Third Party

by duckonaut

co-authored: @graydee, @nomis, @trensient, @mirunao, @pkpseudo

Overall★★★★★★★★★★4.03

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.86

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.82

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.61

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.53

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.86

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.85

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.88

Third Party is a top-down stealth game where you play as a spy tasked with stealing important data from a rivaling government. Your task would be easy enough if your objective wasn't in a underground top-secret facility handling an alien outbreak. No hallway or corridor is free from enemy presence, most ways of infiltration would end up with you 6 feet under, and both man and mutation want you dead. Luckily for you, your favorite movie is Weekend at Bernie's.

Descend deeper into the heart of the facility...

Either through bullets or teeth, death is indiscriminate: you die in one hit. Use the fallen corpses of dead foes to traverse safely within enemy presence.

Every enemy will shoot anything that moves that isn't of their color: make sure you bring the right corpse!

Credits
- EchoDuck/Duckonaut: Lead Dev, Programmer
- Trensient: Artist, Programmer, Level Designer
- Nomis: Lead Artist
- OS: Programmer
- Graydee: Programmer
- Nao: Artist
- pkpseudo: Lead Promo Design, Artist
- Salvati: Music, Sound Design

- egshels: "emotional support"
- Oroshibu: noticing one wrong pixel

Controls:
- Left Mouse Button: Shoot bullet
- Right Mouse Button: Hold corpse
- E: interact with elevators
- R: Quick restart level

Post-Deadline changelog:
- 27/04/21 - Fixed multiple blackscreen bugs, dying after levels ending, level 5 causing a crash
- 10/05/21 - fixed sounds being glitchy, made throwing easier, fixed typos, some tile layers

Tags: #2d, #horror, #pixel art, #singleplayer, #stealth, #top-down

Genres: action, puzzle

Tools: Godot

Comments43

EpicCrownKing27 Apr 2021, 01:02

Overall, really well done :) (obviously biased since i was there while it was being made, but still). The visuals are en pointe along with the sound design, and the gameplay concept is great. There were quite a few bugs I ran into while playing, such as corpses taking bullets feeling pretty unfair and some sprite drawing issues, but other than those bugs(which i'm sure will be fixed), great game and great job Ouroboas!

LDJam user 027 Apr 2021, 02:23

an impressive game given the time limit, visuals are a cut above the rest, the music is great and the gameplay is sound overall and the mechanics are nicely unique.

it does lack a bit of polish but that's to be expected, bugs are also to be expected and there are some but not a lot, the audio is a bit crusty but still enjoyable, there's a lack of feedback when shooting and sometimes i would die in an elevator door with seemingly no bullets nearby (not a big issue due to the short levels). but that stuff can be fixed, don't know if these are browser exclusive as I did not download it.

all in all great game, good concept, well done!

Synthphonia27 Apr 2021, 14:04

really cool game! i can see a lot of work here ;) good job and the idea of disguising yourself - brilliant!

michaelyount27 Apr 2021, 14:07

Great work!

kel27 Apr 2021, 14:11

Very polished and well done! The disguising yourself with corpses is unique and pretty funny. I also really enjoyed the elevator music between levels!

IcarusDev27 Apr 2021, 14:16

Really impressive game, the visuals are great, the music is good but there is a lack of sound efects. The innovative mechanics made this game great. The only problems I found were the body throwing mechanic not working great, and the game crashed. Overall, wonderful job!

ZazaB27 Apr 2021, 14:18

Nice game !
Good mechanics, good graphics, the theme is respected, I relly like it !

Hopefully it will be improved and more content will be added, it has a good potential !

Megastrons27 Apr 2021, 14:18

A beautiful and fun game made in a very short time, congratulations to the team

ABRDs27 Apr 2021, 14:22

This is fantastic, great job

Gulcasa27 Apr 2021, 14:23

Far and away the most impressive game I've played so far on LD48. The graphics, art design, sound and overall presentation are terrific. Gameplay is also pretty great, but it's often buggy or behaves in unexpected ways, like shots going clear through your meat shield even when hitting dead-on. Game froze on me on the "kill them all" level, too.

blobo27 Apr 2021, 14:24

Incredibly done! Seriously great work all around. I love every level I played, and Had fun figuring out the best way to stealth my way through every room. And my goodness, the music slaps hard! Fantastic work!

My only complaint is that I crashed rather deep into my playthrough. Not sure what happened exactly... I was holding a guy, I dropped him so I could pick up another guy, but accidentally picked him back up shortly after dropping him. Anyway, here was the last frame of my heroic adventure. Great game!

