Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Destruction Zone
By chronosv2
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 286 | 3.28 | 47 | |
| Fun | 140 | 3.55 | 47 | |
| Innovation | 429 | 2.63 | 46 | |
| Theme | 367 | 3.11 | 47 | |
| Graphics | 402 | 2.81 | 46 | |
| Audio | 188 | 3.16 | 45 | |
| Humor | 429 | 1.83 | 39 | |
| Mood | 392 | 2.77 | 46 |
cool. i like the way the world shrinks as you take damage, that was a neat idea. and the spreadshot made me feel like a bossssss. more diverse enemies would have been cool, but i totally understand the limitations of ludum dare. nice work!
A lot of fun. I also like the shrinking stage.
I agree with @xxDOOMbox that a larger variety of enemy types would be great. After all, most of the enemies can easily be dispatched by simply putting your cursor over them. The game only becomes difficult when the shooters appear, before then you don't have to move at all except to pick up powerups.
@xxdoombox, @move127, thank you for trying the game, and for the input. I agree, there need to be more enemy types. I think a lot of time went into me figuring out how to get the Bomber enemy type to work. The base Collider AI just looks for the nearest target and goes towards it. I wanted the Bomber to do much the same, but had difficulty getting a solid method of avoiding repeats (otherwise it'd find a tower and just place repeated bombs at that tower until it died). Had I not struggled with that particular enemy AI I'd have probably had enough time to come up with a fourth enemy type, though in hindsight right now I'm not sure what I'd have implemented. Maybe an enemy that does a single pass and drops weaker versions of the bomb onto any towers it happens to come into range with? I do know the game needs more enemies that antagonize the player. The Colliders are trivial and the Shooters are really only a threat in large numbers or when they have the spread shot. Regardless, I definitely plan on taking this game further than this with some more art and more scoring mechanics, as I was hoping for bonus points per remaining tower at the end but didn't have the chance to implement it.
This was a very fun and very very engaging game. I really loved the shrinking playfield, made it a lot more intense and fun. I really enjoyed the enemies and especially loved how there were even enemies which shot back at you, that made the game a lot more engaging. I really enjoy the last stand tower defense feel this game delivers and how engaging it is. Very well done overall. The controls are very smooth and intuitive as well as responsive, no problems there. Sound effects were fitting too and graphics were very pleasant and easy on the eye. Good job! Overall I loved this game
Really fun game. The shrinking world idea is quite nice :D, the controls are smooth and audio is great!
Hey! I think you did a great job of embracing the theme. For a first LD, this is really well done! Your controls were tight, and I feel like the progression was nice. The only complaint I have is the music is a bit much. Maybe turn the sound effects down and leave the music where it is. Anyway, great job!
After I got my first upgrades it became quite easy - except for the shooting enemies.... I didn't really understand whether I won or lost in the end.... Also I was not sure what effect the stage becoming smaller had on the gameplay.
But a nice little game with fitting music and sounds! :)
@kfischer-okarin: The game is a score attack. The game over state is always reached the same way, but the amount of time you have to play depends on how much penalty time you rack up by losing towers. As for the effect of the field shrinking: Flying outside of the arena would very quickly drain your health. The idea was to confine you to a smaller world as time went by.
Thank you everyone for the input. I'm really happy that people are enjoying my first foray into 48-hour game making. There are a few things I'd like to improve on (the powerups do get too powerful) but I want to hold off on doing so until after judging just so that I don't accidentally try and fix something that doesn't belong in the Compo/RebindableKeys versions of the game.
I also definitely want to add bonus points based on how many towers remain at the end. It feels like that would make the score attack just that much more compelling.
fun! I found the gradual progression of the upgrades to be quite satisfying, and the game's difficulty scaled fairly well to match. the music was fitting, but the sound effects became a little grating after a while. I had fun playing this one, keep it up!
Nice work! Good difficulty progression and I liked that it had an explicit time limit. If you were going to develop it further, I think adding some additional power up types (e.g. bigger bullets) would be cool. It'd also be interesting to play around with the firing mechanics – right now there's no reason not to always be shooting, so adding some reason to _stop_ shooting (e.g. maybe your attack charges up when not shooting, or maybe your weapon will overheat if you shoot too much) could add an additional layer of strategy to it.
This is cool! I really wanted to add power-ups in my game but didn't get around to it in time. Nice work!
