FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD28 → Hammer Control

Hammer Control

By pkenney

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness1100
Theme1623.51
Fun1783.39
Overall2383.34
Innovation2483.28
Humor3202.69
Graphics4463.02
Audio5312.43
Mood5882.63

Comments

silentbunny 2013-12-16 04:18

snakes dead body still kills, other than that nice!

zconnelly13 2013-12-16 04:21

Wow! So freaking good. I loved this game. I just yelled "double kill" and probably woke up my roommate. But seriously amazing tho. I would love a little "success!" sound effect to play when i beat a level. But other than that truly good work.

The controls were a little unintuitive at first, but I quickly learned to love them :)

ratboy2713 2013-12-16 04:21

Love the concept. Really wish I had the ability to stand still while throwing. Feel I walked into people I should have hit. Love the little enemies, adorable.

madlee 2013-12-16 04:21

Very fun. The hardest thing about it is that it if pretty difficult to stay in one spot (at least for me), so there were a bunch of times when i accidentally ran into enemies. That could just be a side effect of playing on a trackpad though. Cool game!

archaeometrician 2013-12-16 04:21

Hammer time ;) Cool game, great use of the theme ! I died a little too much throwing that hammer :P

jellycakes 2013-12-16 04:22

Really liked it. Simple idea, nicely executed. I couldn't make it past level 14 though, oh well. Nice work.

jzludum 2013-12-16 04:24

It took me a while to realize the levels were randomly generated. Its interesting to see procedurally generated content without permadeath. Very interesting

elforama 2013-12-16 06:27

Had fun with your game. Although when I first won a few times I kept thinking I died since it went to the next level so abruptly.

parapup 2013-12-16 08:56

Simple fun gameplay with cute ai and sprites this is something to be proud of.

burlapjack 2013-12-17 03:40

Simple, yet so fun! I made it to level 15!

makatak 2013-12-17 03:53

Nice game, fun mechanic, and I loved the enemy variety!

postmodestie 2013-12-17 21:40

Reminds me somehow of Gauntlet..

zkenshin 2013-12-18 03:55

Some interesting things here, keep at it!

coinflipgames 2013-12-18 03:58

Pretty good game. I didn't really care for the controls though. It was difficult to always be moving to wherever you wanted to aim. Great job though!

scottrick 2013-12-18 04:40

Got to level 19! Nice work!

acp_ld 2013-12-18 04:40

good entry, i didn't like the controls but thats not against the quality of the game, just think this kind of game would work better with keyboard controls and mouse to aim and shoot or twin stick

johnfn 2013-12-18 04:45

This is a really fun entry with a nice take on the theme. You know what it needs though? COMBO COUNTERS. My god, if this game had combo counters I would probably play it for the rest of my life. It's still good though :)

pkenney 2013-12-18 05:15

johnfn - Yes! Combo counters with a little popup at the bottom saying "Bank Shot!" and "Triple Kill!!" were the next thing I was implementing if I had time... I really regretted cutting that feature. That and a boss fight of some kind.

To everyone saying they couldn't stand still and aim:

Standing still while aiming is absolutely essential, and it is supported. No wonder you are frustrated, that sucks if it didn't work for you.

When you are not sprinting, there is a "dead zone" around the man where the mouse will make him aim but not make him move. Try holding the pointer closer to him... this dead zone is about 1.5x his shoulder span. I apologize that this didn't simply work out without you even thinking about it, that's on me.

Perhaps people are playing with the mouse further away from the man than I expected. I'm afraid that's not optimal, given how I coded it.

Note that while sprinting this dead zone contracts greatly, but still should allow aiming without moving.

I could be wrong, but I suspect those of you who were keeping the mouse pointer quite far from the man may not realize how nimble he can be. Escaping death by stepping into a tiny safe space based on a lightning-fast decision is the only way to survive the later levels.

This game gets pretty ridiculous by the time you get to level 30!

thatguy 2013-12-18 17:38

Yup, combo counters would turn this fun game into an amazing game! Great work!

acp_ld 2013-12-18 17:55

maybe draw a circle showing the radius of the dead zone

nazariglez 2013-12-18 18:08

Nice Game! reminds me Thor! xD, good physics and audio effects.

occash 2013-12-18 18:11

Good game)but I was very cinfused because of the sudden movement of the mouse

evilindiegames 2013-12-18 20:09

I like it, fun, fun, fun :)

ninjacharlie 2013-12-18 20:13

Nice mechanics. It was kinda hard to tell whether you died, or whether you won a screen, because there was no message telling you whether you won or not. Also, it would have been nice to see the hammer bounce around more than it did. Other than that, nice job :)

keithe 2013-12-18 20:51

cool game. really good use of the theme. Liked that the controls were simple but felt that they were a little unresponsive at times which got me killed. Fun getting ricochet kills! Great job!

ganbaregames 2013-12-19 02:13

This is actually really good. At least it's not totally broken like some of the other games I've played.

