Ludum Dare #48compo

SUPER RED

by neonjeff

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.48

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.15

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.35

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.83

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.56

Audio★★★★★★★★★★4.04

Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.67

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.79

WARNING: There are spiders and other bugs in this game, but they are friendly.

You are SUPER RED the composting worm with a dream. Escape your vermicomposting life and find a fresher food. The deeper you go the darker it gets? I wanted to focus more on the mood of the game for this one through music. I didn't get to add as many details as I hoped, but I think its still a pretty rich world. Not a very interactive world in this state though. Hope you find it interesting! I think it could be a fun exploring type game with some more work.

Controls:
```
WASD - Move
Shift - Move faster
MouseWheel - Adjust Zoom level to see larger portions of the level
Escape - Exit to menu
```

Tools:
- Unity 2020.3.3f1
- Reaper / Audacity
- Gimp / Paint

Audio Resources:
- Spitfire Audio Labs for Drums and synth samples : https://labs.spitfireaudio.com
- Guitar / Bass recorded live on Squier Telecaster / Squier J Bass
- Guitar amp modeling done using free Amplitube VSTs. https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/amplitube5cs/?pkey=amplitube-5-cs

Song: https://github.com/jeffthardy/ludumdare48/blob/master/Assets/Audio/game_theme/game_theme.mp3
Words for original theme song if you get far enough to hear it:
```

Who is this worm
Who eats all your trash
You bought him
With Your excess cash

SUPER RED
SUPER RED
HE IS A WORM
HE IS A WORM

SUPER RED
SUPER RED
HE IS A WORM
HE IS A WORM

E'ry meal ya make
Has too much salt
Three bites in
we throw it in the bin

SUPER RED
SUPER RED
DOESN’T FEEL FED
HE WANTS YOU DEAD

What was that
It fell from above
Ouch my neck
And down goes my head

SUPER RED
SUPER RED
HE BIT YOUR HEAD
YOU DROPED LIKE LEAD

SUPER RED
SUPER RED
HE BIT YOUR HEAD
AND YOU ARE DEAD
```

Genres: adventure

Tools: Audacity, GIMP, Unity

Comments25

monkeybit2926 Apr 2021, 10:43

pretty cool to see how the levels progress towards different environments the deeper you go

JaTDev26 Apr 2021, 13:27

I got a jump scare out of the cat, as I was zoomed in and suddenly a giant monster cat approached me :smile:. Cute little game, I especially liked the music.

pedrorocha26 Apr 2021, 13:29

i love the music, well done !

neonjeffauthor26 Apr 2021, 13:50

@jatdev - Yeah that happened to me most times I was play testing and I even knew it was there!
@monkeybit29 @pedrorocha Thanks for playing!

Last Angle26 Apr 2021, 13:57

I had fun playing this game, going in circles to try to see what is behind the mud. The bugs were really cute! I liked the song at the end, but maybe you should play it before you finish the game? Now it is like the after the credits scene of a Marvel movie, a lot of people miss it because the already left (or closed/stopped playing the game in this case)

GarethTheDestro26 Apr 2021, 14:01

omg I love it so much. The music change was shocking in the best of ways, making progression so much fun. Also, the vocals at the end when I won made me laugh. Gameplay was a lot of fun, there was enough variety to make me want to keep exploring my little worm tunnel, awesome job.

neonjeffauthor26 Apr 2021, 14:01

@last-angle - Thanks for playing! Yeah I considered putting it on the menu as well, but wasn't sure people would listen to the whole thing there. It also tells a bit darker story of why the worm is leaving which I wanted to hint at in the game but never got around to it. I also considered adding a button on the menu to just trigger playing the song as well, but got burnt out on time and didn't get around to it.

ristoretto26 Apr 2021, 19:46

I like the art and the theme of being a worm and in a composite container, with some of the bigger objects and bugs acting as collisions. but tbh I had to turn it off when the long legged spiders came into the screen in the first darker earth, I didn't expect my reaction to that XD

kroltan26 Apr 2021, 19:47

Even noticing the lyrics on this here LD page, I was not prepared! This is awesome, you should put it up somewhere!

