Digital Gray

co-authored: @distorter, @essence
Overall★★★★★★★★★★4.32
Fun★★★★★★★★★★4.29
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.56
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.85
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.27
Audio★★★★★★★★★★4.38
Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.27
Mood★★★★★★★★★★4.26
CURRENT HIGH SCORE: 1191 (chopstick)

You are the only one left.

The last drop of light in a dark world.

The last human among machines.

Digital gray.

GIF.gif

Controls:

WASD to move (press K and L to toggle ZQSD)

Mouse + Left click to aim and shoot

Right click to dash (once unlocked)

Space when standing on the upgrade station to... upgrade

(Note: you need full energy to do so)

E: Toggle screenshake

R: Start game

Esc: close game

gif2.gif

Your objective: destroy all the machines. The more you fight and are overwhelmed, the more you will need to sacrifice a part of your humanity - of your life - for a stronger, mechanical body. That is the price to pay for you to one day, across multiple lives, wipe the machines off your world. But it will not happen today.

The game is a highscorer! Kill as many enemies as you can, bam bam bam!

As you upgrade, you trade your maximum health! Be careful as you progress - power comes at the price of your life.

[there is only a windows build]

Inspired by the music of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard

To compete, just send a screenshot of your own achievement! :D

Team:

Code - Distorter https://twitter.com/theDistort

Music + Code -> Fusionnist https://twitter.com/Fusionnist

screenshot
Genres: action

Comments29

Malarpuppet30 Apr 2019, 06:53
Really cool. super punchy and fun.
RyanJavanshir30 Apr 2019, 17:57
What a great looking game, really love the rumble effect. Simple concept that can be expanded in loads of different ways and released on Steam! :D
z0rlog
z0rlog30 Apr 2019, 18:00
So much fun in this game! Really awesome! Loved the music theme as well, great job.
Artyom Volkov
Artyom Volkov30 Apr 2019, 18:02
I like this game. Neat grathics and really smooth gameplay and pretty nice narrative!
Don Fouts
Don Fouts30 Apr 2019, 18:06
This was great! I really liked the mechanic to lock hearts away after upgrading. Really solid submission, nice work!!
Someday Not Today
Someday Not Today30 Apr 2019, 22:17
Wow, this game is perfect. Nice mechanics, well-done programmer part of this game. And art is beautiful. Good job!
kadecgos1 May 2019, 07:13
Surprisingly polished idea! It's fun, it's delightfully complete given a 4-day dev cycle, and it's among my favorite for LD44 so far!
Essence
Essence1 May 2019, 15:13
@kadecgos we are extremely glad you enjoyed our efforts!
pcmaster1 May 2019, 19:52
Pretty hardcore. Graphics, movement, tension, MUSIC, sound... congratz! Epic! Ship it! ;)
Cikyt1 May 2019, 21:59
looks fantastic!
Rgarbati2 May 2019, 11:57
Really enjoyed your game, great idea, great music, great graphs. GG to you
Alienplay2 May 2019, 12:13
Pixel art in this game looks really clean, color pallet is just perfect and music is very fitting for this art style. Very fun game overall. Great job!
Hygon2 May 2019, 21:47
Amazing game !
The music is excellent, and the graphics are really good too (i liked the choices of color)
The controls are precise. i think that there could have been more audio feedback (when upgrades are obtained or used for example).
Great entry overall, congrats to the team !
gredgie2 May 2019, 22:28
This was a solid game, really hectic but it's done so well. The minimalistic sprites are excellent, the narrative, enemy types, upgrade choices... I loved it all.
ectucker1
ectucker12 May 2019, 22:34
Love this take on the theme! The game has an intensity to it, mostly sold by the music and narration. Great entry!
IanLux3 May 2019, 02:13
5/5
I absolutely adored it, the storytelling, gameplay, audio, visuals, everything is great.
Hard as heck, but satisfying as heck too.
Absurdly amazing job mates, well done;
Alexascher3 May 2019, 17:03
What a piece of pure fun! Everything is beautiful in this game.
My high-score was about 620.
I hope there will be post-jam version with even more stuff and fun.
Korteh
Korteh3 May 2019, 19:42
i absolutely love this game, it's pretty simple, but graphics and sound are amazing, especially voice acting, and it fits theme quite well.
OwlyCode
OwlyCode3 May 2019, 22:03
Awesome! It's one of the best entries I've seen so far. It's fun and fast paced, with a die and retry feel.

