Ludum Dare #50compo

Department of Fire Deferral

by remco

Overall★★★★★★★★★★2.98

Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.70

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.23

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.61

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.88

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.11

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.27

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.89

- (way too) EASY start immediately when the game launches (it will take a long while before the fires start)
- NORMAL? wait 90 seconds before moving in game
- CHALLENGE wait 2.5 minutes before moving in game

Run around trying to prevent burn-downs. Which will get harder and harder.
Controls WASD or arrow keys (tank controls).

Don't like this map? Press refresh! Procedural generation :-)

(Only) When moving, water spews forth from your fire-engine.
There are power-ups to (temporarily) widen the angle or lengthen the reach. (Those won't respawn.)

You lose when the burn percentage is > 50%
Try to get the best time.

Space-bar toggles an accessibility-mode.

- Burns: Grass, Wall, Bridge (will fall into water)
- Won't burn: Water, Road (it will look worse though), (Complete) Rubble (is already burned).
- Drive: Grass, Road, Bridge, Rubble
- Can't drive through: Wall, Water

Genres: action

Comments20

Thomas Higgins4 Apr 2022, 11:31

Cool idea I like the music really makes the vibe, only issue is the difficulty does not feel great to just sit and wait but sure you know that, overall well done

SimplePotential4 Apr 2022, 11:32

Some good things going on here like procedural generation of the map. Controls were extremely tough for me to use but after a while I figured it out enough to put out some fires. I'm not 100% what the bonuses were doing for me if I'm being honest. Not a bad entry, I like the overall look and I think if I could have moved using the mouse in a point and click style I probably would have enjoyed it a bit more.

EagleV4 Apr 2022, 11:36

I like the idea a lot, fits the theme perfectly. I think it would be better to have an icon or some other visual indicator of what was burning, accessible mode helps but it's still not entirely clear which shade of orange is how bad. I like how burning bridges and walls changes the routes trough the level as it goes on. And lastly maybe a bit of a faster fire spread would be interesting.

Glaikunt4 Apr 2022, 19:09

Awesome little game! I done it on easy at first without reading what you wrote. Then I played it on normal, think it would add a lot making the fires start quicker if possible. The fire effects on the tiles are really cool! Love the colour blind addition :thumbsup: Great job!

zimny115 Apr 2022, 18:20

Cool take on the theme. The art style is interesting, and the music is nice too. Great job with implementing procedural generation. I would prefer for the difficulty to go up faster on the start and to have better indication when something is burning. Besides that, good job!

ClaytonRumley6 Apr 2022, 05:00

I like your take on this theme and the procedural generation was cool...though there were places on the map I could get stuck. I thought the range of my water cannon would match the length of the water droplets emanating from my vehicle but it seemed to be much larger, even without powerups.

It would also have been nice to select a difficulty from the start which immediately puts you into a situation of fire as it took me awhile to even notice the fire spreading at first.

I really appreciate the alternate contrast view of the tiles; I found it easier to see the fire even though I have no color perception issues.

mar3k6 Apr 2022, 14:46

Nice entry I liked the tile art style, but it would be nice to have some easy way to know which tiles are a wall/collide with you and which don't. Also the terrain generation is a nice addition. Good job.

yusovv6 Apr 2022, 15:31

100% disclosure of the topic, at first the game seems very simple, but it immerses in itself and everyone wants to play more and more

Joror6 Apr 2022, 19:33

Cool little firefighting game! Frantic drive-by fireprevention is the way of the future.

As described in the description, the game felt a little bit easy when just driving around from the start.
Perhaps an escalation thing that will ramp up fiercely?

The powerups felt really powerful, and then I realized they were one-off, so welp, I used them all in one go.

The blippy music is nice and frantic, and the bitart is neat!

Jimbly7 Apr 2022, 00:51

I got to 400s and finally burnt amount reached 2%, and I was running out of power-ups, so I inevitably called it a day.

Neat game! It took me a while to get the hang of what was happening, it would have been useful if some part of the map started with some fire, so there was an initial goal and the player could see what "fire" looks like. I like the procedural generation, nicely done there! Audio was also really good, I liked the music.

LDJam user 2883227 Apr 2022, 08:03

I didn't read the comment section until after my first round, I was at 0% the whole time haha. Same thing as what other people already said, it'd be nice if you could crank up the time progressed to like 20x at the beginning so you don't have to wait. But unique concept and fun game!

sdelay7 Apr 2022, 13:29

I'm so in love with your audio, it's so cool! +1 also on the random map generation.

Schuster7 Apr 2022, 14:33

I like the idea and I've played around with doing a fire sim game using cellular automata before. It would have been nice to have a start menu to pick a difficulty and "prewarm" the fire sim.

theLudovyc7 Apr 2022, 15:36

Godot user o/ ! My burn don't increase :?

Remcoauthor7 Apr 2022, 18:52

@theludovyc Hi! Please read the text. It'll be a bit more challenging when you wait first. I messed up the difficulty curve severely.

Hawkin9 Apr 2022, 13:26

Procedural generation in a jam? And a compo, no less! Nice! It does create some interest situations, like this unreachable island. But my water stream seemed to reach across!

I do wish that things happened a little quicker. It took a good while before the burn % went up, and driving around before that, I didn't get a strong sense that I was doing any good. You know?

I think it was a really good concept for the game, and all that polishing is hard for a compo! I think it's really neat that you included an accessibility mode :)

nyxkn10 Apr 2022, 09:13

Didn't understand that anything was happening at first since the percentage doesn't go up. Only after like two minutes of running around I noticed the tiles changing color. Gameplay itself wasn't very engaging either; just mindless running around. Level generation is a cool technical feature but doesn't add much to the gameplay! Anyway, watching the tiles change color is actually quite fun when there's lots of them on fire. A simple visual cue that is very effective.

hmightypirate10 Apr 2022, 09:26

I like the idea and that you added the items. And making a procedural game in a compo is fantastic.

The oly problem I found is that it takes a lot of time for the field to burn although you do nothing to water it.

Skruffye12 Apr 2022, 13:29

I struggled quite a bit with the controls. I don't know if that was made worse by my browser doing something weird with the game, but either way, it was pretty difficult to navigate.

The idea is a good one (and I like the name) but I think the gameplay needs a little refinement. The ability to shoot water being separate from movement would have been good, maybe in a twin-stick-like fashion?

The procedural map generation gives it a lot more replay value than it would have had otherwise, even if I did get a map with what I'm pretty sure was an inaccessible section in the bottom left when I played...!

Overall, well done. :smile:

Remcoauthor21 Apr 2022, 19:19

Whatever the results, thanks for rating and commenting everyone!

I'm sorry I couldn't do the usual back-rating (and write-ups) that I usually do, work has been _really_ eating my lunch lately :sweat_smile: (the launch of Cura 5.0-BETA was today!)

Other games by @remco

★3.40

★3.37

★3.15