FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD31 → Neon Z City

Neon Z City

By odefus

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness291
Innovation4283.29
Theme4983.64
Mood5682.92
Graphics5893.04
Overall6853.08
Fun7932.84

Comments

dxsmiley 2014-12-08 05:27

Interesting concept, however I find the game slow-paced and clunky to play. Graphics are nice, apart from the font used and the human 'cursor'. Use of theme is present in the most obvious manner.

whoaconstrictor 2014-12-08 07:39

A bit slow paced, but I do like the core mechanic a lot. For how "simple" the graphics are, they are very well executed. Despite a lack of music, the visuals and enemy movements created a really tense atmosphere. Good work!

snuux 2014-12-08 08:11

Particles are funtastic! Add more instructions about game... Thanks!

warboys 2014-12-08 08:33

Very interesting concept indeed, although I wish there was some way to disconnect yourself from the world so you can move to the other side of the city without dragging your safe guys into the middle xD

Lots of potential expansion with the idea, nice job!

davidb 2014-12-08 08:59

78s is my best. Maybe the score should increase by nb number of whites each seconds.

wandersenus 2014-12-08 09:10

nice game!

zompi 2014-12-08 19:57

92s :D I was able to cach the group of survivors and hide in the corner of the map. Those red dots are aggressive! Visuals are astound, UE4 is a really cool engine.
The dark ambiend music would fit perfect... too bad it's silent. Anyway, cool game and concept :)

okkolobr 2014-12-08 21:21

Interesting ideas. Kind of "sad" that the cursor is so different from other element in the game.
Couldn't have been a blue/green dot, maybe bigger than the other ?
Reds behavior ir pretty neat, congrats !

sensenmann666 2014-12-08 21:22

This game gave me the feels. Very innovative concept and good graphics

greg 2014-12-09 04:30

chilled atmosphere, haven't played anything like it

alvarop 2014-12-09 05:22

Interesting entry and a very good looking one. Keep it up!

pixel_3 2014-12-09 07:53

Pretty cool concept. There's a lot of potential here. Maybe if you could move the crowd via clicking that had an area of effect. It not's that far from being a pretty good RTS game.

-AlucardX60

danielilett 2014-12-10 00:29

I feel the white dots move too slowly to be able to effectively dodge the red dots, but that adds a sense of tension to the game sorta. The graphical style is nice, and the mood was a little tense, but I felt like I didn't have as much effect on the white dots moving as I'd hoped. The concept as a whole is really cool though, I had fun playing it. Great job, a very strong entry!

biliogadafr 2014-12-10 21:26

Great concept and idea. 122s. In the end you can hide a lot of time in the corners with just a one survivor. But it's impossible to control the explosive grow number of infected dots. Probably it would be nice to have some perks to control the situation in the beginning. Overall good game. Like it.

wusakko 2014-12-11 06:43

Nice idea! 154s!

wusakko 2014-12-11 06:44

Nice idea.

biscuitdough 2014-12-11 07:02

love the idea behind it!

domnomnom 2014-12-11 07:20

I like that it is possible to infer a story from your game mechanics eventhough everything is very minimalistic

dieblume86 2014-12-11 20:50

Nice concept.

skulioskarsson 2014-12-11 23:36

Very interesting

laluis1 2014-12-11 23:53

looks great, but i can't play it

odefus 2014-12-12 00:43

@laluis1 Care to share why? Do you get an error or something?

vdz 2014-12-12 23:23

The game's concept is really nice and the zombie/civilian behavior is very interesting. Unfortunately, some gameplay flaws keep the game from being much fun.

The game starts with a lot of civilians, and with the limited range of your character and the slow speed of civilians, it's impossible to prevent a very rapid zombie outbreak. Normally this would be no problem, but this leads to a situation where, under the current score system, there is no reason to protect the remaining civilians. You get a point per second regardless of how many civilians are alive, so why keep all 30 civilians alive when you can more efficiently run away with one or two? When there's a hundred zombies running around, it doesn't really matter if 30 more zombies are added, and an increase in zombie numbers is the only penalty for losing civilians. In the end, you'll be losing all except a few civilians within the first minute, then surviving for the rest of the game by hiding the handful of civilians (or sometimes even single civilian), waiting for zombies to approach and trying to run past them (which depends on luck more than anything else).

Eventually this means that skill and strategy don't really matter past a bare minimum of not getting yourself killed immediately, and it makes the late-game rather boring. A way to block zombie paths or some time-limited kind of invulnerability or some other meaningful interaction would allow for skill to play a much larger part. The strategy part could be enhanced by making survival of civilians actually matter, such as by having your score being dependent both on time survived and civilians being alive (such as just getting points equal to the number of civilians every second, or counting the number of civilians every X seconds and awarding a bonus for them, etc). It needs at least something to keep the end-game more interesting than 'wait for the zombie to arrive then run and pray'.

The zombies/civilians look nice, and the mechanics really add to the atmosphere (it really feels like a civilian is zombified whenever he's touched by a zombie, goes gray for a moment, then becomes red as well). Unfortunately, the white blocks are too abstract and don't remind me of a city which really hinders the 'zombies in a city' atmosphere. Music would've also helped lots to make it feel more dramatic. It's rare to see mechanics fitting the atmosphere so well, but it's a shame the rest of the game does little to capitalize on this.

vdz 2014-12-12 23:26

Best score is 139 seconds, by the way.

gebirgsbaerbel 2014-12-14 21:57

The game reminds me a lot on atom zombie smasher. With the glows it looks really cool. However in general the controls feel slow and indirect and it is extremely hard to save your people for a lengthy time.

tommyboys0107 2014-12-15 06:32

195 seconds for first time.
Concept like the zombie virus.
Don't know why but my fps seems to low, if it can be play fluently that will be so great.

asobitech 2014-12-16 16:20

I'm impressed with the AI. Well done.

grid96 2014-12-17 23:17

Nice idea, with really cool looking lighting

kirbytails7 2014-12-23 04:38

Pretty nice, although I think it would be more fun having tighter control over your group, to try to dodge the occasional stray zombie.