FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD31 → Blockade Runner

Blockade Runner

By kopeph

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness363
Theme3523.70
Innovation4223.16
Graphics4723.33
Humor5792.44
Overall7242.95
Mood8192.56
Fun8902.46

Comments

justinmullin 2014-12-09 03:49

It's no surprise to me that the game made in Processing is very pretty. =) The white light mechanic was cool, but a little hard to understand.

lazerbreadgames 2014-12-09 03:51

I really love the colors with this game. The way they shift and move is really entertaining to watch. The pink tile is a bit hard to find, however

ViliX 2014-12-09 03:54

Really comfy abstract color feeling :)

el-pepi 2014-12-09 03:58

I like it. The light effects are cool.
Sometimes it's hard to tell where you spawn. Also, the first time I played I spawned in a closed square.
When I won my eyes just broke.

antworks 2014-12-09 04:00

I was attracted by the bright colors, but couldn't quite get it.

jamesofjames 2014-12-09 04:12

Taking on 19 themes is ambitious for sure, but as with games with any length of development cycle, it can often just feel a bit unfocused and "what are the important things?" To me, the gameplay suffered for trying to fit too much in - there's not much excitement or fun trying to dodge the bots or get the package. Nonetheless, lots of great code and work in this, it's plain to see!

sikosis 2014-12-09 05:26

I think I got stuck in some area and couldn't get across to the pink tile. Controls work just fine, very trippy artwork.

naoistheguardian 2014-12-09 05:27

Very cool, and very well done, making it fit all of those themes! Nice procedural generation, but I got stuck in a room of my own once, haha. Quite a technical achievement for such a short time!

zillix 2014-12-09 05:31

Fantastic presentation! Very beautiful. I wished I moved a little faster :)

boltz-game-studios 2014-12-09 06:02

There are some interesting subtleties like being a white square trying to hide on a white background while trying to break line of sight with a color.

several of the levels I generated had no solutions (stuck in a box) or little to no white light (so no challenge). Making the levels a bit less random could lead to some interesting though.

rothens 2014-12-09 08:15

I loved the mechanic, even tho I felt the entities annoyingly small. But anyway, it's a very cool entry :)

acro 2014-12-09 15:36

Hi guys, thanks for commenting on our entry; would've loved to know how far you got into it :)

Um, so, "Blockade Runner"... this will be blunt, harsh and to the point. Sorry, but it's meant constructively and I won't mince words.

Players don't care what makes a thing work, only about the experience presented. And this is just about the worst possible way to strain someone's eyes: looking for a tiny spot in a wide field of highly saturated colours, all of which are mixing together and moving.

The 'graphics', image/asset wise, could be made in under an hour.

Three of the six times I ran it (including the first time), it randomised into an unconnected rectangle. I tried something like that in LD30 ('Connected Worlds') and had to spend a long while ensuring connectedness - in the end didn't have time to finish the entry, so I totally understand you just leaving this with the occasional break. It always seems like it shouldn't take that much time, but it does.

Also (still playing devil's advocate, here), I didn't read the wall of text concept/description until after playing the game.
I was, however, quite intrigued by the screenshot, as I couldn't work out what it would be.

All that stuff about '20 themes' and 'being a robot'... what? No, you're a painfully slow-moving white dot!

The graphics are genuinely, impressively horrible. The use of saturation inflicts pain (although I've been staring at a monitor for 3 days already), while hue and saturation aren't used at all! If the aim was to strain the player's eyes to the maximum possible extent, you couldn't have done much better.
The only way it could look worse would be to make the victory/death screens raw Cyan, Magenta, or shocking pink, instead of red/green, or perhaps flickering rapidly between red and blue to trigger epileptic seizures (please don't do that).

One of the screenshots shows circles. A circle would be really useful when you spawn.

So, as a game, it's outstandingly bad.

I found the most interesting aspect here to be Alex's timelapse video - I also use Eclipse Luna and didn't know it's possible to block-edit vertically, so thank you for that, I learned something :)

headmade 2014-12-09 20:45

I like how colorful the game is.
Unfortunately the room creaton is a little bit bugged. It generated a map where the player and the goal were not connected at all. Also it is rather hard to see where you are and where you have to go becuase there is so much going on on the srceen.
Still a very nice entry, well done.

ryannielson 2014-12-10 13:36

Some parts of the game look neat, but overall it's too visually busy. There are two many moving colours, and it took me about a minute to find my square. It's also not entirely obvious what's suppose to be happen. Also, when I go into the white areas of the map I can't see my character, which is kind of a pain.

anael 2014-12-10 13:38

It took me a while to figure out where the player was (white dot). The other dot behavior looks interesting, good coding.

trisquare 2014-12-11 01:34

This game was confusing and hurting my eyes, , ,the character was to small to find. i had to spend like a good 30 seconds fining the character. Its a shame though your game look really good and promesing

grabengroup 2014-12-11 07:20

very cool game !! like the way you have to search for the right dots in the screen! Cool use of the theme ;)

by the way, we added a better description to our game maybe you want to try it again ;)

grabengroup 2014-12-11 07:25

Oh there is something else! Sometimes there is actually no way to the goal... we had the same problem with our random generated world... but we added "zapping" i think for you game it would be better there were always a way because its frustrating to search and then realize that there is no way...

biscuitdough 2014-12-11 07:47

Got some impossible levels too. didn't see any downside to being "seen" by the lights. Thought the visuals were interesting.

zyxer 2014-12-12 01:58

Cool graphics, quite trippy! The use of several colors gives this kind of game a completely new depth, well done!

I also really like the procedurally generated levels, too bad the rooms sometimes don't connect.

dieblume86 2014-12-16 16:09

Nice idea

grambler1 2014-12-24 00:31

I don't know why, but I had to restart 5 times before getting a level where I wasn't stuck from the beginning. o:

nicealexanderas 2014-12-28 05:04

Nice colors, interesting concept (: Great work :D

menesetsu 2014-12-28 05:05

Very beautiful! I think movement is frame dependent because sometimes my avatar moves slowly for no reason.

maxmetallica 2014-12-28 05:25

wow nice game

kopeph 2014-12-28 05:37

You're right, the movement is framerate-dependent. We've since fixed this after the jam, but it's too big of a patch to be able to justifiably update the download links.

kualitygames 2014-12-28 10:00

nice colors, has special graphics. Gameplay is fun!

thopis 2014-12-28 13:13

Nice work!Cool colors too!

_waterman7_ 2014-12-28 21:54

Good job, really liked it!
The level generation didn't always work out so well, sometimes I couldn't even reach the room with the goal in it. Also, finding yourself and the goal in each new level was sometimes a bit hard.
The color-blending is not only really gorgeous looking, but also an interesting and innovative mechanic once you figure out how it works.