I didn't realize you could zoom so far away initially, but that can be filed under "replayability". :smile:

neonjeffauthor26 Apr 2021, 19:50

@ristoretto yeah I was worried some people might react that way and at least added the text warning to the webpages, but since the whole game is bugs I assumed people would avoid it completely if concerned. If it helps there is nothing that can actually hurt you in the game.

neonjeffauthor26 Apr 2021, 19:52

@kroltan You can listen via the source: https://github.com/jeffthardy/ludumdare48/blob/master/Assets/Audio/game_theme/game_theme.mp3

internetpaulicy26 Apr 2021, 19:53

I kept going down and I was not disappointed!

Noel Widmer26 Apr 2021, 19:53

I was confused at first because I zommed out and didn't see anything happening until I realized that I was this tiny worm :P The music is sick. The effort you put into it really pays off. I would have probably made the pool area (not the water) smaller. I was moved onto land by the cat and thought that was the idea. So I searched around until I found the exit. I am going to look into your source to see how did the masking. Not sure how I would do it and I would like to know how you did :D

neonjeffauthor26 Apr 2021, 19:57

@noel-widmer Yeah I wanted to put more detail into the ending and maybe alternate exits but ran out of time. I really only planned to figure out how to show different ground under you as you went through the dirt but the same method worked to make the wood container too. It worked better than I thought! This is where I learned how to do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pl8DcsCQ_k

ristoretto26 Apr 2021, 20:06

@neonjeff yeah, the warning was good, I didn't expect to react from them. Also the first bug is super cute. I think creepiness of bugs are relative to their leg length!

nice with the sprite mask tutorial, I will book mark it.

Noel Widmer26 Apr 2021, 20:54

@neonjeff I liked our conversation in the comments of my game. Would you like to stay in touch? Hit me up on Twitter if you want (I would like to prefer not to paste any email addresses here). My twitter is: https://twitter.com/NoelWidmer

FussenKuh26 Apr 2021, 20:59

Nice concept. I think you fully succeeded on your quest for quality audio (especially the original lyrics song at the end of the game). Controlling Super Red was actually sort of Zen-like without the worry of things attempting to kill me. It was a nice change of pace from the other games that I've played thus far. Well done.

rhoff9526 Apr 2021, 22:17

Cool game, I like the visual style of the worm.

Chensu26 Apr 2021, 23:37

Love the art and the control

sacredbacon27 Apr 2021, 00:00

Controls are great, excellent world design the variety makes for some very cool obstacles. I like how the music changed throughout the level to give a sense of progress. Thanks for the game!

audioBusting27 Apr 2021, 09:56

I don't like creepy crawlies but this is cute! I thought they were going to do something bad to me, was glad to see that's not the case. I also like the addition of zooming with the mouse wheel. It feels quite accommodating.

neverautomatic27 Apr 2021, 17:42

Oh man, worm game brothers! I thought the movement of your worm felt really smooth for WASD controls, and really liked the amount of variety and content you managed to cram in there in 48 hours. It was interesting to explore the different areas, interact with all the critters, and I don't think very many people wrote and produced a whole song for their compo game, haha. Nice work!

Thanks for your feedback on my game! In regards to the trails, I used a series of straight lines with circles at the joints to make it smoother without taking too much of a performance hit. :)

PeachTreeOath27 Apr 2021, 21:50

I've seen digging games and worm games so far, but not a compost heap one lol. I actually really enjoyed that it was a much more chill environment with bug friends rather than enemies. I could focus on exploring and just enjoying the environment.

I saw you said you had a lot more details planned. Did you mean exploring within the compost box or once you move beyond that? Like some kind of cycle where you move to the real world or something.

Either way, I thought the level was all composed really well and was interesting enough to explore. I didn't realize you could zoom out until I re-read the instructions and that helped me finish it. Fun concept!

neonjeffauthor27 Apr 2021, 21:57

@peachtreeoath I had wanted more details both in and out of the compost box and was planning on adding some secret areas you could find with different music as well, but time... I had told myself I would spend more time on music this time around and didn't start on it until ~8hrs before it was over so I rushed to get stuff made and was too burnt out to do any more than I did.

commanderstitch2 May 2021, 05:58

Whoa. Didn't expect this at all. I have no idea how you made this, but it was pretty immersive for whatever i played. I believe i was that worm thingy and i was just eating/digging so far down! Got the little cycling weird physics game vibes going on. :-)

Other games by @neonjeff

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