FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD29 → Maniac PengMaku!!

Maniac PengMaku!!

By spotco

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness1100
Fun643.83
Humor1653.25
Overall1763.63
Graphics3023.59
Audio3043.16
Mood3153.28
Theme4323.40
Innovation5773.04

Comments

trueyomic 2014-04-28 04:01

Pretty fun game. The only beef I have with it is that it is too hard to control. I got far into the child penguin stage before I died and gave up. It would have been 10x better with WASD + mouse controls.

spotco 2014-04-28 05:20

Thanks! I'll probably add that if I work on it some more (kinda want to add a "challenge" mode, and I'll put it up on FGL).

reinkout 2014-04-28 07:56

Great graphics! The controls are a bit tough. Other than that, i liked it :)

spierek 2014-04-28 07:57

Neat, though steering and firing at the same time is hard. One thing that bugged me is that drop rate for 1UPs is too high - during a single round I could easily get like 5 lives before dying.

dustystylus 2014-04-28 07:59

Agreed with trueyomic, a beautiful game though! Alas, my reaction times don't get any faster as I get older. An 'old farts' mode would be welcome. :D

mihic_ts 2014-04-28 08:02

It's really fun, I like it!

halfmage 2014-04-28 08:02

Well done! I really enjoyed it to play this game

skywolf 2014-04-28 08:10

Penguins that shoot whatever that is, you sir, win the internet :P

monaarc 2014-04-28 10:56

I'm a JellyFish Killer !!! Cool game, the controls are juste a bit hard

nnoel 2014-04-29 00:16

Really fun game. Like others have said, the movement is difficult to master. Needs a focus button.

pinktreeleaf 2014-04-29 06:24

Loving this game. can't say it's too complex, but the turning feels right, the graphics have a minor realism to it; i guess its the shading. The audio is fitting.

spotco 2014-04-29 10:30

Thanks! The audio turned out surprisingly well for being 100% autotracker.py (which I discovered 2 hours before the deadline...)

jonochrome 2014-04-29 10:57

Free-range bullet hell starring a penguin. I don't even. I like how the gameplay feels even though I don't have the skills to play this game well.

popogames 2014-04-29 11:12

Nice game. Took some time to master the controls, but the game play is really nice. The music doesn't fit the theme though.

tomvert 2014-04-29 11:27

Nice simple game, I loved giving all the fish.

blokatt 2014-04-29 13:33

I loved everything about this one.
Well done!

pinktreeleaf 2014-04-29 14:58

Your profile is Gogo from Final Fantasy 6. Awesome!

bvanschooten 2014-04-29 17:56

One of the best games I've played yet! I would have liked to see more colour in the enemies, and pressing 'z' 120 times when giving the fish seems a little pointless. But other than that, great fun!

stvr 2014-04-29 18:32

Aww! Penguins are rad. Very simple, but I did like that there was a low punishment for failure, with a "game over" only resulting in a level restart and no serious penalty before that.

noorstudios 2014-04-29 20:25

I have a soft spot for penguin games =) This was a lot of fun, good job!

vandash 2014-04-29 22:36

Nice game. If you lose all your fish when you die, then you've got a nice risk/reward mechanic, what with being able to go up at any time. Good job!

namuol 2014-04-29 23:52

Played to completion! Being a penguin is hard. Great job!

savethejets1 2014-04-30 04:05

Fun Simple game!

01010111 2014-04-30 05:12

penguin bullet hell? this is awesome :D love the way you can return to the title screen.

strd6 2014-04-30 06:43

Crazy and fast paced! I got a little bored of just spinnig in circles and shooting though.

jrap 2014-04-30 06:44

ITS'S AN ANTARCTIC SHMUP

solifuge 2014-04-30 07:42

Hi, this is Vector from the Victory Garden team! (posting under Solifuge's account)

Man, I love a cute danmaku game. The idea is great, it's adorable, I like the pace. Touhou controls are fine, though the penguin rotates in a way that's difficult to maneuver. Music and SFX are a bit unbalanced, too, while the backing track didn't quite seem to suit your mood.

Thing is, though, I can't really understand why I was collecting fish--I got to 46/25 and nothing in particular happened (I'm looking at the comments below--it seems that you're supposed to feed the penguin on the surface, but there's no indicator that you'd be able to do that).