AltTabber27 Apr 2021, 14:27

Great game! Thanks For the Experience)

Game is lagging after you fastly grab corpse multiple times. But is not a problem actually)

DivFord27 Apr 2021, 14:27

I love the main mechanic. The way you can hide by using the same faction, but can only shoot by using a different faction makes for really interesting choices.

It froze on me, and I didn't feel like playing through again, but I hope I'll be able to play it again after the bugs are ironed out.

frokes27 Apr 2021, 14:35

Great mechanics and overall impressive polish! The game did however freeze twice on me (web version, chrome) once after death and once totally randomly on lv 5 so I didn't get to expirience the entire game.

Sieber221027 Apr 2021, 16:14

The game was great fun. Had a blast using the disguises to get through the levels and tricking the enemies. The different factions was also a cool puzzle additive.
The only issue I experienced in my playthrough was if I rushed the door I was able to get through even after death on some levels.

Aditya Kumar27 Apr 2021, 16:30

Fantastic game and great level of polish! Sometimes during an LD I encounter games that I'd still consider good even if I didn't know they were mage under a time crunch. This is one of those games. The body mechanic is sufficiently fleshed out to provide interesting gameplay, sneaking around two factions adds a lot of depth to levels, and the art and music tie everything together incredibly well! I don't know if it was intentional, but the intense levels punctuated by the elevator sequences was quite funny. So overall, fantastic, one of my favorite games so far!

OS_Gaming27 Apr 2021, 16:31

I have fixed the bug concerning level 5, shooting after the cutscene has played, enemies shooting you from far across the screen, and a bug with one of the audio files.
Play beyond level 5 to your hearts content.

Eugenik27 Apr 2021, 16:56

Good game for the small amout of time you had !!!!.

musicman65527 Apr 2021, 17:21

Real neat concept, smooth gameplay. Overall really cool for that amount of time. Some things could prob be smoothed out a little, maybe an option to skip straight out of those elevator cutscenes since they start to get repetitive. Overall this has a whole lot of potential for future, especially the artwork as well.

Niall_Chandler27 Apr 2021, 21:27

Awesome game! The music was a bit laggy for me for some reason, but otherwise good stuff!

Lomna28 Apr 2021, 02:44

The level in which we can see blue and red guys fighting telling us that they are enemies and we can't disguise as the other faction to avoid conflict without a tutorial was genius. :thumbsup_tone3:

Ismael Rodriguez28 Apr 2021, 03:47

Very nice! I had some trouble with enemies attacking before I could see them, or hiding around corners that made attacking impossible, but overall this is a great entry. I especially liked using the bodies to blend in, or as a source of ammo for attack. The war between factions was dope.

There was the 1 floor where you get a bunch of blue bodies to fight the red brawler dudes, I thought that was a nice touch and it'd be cool to see some more action like that. Maybe I missed it but all of them fired 1 shot pistols; would be cool to have some of them with more blasty-blast guns like shotguns or lazers! (jam problems lol)

I feel like the transition in music from the floors to the elevator was a little weird/jarring, but I suppose that was intentional. I did like the use of the elevator as the theme.

Overall a great entry, good job yall!

el_lisado28 Apr 2021, 14:38

Great game! Had a blast playing it. Sometimes music and controlls lagged a bit, but nothing too serious.

waltsontanaka29 Apr 2021, 04:58

Well polished, great idea and execution! The music could have more variation through stages (and, nice touch with the elevator music). Overall really nice work!

Rawb29 Apr 2021, 19:13

This game is really cool, the graphics are amazing

Roolow29 Apr 2021, 19:57

Amazing. You have invented an intriguing main mechanic which has good depth, implemented it well, designed satisfying unveiling of the nuances through the levels, and on top of that great visuals and sound. Top shelf! Thanks for making this, hope you have plans with this in the future, multi-faction stealth stuff has always interested me since that one segment in the beginning of MGS4.

chrissx21 May 2021, 00:27

Great entry. Love the tactical/stealty gameplay and visuals/animations are fantastic!

TBaudon2 May 2021, 02:40

I got some vibes from madness combat, an old series from newgrounds. Nice game, pretty polished for a jam! I had a hard tim eusing the corpse as shield thought, the bullet still could reach me.

neowhoru2 May 2021, 10:22

wow this is a ultrapolished entry. i had really fun playing it.

deepnight2 May 2021, 12:28

The art was absolutely amazing :) Good job! The stealth approach could have been a little more interesting with some extra polish & balancing but so far, it works really nicely in your entry. The biggest problem is that, without enemy "patrol paths", it was probably super hard for you to come with interesting level design situations (as they tend to get repetitive quickly). Enemy movements being chaotic, this limited approaches to "rush to the exit as quickly as possible", instead of negotiating specific movement patterns.

