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This is Backup Dancer rampage, a puzzle game influenced by pop music and zombie games. You play as a crew of zombie dancers who wish to take over the world. Features: - 10 playable levels - 4 different enemies - various environments - DANCING
The thought process I underwent to make this game:
>The theme is: "The more you have, the worse it gets"
>Having more player characters makes it harder to move
>Q: why would all the players move together synchronously?
>A: because they are dancers
>Q: what is the goal of those dancers?
>A: to recruit more dancers
>Q: what is an easy gameplay mechanic to recruit more dancers?
>A: to touch people
>Q: what is a good X that converts people to X on contact?
I watched a bunch of videos from Game Maker's Toolkit (Mark Brown) and it really inspired me on the whole "form follows function" aspect, and on the "safe-space" tutorial :)
Neat concept. Controls felt unresponsive (at least on HTML5 version), which is rough when you need to be very meticulous with creating your configuration. It felt like the polling was timed with the movement.
Great Game with great level-design. But it is possible to cheat: If you walk towards a zombi and he walks towards you, the zombi disappears under your current dancers, so the game becomes easier to play as your group is smaller
Quite nice puzzle game. It's not without problems though. The graphics could be more readable, maybe by using more contrasting colors. Currently background slightly blends with foreground. Also, the controls feel wonky. I understand that you wanted to make zombie dancers move every beat, but it slightly confused me at start - I first tried to press arrows to rhythm, then I realized that holding them down is easier. That caused me to slightly drop the Fun rating because of controls.
This game deserves a polished post-jam version though. This idea is too nice to just let it go.
I love the game! I really echo the call for a post-jam polished version. This could be a great mobile time killer type game. The music is super catchy and sounds really familiar. Is it a reference to something specific? I'm thinking SNL or something like that... but I can't quite place it.
Your game makes me think about the Michal Jackson "Thriller" :D Music, dance movements and.. zombies ! Original concept, I had fun. I agree with others about the confusing key pressing. Nice game !
I really like how you get to know the controls while playing the game without much of an explicit tutorial required. The movement is a bit weird: Instead of ignoring keyStrokes off-beat, queueing them (and executing them in the fitting moment) would probably feel better.
------------------------ Bugreport: When moving right, and a person is moving left, the new zombie dancer sometimes glitches into the dancer-group. This makes it easier to play.
Feel like I want to dance now. Good idea and use of the theme and I like how the music changes when your moving. Feels a little slow sometimes but guess thats due to having to stick to the tempo of the music.
This is one of my favorite games! Really, good job!
As others have said: responsive controls are a must here. Also, sometimes, the movement doesn't feel in sync with the music. I'm not really sure on how will you leave everyone happy at the same time (responsive controls + sync with music), but it's worth your time as the game is quite good!
EDIT: By the way, I stopped playing in The City, not because I wasn't having fun, but because I want to try other entries. I loved the "other invasion", haha.
Challenging and frustrating at times, as these kinds of games should be. These zombies know how to moonwalk! I like the rhythm / timing side of this game also. I enjoyed playing it through!
Great game! These puzzles are very well designed. Some levels introduce new mechanics in a very intuitive way (no reading required). I did not beat this, there are a lot of levels and they start to get hard. I may return to complete the game though. Well done.
Really slick concept for puzzle based gameplay. Definitely works for the theme really well, and super massive kudos for creating a puzzle game on a time limit like this. That's serious pressure ;)
Nice game concept indeed. Good work, and despite the moving in rythm thing not being too obvious to the user and making them think it may be missing input - I think it adds to the game :) Good job!
I had a lot of fun playing this on stream! Really great idea and the implementation of it was great! I loved the way you handled the tutorialising in the game. I'd love to see what else you could do with it too! Great job :)
Awesome game. I've seen similar mechanic but you used it uniquely. Only bad thing I noticed is bad response time, it seems that game ignores some keys pressed.
