Apocalypse Express
Welcome to Apocalypse Express.
Voting
Please vote on my game <3
Theme
This game was written for Ludum Dare 53 with the theme: Delivery
Gameplay - Video
https://youtu.be/7JmVmq1NUqw
Review - Video
coming soon
Story
The world has gone to poop. The virus started with the odd bite and then it spread. Rapidly. In order to regain order nukes containing radioactive waste were dropped on the worst areas. Of course, it did nothing. Most of them didn't even go off. So now you have zombies running around, attacking people and as per human nature, civilisations and gangs were formed. But somebody needs to go out in the wild and find things people need then deliver it back. Work with the gang who required you to find what they need to survive. Run, dodge, and take out zombies all to find the parcels you need to deliver.
You start in a recovery base where you have been rescued and healed by a gang known as the Enforcers. They are trying to restore military order to the world. They are in dire need of supplies and since you are a famous runner (someone who can dodge duck dip dive and dodge zombies) you are asked to go out into the world once again to help them out.
Gameplay
This is an FPS game where you run around hordes of zombies to find parcels to collect and deliver. When you bring parcels back your base will upgrade to help the gang out. You have basic movement with WASD + Mouse. T for the torch. E to interact and left shift to sprint. You can press R to reload your revolver.
Developer Comments
This game has been mixed development emotionally but so much fun. The first day was really slow. The idea fluctuated over multiple ideas until halfway through the day I settled on this. The ideas kept changing because honestly, I downvoted delivery. It sounded so bad lol Plus I didn't have the right assets to do whatever idea I came up with :(
But by the second day, I was wired in. Writing blueprints out left right and centre to achieve the idea. By the third day I was writing entire sections with minimal testing and it just worked. It felt so fantastic.
What I did well
- Level designed the Synty packs into a very nice little base
- Integrated Narrative into a project and made some epic dialogue/quests
- Finally tried an FPS! I have never done guns before and it worked fantastic!
- Smashed the AI out in half the time than I did last time.
- Cracking idea for a game/story (if I do say so myself)
What I would do better next time
- Honestly, if I don't like the theme, don't do it. I was so guttered and took way too long to come up with an idea but on the flip side, I'm well happy with what I have
- Jump into new ideas, embracing them rather than avoiding them. It often works out and is much easier than previously thought.
- Add a cutscene! A game isn't a game without a cutscene IMO. But I ran out of time lol
New things I've learnt
- First-person shooting. It's super easy! Its not AAA but its good enough!
- Narrative quest and dialogue. Its fantastic!
Known bugs
None...? So far?
Comments38
My favourite moment is walking out of the camp's gate for the first time. There's zombies right in front of you scootching around and also this whole world to explore. That tension between "I can go explore" and "I need to be careful" felt so good for me.
Read through your comments and thought your use of the asset packs was really smart. Great way to get quick results, elevate the project and spend your jam time working on parts you clearly enjoyed ... rather than bashing out tons of assets.
A niggle I had with the FPS control was that the acceleration when moving feels a little sluggish. Like it would take me longer than expected to reach full walking speed. My personal preference would be to reach speed faster.
Also liked what you did with the ammo / reload indicator. Seeing it visually instead "X / Y remaining" was a nice touch.
I know what you mean about the running. It was a cross between allowing the zombies to actually get near you vs being able to get to places at a good pace. I'll note it down for next time :D
Thank you for trying my game. I'm glad you liked it :D
Thank you for playing!
I couldn't figure out why the debug stuff wouldn't go.
To my knowledge, building the game in "release mode" should have removed them :(
Sadly the weapons was the last mission! I ran out of time :(
I think the AI voices make the game stand out in a very cool way, but it takes some focus away from more the more shooter aspects of the game so they are little more glitchy and less polished.
Overall the game runs great though and the story is very engaging for a ld submission. Amazing work ! Have a great ludum dare!
The zombies were a non-threat. Seeing them there was intimidating at first but you can just stroll casually past them.
The 'Press E to talk' doing nothing once you completed the two quests seemed like a bug. It wasn't clear you have done everything.
I appreciate the Linux build.
I wanted to add up a conclusion but ran out of time :(
Gotta support us Linux people
I'll take a look at the motion blur for next time :D
A quest system, voiced NPCs, a dialogue system, NPCs walking about and shooting were all very nice things to have implemented. I almost got the feeling you plan to work on it a bit more with the scale but it could just be so the questing had a nice backdrop which it did, it felt like being in a big world!
A couple things I would suggest:
-A retry button as one time a corpse killed me because the body hadn't despawned yet and the only option was to close and relaunch the game
-The option to skip dialogue, mainly for the previous reason
This was very pleasant to play though. It made my laptop heat up like crazy but zombie killing will heat things up a bit! Great job with this!
Yeah I had plans to add multiple missions and set a world. It was all achievable until I got that ONE DREADED bug. Took a large chunk of time to fix :(
I normally go for a lose screen / main menu to restart but ran out of time.
Thank you for playing! :D
The level design is nice, and it was fun to explore. The colors are pleasant and I adore the low-poly look. Having the lines ai voice acted is a really nice touch! I had fun shooting at zombies, even though some of them... just... wouldn't... die (or rather, die again?) :laughing:
I'm not sure if I run into a bug or that was the end of available quests, but the Captain told me to come back to talk to him later (after the second delivery) and I never could. I ran around, killed stuff, returned later, and he still didn't want to talk to me.
Unfortunately I ran out of time due to a bug so didn't manage to finish it :(
Thank you for your kind words :D Glad you enjoyed it! :D
I love your comment! I'm glad you enjoyed it :D
For the logo, it was legacy. I used Unity for 10+ years and moved to Unreal only 2 years ago. Haven't gotten around to updating my logo yet haha