Ludum Dare #51compo

Catacombs 51

by csnxs

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.34

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.24

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.92

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.47

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.84

Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.58

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.69

A 2D top-down shooter with a new level procedurally generated every ten seconds. Each level is harder than the last, so grab weapons and power-ups to progress, and go for the high score!

Created using GameMaker Studio 2 and (of course) sfxr.

Mouse and keyboard are required. The web version requires WebGL. The desktop versions perform significantly better than the web version. Additionally, the desktop versions persists your high-score, and even writes your run history out as .ini files (I wanted to implement a history viewer, but I ran out of time...)

Help is provided in-game from the main menu.

itch.io page (include alternate web player and downloads): https://drinkybird.itch.io/catacombs-51

Source code: https://github.com/DrinkyBird/catacombs51

v1.0.2 was uploaded, hopefully reducing the amount of empty levels generated, and (on desktop only) adding the run history screen.

The original versions are still available (v1.0.1 was a Linux-only reupload to fix weird build bugs.)

Genres: shooter

Tools: GameMaker, sfxr

Comments10

LDJam user 1790403 Oct 2022, 01:04

This was a fun foundation for a game. I feel like you spent a little too much time and instruction on the weapon-switching mechanic (which honestly felt superfluous), but the graphics/shading and the top-down gameplay worked really well.

Ben Parisi3 Oct 2022, 01:32

I like the Concept. I wish that I had longer than ten seconds to explore each level haha. The lighting worked really well with the pixel art.

Henrik Ganard3 Oct 2022, 11:24

I am not agreeing with @mrwarranty and @ben-parisi, the thing I liked most with the game was the short round-time and the powerups. It made me urgent to look for powerups and decide if I should attack, run for an upgrade or just run away and choose another battle.
I liked the game. Thank you for making it.

BridgeOnAStick3 Oct 2022, 11:30

I like that you did not necessarily have to kill every enemy, but just the upgrades are enough to get. Moving right past enemies to get the upgrade and then peace out worked best for me. I had a level which was really small and had no upgrades in it, but I guess that's what you get with procedural generation. Also felt like I got instakilled with the shooting enemies, one shot on a level was sometimes all it took to take me out.

csnxsauthor3 Oct 2022, 12:23

Yeah, sometimes it generates small levels, as an artefact of the level generation. Now that I think about it, I might know how to fix (or at least alleviate) that, though it'd probably make generation take longer.

The gun zombies are a bit unfair I'll admit, especially if they spawn with a shotgun. If I had more time I would've balanced the enemies a bit better...

Serxiolas4 Oct 2022, 20:00

Works fine! Fun to play and re-play!

red-stake5 Oct 2022, 09:49

I really enjoy the foundation of this, and there's so many cool things you could do with this! I love top down shooters too, so I played this for quite a bit. I think everyone's ideas on the 10-second theme are interesting - I agree that forced you to make snap decisions, which I liked, but there often wasn't enough time to interact - like one level I was stuck in a corridor and couldn't explore at all. Maybe if the level were a tiny bit more open with less walls, or they were smaller, they'd really fit the 10-second time better. Just a thought.

Overall, I really liked it, and would play more if you decided to expand it!

bentglasstube15 Oct 2022, 13:52

I played this one for a long time, so great work on making an engaging game. I really enjoyed the concept and the variety of weapons. It's not really clear to me how the difficulty ramps up each level, but it seemed like almost every time I died it was because I got one-shot by the shooting enemies, so that was a little frustrating. Because it's such a fast paced game, an option to pause or waiting for a key press to start each level might have been nice to have a break sometimes. The empty levels were actually nice for this reason, although that did mean I wasn't getting any upgrades that level. Overall a really cool idea that would be a fun game with a little more polish.

Vykri15 Oct 2022, 21:12

Hey, thanks for making the game! I played through it and recorded my thoughts.

nanolotl16 Oct 2022, 06:07

I had fun with this. Definitely an interesting core gameplay loop.

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