grindatron.tv

by donitz
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.74
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.79
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.62
Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.21
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.44
Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.85
Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.10
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.23
grindatron.tv is a game show set in the industrial future. The rules are simple. Be the last contestant standing. And no shoving!

cover.png
The game uses a somewhat working platformer pathfinding system which allows the AI contestants to do simple acrobatic moves (more or less successfully).

pathfinding.png
Go on. Give it a shot!

Comments44

AndrewJAdams
AndrewJAdams12 Aug 2018, 23:10
Fun game! Made it to "Episode 4". Simple but fits the theme well. Sometimes the AI can be a real ahole, but it's good.
bennyqbd112 Aug 2018, 23:14
Nice job! This was pretty fun. Simple and effective! I also liked how the levels gradually got redder as they went on, that was a nice bit of atmosphere
Donitz
Donitzauthor12 Aug 2018, 23:37
I fixed a couple of game breaking bugs. One which allowed the player to hold on to a wall indefinitely, and one which activated next level twice skipping levels.
TinyNerd
TinyNerd13 Aug 2018, 14:03
This game is awesome! There are some bugs where the AI will go into the ground when standing on them. But overall, great game!
Swini13 Aug 2018, 14:13
the first episodes are easy but you made the Ai system pretty good. Like playing it. It's fun. Also Sprites and Animation are brilliant!
Donitz
Donitzauthor13 Aug 2018, 14:17
@swini Thank you! I completely botched the walk animation but I hoped nobody would notice :D
Fire_phantom7
Fire_phantom713 Aug 2018, 14:19
This game is HARD, but in a fun way! It's not easy to do that, nice work. It could use a soundtrack but I definitely prefer this game-play over any music.
Peterr13 Aug 2018, 14:21
Very nice and actually great fun to play. I love how the little dudes believably fight for their spot.
Donitz
Donitzauthor13 Aug 2018, 14:36
@fire-phantom7 Agreed, this game really could use a soundtrack. I don't personally have any skills at all in making music, but in retrospect I could at least have generated some type of ambient noise.
Goutye
Goutye13 Aug 2018, 15:02
I love literally everything about that game! Nice AIs as well! Really well done :heart:
Cobear25
Cobear2513 Aug 2018, 17:03
Awesome game! I love the controls, the visuals, and the AI. Sound effects are great too. The only thing missing is some fun futuristic music.
mrjorts13 Aug 2018, 17:06
This is quite fun, and the AI is fun to watch even when they make bad decisions. I especially like how you can stand on your opponent's head to be the last one to fall.
OmnipotentIndie13 Aug 2018, 17:44
Really fun, controls are great. Sometimes it just comes down to waiting at the top
maartene
maartene13 Aug 2018, 18:57
I'm impressed with the AI in this game. Game is quite difficult though.
artbohr13 Aug 2018, 19:24
Very fun game, great idea, had quite of fun, reminds me of move or die
jchaplin13 Aug 2018, 19:25
Cool game! I'm not very good at it (yet), but it's quite fun.
Treizive13 Aug 2018, 21:52
One of the best game tested so far. Good job!
DPS2004
DPS200413 Aug 2018, 23:40
I beat the game and had fun, but would gladly come back if you put in online!
Gaoyuan Chen
Gaoyuan Chen14 Aug 2018, 02:36
It is so much fun to play. Only issue is that sometimes you forgot which is you and when you figure it out you already dead.
shockeye14 Aug 2018, 05:57
Good game mechanic, level progression well designed. Each level teaches you tactics that serve you well on the next. (for example, the rebound jump technique) AI is good (I learnt that jump from watching AI do it) Simple graphics suit the game.
Donitz
Donitzauthor14 Aug 2018, 08:16
@dps2004 yeah, maybe it could work as a multiplayer web game. Dealing with latency would be a bit challenging but not impossible to solve.

