FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD32 → U.C.O.N.

U.C.O.N.

By fleegle2000

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness368
Theme3053.65
Innovation4203.29
Audio5652.67
Mood6562.81
Humor7952.25
Graphics8342.57
Overall8372.86
Fun8632.66

Comments

thescopelessone 2015-04-20 15:55

It is a good concept and game, it could be more obvius if the combo is efective however.

fleegle2000 2015-04-20 16:05

Thanks! Yeah I didn't have enough time to really flesh that part out.

dkoding 2015-04-20 16:47

It was great after I understood it. The weapon icons could be better I guess. Loved the goo though. The help was a life saver. A little unintuitive controls.

maral 2015-04-20 16:48

The game lagged a lot on my Win 7, I have quite slow computer, but it manages most of the games... This one had about 2 FPS and slowed down the whole computer, considering that it doesn't really have any complicated graphics... Therefore I don't rate, it's better for you :D

fleegle2000 2015-04-20 17:23

@Marek - thank you for bringing that to my attention. The blob graphics rely heavily on the GPU as they are almost entirely shader-based. That could have been the issue. I have an older machine and my graphics card is not the greatest but I didn't have any issues, and I also use Win7, so I'm not really sure why it was lagging so much for you. Thanks for trying anyways!

fleegle2000 2015-04-20 17:25

@DKoding - thanks for the feedback. Yes, I was a little concerned that people might have trouble with the controls, which is why I put the "F1 for help" prominently on screen - definitely something I'll be working on making a bit clearer in the post-compo version. Thanks for playing!

dohxis 2015-04-20 17:34

Poor mac :D

benmcnelly 2015-04-20 17:44

F3, muhahahaahaha! Good work, and I can tell with more time you would have been able to really polish it. Nice work!

swizzman 2015-04-20 17:46

I didn't really understand how to play this game :/ I guess clearer instructions could help, otherwise, it looks pretty cool and seems to be a cool idea!

fleegle2000 2015-04-20 18:38

@SwizzMan: thanks for the feedback - yes, I was a bit concerned people might have issues figuring out what to do. I will be sure to make the controls more intuitive and make the instructions clearer for the post-compo version.

fleegle2000 2015-04-20 18:51

@Dohxis: My apologies, I don't have a Mac handy. I will try to make a Mac version available soon.

fleegle2000 2015-04-20 19:08

I just added a port for the Mac :)

iapc 2015-04-21 01:46

eh, was a fairly straight forward game, although i got the feeling that the effectiveness of the weapons drops off a bit too fast, since by the time i had found out all the most effective ones (and thus the best combo) the goo was beyond controling.

xbcw 2015-04-21 01:53

This was fun. Double-clicking to load a new combo did not work for me on Debian using Love 0.9.1-3. Worked in wine though.

uvwar 2015-04-21 02:42

No idea what was happening. I just had a wall of green that seemed to sit there and none of the weapons seemed to effect anything. Wasn't sure if it was broken or what.

fleegle2000 2015-04-21 03:04

@xbcw: Hmm, I'll have to look into that - I don't have a Linux box set up so unfortunately I can't test it. I'm glad you were able to get it working in wine, though. Thanks for playing!

fleegle2000 2015-04-21 03:20

@iapc: yeah, there are definitely some balance issues I still need to work out. I simply ran out of time.

@uvwar: Yeah, if I'd had more time I would have made it a bit clearer what you're supposed to do and added more feedback. Some of the weapons have no effect. To figure out how effective a weapon is, you have to fire a single part at the blob to get its effectiveness rating. I apologize for not making that clearer.

jhell 2015-04-21 11:34

Interesting idea, definitely a nice take on the theme. It was hard to understand why some goo resisted some weapons and the other no, maybe a color variation on the mutated goo could be nice, I'm not sure... anyways, cool concept :)

fleegle2000 2015-04-21 13:29

@jhell: you probably encountered the bug where the goo sometimes doesn't disappear from the screen even though it is gone. The bug is due to the way the shader code works - I tried to squash it but ran out of time. It will be my priority when working on the post-compo version.