@madlee That gives me an idea, actually. Perhaps if you hold off on shooting your bullet size grows. Also it'd be neat to put shields on the towers, so this mixed in with the other feedback is giving me a very firm foundation to take the game post-judging.
For a moment I thought those things were w.c's XDDDDD
@nilead I can see that! Haha. I wanted to add more detail to the towers but ran out of time.
A really solid, fun experience even if it feels kind of classic (more positively than negatively though)
|+ The loop of trying to protect towers and yourself as the arena shrinks is nice. |+ There's a nice sense of escalation with the introduction of new enemies. |+ Having the loss of towers also impact your remaining time was a great way to emphasize the impact of their loss while also adding extra engagement. |+ The art feels consistent and creates an easy to read environment
|- The starting enemies didn't really grab your attention.
? I think if the first enemies grabbed an initial target instead of just the closest that could have immediatley made a more engaging initial stage-trying to have them chase you while dodging their bullets instead of letting them reach a tower first. Personally I didn't feel the need for additional types, just each being more meaningfully engaging like the suggestion above, to compliment the compact experience. Still I really enjoyed playing it, great work :)!
@swiftillusion Yeah, the retargeting for the Collider enemy type was an attempt to make it easier to deal with them since they go towards the outer towers a little too easily. If you can get between them and their target for long enough they'll go through another retargeting loop and you can actually start kiting them around while you shoot them.
The bombers definitely need some work. Targeting something at random, or even something deliberately far away, would make them more interesting than just rushing the closest tower to blow it up.
Wow, what a cool game! I really had fun playing it, some decent tower defence stuff here :) I also really liked the balance; although after some upgrades noticably made me alot stronger and feel badass, it didn'n turn boring since the enemies and/or their skill also increased :) really nice what you were able to put up alone in this little amount of time! I'm even jealous you have a game that last longer than 1 minute, haha :)
I just have to admit I didn't quite look at the interface or explicity understood WHY I died in the end, so if you want to work on this game a little more, maybe add Icons to your interface and make low displays attract attention or something like that :)
I would also love if you could build towers by spending some currency, maybe the enemies drop a currency and then you need to decide what to buy, upgrade for yourself or infrastructure? :)
I also love the idea of the world getting smaller and smaller, maybe add some plot twist how you can save yourself after all, that would be cool :D
rated <3 :)
I liked the game, the graphics and the variety of enemies and powerups. What I was kinda missing was a good feeling when killing the enemies, it was kinda dull, I think that the main reason for this was missing death sound or at least hit enemy sound. But overall great job for a compo entry!
Very solid twin stick style shooter - the vanishing playfield reminded me a little of bomberman
Nice little arcade game. I couldn't tell if the walls were closing in because I was losing towers, or because that's just how the game works. This felt like a solid old-school Newgrounds game.
Definitely in the 70th percentile of gameplay for Ludum Dare games!
Great game, but gets rather easy with all the upgrades.
This game gets hard pretty fast if you don't manage to grab some good upgrades early :D I like the challenge and the idea of the shrinking map. Enemies from the top were much harder to destroy before they reach a tower than enemies that came from the bottom as you can see them not as early. Overall very good job :)
Nice job, I really liked the feeling of getting more powerful as you collected powerups. Good work!
Had a lot of fun playing this. Gave me a feeling of nostalgia of the games i would play as a kid. Arcade classic. As i tend to do - i jumped right into the game to get a feel for its UI, gameplay and intuitiveness before i go and read up a bit about it, as this gives me an idea of how much thought went into certain areas, and of course, being a classic - it was immediately intuitive.
**Things i thought worked well:**
- General gameplay - loved playing, and played a few times over, having a different experience each time, due to my next point. - Difficulty - this seemed to scale well. The disappearance of the safe area gave a sense of emergency and each time i played felt different in difficulty - if you die or let the enemies build up, it can get on top of you quick. - Enemy types - i liked this, the number of different types were perhaps a bit limited but for a game jam, cannot be expecting the world. - Music - Worked well, suitable.
**Things i thought could use improvement:**
- Not sure if it was a bug but on a follow-on play-through, i immediately had the spread-fire ability, didn't really think about it but made the game a whole lot easier in early game.
- Could use more variety on weapons/attacks. But again, for a game jam, a good job still
Overall, a great, fun game. Well done on your entry.
