Darkling

by jordantanner

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.80

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.74

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.88

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.55

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.73

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.56

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.95

Is this reality?

You "wake" to find yourself in an eerie landscape. Strange voices fill the air, and the
trees that surround you seem to be made of bones, or of something else not of this world.

Suddenly, your right arm is filled with a fiery pain. Looking down in horror, you realize that your arm is gone,
instead replaced by some terrible demonic entity. You can feel its evil power surging through you, burning like hellfire.

Peering off into the distance, you can vaguely make out hordes of ghastly shapes rapidly approaching, while the infernal pain in your arm feels like it's about to explode...

------------------

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How to Play

- Survive waves of enemies that grow more challenging each time
- You may choose to upgrade between waves at the cost of your MAX LIFE
- Collect GREEN ORBS to gain LIFE
- Collect RED ORBS to gain MAX LIFE
- Collect YELLOW ORBS for a temporary speed boost
- Collect BLUE ORBS to become temporarily invulnerable

Controls

- WASD - Move
- Mouse - Look / Aim
- Hold LMB - Rapid Fire Explosive Beam (unlimited ammo)
- Click RMB - Launch Grenade Volley (this costs Life)
- CapsLock - Run (L-Shift was causing problems)
- Spacebar - Jump
- Z - Zoom

Hints

- Keep moving!
- All Orbs expire 30 seconds after they drop
- Upgrading between waves is optional, not required
- Aggression is encouraged rather than "circle strafing"
- Enemy projectiles can be destroyed
- There is a cheat code that grants max upgrades...

Thanks for playing and rating!

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Me playing "Darkling:"

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Check out streamers playing "Darkling"

Playdungeonmans

Ursagames

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Credits:

- Jordan Tanner: Graphics, Programming, Design, Sound
- Please drop me a line at [email protected]

(ROBO font by George Edward Purdy)

Comments47

Team-on1 May 2019, 01:12

I got blackscreen and UI after pressing start game

johanhelsing1 May 2019, 11:56

I also only get a black screen in both firefox and chrome. There are some errors in the console, maybe that helps you?

jordantannerauthor1 May 2019, 22:35

@team-on @johanhelsing hey guys thanks for the note. I finally figured out what was causing this. I was using multi-scene editing in Unity and there was some kind of cross-scene reference that was breaking and causing a fatal error. Thanks for understanding and please give my game a try when you have time. I'll be happy to return the favor! Thanks!

CamCam2 May 2019, 08:05

Cool game !

Notekri2 May 2019, 08:18

This is a really fun game, I enjoyed playing this game, but when I used the fullscreen the game lagged a lot, other than that I think, that this a really good game. Well done.

-banzi2 May 2019, 08:35

One of the best I have played so far. Love the atmosphere. Good job!

sadzanenyama2 May 2019, 08:46

Cool game. Some improvements in my opinion would be to give the spider enemy things some sort of movement animation instead of them sliding along the ground. Also when the frame rate of the game goes down due to lots of enemies being on screen the fire rate of the hand also goes down. Is the fire rate dependent on frame rate rather then delta time scale? Don't think this is intentional so you may want to change that. Still solid entry. Well done!

palsina2 May 2019, 08:57

This is the exact same idea I had for the previous LD, that's really cool! I liked succesfully launching a beam, destroying a bunch of spiders and making a rush for the health pickup. It's basic now, but already fun and addicting.

TK072 May 2019, 08:59

Fun game, realy enjoyed playing this. Two things i would like to be different: the floatiness of jumping makes it hard to land on pickups and add cooldown to right click, once I unlocked no cost and spammed it constantly the game gets laggy and after 5 levels of me spamming it the game crashed :D

CodeKoto2 May 2019, 09:07

Overall i liked the game, the only issue i see is that there's too much bloom and it's just hard to see the enemies, plus the level could have been a bit better maybe, like some cover or something.

