't really supposed to continue development after the judging begins. You can link to an alternate "post-compo" version, but your original version should not be changed.
Zyzzyzzyzauthor2 Aug 2017, 01:18
The rules state that bug fixes are allowed as long as they are documented in the game description and don't add features to the game. Mike Kasprzak has also clarified that control changes for ease of play are ok.
Plepletier
Plepletier2 Aug 2017, 02:43
Great game!!! Dodge of these airplanes is really challeng! The controlls is easy to learn and the retry is very fast, providing a game replay agile and fun. Good Job!
Arkthalohs2 Aug 2017, 04:51
Fun graphics, good music, all around quite a challenging and fun minimalist bullet hell. Nice implementation of the theme as well. Overall great job!
Crabman
Crabman2 Aug 2017, 12:57
The title is hilarious :D And the game itself is pretty good, I only wished for more to do toward the end. Of course, the options are somewhat limited for a peace bomb, but maybe the ability to deflect some of the bullets through the power of love or something?
Jungle
Jungle2 Aug 2017, 14:39
Yeahhhhh!!! I destroyed the captalist dogs!!! It is very difficult when the end is near. Very funny game 5/5. Art can be improved and you can put and SFX when heart is picked up. Many laughs are garanted with this game! Great job.
Vivoubos
Vivoubos2 Aug 2017, 18:27
Yeah!!

Nice game, concept are simple. Good work.
mmason
mmason2 Aug 2017, 23:42
A fun little game, I didn't manage to beat it but I tried several times, fitting music to go with it.
ModalModule3 Aug 2017, 06:47
I DID IT! THOSE AMERICAN PIGS NEVER KNEW WHAT HIT 'EM!! haha No but seriously that was fun! Definitely a unique take even if the result was a very simple game. I've only started programming recently as well, using GMS2 and I totally align with the mechanics you started by learning. Good job! There was a bit of a glitch with the controls where sometimes if I was holding left then pressed down it ignored the down command, but it wasn't all the time. Other than that, like others said it felt a bit unfair at times, but eventually I just upped my reaction time game and kicked it's ass! :)
KunoNoOni
KunoNoOni4 Aug 2017, 00:54
For your first game is was pretty good. The pacing of the game was nice and the music was good. I chuckled each time I played and shook my head when I died. You should continue to work on this game when the rating is over. You have something good here! Well done and congrats on making your first playable game and for your first LD!
gonutz
gonutz4 Aug 2017, 23:14
Unfortunately I cannot play your Windows 64 bit game on my 32 bit machine, could you add another build?
Maldo19
Maldo195 Aug 2017, 07:17
I was interested for the name and the image you put as the entry, however the game itself didn't kept my attention for long as it's too barebones. I really liked the explotion sequence it looked good, the game's pacing was fine. Congratulations on finishing a LD game.
silkworm_sweatshop
silkworm_sweatshop6 Aug 2017, 00:25
I played this for the title, I stayed for the end card. Congrats on your first LD!
bveeramani
bveeramani6 Aug 2017, 03:26
Fun, addictive, simple, yet not too easy. The music is catchy, the interpretation of the theme is unique, and you took simple mechanics and implemented them very well. When I lost, I never felt cheated, and I kept on coming back for more until I did my dear leader proud. Great job!
Zyzzyzzyzauthor6 Aug 2017, 16:34
@gonutz - currently I don't know how I'd go about doing that, but now it's definitely something I'll read up on. Thank you for the suggestion!
realryanrogers6 Aug 2017, 22:23
Great game! I've not beat it yet, but I plan to keep trying.
pkenney
pkenney12 Aug 2017, 17:04
Nice job for such a simple game, it feels really good with tight responsive controls, and the music was a huge boost to the feel of playing. The silly theme of the game gave it some extra appeal.

Thank goodness you had those drop shadows though, the contrast of the planes being light grey against the bright blue water, it wasn't quite enough for them to really pop out to my eye, but the darker shadow has a nice pop to compensate.

Difficulty was good, I replayed a bunch of times but never quite got there.

There is one HUGE strike against this game though: It forced me to INSTALL it on my computer. That's a giant no-no in Ludum Dare, and about four times out of five I just don't play the game. I only played because this was your first. Imagine if everyone did this, and I had to go an uninstall forty or fifty games after each LD! Most games simply require a download of a zip file which I open and then run the exe inside.
mikethewayne19 Aug 2017, 08:48
Brilliant game, love the theme of your game, very funny and topical. The graphics of your game are amazing too, I especially love the colours that the screen turn when you explode. Music is great too, added a whole lot to the game. Also, having to install the game isn't great in Ludum Dare, but I got around this by installing to desktop. Overall though, a brilliant entry!
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