Ludum Dare #56compo

Gossamer Glade

by deepfreeze

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.10

Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.40

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.88

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.50

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.20

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.60

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.00

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.25

City Builder (In theory; In practice, extremely debatable!) + Shmup!

WARNING: HTML5 VERSION IS PRETTY MUCH UNTESTED!
DOES NOT SEEM TO WORK PROPERLY!
"Will try and fix it when I wake up". - 10/6/2024

Due to a lack of time, there is no tutorial, and upgrade requirements are not in the UI.
Also extremely poor testing as I had to cram a bunch of stuff in the last minute.
Boss is very much unfinished. Boss drops nectar, which is needed to upgrade the tree to win.

Options are likely broken, sound options definitely are.

Default controls: Z to shoot/select. Arrow Keys to move or select.
Supports controllers. I have no clue what the default controls are offhand. In theory rebindable, in practice, not tested enough.

UPGRADE REQUIREMENTS:

Tree: 1 Nectar (Acquirable from the boss)
Weapon: 10 Chitin per upgrade, and an additional 10 chitin for each upgrade beyond that.
Armor: 50 chitin per upgrade, and an additional 50 chitin for each upgrade beyond that.
Recruit: 20 wood, 5 chitin, and additionally 20 wood and chitin for each upgrade beyond that.
Heal: 1 Mushroom, and an additional mushroom per heal used.

If population runs out, game over. This is however completely unimplemented. Thus this is on the honor system.

PATCH NOTES:
v0.1.0
Fixed Mushroom crash and various mushroom related bugs.
Population actually eats the meat now.
Population Grows each day.
Boss escape fixed. (Fly to the top of the screen to escape the boss; works after the boss is dead too.)
Buying upgrades actually subtracts the materials.
Dying actually subtracts a hunter as intended.
Ending Background Fixed.
Pausing Allowed in City and Ending (And thus able to get to the main menu from the ending; This will not work in HTML5 due to a GMS2 bug.

Known Issues:
Armor will purchase a weapon instead.
HTML5 version will crash if attempting to buy armor. Various crashes and bugs in HTML5.
Boss remains boring, unfortunately. (Unable to fix for the jam as that would require new assets and a fair amount of code)

v0.1.0c
Upgrade requirements now in UI
Armor costs 25 Chitin now
HTML5 Armor upgrade crash fixed
Various Bug fixes
Stag beetle HP reduced slightly

TOOLS:
Gamemaker Studio 2 (Engine)
Aseprite (Graphics)
Deflemask Legacy (Audio)

Tools: Aseprite, GameMaker

Comments5

LDJam user 299091author7 Oct 2024, 08:09

The city building aspects were admittedly super rushed in the last moments of the jam, so I made the requirements for the tree upgrade just require a boss kill. The initial plan was to need various items, as well as population requirements to upgrade the tree (But Unfortunately, building houses had to get cut due to time constraints), with the final upgrade needing the nectar, but time ran out, so I had to simplify the tree. The boss only having a singular attack was also a victim of time. I'm still getting used to HTML5 exports and I struggle with debugging them. The windows version should be much more stable.

LDJam user 2434897 Oct 2024, 08:10

Amazing game, I love the concept so much, will you be making a post-compo version to fix some of the bugs/issues?

LDJam user 299091author7 Oct 2024, 08:21

Yeah, I plan on fixing it up a bit post-compo. The main plan is to implement the city building a bit more as intended, with the UI actually telling you what's going on, as well as making the boss challenging, as the top priorities besides bug fixes.

LDJam user 299091author7 Oct 2024, 22:32

@bitluderrb7804fr @ellaris Ok the HTML5 armor upgrade crash should be fixed. (Crash was due to a typo, but only affected the HTML5 version, which is why I missed it.)

@tuism Yeah, time got the better of me; I tried to chase two hares and caught neither, and it shows. Xevious-style ground attacks might be a good idea for a future, post-jam build, as well as some much-needed variation.

LDJam user 299091author24 Oct 2024, 04:39

After giving it a lot of thought, I've chosen to halt development of this game after the next patch (which will make the boss actually not be exceedingly boring). I absolutely overscoped, combined with a slow first day, lead me to make some poor game design decisions, which cannot be easily rectified by minor tweaks, and it needs a whole rebuild from the ground up. I am currently working on other projects at this time, which I should put more focus on. Thus it will likely be a few years before I come back to this concept. I earnestly believe there is a good concept in here, but I executed it quite poorly.

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