30dogs 2013-12-19 03:24

Really fun and the graphics are slick. It's a lot like my game, except... well-designed :)

Great work.

simianlogic 2013-12-19 03:37

This is awesome! I would prefer WASD + Mouse, but it's fun even with a little bit of wonk in the controls. Could definitely see this getting expanded out into a big game.

beavlgames 2013-12-19 06:12

I liked this one. “Thor” mechanics are cool and despite controls sometimes being really annoying I played this game a lot. Congrats, Hammer Control is fun!

mrvanderpants 2013-12-19 08:38

I really loved the throwing hamer mechanic of this game. But try to put in a imple fade to black transition between the levels. It gives a more smoother feel to the game

recursor 2013-12-19 21:18

haha very cool. This is a neat little game that would translate well to mobile.

reverend-speed 2013-12-19 23:02

Lovely little game - great use of basic art assets! Controls are a little awkward, but it's a great feat to fit so much on a basic mouse! Loved the creature designs and the variety of movement/attacks. Great work!

several 2013-12-21 05:51

Definitely one of the most fun entries I've played so far. The random generation keeps things varied even if you keep dying, and sometimes makes it easier to reach the next level. And the fact that the level doesn't go down is also pretty great--you can keep playing at a level of difficulty that's actually challenging, rather than slogging through the easy stuff again. Great job, too, on the variation in enemy movement/behavior patterns (like the snake & spider).

You should really consider continuing development on this.

Some possible improvements:

- Use Screen.lockCursor (look it up in the Unity documentation, if you haven't already, as there's some extra details for doing it right in the webplayer or windowed modes). I suppose you'd have to make your own cursor to replace the system one, and then make sure you take the dead zone into account, but it's better than accidentally clicking out of the window or closing it.

- Consider adding the ability to hold shift (or any large-ish button, really) to stay still, as it's pretty easy to mouse too far and move when you just want to turn around or aim quickly.

- Provide more audio feedback for winning or dying--something still very short, but recognizable. Maybe just a coin-collection-style 'pling' sound on success would cover it.

- Perhaps provide some reason for starting the next round without hammer in hand. (Maybe the ground is falling out from under the character, and he's landing on a new level each time. Maybe time is passing--colors could change each round, perhaps with varying day/night/season details. Or there could be different locations, I guess.)

- Adding even more enemy types would be nice.

- Having non-enemy, non-wall things to hit could also be fun. Maybe something that creates a briefly fatal area (e.g. explodes) & flings your hammer back. Maybe smashable obstacles that only ghosts can pass through (until they're smashed, anyway).

Heh. I could probably keep going on. There's a lot of ways this could expand. The rapid succession of bite-sized battles in a small space with bouncing is a great kernel to build on.

maple 2013-12-21 10:08

Nice foundation and graphics. You have a pretty solid game here, though I will say that the enemies became repetitive after a while. Also, while aiming the cursor close to the character in the dead-zone works, I personally think it would have been better if you eliminated the dead-zone and made it so that stand stand still unless holding right-click.

gnargle 2013-12-21 18:23

This is cool - , really like how the hammer bounces off walls.

thijsku 2013-12-23 16:54

This is a really fun game to play! I love that the hammer bounces off the wall, because you can make multiple kills at once that way. :) The graphics are really simplistic and I like it a lot!

The controls feels a bit clunky in the beginning, but the player gets used to it. However, I would love the ability to stand still.

And last but not least, I miss a little juiciness. By example, you can shake the screen when you're hitting someone, or you can add (exaggerated) particles to the screen. This will hugely improve the experience of playing the game! I'd recommend you to watch this video, which talks a bit about juiciness in a game: http://goo.gl/N7RfKV

diptoman 2013-12-24 06:34

Simple and enjoyable, nicely done. Had some problems retrieving the hammer from a dead snake's body, it could kill. The random generation of enemies was a nice feature, and there were many different types of enemies, so that's a good point.

somepx 2013-12-24 09:03

Controls are hard to master, an original entry - I liked this!

wisegamer 2013-12-24 16:46

It needed to be less hard .. and also to know how much level it there. Other than that it is a cool game.

anvoz 2013-12-25 15:44

Really fun to play. I love your pixel monsters.

I got to level 21 and stopped because my hand was quite tired. The game speed was too fast so I just threw the hammer randomly. Also having to run around and throw hammer just with mouse was quite hard. Maybe it would be better if you allowed to control the movement by keyboard.

frederickk 2013-12-30 05:43

Hey! We both really had similar ideas!
I loved the presentation, the guy moving at the start screen already teaches you how to play the game, also, kudos for that, simple and easy to understand, I liked a lot that.
Good job!

bradleysmith 2014-01-04 20:45

Controls took some getting used to but this is a pretty awesome little game once I got the hang of it. :) Nice work for 48 hours. :D

gatechgrad 2014-01-06 02:25

Nice little game. The hammer throwing mechanic works well. I liked the snake movements as well.