@justinsix Yeah, those instructions were written in a hurry (literally in the last 5 minutes of the compo) and aren't as clear or detailed as I had hoped. I'm going to put better ones up on here tomorrow, I think.
I figured everything out, eventually. I actually really like a game that dumps you in and says "go", especially when it has these clear-cut rules that also fit in with the theme of the game. "Shut off the reactors that are ripping open spacetime", got it. So to find them, go where spacetime rips are gathering. Makes sense!
The game itself is really neat, too. I love an old-fashioned shooter dungeon every now and then, and this delivered. Really neat.
The music sounded good and the game was pretty good from what I was able to play. I was playing in the HTML version but it kept crashing (my chrome tab would just close, I imagine that's crashing for HTML5?)
It does seem like there is more explanation needed. I got pretty quickly that I had to shoot the noise and I wanted to hit the stations. I wish I could see more of it without it crashing. I also am not sure about the theme on how I was running out of space, beyond just the enemy encroaching and growing.
[Edit] I also like the overall consistency of the art style and gameplay and audio. Well balanced.
@colin-doody - looks like Ctrl-W is close tab in Chrome, and it's catching that and closing the window when you're playing! Oops! That shouldn't happen if you use the arrow keys rather than WASD to move - but I think I'll upload a version with remapped controls so that doesn't happen.
I saved all of existence! :smile: Final score 53700. Despite being somewhat simple, this game was one of the most fun ones I've played so far. I liked the creeping space-time blocks, and the map layouts were good at slowly ramping-up the difficulty. Some more variety in enemies would be nice, and some actual benefit for the energy boost would be nice (my energy recharged fast enough that the boost never really helped). Not that it was bad, the main character could benefit from a better running animation since you spend so much time looking at him.
@deathray Thanks for the kind words. I agree with all of your ideas for where this could improve - "improve animations" was on the to-do list right until the end, in particular, but I obviously didn't quite make it there. :p
The aesthetics were nice, reminded me of being a kid and playing some DOS games. Music was nice and SFX did their job nicely. Having you character flash when taking damage would have been nice in addition to the sound cue. Took me a while to realize I shouldn't be spamming attack and that the space time rips were closed in one shot because they were blinking to show they were about to disappear, but their normal behavior is also to blink. I think if you had a frame of animation where they got smaller and then disappeared might have been a better indicator. These are small nitpicks though. I had fun and finished the game.
Edit: I don't think the cannon charge up power was working correctly. My intuition was that it would recover my spent energy but it actually just decreased it when I picked it up. Not sure if that is a bug or if I'm just missing the point of it.
Great sound design and atmosphere, simple and fresh idea fitting to the theme. Just a minor thing i would have liked the camera be zoomed out just slightly more to see how far the corruption reached and make the navigation slightly easier. Otherwise nice and complete game, well done rjhelms!
Felt like an authentic Commodore 64 game, from the graphic style glitches with the corruption over the tiles, to the sound, and down to the colour palette used. Bit too smooth movements though (the C64 would be a lot jerkier) ;)
:thumbsup: I enjoyed playing this (my final score was 52800). It was nice to discover new things about the game, and not have it completely wreck my play through. (It was a while before I realized that the corruptions were damaging me when I touched them, but I noticed in time to find some healing items and be on my way, with no long term harm).
:point_right: I understand Unity makes working with pixels a chore... but it would have been nice to see the pixels a little less distorted.
:bug: It seems like the player moves left and right faster than up and down. Maybe this is intended, but it feels strange. It might also be that the entire screen is squashed a bit, but I can't tell for sure. There is a Unity preview package (in the new Package Manager) for a pixel perfect camera, I haven't used it yet, but it would probably help a lot with this type of game. https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/[email protected]/manual/index.html
:star: Overall good job, and thank you for making this.
Whew, I leave Ludum Dare alone for a few days and come back to all sorts of amazing comments. Thank you very much for the kind and thoughtful feedback, y'all!
