draknek 2011-08-22 22:19
Spotlight/buildings are nice. Would be nice if there was a goal or something to aim for (# of monsters woken up maybe?)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD21 → Escape from Monster City
By kevinworkman
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coolness | 3 | 26 | ||
| Community | 61 | 3.35 | ||
| Theme | 157 | 3.28 | ||
| Fun | 234 | 2.70 | ||
| Humor | 235 | 1.91 | ||
| Innovation | 246 | 2.78 | ||
| Overall | 256 | 2.85 | ||
| Graphics | 274 | 2.63 | ||
| Audio | 368 | 1.05 |
Spotlight/buildings are nice. Would be nice if there was a goal or something to aim for (# of monsters woken up maybe?)
This game was AWESOME!!!! I absolutely loved it!!! I played it for forty five minutes and still haven't beaten it... XD
Then I showed it to my 60+ year old great aunt, and she played for half an hour, then my brother, etc... this is my favorite so far! Great little game! With some sound and music, would be perfect. :)
In all honesty, this game is ridiculously fun! I can't stop playing it! What are your post-mortem plans for it?
Bloodyaugust : Wait ... What ? Are you serious ?
I played the game for 1 minute, and it sucks.
Have you gotten into it? Beaten it? It rox! XD
Draknek: Thanks, and you're absolutely right. I started implementing a few different "win scenarios", such as giving the city a boundary, or recording the time or distance walked, but nothing felt quite right. And given the time constraints, I didn't want to implement something half-assed, so I left it open.
LumdumDareisCool: Sorry you feel that way! Did you play long enough to run into any monsters? What specifically do you think should be improved? And just out of curiosity, how do I play your entry?
Bloodyaugust: Thanks so much! You pretty much just made my day.
As for plans for the game after the competition, I suppose that depends on what kinds of ratings it gets. If people seem to like it, I'll spend some time fixing it up, adding an ending, etc. I'll keep you posted.
Thanks for playing!
Theme-wise this is really good in my opinion. I like the look and feel, the running works quite well. Other than that, game doesn't state the goal, doesn't give any direction (I suppose it's not possible to escape at all?). Buildings seem to be randomly generated - few times I got stuck just at the beginning.
This could use a little polish, but isn't that bad.
@LumdumDareisCool: It certainly doesn't "suck", in my opinion. There are lots of bad/mediocre games in the compo and this isn't one of them. It just feels a little unfinished.
Thanks marudziik! The title screen does say that you're trying to escape the city, and I tried to keep the text to a minimum, but even so, people tend to click through text descriptions. So maybe I should have added a short one-liner at the start of the game, or as the game progresses?
And yeah, the game goes on forever, and the building/monster respawn algorithms leave much to be desired. I plan on fixing both when the contest is over.
But hey, really good but unfinished is pretty much the best I can hope for in 12 hours! Thanks again for playing!
Great work with the game, played on linux and didn't hear any sounds. The game is funny, however, is there any way to escape from the from the monsters city?
Awesome that it works on Linux- which version did you use? And there are no sounds, so I'd be worried if you did hear anything! And, sadly, there is no way to actually get out of the city- that will come in the post-competition version. Thanks so much for playing!
Its kind of entertaining, however without a real goal (I guess there is not exit, as I went far without any in sight) it seems unfinished.
Also, some of the monsters are placed withing the buildings, and even if they were awakened, they couldn't move at all because of the collision system.
Yeah, the game doesn't really have an end- for now, it's mostly a "see how long you can survive while escaping the monsters" game.
And I know about the monsters spawning inside buildings, another thing I couldn't quite get to in time.
Both of those things will be fixed after the competition! Thanks for playing!
Not bad, I run far enough and the game just frost!! :) you got some bug. Still.. a goal won't be bad, and maybe a bigger area of sight.
Yeah, there's definitely a bug that will freeze the game (it's not exactly common, but it's common enough to be noticed by a few people). I realized the bug about an hour after submitting, doh!
I'd definitely like to see an end game for this and some bassy slow music would add about 10x more atmosphere... maybe with some horrific violins when the eyes go red (thinking witch from Left4Dead here)...
Fun game though and I had fun running through the streets with monsters tailing me.
Thanks! I think you're absolutely right- I'm not usually big on sound (I usually play games muted, listening to other music), but I think some mood music would go with the mood lighting pretty well. I'm definitely making a post-competition version, and I'll shoot to add that to the list of enhancements. Thanks again for playing (and for the hilarious video)!
This is fun! especially the panic-moment right after you are spotted :-)
Not having audio was kind off a let down but otherwise good work. I also agree there should be some kind off goal to keep thing moving along.
A fun idea, but to be honest without a win scenario it's hard to play for more than a few minutes. Also the difficulty is a little bit to extreme. It's quite possible to end up with every path blocked by a monster and that just makes it feel like a waste of time. Excellent graphics for 12 hours work though!
i liked the perspective, and it was fun to play!
Thanks to everyone for playing!
Matthias- Awesome, that's exactly what I was going for!
Wally- Yeah, the next version will definitely have a goal, and hopefully it will also have sound.
Mjiig- I'm pretty okay with it being playable for a few minutes! :D
angrygeometry- Thanks so much! I'm also playing with different perspectives for the next version.
This might be my favorite entry. I love the simple gameplay and controls, and the fact that the light is an actual gameplay element (not just atmosphere).
Totally reminded me of the movie "I am Legend". Only thing lacking was the dog! My only complaint goes regarding the lack of some visual feedback on how close could the avatar approach a monster. Despite that, fun has been had, and we trully loved the top down 3D building effect!
Orz- Wow, thanks a lot! That makes my night (although now somebody will inevitably argue that it's the worst game ever, haha).
Make A Game- Haha, thanks, that's pretty much exactly the feeling I was going for- creeping around corners and not knowing when something was going to pop out at you. I'm thinking of actually making the sounds tell you how close you can get- maybe something like a heart beat or slow music that gets faster as you get closer to a monster. That's just an idea though. Also, thanks for appreciating the 3D building effect, that's pretty much the first thing that popped into my head when I thought of this game.
Again, thanks everyone so much for playing and commenting!
Very nice graphics. I loved the way the buildings had parallax. Could have used some spooky music. And maybe some signs or something. I never did find the exit.
Great entry!
Neat idea. And it even is 3D, which I didn't notice at first try. I was wondering about the strange parallax scrolling of the rectangles ;).
With some fitting music and sound this would be very thrilling.
Thanks guys, I agree with all of that. I'm thinking of adding a "warmer/colder" mechanism to help you find the exit (guess I should add an exit, too). I'm looking into sounds and music, too.
This was my first time messing with 3D, and even though it's just cubes and not actually 3D, I'm pleased with the effect.
Shame it's a bit unfinished - It's nice to see a level layout that's not just a tilemap, and something 3D that's not done in Unity. And the steering-based controls make it a bit different. But with no clear goal or scoring system, it didn't hold my attention for long.
That's understandable. I'll be releasing a more polished version as soon as I get time after the competition. Do you have any ideas about what kinds of things would keep your attention longer? Thanks for playing!