Ludum Dare #42compo

TriSpace

by gtrogers

Overall★★★★★★★★★★4.00

Fun★★★★★★★★★★4.08

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.60

Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.17

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.98

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.83

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.76

TriSpace is a top down space puzzler built for the LD42 compo.

I'm really happy with how this turned out - especially the theme music.

The controls are (should be) explained in the game but just in case:
- Movement - arrow keys
- Switch ship - x
- Use ship power - z
- Open/close messages - c

Progress is saved automatically.

Tools used
- Love2d - code
- Gimp - art
- OpenMPT - music

Note - if you are trying to run the game from source you will need Love2d v10 (the latest release is v11). I'll push a compatibility fix soon.

Note - to run the game on OSX you may need to open the /Application folder and right click on trispace and choose open (this will get around the un-recognised developer warning)

Bug Fixes and Updates

- v1.0.1 (Currently Windows only) fixes a bug where shooting a turret would crash the game

Tools: GIMP, LÖVE, OpenMPT

Comments16

Jasper Hansen13 Aug 2018, 02:02

This game is really well done. The sound design and graphics do a great job of establishing a retro aesthetic, and the levels have some really cool ideas, especially considering how much time you had to design them.

Mazzletov13 Aug 2018, 05:47

The sound during the intro, the bass. That's definitely something I like. The game and sounds feels very polished and fits 100% with the theme. I only couldn't get the Tractor beam to work? I'm on an Azerty keyboard so I also tried the w key but no avail. Maybe I did something wrong.

Andy Wolff13 Aug 2018, 05:51

Excellent game. The mechanics are a nice combination of simple and interesting, and the levels do a good job of introducing and then exploring them.

I got an error (https://i.imgur.com/qCliuil.png) on the level "Escape ?" when I shot down toward a block near the top-left of the screen.

gtrogersauthor13 Aug 2018, 05:53

@mazzletov thanks for the comment! To get the tractor beam to work you need to be the orange ship and be reasonably close to the thing you want to move. It's the same key as the gun or the teleporter, just with a different ship enabled so if those things work then the tractor beam should work too. Let me know how it goes, happy to look into it a bit more if it still doesn't work. Thank again for taking a look!

Marcel Oyuela-Bonzani13 Aug 2018, 05:54

Pretty fun! Perfect length without exhausting the concept. The level order was pretty good at teaching each ship as well. My one nitpick is I wish hitting a wall didn't lock your position until you let go of that arrow- I found myself getting stuck more often than not.

gtrogersauthor13 Aug 2018, 05:57

@andy-wolff thanks for the comment! And thanks for screen-shotting the error, I'll take a look!

Rosden13 Aug 2018, 07:06

I really liked it. It was fun, the visuals and sound were quite nice and there was plenty of levels. great work :)

Lexyvil21 Aug 2018, 20:25

Just finished it! I love the concept of switching between ships to do certain tasks. The only time I had difficulty was in the last stage, with the narrow space between a wall and bullets. It also felt like the tutorial was longer than the game itself, but it was still fun at least~

ursagames22 Aug 2018, 13:24

This was an outstanding entry! Loved how the mechanics played together and the game's aesthetic. Thanks for sharing it with my stream! Here's a link to the vod: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/297479036?t=02h47m07s

gtrogersauthor26 Aug 2018, 23:49

@ursagames thanks so much! Enjoyed your entry too! Was great to see someone play my game on stream, I'll work on adding in some of the feedback at some point :)

Eric Kulbiej2 Sep 2018, 00:16

Your game is very nice to play. The general impact is positive.
As a professional game dev I would suggest... just kidding haha
Nonetheless, if you want to work on this project more I suggest making a difficulty incresing algorithm.
Graphics - very nice. Controls are also working very well.
Maybe you could also take a glimpse at my game? I already enlarged it into a wholesome Android game :)

HellSquirrel4 Sep 2018, 13:21

interesting

framg4 Sep 2018, 13:41

I really like the game, good job

shp4 Sep 2018, 15:50

Very nice music, gameplay had good ideas behind it, the simple visuals kinda make it hard to identify different elements in the game and the controls could use a bit more polish (getting a bit stuck on walls, rotating through ship types and their abilities isn't obvious), well done overall!

Sambi4 Sep 2018, 17:33

Hell of a game!

Quetzakol4 Sep 2018, 18:23

Fantastic game! Just finished it and it felt really rewarding at the end. Sometimes I mixed up all the controls, maybe it's possible to find better keys, I don't know. Otherwise the combination of the power of the three ships works very well and the difficulty is well balanced. The music was good too :) Well done!