Pre-post edit:

Okay, I went back and played a bit longer, getting to the baby penguin level, which I probably played about 5 times. Most of the jellyfish are clustered on the edge of the screen, hence most of the fish and powerups they spit out, and a hell of a lot of bullets. However, you have an ocean current there. Getting blown into danmaku over and over again was really frustrating, so I'd say the number one thing is, for this adorable game--do something else about the edges, perhaps? Otherwise, I love the theme, the general setup, the concept. I got pretty involved in playing! So, thank you for the experience.

x1212 2014-04-30 08:18

Yay, I always wanted to play a game with whale-hunting pingus :D
Great audio and storytelling (I consider this growing the child thing a story).

degtyarev 2014-04-30 09:29

A Great take on bullethell shooters! Controlls are not as good as they should be for a game of this type, but overall the game is pretty fun.

jeffalisk 2014-04-30 09:40

Man that second level was tough, but helping the penguin to build his family was the perfect incentive to keep going right to the end. There was no way I was going to let the baby penguin down!

Really enjoyed that. Great job. If you could port this to the Vita and add twin stick controls, I would 100% buy it. :)

madflame991 2014-04-30 09:47

+ fun and simple
+ challenging levels, with a nice story (life's tough if you're a penguin mom)
- gathering large amounts of fish gets tedious after a while

rylgh 2014-04-30 09:52

realllyyyy liked this. good energy system, diagonal spray shots took skill, liked the little beating heart hitbox.
didn't understand why bullet-time was in there though (seemed unlimited?) so i just didn't use it.
also think it'd be good if your dash could hurt enemies (either that or you die touching them, felt weird just dashing into them and nothing happening)

dsoft20 2014-04-30 09:56

Nice entry :D , great graphics.

zkenshin 2014-05-01 02:21

Cute game, and neat idea. :)

jupiter_hadley 2014-05-01 18:19

Really cute, fun game! I included your game in part 6 of my Ludum Dare compilation video series! http://youtu.be/K5ATRciKj24

thingostudios 2014-05-02 02:24

I found this one hilarious. The giant fish that fired out huge blasts of energy like a Megaman enemy made me laugh much, much harder than I should have. Good music. Very enjoyable game play, if not a bit repetitive.

thorig 2014-05-02 10:42

Nice game, the controls are fine.

paperblurt 2014-05-03 09:22

Hey I mean penguins are always penguins.

Like the animations...

dector 2014-05-03 14:26

Cool graphics. And challenging game.

ehtd 2014-05-03 17:23

I really like bullet hell games, just my type of game to play after work. Good job!

donovanwu 2014-05-03 18:44

After I know the dash trick the game feels easier. While I used to think the game is hard, now I find the level difficulty balance is very well done and challenges players in a good way!

curiousexpedition 2014-05-03 20:09

Holy cow this is the penguin shmup I never knew I wanted! Really nice idea with guiding the player along trough the different stages.

petey123567 2014-05-04 06:40

Solid entry! Protip: Z and Y are switched on European keyboards - best to sample both.

oddly-shaped-pixels 2014-05-04 10:54

Super polished controls and gameplay. The persistence and seeing your family grow is a super idea! Great job!

hyouko 2014-05-04 16:09

Fun, and it has plot progression (of a sort)! The hitbox feels a bit big for a typical danmaku game, which makes it pretty hard to dodge some of the burst attacks.

spotco 2014-05-05 00:18

You're supposed to use the "dash" button to get out of the hairiest situations (you can dash to destroy bullets). It's mentioned in the controls popup, but in retrospect should have made a in-game text popup to make sure it wasn't missable.

The game's probably pretty damn hard without it!

lemmingsurvivor 2014-05-06 14:02

Controls are a bit floaty - which makes sense, but makes it hard to squeeze through gaps. Felt like more of a problem with the mouse controls, actually - keyboard ended up being easier to me.

The surfacing mechanic puts a nice spin to the idea, and takes away a lot of the frustration.

Good work.

maesk 2014-05-11 20:50

Great game! I couldnt stop until I finished it! (with a joypad, it was harder with a keyboard)

It is addictive, it has a good mechanic, and it has penguins! What else could it need? :P

king_mew 2014-05-12 02:08

Fun game! It got a bit boring after a while. Solid gameplay and great graphics though!

udo 2014-05-13 19:02

That was fun! At first I walked up to the other penguin who said "click" but I was empty. Maybe it should say something else in that case... Anyway, good work!

actionremix 2014-05-14 12:42

Whew, I beat it! The penguin seemed to be magnetized to a random direction - this increased the difficulty tremendously. Cute level transition.

ohsqueezy 2014-05-14 16:31

Go to the surface, feed the baby, dive back into another maniacal killing spree!!

nanolotl 2014-05-17 02:11

Quite a fun Danmaku game. The controls when near the edge of the screen felt really weird though.