Arowx
Hectic!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD14 → sekhar
By sinoth
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Innovation | 44 | 3.33 | 15 | |
| Overall | 73 | 3.00 | 15 | |
| Theme | 77 | 3.20 | 15 | |
| Fun | 102 | 2.33 | 15 | |
| Audio | 55 | 2.83 | 12 | |
| Graphics | 59 | 3.27 | 15 | |
| Humor | 85 | 2.13 | 8 | |
| Polish | 95 | 2.53 | 15 | |
| Technical | 10 | 3.64 | 14 | |
| Journal | 10 | 4.13 | 8 | |
| Food | 11 | 3.57 | 7 | |
| Timelapse | 3 |
Hectic!
Well, first I agree with the control issues mentioned by mjau.
As for the game, I find the actual gameplay confusing and strange, it's not clear what you are actually supposed to do to get the spheres. But the pieces that went into assembling the game are amazing. The motion of the cubes, the x-ray vision, the collision, and the sound effect when moving are all awesome.
It's like the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. :-)
Didn't like that it grabs the mouse at the start in windowed mode, and none of the keys to ungrab etc work before the game runs .. so you can't move the window, or go fullscreen, until the game starts. Also, why ESDF? The nice thing about WASD is that it doesn't use the F key, which has that nub or whatever it is those things are called. Either have that on the middle finger (RDFG?) or don't have it at all, or it upsets the balance of the.. ok, that's somewhat hyperbolic perhaps, but still. Also I found myself automatically adjusting to WASD and having to readjust back to ESDF all the time for some reason. It's a bit weird actually, I don't play a lot of FPS games, so I didn't think I was that used to it, but apparently I am. Who knew.
Anyway, the game is .. chaotic. Collecting a few of the data spheres is no problem, but then there's always a few left that seem to be trapped inside other cubes with no way to get at them except waiting for the wall of death to close in so the spheres will clip through the cubes enough for you to get at them, but by then everything is utter chaos, you don't really have much control, and you'll be dead in a second anyway. I saw the "enter the portal" message a few times, but didn't see any portals.
I think the potential is there and this is a game I could like. It reminds me a bit of a hectic version of "My Cockpit Is Bigger Than Yours" from TIGsource's cockpit compo, which I loved, though of course in that game you navigate mostly based on sound alone, it's not hectic at all (rather the opposite), and there's no wall of death, and the atmosphere (which was a huge contribution to me liking it so much) was completely different, so it's not similar at all, really.. (Well, you collect things.)
Anyway, at the moment this one's a bit more frustrating than fun, I think, because of the control issues (for me, anyway), spheres hiding in inaccessible places, etc. Also, the movement speed is a bit on the slow side.
Kinda difficult to control: even if a data sphere is right in front of me it's maddeningly difficult to catch it.
It's a neat idea though, and the appearance of the cubes is very cool.
Finished the game on my third try.
Not bad, but not exactly a great game either. There's not much room for decision-making other than "collect the spheres inside or outside the ring first".
The audio is nice though.
Crashed for me after the intro screen:
Same error on Intel as well as GeForce FX 5500:
* CONFIG: Fullscreen off
* CONFIG: Setting windowed X-resolution to 800
* CONFIG: Setting windowed Y-resolution to 600
* CONFIG: Setting fullscreen X-resolution to 1024
* CONFIG: Setting fullscreen Y-resolution to 768
* INIT: *** begin irrKlang init
irrKlang 3D Sound Engine version 1.1.3
Using DirectSound8 driver
* INIT: *** end irrKlang init
* INIT: Trying to init FreeType... past main inits... done.
* INIT: Trying to init FreeType... past main inits... done.
* INIT: Loading textures... done.
* INIT: GLee initalized successfully
* INIT: VBO not supported
* INIT: Not totally ready for GLSL :(
* INIT: Filling vertex array... done. [0.000004s]
* init: Starting physics initalization... done. [0.001654s]
* HACK: vec_vertex: 57816, vec_normal: 57816, vec_color: 77088
* RESIZE: set window size (800,600) ... end
* INIT: Loading textures... done.
FPS: 58
FPS: 60
FPS: 62
FPS: 61
FPS: 61
FPS: 61
The whole bouncing green worm walls is a really need effect, also cool how they started to change patterns as you collected orbs, it turned into this crazy jenga-block shaped waterfall at the end.
I was unable to collect the last 2 orbs, they got stuck in something...
Because any spheres inside the ring become trapped you can fail quickly and know that you're boned, which wastes the element of time pressure.
Great use of theme, I liked the claustrophobia at the end even though I was just sitting there waiting for the time to run out.
It crashes. :(
Very interesting, both in concept and in execution. There's a strange beauty to the patterns the cubes form. I did find it hard to collect the data spheres as they moved so much faster than I did, and I think three is the most I managed to catch. Also, towards the end there was a massive framerate drop. Anyway, kudos for trying something different.
I thought the idea was neat, and liked the graphical effect of the cubes, especially the way they changed at the end.
However, I could never manage to get more than 3 orbs. The ones in the snake seemed unreachable to me. The chaos of it all meant that most of the game was filled with me unable to figure out what was going on and just sitting somewhere until the orb worked itself over to me.
The ship itself felt unfinished, and really could have used some hud elements to make it look like a cockpit or something.
Got an error =(
chandrasekhar.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.