@nathan Yet another thing I forgot to reset in my `NewGame()` function. Whoops! Good catch! I guess it's a New Game Plus for now? Haha. Unintended as it may be, it's not game breaking enough to warrant a patch to the Compo version like only being able to hit play once without a refresh/restart was. :laughing:
@Chronosv2 Absolutely, its a New Game Plus ;) As you say, not game breaking, and if i was that bothered, i could have just restarted the whole thing - not going to lie, i enjoyed the fact i had it from the start on that run through!
Bit of a learning curve, but it gets fun. Starting with 1HP enemies would be nice for a warm-up. I liked the power-ups. The aiming is a little difficult, if you're going to show a cursor a custom reticle might be nicer. I'd also like a blast radius on those bullets, they are really tricky to land until you're spray them later. :) Good work.
@scriptorum I actually had a reticle cursor set for the game, but somehow it didn't work on the WebGL version. I have absolutely no idea why. Going to look that up now, though. **Edit:** Just looked this up and there's an issue in Unity's issue tracker for the cursor not showing up in WebGL in v5.6.
Liked and rated it ! thx for this entry
Oh yeah some twin shooter action! I thoroughly enjoyed this game. Its fast-paced and energetic with mood moving music!
As for what you delivered for the compo I will say its nicely done and was very fun to play, but I do have agree that perhaps an extra enemy or two and a little more variety of player weapons would enhance the game.
All in all good job!
Nice game!! The shrinking world makes game more interesting. Few times I've forgot about smaller map and died. You also created nice graphics and music. You could add some other types of enemies and power-ups, maybe in other levels that you can reach after protecting previous one. I think also about adding some weapons to turrets but it will probably change the idea of the game too much. Really nice entry, well done ;)
It would be cool if every tower had a radius of ground which it protects and if the tower falls, the terrain which is not protected by towers anymore crumbles. You lose, if all towers are gone and the ground beneath your feet dissolves. I like the mood of the game, the music fits pretty well. It could be easily updated with more enemies and (temporary?) powerups, secondary weaponry (or repair?). It's a solid base. :)
Nice game.
After some power ups you are kinda overpowered and you can just shoot around in the general direction of an enemy and have a good chance to kill it. Also the towers don't change the game play much (especially because your bullets don't collide with them) and you just shoot at any enemy no matter what.
The game was well done and I didn't run into any issues. I liked the mechanic with the vanishing parts and the power ups.
I beat it! It got really intense at the end, would be great if the music got faster as it progressed or something to go with the intensity. But I loved that my guns kept getting stronger. Especially great considering this is your first LD. Your comments here outside the game are really funny and I wish I saw that humor displayed in the game.
And thanks for rating ours, really funny comment!
@sebasrez Yeah, my biggest regret is that I didn't have the chance to add an intro of some kind to the game, even a text one. A few things (the bomber's tower AI comes to mind) took longer than I'd have liked, and left me with less time for an instructions/intro screen. The things I've learned from this one will definitely be put in practice so that I'm better at them come the next LD.
@zorg I actually originally intended on the platform falling apart in chunks, rather than the "shrink" that happens now. The problem that I was having, though, is that I couldn't figure out how to do it well within the time I had allocated. The shrinking from the outside compromise did work, but definitely isn't my favorite way to do it. I might actually try and experiment with the basic idea this game set up for something more complex.
Aaayyyyyyy, high score is 47500! :D I'm not sure if that's good or awful...
Anyways, for a first time Unity game, I'd say you did a pretty good job! :) I liked grabbin' all the power ups, especially the triple-shot. Though to be honest, after the 2nd dmg powerup I kind of stopped going for them, since by then I was killing most things in 1-2 hits. I would ALWAYS be grabbing the fire rate power ups though. I wanted to see how fast I could go!
What I noticed is that the powerups kind of stopped dropping during the latter half of the game. I'm sure you have a limit on how many powerups you want the player to grab, but it might be a good idea to spread them out a bit more to give the player a better sense of progression throughout the entire game.
Another thing I noticed is that the powerups drop exactly where you killed an enemy. However, this kind of pits two conflicting goals for the player against each other. The first goal is to kill everything as quickly as possible, so they don't get close to your cores. The second goal is to collect all of the powerups so that your ship is super powerful and can help out with goal 1. However, when you kill enemies on sight, you can usually nail 'em before they get anywhere near your cores in the beginning. When they drop their powerups, they're just floating in the black void, which I quickly discovered drains your health immensely if you venture out there. At that point, I was kind of at odds with whether or not I should kill everything as quickly as possible or MAYBE let them get close enough to where, in case they were holding a powerup, I could grab it. Maybe having the powerups float closer to the current safe area would be a good addition. :)
regardless, I definitely had fun with this one, and managed to play it to the kill screen! This was a pretty great first attempt with Unity!