Really cool game dude ! I particularly enjoy (after the gameplay, of course ^^') that our moves add an instrument to the music ! That is a nice touch ! Nothing particular to say so, your game is really well done ! ^^
Really cool concept, well use in term of level design ! The visual make sense (and it seems that the animation differ in fonction of what direction your going, it's making the game ... groovy ! ) and the audio really push the idea of dancing espacially when the blue ennemies come in game and start to impose a rythm to the game ! Put together, your game just work perfectly !
Fun and challenging game. Nice tribute to Michael Jackson's Thriller :)
Things I don't like: - Controls in UPDATED version. While in the original version movement a bit slow and makes game harder, updated version ruined the idea of the game (in my opinion). - Audio clipping (background track in particular)
I really like what you did with this game. The puzzles were well done, and I actually really liked the music. The only think that wasn't great was that the input felt a little janky, sometimes the game would miss my input if I just tapped a button.
Haha that was really nice! :D I don't think I've seen this kind of game mechanic before but it was really cool! I mean it was frustrating at times but It's still a pretty fun game! The graphics and the music aren't outstanding but it was good enough to provide what was needed. Overall, Good job! :D
Pretty interesting puzzle, I really loved the concept, I can definetely see this becoming a full game in the future, the art and animation are pretty cool, the music is really good, but what I loved was the concept and level design really great stuff, congratulations great job !
What really stands out for me is the level design - you've done a great job of making the game explain itself, without needing a separate tutorial. Good job!
Very interesting puzzle mechanics, I don't think I've seen a puzzle like this before so I enjoyed the breath of fresh air. I liked how intuitive figuring out what the puzzle part of the game was as well. Great thing restarting levels was an option as well, or else this could've been very frustrating.
The only drawback I came across was that I didn't immediately figure out that holding down the movement button was the best option, so I tried doing single presses for some time, which was really slow as the dancers would only move some times.
I loved it! Although at times the speed of the dancers was challenging (until like the commenter above I figured out resting my finger on the movement keys made unlife easier) I played it til the end! Took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do in the last level, haha. Very satisfying!
One little bug I noticed, sometimes when the cops shot me, I didn't freeze. Didn't happen very often though.
The dance moves were adorable and the music is very catchy. It kept me playing!
Comments62
But it is possible to cheat: If you walk towards a zombi and he walks towards you, the zombi disappears under your current dancers, so the game becomes easier to play as your group is smaller
This game deserves a polished post-jam version though. This idea is too nice to just let it go.
------------------------
Bugreport: When moving right, and a person is moving left, the new zombie dancer sometimes glitches into the dancer-group. This makes it easier to play.
As others have said: responsive controls are a must here. Also, sometimes, the movement doesn't feel in sync with the music. I'm not really sure on how will you leave everyone happy at the same time (responsive controls + sync with music), but it's worth your time as the game is quite good!
EDIT: By the way, I stopped playing in The City, not because I wasn't having fun, but because I want to try other entries. I loved the "other invasion", haha.
The best game I played so far in this LD!
It became quickly challenging ..
Well done ..
Keep coding :)
Put together, your game just work perfectly !
Things I don't like:
- Controls in UPDATED version. While in the original version movement a bit slow and makes game harder, updated version ruined the idea of the game (in my opinion).
- Audio clipping (background track in particular)
I don't think I've seen this kind of game mechanic before but it was really cool! I mean it was frustrating at times but It's still a pretty fun game! The graphics and the music aren't outstanding but it was good enough to provide what was needed. Overall, Good job! :D
The only drawback I came across was that I didn't immediately figure out that holding down the movement button was the best option, so I tried doing single presses for some time, which was really slow as the dancers would only move some times.
One little bug I noticed, sometimes when the cops shot me, I didn't freeze. Didn't happen very often though.
The dance moves were adorable and the music is very catchy. It kept me playing!
Thanks for taking the care of going back in time to review it :D