@gaoyuan-chen Knew I should have added some kind of visual indicator above the player.
Frank Gevaerts
Frank Gevaerts14 Aug 2018, 14:54
I'm not very good at this (Where are my turns? :), but it was fun to play
Samuel Kriman14 Aug 2018, 15:14
This was great. After many tries, I managed to survive this season of grindatron.tv. Some of the levels reminded me a lot of playing super meat boy.
RNGSilvercraft
RNGSilvercraft14 Aug 2018, 15:59
It a decent game!It gets really tough near the end tho.It must be a pain in the a-- to work on those enemy AI...I appreciate the hard work.
Suchista
Suchista14 Aug 2018, 17:07
Wow, really fun game! I don't like bouncing off the enemies, but I guess that's part of the challenge :P
Joloujed
Joloujed14 Aug 2018, 17:45
I really liked the idea, It was nice to see fall the damm AI, I found the controlls a little bit weird thoo and sometimes I couldn´t tell my guy from the rest, But good game.
Sam Estep
Sam Estep14 Aug 2018, 18:03
Very cool! I wasn't expecting to see AI in Ludum Dare; I'll have to check out your code to see how you did it. In the earlier levels it mostly just feels like a search for the platform that disappears last followed by standing on some AI's head, but later it becomes a solid platformer. I lost interest in continuing after a bit due to the controls; they're pretty good, but more polishing would be nice to make doing the later levels more fun.
Donitz
Donitzauthor14 Aug 2018, 18:17
@sam-estep Thank you! I did try to make the AI act in a somewhat unpredictable fashion. For example, whenever you hear a character "talk" it means they're following another character. They also sometimes just stand in place waiting for their doom, or try to find somewhere safe to stand.
Sam Estep
Sam Estep14 Aug 2018, 18:18
@donitz Yeah it was interesting! Sometimes I would feel safe and then they would spazz and I would die. I didn't hear the "talking", though; maybe I just wasn't listening for it.
YamiOG
YamiOG14 Aug 2018, 18:21
The game was pretty fun! The graphics were a little blurry though
gwinnell
gwinnell14 Aug 2018, 19:42
Very nice game. Impressive to have AI in for the jam - I know I'd have probably used ghost movement data or something much less technical. Wall jump was finicky at times, it just took a while to get used to. _Conglaturations_ on your entry! :clap: :thumbsup:
roberth33214 Aug 2018, 23:02
Fun game! Controls feel really good and I think you did a good job with the AI they were not annoying and did there job.
Nam Nguyen
Nam Nguyen15 Aug 2018, 02:05
The AI is really annoying, which I guess is the whole point of this haha. I totally digged the game, good job! Not the best control keys, but I can live with that. I guess there was a reason for z instead of space bar. Otherwise space bar would be better
Ezra LaFleur15 Aug 2018, 05:36
@sam-estep and I finished it! It was super funny watching the AI and jumping around with them. Solid gameplay also I died at the same time as the last AI one level and I both advanced and was shown the death screen at the same time
Quetzakol
Quetzakol15 Aug 2018, 09:19
Really loved this game! The concept is original and works quite well despite the other contestants being quite dump sometimes :stuck_out_tongue: Very cool level design ideas. The one where all the contestants are stacked together was surprising, although I stopped there because I didn't manage to win.

Graphics are simple but cool. I like the overall effect you get with the colors changing :) Sounds could be improved

Very good overall!
Szatku15 Aug 2018, 10:22
Maybe i don't get concept of game, but AI is not smart enough - do many mistakes, killing in very irrational way. Why jump on one of side computer player make the same action like climbing? Sound might be better.
Donitz
Donitzauthor15 Aug 2018, 10:49
@szatku The AI does a lot of mistakes yes. The game uses manually drawn patterns which are overlaid on top of the level to find potential paths. If I had more time I'd have checked through each pattern individually and see if the AI is capable of performing it.

Here's an example: Jump from "0" through the air "." to the target "1" on the platform "#", while ignoring anything in "?". The mirrored version of the same pattern is also tested.

```
PathPatterns._createPattern([
'1...?',
'#....',
'?....',
'??..0',
'????#'], true /* jump */);```
Mil
Mil16 Aug 2018, 15:32
All these mean little people. :D
chkkll
chkkll17 Aug 2018, 01:51
Loved it! In taste this is somewhere around super crate box, n++, nidhogg, disc room. In my opinion you should take this further. Good Work!
Bichodust
Bichodust17 Aug 2018, 18:04
So much fun!! Such a great game. The concept is super fun. The art and sound is awesome. I love it. It would a fantastic party game with online instead of AI (these are kind of unpredictable, they all suicide once in the game haha... I won!). I would buy it as a party game to play online with my friends!! Great job, congrats!!
ConorOD
ConorOD19 Aug 2018, 10:47
This is so much fun! With a bit of improvement to the AI, this could be a genuine classic! Local multiplayer would also be a ton of fun. Nice visuals too. Great job!
crneumre
crneumre19 Aug 2018, 18:04
Super fun game! Completed it, really loved the levels, and it feels very satisfying to complete them.
The only criticism I have is the wall jump feels a bit unresponsive at times.
Overall I really enjoyed :) Great job!

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