Wow that's a really intensive game. Love the DOOM-style music. The difficulty curve is nice and those pick-up items give the player enough sense of progression.
Solid offering. Congratulations on finishing it in only 48 hours, especially if you're newish to Unity!
I like that it's a tower defense that has the shot powerups from my favorite classic sh'mups. Defending those towers sure is a lot easier once you've got fast spreader shots, but then the enemies ramp things up too.
Really fun!
Incredibly well polished game, very enjoyable. Solid gameplay with a lot of replay value! The powerups makes the game fun and all the mechanics are simple but fun. The difficulty level was good too because it slowly escalated and therefore I had time to figure out how the game worked.
I also liked the fact that you didn't just have to restart the whole game if you died but instead respawned in 5 seconds, very well balanced. Excellent job!
Really fun straight-forward game. I like the shrinking platform idea, it's a good way to build tension. The controls were solid and I felt the increase in player power and difficulty was good. Games of this variety benefit a lot from more content (more powerups, enemies, etc.) which is tough to do in 48 hours, I think you did a great job with that! Really enjoyed the game!
Nice defense game! I liked how the difficulty ramps up and the enemies that shot back at you. It was pretty slow at the start, but after getting upgraded weapons it was a lot easier to play :)
Really enjoyable, you did solid work with your project.
** What could be improved **:
- **background ** - small, gray tiles with contrasting outline make it look unnecessarily cluttered. Making tiles more easy on the eyes, more evenly coloured, would greatly help. For now, it just pops out too much, and doeasn't really feel like background to me.
- **overall palette** - Enemies and towers, on the other hand, could use some colours to make it more lively. Game is fast-paced, so it's really important to be able to assess the situation at a glance, without too much squinting. Also, **UI** could really use a slight, transparent background to make it stand out.
- ** bullets ** - blue on gray just don't sit well. This could use more contrast. Also, with the movement speed you've set, the could be a tad faster, actually.
- ** Visual feedback** - some **explosions** or other effects on enemy death would also improve the feedback player gets. Simple disappearance is not enough if the pace is high. On the other hand, **health bars** for towers obstruct the view - their health could be indicated by changing the hue, for example progressing red colour.
- **powerups** - somehow I feel that keeping powerups between playthroughs is a bug ;) game over should reset the powerups.
- **music** - it's good, but doesn't match the pace. Something more upbeat would really help the player to keep the tempo up :)
- Also, 'high' next to highscore is slightly confusing here, took me a while to figure it out actually
One more thing: if restricting player to 5 minutes, up the difficulty. Start slow, but after a minute, give'em hell, so only the best can withstand the whole time. For now, it's really easy to stay alive for the whole duration.
I'm writing all that, because you've made a really solid shooter, which main issues stem from visual side, not the mechanic itself. And it's in compo, which means you were all alone in making this, which is a huge feat in itself. Mechanics are in place, controls are good, shrinking platform adds tension, powerups are rewarding. And I played much longer than I initially expected :D
I hope this will help you, if you're planning to develop game further.
Leaving my rating, Cheers!
Pretty good twin-stick shooter. I did notice that once you die, the game carries on. Unless I'm missing a restart button there needs to be a game over state of some sort.
I definitely plan to continue developing this game into something more -- once the judging is over. At that point I'll be updating the game with a bunch of ideas inspired by feedback. I'll probably split that update apart from the current itch.io project just to keep a version in existence for history.
@takusan: Thank you for the feedback! I've been keeping an eye on the feedback I've gotten, and a lot of this helps. I'm hoping to actually do quite a comprehensive update once I'm able to.
@gamepopper: When you die you come back after 5 seconds. Enough time for some enemies to spawn in and wreck some towers. :) Unless you didn't ever respawn, in which case there's a terrible bug that I somehow missed...
Nice work - I very much like the scaling up of your weapon capabilities with powerups, and that the game isn't too hard, but still requires a lot of skill. The warning tiles disappearing without fanfare was a missed opportunity though :) Overall really good job.
I played this on stream at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/141703264 - time 1:58:40