Contraband Crackdown

Nice entry. Is there a way to lose?

@tom-cumpsty there is.... but you would have to VERY unfortunate... I made past entries too difficult and this one VERY easy (too much really :smile: )

Nice idea but it's so buggy that it's near unplayable. Did make it through it though...

First of all, the web version at least has some major scaling issues. It doesn't really like to respond well to screen size and (maybe because of it) you get hard locked in the how to play or game over screen and have to do a full page refresh to continue. Not too fun. And zooming the page so that it the "supported" play size fits affects the positions somehow so that for example mouse clicks are misaligned a bit left and up.

Really hard to stay informed on what is fully going on. The convicts sometimes teleported around and moved even while being knocked out. Didn't really figure out how the whole losing thing happened because sometimes they got away with contraband and nothing really seemed to happen. Played again and looked at the scoring thing more closely and I guess you just lost "points" when they escape. It is only detrimental in the beginning though and later on you really can't lose anymore as you get points so much faster than they possibly can take them away from you.

Best strategy (if you could even call it that) just seemed to be to just knock everyone out periodically and try to grab the loot. And knocking them out was a bit though to "aim" and the visual seemed a bit misleading.

Same as aiming your punches, grabbing stuff was weirdly intricate as well. Sometimes I could run circles on top of item and it just refused to get picked up. And items fading out by themselves didn't really help either. The pickup sound was quite often also missing which made it harder to understand whether you picked up an item or it disappeared or what happened.

Were the drones supposed to drop the items? It looked like that most of the time but sometimes they just appeared out of nowhere.

Oh and completely missed that there was supposedly a sprint on my first play. Even though, it didn't seem to work. Oh never mind, looks like there is an invisible cooldown on it. And having the music be muted by default was a weird choice. But even having it on didn't really help much with the irritatingly monotonous and repetitive sound effects. Some more variety would have been nice.

Anyways, good job! 👍

@antti-haavikko
Thank you so much for the feedback - and you absolutely correct on all of the above.
The whole project was "restructured" about half way through... It was supposed to be locked to specifc lower resolution and then only show the "play pen", but I just could not get it to behave. This caused all sorts of weird issues especially with menues.
I also noted the teleporting - and it's one of those things I need to look in to - as this is clearly a bug.
There could be better player feedback as well.
Also with the "losing" - this is nearly impossible - once you get passed the few first contraband pickups (direct consequence of the fact that I used to make the games WAY too difficult.

In short I think most of my troubles here come down to the fact that I'm REALLY not an artist and leaned heavily in to actually practising that part a little.

Again thank you VERY much for your feedback :thumbsup:

All play your entry once I get my hands on my private PC.

:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:

Fair enough, I think it's a good idea to focus on a single aspect to hone. Mine this time was a new engine. The art itself looked pretty good in my opinion. And as you mentioned, polishing the effects and other feedback would really help sell it even better and of course make the game that much more enjoyable.

The game worked pretty well for me. I admit, I don't have a ton of skill at running around bashing everyone, but I did end up clicking a lot and things seemed to work out.

The penalty for letting a prisoner escape probably weren't high enough. But, on the other hand, I appreciated that because I was actually able to finish the game. :shrug:

It looked like different contraband gave boosts to different stats (i.e. security vs. happiness). I'm not sure I noticed any difference in the scoring though.

In the end, I think you executed well on a simple game concept. You included music (which is better than I normally do - also, what did you use to make your music?) and you even made it possible to win the game.

As "Head of Institution" I pronounce that good!

@thepelranthean Thank you for trying it out - unfortunately it's quite buggy. But good thing it didn't bother you too much. The music was made from a generator of sorts - I'm not skilled in that department :shrug:

Theres a little difference in regard to how many points is involved when you win or lose a piece of contraband. Unfortunately I didn't get around to tie any mechanics in to that mix.

:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:

Maybe I did not pay attention enough but I did not encounter any bugs in my run. Also I guess balancing a game is one of the hardest part of a jam haha. Anyway it is a quick run and I think the visuals are neat, good job on that !

Same kinda thing as said above really. It was a good idea and would have been more fun if it felt fairer. As soon as people start teleporting about it feels like you are being cheated a bit. I would have liked for a bit more clarity on the hits and pick ups too. It felt a bit hit and hope at times. All minor things. Good job

I found the game quite interesting. The mechanics were enjoyable, Keep up the good work!

