Televised Intelligence Manager (TIM)

Overall★★★★★★★★★★4.14
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.62
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.81
Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.05
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.00
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.71
Humor★★★★★★★★★★4.09
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.65
- 3D platformer adventure

Spend some time with a very awkward AI. The power is low on this spaceship, and the Televised Intelligence Manager (T.I.M.) is having some problems because of it - and he enlists some robots to help him out.

Make sure to turn the audio up, because that's the main point of this game!

Inspired by "Strafe" and "Rick and Morty."

Controls:
Keyboard: WASD to move, E to swap battery, Space to jump
XBOX: Left stick to move, X to swap battery, A to jump
PS3: Left stick to move, Square to swap battery, Cross to jump

Source: https://github.com/ianburnette/LDJam39-source

Entry for Ludum Dare 39 - Compo

Theme: Running Out of Power


Tools used:
- Unity
- Blender
- PyxelEdit
- MagicaVoxel
- Photoshop
- Audition
- Otomata by Earslap - http://earslap.com/page/otomata.html
- Skybox Generator - https://wwwtyro.github.io/space-3d/

screenshot

Comments20

Aterlamia
Aterlamia31 Jul 2017, 12:42
Looks pretty good and the talking monitor made me laugh in teh beginnig. For me after that it started to feel a bit slow and not as fun anymore (the talking). i like the mechanics with swapping the battery. ALso controls were a bit hard.
TheSand
TheSand31 Jul 2017, 13:08
My first impressions of the game where the funny narrator and how funny the robot was moving, I felt like sonic at the begining.
but it fell off fast(the feel I mean)
I really liked the game but after a while, it started to feel a bit slow. And the movement system started to make me salty. I really couldn't tell where I was going to land on the position jumping part and that made it super hard and salt inducing.
But if you're going to make a full game of it be sure to let me know, I would really love to play that aswell :D
Well, dude!
Kristian David
Kristian David31 Jul 2017, 13:29
This might be the most humorous game I ever played on ludum dare. The awkward AI definitely made me laugh, I don't know if other people will find it funny. The AI's voice reminded me of Dan Mintz or Tina Belcher from Bob's Burgers.
Humor aside, the graphics of this game is also good.

Overall Great Job!
BinarySpark
BinarySpark31 Jul 2017, 19:27
I'm very impressed. It looks nice, I really like the narration, and I think you had a number of interesting mechanics going on. The style kinda reminded me of The Turing Test, in a good way.

There were a couple of rather awkward camera angles. Particularly during the air duct section, I felt disoriented and didn't know where I was going. But overall, really good work.
benmcnelly
benmcnelly1 Aug 2017, 00:05
Five stars across the board. Biped rig and animated, check. Rolling ball with reverse gravity mechanics, check. Rumba bot, check. Funny ending, check. I found myself taking longer to complete sections so I could enjoy all the audio work. Superb work. I especially loved all the unique ways you used perspective and cameras, and the swapping power mechanic was well thought out.
Winterslice1 Aug 2017, 14:39
Graphics are really impressive, and the narration was funny. Good job!

I had some volume problems, everything was really soft, and even with my laptop cranked up to max volume I could barely hear any music or sound (except the narration, which was still quite a bit on the soft side).

I think this might be a problem unique to me, but the controls are really floaty and imprecise, with every character sliding all over the place like they're on ice. The Roomba bot especially -- I couldn't progress beyond that section because the controls made it impossible to get through of the air ducts.

Camera had a similar problem with floatiness. I'm not prone to motion sickness at all but this was on the verge of giving it to me.

All the same, I still liked it! Thumbs up from me.
ianburnette
ianburnetteauthor1 Aug 2017, 16:46
@winterslice Thanks for the feedback! I may try to fix that air duct section - you're not the only one to get stuck in there. Thanks for playing, despite the near motion sickness! And I should adjust the volume a bit as well. I didn't do really any audio leveling.
GoldRanger
GoldRanger2 Aug 2017, 01:59
just take a note here first
I play the newest version and it go to THANKS FOR PLAYING page at first
I am playing the compo version now come back later

COME BACK

It's Wonderful!! Although I can't say the camera control is perfect, it's enough for me to feel like watching a little movie! Every thing is alive! I feel really good after playing this game!

However, actually I played 3rd times to finish the game
1st like others air duct section problem, 2nd after go out of air duct section, I press right click twice and the battery go back to the human robot and the door is not open!

I think these issues are fine if you make some checkpoint to let player to restart

ALL in all, It's a wonderful game for a COMPO! I really love this game!
ianburnette
ianburnetteauthor2 Aug 2017, 02:16
@goldranger Thanks for noticing that! I'm pretty sure I've fixed it - you should see version 1.0.2 on there now.
Wizard.Exe
Wizard.Exe2 Aug 2017, 02:18
I very much enjoyed the idea, the voicing was well done and quite a bit of humor. You took the theme in a different direction than I've seen and did a very good job with that. Not a difficult game but still fun that you explored different uses of the battery.
Fawaz.Strawberry
Fawaz.Strawberry2 Aug 2017, 02:30
I loved playing this game, while the movement controls weren't great and the game wasn't difficult, Tim and the three different robots you play as kept me engaged and smiling the whole way through. Really great game overall great job!.
LeonLaci
LeonLaci2 Aug 2017, 11:43
At first it was fun but then I was annoyed by the fixed camera and the movement.
nintendoeats
nintendoeats2 Aug 2017, 20:13
I lost Katie! She got stuck up in a corner where I couldn't get to her.

The AI thing is cute, though not nearly tessellated enough for my tastes. The actual game felt very slow though, and I felt like I was mostly arguing with the controls. The atmosphere was quite nice and I wanted to spend more time i the spaceship.

I had to crank up my volume most of the way to hear the game, you may want to give your recordings some gain. For comparison if I played music at that volume I would permanently damage my hearing after a while.
boaheck-artgent
boaheck-artgent2 Aug 2017, 23:07
This was a great experience! I loved the voice acting, the art had a lovely feel, the fixed camera was awkward but also helped the AI stay in the center of the screen. The controls were a little bit awkward but overall I loved it
KunoNoOni
KunoNoOni3 Aug 2017, 00:32
I chuckled at the talking screen. very unique game and a good interpretation of the theme. This has to be the most humorous game I've played so far. Well done!
Batheo3000
Batheo30003 Aug 2017, 14:29
For me, the talking screen got annoying after a while...
ToonTeamJ3 Aug 2017, 14:52
I liked it. My only problem was that I couldn't figure out which key to press to switch batteries. Also, the tiny bot didn't go very far and so was not very helpful.
Sarrixx
Sarrixx5 Aug 2017, 17:19
Very good work on the voice acting! And a really great original idea, this was very entertaining to play!
David Allen
David Allen13 Aug 2017, 19:53
Really liked this game. The humor was really effective for how potentially volatile the premise is. As in, 'socially awkward AI with a stutter' could have been really annoying, but you made it work with convincing voice acting.

If you had more time, fleshing out the VO triggers so that they don't stop prematurely would really add to your game. Darren Korb (composer/sound designer of Bastion/Transistor) has a GDC talk about how they set up a VO priority system for Bastion's narration. Definitely out of scope for a compo, but something cool you could add in later.

Great job! :smile:

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