It was fun playing though! just hard to get the max life up ;/ or maybe i am too bad. Good job on the game!

jordantannerauthor2 May 2019, 09:10

@sadzanenyama I agree that enemy animations would be nice. Just didn't have time. Also, sorry for the lag, you're not the first person to mention this. I'll have to do an optimization patch soon! Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

Purrseus2 May 2019, 09:13

You created a really eerie nightmarish atmosphere, amazing job on the graphics and audio front! Gameplay works really fine, too :)

jordantannerauthor2 May 2019, 09:13

@tk07 I know what you mean about the jump, I'm still not happy with it either. Maybe I should make it more like a platformer-style jump where you hold the jump button down to go higher, so you can kind of "stop jumping" when you want and have more control? Not sure yet. Regarding the Grenade Volley, I'm sorry to hear that spamming it crashed the game. Hadn't experienced that yet. Gonna have to optimize this thing. Thanks for the feedback!

jordantannerauthor2 May 2019, 09:15

@palsina Glad you like the idea! I definitely found myself doing the same.. clear a path and then GO GO GO for the collectibles. Haha! Thank you for playing and for the feedback.

ludwici2 May 2019, 09:45

I like you game. Hard and interesting

jordantannerauthor2 May 2019, 09:49

@ludwici Thanks so much! Wave 6 is pretty good! It's definitely harder than I thought it would be. Maybe I'll adjust some things later. Thanks for playing and posting.

appix2 May 2019, 10:46

The graphics and music are really cool. Well done!

Kritz2 May 2019, 11:24

Nicely made game. I was having so much fun. I would suggest adding a lives system, because I always died late game!

stark2 May 2019, 11:54

Good one! Thrilling atmospheric Serious Sam with life consuming upgrades - great combo 👍

bbaf2 May 2019, 14:10

Very atmospheric game. I guess, first of all due to nice art and dark ambient music.

Only a small thing. For future entries I would advise to make at least 1 additional build for Win, Linux or Mac. Usually native builds run much faster on low spec PCs which may add a bit more players.
As for me, I started to feel significatn lags on 5-6 waves.

Anyway, great job and nice entry! :thumbsup:

ZAX3 May 2019, 08:57

THis is so cool
I had fun playing it
keep it up !

GerardB3 May 2019, 20:48

This was so much freaking fun!!! I played untill I unlocked all powers and I felt like a spider killer god.

For real I don't know if it was intentional or not but the game gets easier as you complete rounds, not the other way around. Which in a way is great since it makes you feel ultra overpowered and cool but at the same time it gets old after a while.

I discovered I was invincible when I realised that I could grenade a big group of spiders jump to the middle of the explosion, heal up to 100% and repeat.

But the crazy part gets when you unlock no cost grenades. At that point you can just walk through the field feeling like the god of destruction XD

Oh man I had too much fun with this. Congrats!

And oddly enough I also did a game half 2D half 3D. Give it a go if you want and rock on!

dk5000p3 May 2019, 20:51

How many waves are there? I personally thought the game was way too easy. As long as you keep moving and hold down fire you pretty much can't die. Still, the art was great and definitely invoked a Doom vibe.

CraftLord3 May 2019, 21:11

This is sooooo cooool, good job!

The Blue Hatted3 May 2019, 22:17

Cool game!, It kinda lag when a lot of monsters appeared, liked the style of the 3D!

jordantannerauthor3 May 2019, 22:33

Thanks for the kind words and for the feedback, guys!

@gerardb I'm glad you had fun playing it! I definitely wanted the player to feel powerful and strong, but I do feel that the game needs some difficulty balancing. I appreciate the detailed feedback.

@dk5000p As it stands now, there are infinite waves. I intend to release a difficulty balance patch soon so please check back!

@craftlord Thanks, dude. :)

@the-blue-hatted Sorry for the lag, I'm currently working to optimize that. Also, I'll be releasing a Windows port soon, so hopefully that will run faster on most people's machines.

ursagames4 May 2019, 07:30

Thank you for submitting your game to be played on my stream!

Once the stream is finished you can find the video here: https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos
If you want to know when it was played you can find your game in the queue here: https://tinyurl.com/y5rdokvp

tjakka54 May 2019, 14:23

Really cool game! I like how you're mixing 3D with pixelart.
The high firerate felt great, and the right click ability looked really cool!

I got up to wave 4, at which point there were so many enemies that I saw a big framerate drop. My suggestion would be to add variations of monsters that are stronger, and less monsters overall.

Great job!