The concept is good and well implemented (I did not face any issues, the game was running well on itch.io). I did not manage to finish it because at some point the prisoners started teleporting away from me which made me lost my interest. Anyway, I liked a lot the experience and the result of your entry!!! Good job!!!

The menus are very polished! Good job!

@valentinwb Good thing you didn't encounter too many bugs. I have seen the teleporters myself... and can't quite figure out why it happens. Thank you for playing :smile:

@arron-fowler Thank you for playing inspite of the teleporters :wink:

Thanks for the game, was pretty fun. I had some delays with my mouse click but found the space button was accurate. Great art style!

@aschab Thank you for playing - just did a rating on your entry as well :smile:

@deadbydeath Thank you for playing ... again SO annoying with the teleporters.... maybe I actually should go and fix this issue :shrug:

@rocket-and-blanky Thank you for trying out the menus :smile:

@str8griz Thank you very much for playing and thank you for the "praise" of the art... actually tried to pull something a bit higher than my usual developer art :rofl:

A little janky but thats a game jam!

Weirdly enough one my favourite parts was the start menu, I loved the design of it with the little mouse running back/forth.

@hcs-hades Yea ... name of the game and all that - but for me it's likely a case of "uh shiney" when I think of something new. Don't worry - I was quite happy with adding the rat as well :smile: Thanks for playing and looking at the menu :wink:

Like the graphics work, nice job!

Nice compo game! The graphics and menus are top notch! Very nice work and feels very polished. The gameplay itself is a hectic and crazy. I didn't feel like I was developing any kind of strategy, I was just running around and smashing any prisoners I got near, prioritizing anyone carrying anything first. It made for some fast and frantic gameplay, but it lacked some depth. Which I can't hold against the game too much because it is a compo game. With more time and iteration, I'd like to see some depth added to the gameplay. Maybe variety in prisoners, obstacles in levels, or powerups. Something to vary the gameplay a little bit. But overall, I thought this game was really solid and enjoyed it! Great work! Super great compo game!!!

Really cool game I had too much fun beating groups of prisoners in little piles all over the arena. Liked the graphics and sound effects. Drones were a really nice touch.

Only thing I would have liked that wasn't there was an attack animation - could have made the beatings feel way more meaty.

Also the music was an absolute banger I wish it was looping in the background the whole time. Then again I loved that I could press 'm' and jam out for a little while whenever I felt like it.

I retired as the head of the institution! The art was great, and frantically running around after the inmates was fun. As others have already pointed out, there were some bugs but they didn't really reduce my enjoyment of the game. I appreciate the audio settings too. Some commercially sold games don't have sliders like that, but you managed to make a settings menu for your timed compo entry, that's impressive!

Is there a story behind the dogos? Do they randomly enter and exit the map for aesthetic value or did you originally have a mechanic in mind for them?

The game loop sounds compelling on paper but I think the game area is too cramped for it to really shine. Everything happens so fast and in such tight quarters that it feels like a frantic button-mashing frenzy with no real thought or strategy involved. Also not a fan of how there's functionally no way to lose the game, you can only grind through it till you reach maximum rank; I quit after I hit rank 3 myself.

Thank you all for playing. @thaprofesional Really good point with the attack animation ... that would of course have heightened the sense of engagement.. but alas... Compo and all that :smile: @noobman64 Well the dogos.. aside from actually being rats :rofl: no they were just so the playing field wasn't too static... dogos.. would be something that would actually be very easily integrated in to the game play... and if I redid I would definetely include that :smile:
@ryusui thank you for playing and sorry it didn't really tickle you the right way - but hey I do get what you are saying .. and I actually thought about the gaming area when making it. One of the main issues I had was making the game fix the originally intended resolution - so the 1920x1080 was a very late addition and I actually scaled entities down to 80% as it started out worse.

I like the concept and was happy once I unmuted the music. I think issues aside you have a really cool little beat-em-up here.

I liked the graphics and overall idea !
It felt so nice to smack around some bad guys ahah
Would be nice if we could buy upgrades once in a while or if the stuff gaves us bonuses
But Really cool game ! Nice job :)

Interesting entry, I like the graphics and the game feels quite polished. Could be a little more challenging though. There also seems to be a problem with scaling, it seems that some parts of the game did not fit on the screen. Overall, good job! :D

Really cute sprite work, this game looks amazing. The concept is really fun but I did end up mashing the spacebar for the better part of the game. It's frantic but manageable, which is good. I guess my main critique is it seems like the game is missing a little bit of feedback on whether you've successfully used the baton or hit something with it. But I really enjoyed progressing through the ranks!