Thanks for the feedback!

timm638 2015-04-21 18:24

I doesn't show how effective something is and you can't see even roughly where the goo is.

fleegle2000 2015-04-21 18:35

@Timm638: You're right, it doesn't show the overall effectiveness of the weapon, although you can find out the effectiveness of each part by shooting a single part at the blob, and from that determine approximately how effective the weapon is. I was going to add an overall effectiveness rating but ran out of time. The post-compo version will include that information. As for not seeing where the goo is, there is a bug where sometimes goo doesn't disappear. Once again, I will fix that for the post-compo version.

Thanks for playing!

electroyak 2015-04-21 19:47

It was good once I figure it out. I didn't realise I had to attack the edges of the goo, but once I figure that out I got into the game.

badlydrawnrod 2015-04-21 20:34

Good take on the theme, but I think it needs a bit of balancing. I couldn't really tell the difference between the effects of the weapons. Nice idea though - it would be interesting to see where you take it.

fleegle2000 2015-04-21 21:14

@badlydrawnrod: Thanks for the feedback - yes, there is definitely room for improvement on the balance side of things. Sometimes you get lucky and get a good weapon at the start and it's too easy, but if you have bad luck it can be nearly impossible to beat. So I'll be spending some time working on balance for the post-compo version.

lolshouse 2015-04-22 15:39

Interesting, if a little frustrating to figure out the correct working combinations. After some time I decided instead to submit to the goo. I, for one, welcome our new Goo Overlords, and invite you to do the same. Hail Goo.

yakka 2015-04-22 17:06

Great concept, I liked the mood but I didn't understand how to make more efficient combos :(

mooglesensei 2015-04-22 20:43

My only gripe was not being sure whether I was being effective or not. Otherwise I really liked it!

fleegle2000 2015-04-22 21:55

@Yakka: there are some balance issues I need to work out still. Basically the way it currently works is when parts are combined, the falloff of the effectiveness of each part reduces at a lower rate. The average effectiveness of the parts is what determines how much a weapon harms the blob. Usually, if the effectiveness is above 50 it pretty much wipes out a blob block.

@MoogleSensei: stay tuned for the post-compo version - I haven't released it yet but I have already improved the feedback immensely, plus solved some other major bugs.

Thanks for playing!

drprettypatty 2015-04-23 15:32

Nice entry! I didn't think it was hard to figure out with the instructions, I just would figure out the values of the weapons, then combine high-numbered ones until they went in the red and then switched them. Is there an end-game? I was overrun after I ran out of weapons haha, it would have been cool to see a "time lasted" or score or something. Other than that, loved the music and sound, controls were fine after getting used to them, and the graphics were nice! Great work!

fleegle2000 2015-04-23 17:15

@DrPrettyPatty: There is an end-game - unfortunately once the blob gets to a certain size it is really hard to push it back, so if you have the misfortune of getting bad weapons early on it can be very hard to regain control. This is definitely an area I intend to improve upon - there wasn't nearly enough time to get the balance where I wanted it.

I appreciate your feedback - thanks for playing!

darkavenger211 2015-04-25 02:36

Very high burden of knowledge gets dumped on the player immediately.

andynonomous 2015-04-26 16:08

Really cool concept! I could never quite get the goo below 8% coverage but I really like the glow of the goo and the way it grows is interesting.

pixel-heart 2015-04-26 16:58

It takes some time to understand the mechanics, but after it is really cool!

calavera 2015-04-29 17:51

cool style, it reminds me of old movies

krunoslav 2015-05-04 17:52

I won the game! It is fun but too short. Anyway, as a little game it is very well done. I try to imagine more posibilities but in a compo, it is not possible.
Nice music :)