Attala4 May 2019, 15:44

Nice action game. Liked the retro look and feel :)

Biebras4 May 2019, 18:19

Cool game, nice graphics, but I missed some sort of music and I can go out from the map.
Hard to read instruction text. This game needs some optimization. You could go with ECS(if you are programming with unity), but that's a whole new programming method and it's really difficult.
Anyways, good job !!!

cheesepencil4 May 2019, 23:27

Wooo that's tough. Nice entry, nightmare fuel for the spiderphobic!

Lexyvil4 May 2019, 23:57

Love your game! The difficulty is there. This is probably the hardest LD game I've played yet~ I could only ever get to wave #3.
The only frustration I had was how it feels like enemies spawn right next to, or behind you. I somehow could only buy the first two upgrades, and sometimes the jump button wouldn't work, and I realized it's often best to stay on the ground for how vulnerable you are in the air--when I started falling in the air, and with no control, I kept hitting constant enemy projectiles.

Webox5 May 2019, 00:38

PRETTY HARD!! haha good one, dymanic, fast, and fun. I made only it to wave 4 yet it's super fun. I loved the hand drawing and the animation

EdevJogos5 May 2019, 00:45

I had fun playing it, though is hard, wave 3 was my limit too.

HenanBoy5 May 2019, 04:02

I had a lot of fun playing this, even though I died a lot. Great work!

FatCrow5 May 2019, 04:09

This game is so amazing! It's a lot of fun and I am going to save it in my best games folder for LD44. I love the atmosphere and it almost reminds me of Doom. I love how the guns feel and just how fun it is to shoot hordes of aliens coming at you. I played both the web and downloaded version and found the downloaded version had a much better mouse sensitivity. I seriously think this is a dope game, super good work!

jordantannerauthor5 May 2019, 04:40

@lexyvil, there is currently an issue with the jump that I'm working on fixing as we speak. Sorry about that!

jordantannerauthor5 May 2019, 04:41

@cheesepencil @lexyvil @webox @edevjogos @henanboy @fatcrow
Thanks to you all for playing and for the detailed feedback, I really appreciate it! It is meant to be a tough game, but I do want to balance it so more people can experience more of the upgrades and get a little further in the game. Any opinions on how to balance this? Maybe just increase the spawn rate of the green and red orbs a tiny bit? Any thoughts on how to make the game SLIGHTLY easier would be appreciated. Thanks again you guys!!

jordantannerauthor5 May 2019, 05:05

@fatcrow I'm so glad you consider it one of the better games, man, that really makes my night! I'll have to look into the mouse sensitivity issue. Thanks again!

madjackmcmad6 May 2019, 02:22

Hella fun omage to Devil Daggers, excellent control, pacing, tons of shit on screen, this all made me so happy. Well done, please keep it up.

jordantannerauthor6 May 2019, 02:24

@madjackmcmad Thanks so much for playing and streaming my game, man, I really really appreciate it! It was a blast to watch you play, and I really appreciate the constructive feedback. So glad you had fun. I'll be playing and rating your game as well, and I'm now following on Twitch. See you around, brother!

pleyad6 May 2019, 07:25

Very cool game! The audio fits the atmosphere really well, and the story behind the gauntlet is just great! :smiley:

jordantannerauthor6 May 2019, 07:54

@pleyad Thanks so much for playing! I'm glad you liked the gauntlet, I thought it was kind of random and fun, too! :)

Kaisean Games6 May 2019, 09:25

Besides balance, I think the game is awesome :smile:
Red ones are too few in my opinion.

But the game does glue you to your keyboard, that's for sure :smile:

jordantannerauthor6 May 2019, 09:32

@kaisean-games I'm so glad you liked the game. Balancing was a tricky, tricky thing and I look forward to making some nice tweaks in a post-jam version coming soon. The orb spawn rate (both green and red) was a particularly hard thing to tune during playtesting.

Kaisean Games6 May 2019, 09:36

@jordantanner Yeah, balancing is the hardest thing ever and takes a lot of playthroughs. It's especially difficult because there are many skill levels among players, so some kind of difficulty setting is usually needed. But otherwise, well done with the game :smile:

jordantannerauthor6 May 2019, 09:40

@kaisean-games That's a great point about Difficulty settings... there rarely will ever be one difficulty scaling solution for "everyone." Definitely going to put Diff Levels in my post-jam version, good suggestion man!

Other games by @jordantanner

★3.48

★3.15

★3.50