José Bonilla3 May 2021, 04:29

Beautiful, beautiful game, amazing stealth mechanics. I love the way you let users use corpses. Everything is amazing, easily one of the best games I've played this LD edition, even though this edition I've seen really amazing games already!

Yorsh3 May 2021, 13:14

Really nice idea. I love the two factions fighting each others and that you have to hide from both. The game is also really, really well made (some controls or enemy detection could probably be improved upon, but for a game jam it's quite perfect as it is).

I would say it falls into the very basic "each level is deeper than the last so here is the theme" which could be used to make every single game in existance fit the theme, BUT this one really emphasis the transition between the levels. It does bring something to the atmosphere and pace, so while not being the best fit to the theme I've seen, it's still nice and by far the best of this kind of take on the theme.

LittleW00D3 May 2021, 16:19

The stealth and the faction system is really good, along with the graphics and audio.

Pressing "E" to enter and exit the elevator seems unnecessary and the 30 seconds between entering and exiting the elevator is torture and was the main reason why I stopped playing after several levels.

The enemy AI needs a bit of tweaking as it feels unfair that they can aim at and instantly kill the player as soon as they drop their body shield.

Overall this is a really great entry and I'd like to see how you would improve and expand upon the idea.

Theodore4 May 2021, 11:30

Really cool game it was fun to play. Well done!

asdehielo4 May 2021, 14:06

Amazing graphics, cool mechanic, excellent mood. Needs a bit of polish tho, like sometimes bullets would go through the meat shield, or being able to walk while dead, but such small things are expected in a jam.

I didn't like the elevator ride in between levels, it took too long.

Good game overall, keep it up!

EOShadows6 May 2021, 02:16

Really good game! The graphics are amazing, as well as the music that accompanies it. The game mechanics are also well done - they are innovative and fun. I also like how the environment changes the deeper you go, indicating some satisfying progress. I think the only issues I found were that the sprite sorting could be improved, transitions took too long to initiate, and things started getting too challenging when the weaponized body I'm holding can get shot away before I can even get the enemy into view. Other than all that though the game was really good. Well done!

Edit: Forgot to mention a bug I found. It doesn't mess up the gameplay that much, though it does sort of act as a small cheat. If I'm holding a body when I get killed and don't drop it before I respond, I can essentially double the body. I still end up holding it when I walk out of the elevator, but the body is also respawned on the ground, creating a duplicate. Just wanted to bring to bug to your attention!

Lisichka7 May 2021, 07:10

It was super cool!

Euler Moises8 May 2021, 03:15

I don't really like Stealth games, but I found the mechanics of this game very interesting. Protecting yourself with the enemy's body was a cool thing to think about. A very well done game, beautiful and with a very interesting soundtrack. The correction of some small bugs and a small level level redesign (some phases are so easy that I passed without thinking) and this game will be ready for steam, for sure!

Congratulations to the whole team.

darkshadow8 May 2021, 14:52

Maybe it was the web version but all the dead bodies were spinning around like mad?

I'd have played more but the elevator loading screen took far too long.

Graphically it looks great though

tanis8 May 2021, 17:02

The elevator music!! that is so funny! :)
Very polished and actually hard. Very well done. Both the art an the music are awesome

JRevel10 May 2021, 14:22

That's quite an army you had to make this game, and that's a great game you made :)
The mechanic is really interesting and well executed, the charadesign is really cool and he pixel art is gorgeous. Music is really helping to create the ambience !
The level design is quite clever, at least for the first levels, that teach the mechanics quite well. But I think the last levels are a bit too open to really match the mechanics of the game, I often felt like I almost cheated because I ran directly to the elevator without seing the rest of the level.
Please add the possibility to throw corpses on enemies, to stun them for a small amount of time, that would be so fun !

Villanelle11 May 2021, 04:30

I actually believe I played until the last level, but wasn't able to finish this because I tried many many times and couldn't pass those enemies... But I really enjoyed the game so much that I'll give it another try tomorrow just to finish it. The suggestions I'm going to make now is for the level design actually. It begins very accurate in terms of difficulty, but there are some levels that you can pass through everyone without shooting or disguising even once. Then a few levels later, you face an enormous amount of enemies in a giant space that you still have to explore while managing to pass both groups. That's when I gave up, but all the elements of this game are so interesting that makes you keep trying even when you fail many times. The story and the mood are very well set, and the music is so nice that I want to hear this on Soundcloud if possible hahaha Thanks for such a nice entry! Great job!

ledgrealed14 Aug 2022, 06:12

Good job, thank you. 0.39 inch 3491AS led 3491AS 7-segment 3491BS display 3491BS