@phlip45 You're totally right that some flashing on hits & better feedback about the corruption disappearing would be better. For the charge up, it actually increases your maximum power rather than the current power - I thought about making the power bar grow but didn't implement it, but one way or another I agree it could be clearer.
@t8kk I think you're right. I intentionally wanted to keep the viewport a bit claustrophobic, but may have overdone it.
@amkingtrp Now that you mention it, I probably shouldn't have had the camera scroll at all - just jump entire screens at a time.
@hitchh1k3r That package looks amazingly useful - thank you! My goal here was to emulate the C64 graphical style, which had non-square pixels. That's also why the movement is faster L/R than U/D - the movement is the same speed in both axes in "pixel space", but looks different on screen.
@rjhelms Oh! The first computers I can remember using ran windows 3.0, and I never payed enough attention to C64 screenshots to notice rectangle pixels. Now that you mentioned it though, it does seem familiar. I will adjust your graphics rating accordingly. ^_^ (PS. It seems the pixel perfect plugin should let you do squished pixels).
There you go, 20 ratings! Although the graphics were lacking a little polish (good effort, though), I liked the concept and the audio. It would've been niche to be alerted when you're taking damage. All in all, nice entry!
Nice! This game made me a bit nostalgic because it made me think about old DOS games that I was playing in my early years like Duke Nukem 1 or Slime World. So you definitively got me ont the mood, graphics and music categories. Good work!
Well implemented game, i especially liked the music and the retro style gfx, very relaxing and chill :) (except for when the robots tried to kill me with their death rays, hehe)
Got heavy Blaster Master vibes from this game, brought me back.
The music loop was a nice fit, and the growing corruption telling you where you need to go along with the shooting recharge rate being nicely balanced all made for really enjoyable game. Nice work!
Comments26
Thanks for checking it out!
The game itself is really neat, too. I love an old-fashioned shooter dungeon every now and then, and this delivered. Really neat.
It does seem like there is more explanation needed. I got pretty quickly that I had to shoot the noise and I wanted to hit the stations. I wish I could see more of it without it crashing. I also am not sure about the theme on how I was running out of space, beyond just the enemy encroaching and growing.
[Edit] I also like the overall consistency of the art style and gameplay and audio. Well balanced.
Thanks for checking it out!
Edit: I don't think the cannon charge up power was working correctly. My intuition was that it would recover my spent energy but it actually just decreased it when I picked it up. Not sure if that is a bug or if I'm just missing the point of it.
Have fun out there!
All in all, pretty good fun :)
:point_right: I understand Unity makes working with pixels a chore... but it would have been nice to see the pixels a little less distorted.
:bug: It seems like the player moves left and right faster than up and down. Maybe this is intended, but it feels strange. It might also be that the entire screen is squashed a bit, but I can't tell for sure. There is a Unity preview package (in the new Package Manager) for a pixel perfect camera, I haven't used it yet, but it would probably help a lot with this type of game. https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/[email protected]/manual/index.html
:star: Overall good job, and thank you for making this.
@phlip45 You're totally right that some flashing on hits & better feedback about the corruption disappearing would be better. For the charge up, it actually increases your maximum power rather than the current power - I thought about making the power bar grow but didn't implement it, but one way or another I agree it could be clearer.
@t8kk I think you're right. I intentionally wanted to keep the viewport a bit claustrophobic, but may have overdone it.
@amkingtrp Now that you mention it, I probably shouldn't have had the camera scroll at all - just jump entire screens at a time.
@hitchh1k3r That package looks amazingly useful - thank you! My goal here was to emulate the C64 graphical style, which had non-square pixels. That's also why the movement is faster L/R than U/D - the movement is the same speed in both axes in "pixel space", but looks different on screen.
The music loop was a nice fit, and the growing corruption telling you where you need to go along with the shooting recharge rate being nicely balanced all made for really enjoyable game. Nice work!