FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD31 → Snowball Escape

Snowball Escape

By thenumberguy

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness363
Humor6692.26
Theme7303.28
Graphics8482.49
Mood9402.13
Fun9532.27
Innovation9552.08
Overall10002.32

Comments

aare 2014-12-09 20:06

I gave you 5 for the theme. Didn't liked it either :3

watercressstudios 2014-12-09 20:07

I wish there could've been more to it. It's fun, but just too simple.

zimennik 2014-12-09 20:07

Well, interesting idea, but why so strange location? on phone.

rob1221 2014-12-09 20:09

It seems too easy.

thenumberguy 2014-12-09 20:19

It took me 4 hours to think of a game with this theme, so I decided to have snowmen play a game literally on a screen. :D

alendro 2014-12-09 20:27

Seems impossible. Good job though.

ace 2014-12-09 20:29

Well, I guess the entire game is played on the screen of the phone. And the graphics are quite nice.
A bit too easy though, and slightly sudden too. Getting bombarded with snowballs the moment you press start.

awesomenuclearmonkeys 2014-12-09 20:39

The game is enjoyable for the first time but it's not really fun to play it a second time.
I have to agree with you about the theme, as we really disliked it, too. The snowman theme was a much much better candidate as a theme (IMHO).

A few more notes:
- the screen is simply a frame around the game and is IMHO a bit too small.
- put the screen more "front-facing" to the user: reduce the angle at which it's viewed.
- the top snowman drawing goes beyond the screen(!!)
- snowballs disappear a little too early, without reaching the end of the screen.
- to win it you can just stay in the central position and press fast the up key.
- this kind of games (shooting battles with another enemy) are very difficult to balance out. They are usually either too easy or too hard for the player, so try to avoid them :).

Sorry if I'm a bit too harsh with my comment. This wants to be constructive so you can improve on the next LD.

I may guess wrong, but I had the impression that you probably spent a lot of time on the background image and found yourself rushing for the game. For the next time start with a planning phase on paper. Decide what your game does and how much time you need for each feature. Delay the graphics at the end, after the game is done! :).

I also suggest you to do LD with a friend. It's much funnier than being alone :)

pht59x 2014-12-09 20:47

Probably too quick !

thenumberguy 2014-12-09 21:14

Thank you for your comment.

I had a lot of experience from the previous LD, but somehow this time I did not have as much time, didn't feel as good and also was disappointed with the theme, so for some reason I started with the graphics, even though I knew I shouldn't. So you're right, it really did take a lot longer than it should have, and in the end I almost didn't have time for coding basic gameplay.

The idea of the game is that two real, actual snowmen are playing the game on top of a real phone screen. That's why they look a bit weird, but understand that you are looking at the game at an angle, and the snowmen are standing on top of the phone itself; they are not displayed on the phone's screen. The snowballs should appear and disappear near the snowmen's hands, so it should look pretty realistic if you see the perspective. I rushed the gameplay part though, so not everything might look as good. Sorry about that.

I realised the playable area is a bit too small, but I couldn't do anything about it since I had already made most of the graphics. I tried to scale the game relatively to the browser's size, so it might look a bit worse if you have a small screen.

I know that fast pressing the up key can help win the game, but that was the last thing I had time for to fix. So take it as a small challenge to win the game without rapid pressing :)

I'm not experienced in making games, so I didn't really feel that shooting games can be unbalanced. But I'll take this into account and will probably make something new for the next LD. I will also ask my friends to join me next time. Thanks for your advice!

scam 2014-12-10 20:26

Simple game and too hard for me (does the opponent have a snowball machinegun? :). However, from the theme you get 5 points. AwesomeNuclearMonkey already pointed out most of the things I would've complained so I don't repeat them here.

indie4fun 2014-12-12 09:45

Wow, those snowmen are fast! :S

ethanwebster 2014-12-15 20:10

Fun little game. good job.

cxsquared 2014-12-18 19:16

Nice and simple fun game. Good work.

naali 2014-12-18 19:27

I felt the controlls and concept were good. Since the game was on an iOS device I was expecting the game to be a single button click, but it didn't take too long to discover what to do. I would have liked to see more mechanics and increased difficulty over time.

maxmetallica 2014-12-29 22:32

nice work