Only issue I had: I didn't realize the first upgrade that I had to go on the center platform. Maybe a visual effect should point to it the first time. Like a short blink effect?
SnowTV4 May 2019, 03:26
This is one of the most polished I've played in this jam! The graphics is simple but stylish, especially the melee enemy's animation, really well done!

The soundtrack is also dope.

Overall very polished jam. Congratz!
puppetmaster
puppetmaster4 May 2019, 11:19
Great mood, very good control especially with the abilities.
What disturbed me personally was the room image, I always thought I could move more to the left.
Highscore 856
stevenjmiller
stevenjmiller4 May 2019, 21:22
Amazing game, my best score was 1076.
Anion_Z4 May 2019, 21:38
Holy f....
This is absoloutely amazing, highest score - 1080.

The music together with Voice makes it that much more fun, the game is very polished and upgrades that cost life are balanced well.

One thing though is you cant hear other sounds apart the music maybe you want to adjust that. Besides that the gameplay is extremely fun and I wanted to keep going! Definitely would love to see this game with more upgrades and enemies, keep it up guys!
CodeKoto
CodeKoto4 May 2019, 21:43
I loved the concept of the game! The irony of wanting to stay the only human, but eventually you succumb to power and slowly join the machine. You end up being a hypocrite to yourself, and i was always curious what the next upgrade is.

As far as gameplay goes, i think the space given is a bit too small but at the start it was hard, though, when i got an upgrade everything became much easier and easier so maybe the more upgrades you get the more space but also monsters you see.

Good job on the game though!
fusionnist
fusionnistauthor5 May 2019, 08:44
@owlycode
Thanks for the feedback - we were fairly concerned about that, I placed tip text that somewhat instructs as well as an extra sprite for when the upgrade machine is stepped on... but in the midst of action, that wasn't entirely fool-proof, I agree.

@puppetmaster
Indeed, I (as the coder for room bounds) didn't want to bother making some funky trapezoid bounds, so the small rectangle is what fit best and helped with the time constraints - hence the greyed area. I suppose you all figured that out after a game or two, but for the past days I've been wondering when anyone would bring that up! haha :D If we ever remake this, I'll ditch weird bounds for sure ;)
@anion-z
For sure! I somewhat took a safe shot at balancing in order to make sure that the music and speech would be heard, but the best is always to let the player adjust. It's noted, thanks!
@codekoto
I'm glad you got that part of the narrative! As for room bounds, I answered that earlier in this comment - it's really just something born out of time restrictions :)

Feedback has been pretty awesome overall! It's a pretty big step-up from previous games, so I'm glad! (no one beat the dev highscore yet though, muahahahaha)
HAUO
HAUO5 May 2019, 14:41
One of my favorites so far! Its just a awesome package. The mood is great, great art, and especially love the voice recordings really just puts it one level higher. The controls are tight, and the pace is also great. You also managed to add the power-ups at good intervals before the combat started feeling boring, giving me new options and basically changing how you play at every step. Really just a fun jam-sized experience all around.

With that said, while I really like both the mechanic and lore of becoming more robotic, the "price" that needed to be paid to essentially level-up was with-out much choice and it did not really feel like a currency? I think I would have liked to have a bit more control over how my health is spent. At the same time it's difficult, as more choice would slow the game down, something I don't think would do it any favors, so I'm uncertain of my own critique.

In the end, I like how "compact" it is, and has a good feel of "speed", the lowering of the health is a great representation in the end of both your humanity and keeping the game hard even with the OP-weapons you gain in exchange.

Great work!
fusionnist
fusionnistauthor5 May 2019, 16:41
@hauo Indeed - we didn't explore the theme as a mechanic as much as we explored it >, so to speak; in this context, you "pay the price" of your life in exchange for more kills. By the time we had this idea, even acknowledging that we weren't quite bringing forward the notion of currency, we decided to roll with it haha. I do agree though! I always had that thought on the back of my mind while programming :)
Thanks for the kind words too! We've all been blown away by the reception we got :D
geist_191
geist_1915 May 2019, 18:18
For a 72 hour gamejam game this is very impressive. The polishing of this feels very good! The music and the vocals really underline the story. Maybe replace the title screen and the game would be perfect!

Also the waves feel very "realistic" and "natural". If you decide to make a whole game out of it, let me know!!
Nippaaah5 May 2019, 20:38
this game is amazing! the animations are so smooth, it feels really good to play it, very responsive mechanics and I love the voice-over story playing in the background, making you think about whats going on on your chaotic screen :D

Other games by @fusionnist

Found a bug?
Tell us on Discord