kroltan 2017-08-01 02:28
Nicely made to simulate an old game, but I think the controls were just a tad too clunky (a bit of clunkiness is good for the theme, but this was quite annoying to play),
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD39 → Zone Slayer
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 337 | 3.48 | 39 | |
| Fun | 369 | 3.21 | 39 | |
| Innovation | 452 | 3.00 | 39 | |
| Theme | 375 | 3.56 | 39 | |
| Graphics | 510 | 3.29 | 39 | |
| Humor | 182 | 3.11 | 37 | |
| Mood | 292 | 3.45 | 39 |
Nicely made to simulate an old game, but I think the controls were just a tad too clunky (a bit of clunkiness is good for the theme, but this was quite annoying to play),
Graphics and Effects are really nice, the only problem is that you cant move forward and turn at the same time. I like the retro feel of it. Good job!
Super nostalgia trip with every aspect of this game. Really cool. Wish it was a bit easier to turn though.
We were trying to capture the feel of old style games so the clunkyness is intentional, as frustrating as it is :P
Cool retro feel! The way you could either turn or move forward made for an interesting choice... of course you need to move forward to keep the batteries coming but you also need to turn to fight. That plus the slowness of the attacks made me REALLY want to deal with combat efficiently. It was a commitment to turn and shoot, wanted to do it quickly but not to miss!
It went maybe a little too far in that direction, and things felt a lot better once I picked up a couple of oil cans. I did find it a little disheartening when I just fell too far behind and watched my energy drain out but then got a turkey but no batteries in the final half block I could still move.
But I loved the classic look and sound effects, great job!
Feels like playing an old gameboy game, very nice!
Reminds me of a weekend when you mistakenly rent a bad NES game... Awesome sounds and stuff tho.
@connor-hagan as far as NES style games go it's pretty easy :grin:
Felt like an old DOS game, which is great! I'm not a fan of tank controls, but it does help that retro DOS feel. Shooting felt a little unresponsive at times too, but other than that, it's pretty fun!
Good job!
Found the controls clunky, I liked the intention to make it look like an nes game, I would change the color of the player, that grey blends too much with the environment
Nice job of making it feel like an old game. Only thing is that the controls annoyed me a little with not being able to turn and walk at the same time.
[duplicate comment]
He, cool game! Love the intro, that is really retro! I managed to kill all zombies (I think) but ran out of energy shortly after. Is there more than one level?
This could be really nice if you just spend another day or two on polishing, e.g. walking and turning at the same time, splatter effects when you kill zombies and all in all just speed up the game (try to set the timescale in Unity to 1.5 and it will feel completly different without changing a line of code).
Thanks for letting me play (and reviewing my PowerLessWorld), keep making games!
@kichex we were trying to stay as true as possible to the nes palette which is why a number of the colors blend, but I agree.
@parkermc, @marc-grabow the controls of turn or move or attack were an intentional choice that I don't think I'd change, the goal was to replicate that era as much as possible. The controls are frustrating but not impossible to play with, but I do see your points.
@marc-grabow the game speed was actually increased from what I had it set at origionally, some more balancing was needed here, there are powerups that make you faster so its sort of a balancing act to find a good starting speed. Everything probably could have probably been a bit quicker for sure though.
I think this could have been so awesome if the movement wasn't so annoying :\ the slow movement and clunky controls sadly killed it for me, otherwise nice take on the theme :)
Alright, this is dope as hell. Really dig the overall aesthetic. Graphics, story, audio, title screen, freakin' 'Password' button - all of it is excellent. Great work on this, and perfect for an LD game!
This game reminds me of those old GameBoy games I used to play when I was in foster care! I wished there were some sprite/particle effects for killing zombies and for when you died though... Loved this man! Great work!
***ZOOOOOOOONE SLAYYYYYYERRRRRRRR!!!***
We were planning to add effects and zombie corpses when you killed them, and other things. I'm planning on adding a post jam version with options for alternate controls and updated features and increasing difficulty for each zone you clear.
Your great choice of music and amazing pixel art really makes this feel like an old DOS game! However, I didn't get what the oil can does, and "Alt" to fire doesn't agree with a web game (opens browser menu). Worked great with mouse though.
Wow, Zone Enforcer is one of my favourite games of all time. I'm so glad I can finally play the sequel after so many years! The graphics are so much more realistic than the original and it improves on the game mechanics in every way!
I loved it! Totally got the retro vibe. The music and graphics really sold it. I enjoyed having to plan out my moves and pick good times to use the Electro-Blaster.
I really enjoyed the retro vibe and the concept of the game with the incorporation of the theme. My only gripe would be the controls. They did feel at times rather non-responsive or just clunky. If you tighten those up you have a really nice little project! :)
Awesome game! it was really fun to play and work out. The only problem I have is that I'd prefer that the character could turn and move at the same time, that was kinda frustrating. But aside from that, it was a fun, cool, and well-made game. I liked it!
Very fun game! Not too challenging until the end, though. I loved the concept, and gameplay was very smooth! Great job
Even didn't work reminds me when old games ask you for a password. I just run to pick up the gameboy :grin: . Good retro feel on your game.
Neat game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 39 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tnbJWl_w0c
The graphics doesn't seems like retro game. In 1980s consoles can only represent several colors at the same time.
Interesting game. The tank controls kinda putted me off, but I don't know if that was intentional to make it harder tho.
The graphics did hurt my eyes pretty badly, it felt like a slop of flashy pixels (and usually, I like retro pixel-art). A serious lack of energy along the way, clearly not enough to see the end of the game, and I didn't even use the gun!! General opinion: Several good ideas for a retro-like a game (tank control = nice), not very well exploited, but still a very good work
Ha! Very nice NES recreation (though you'd never be able to do that nice a rotation on the NES). I love how you completely embraced the 8 bit aesthetic. I don't think the world needs any more zombie games though (unless it's a tribute to the late George Romero). Maybe I'll just pretend that they're aliens.
@cnoble, @mr-elektro, @sir-daniev I do agree that tank controls are kind of crap we were mostly trying to stay true to games from that period. We did release a post jam version that allows for turning and moving, although this isn't the intended way to play so the power drain is a bit faster when playing that way.
@artur-hawkwing, @ledez Glad you guys enjoyed it
@fangzhangmnm NES games actually could represent a fairly large number of colors, sprites were limited to 4 colors per sprite, but you could imitate 6 if you overlay 2 sprites (3 colors and 1 transparent per sprite usually) Mega man did this. With the exception of the robot we actually used explicitly the standard NES palette, although it was possible on the NES to change the palette. The resolution is 256 X 224, which is actually 16 pixels smaller than the NES resolution of 256 X 240. I actually did some research here to make sure we were mostly true to the graphics we were targeting.
@cydouzo everything was being passed through a filter, which probably added to the flashy pixels. Everything was being rendered normally to the unity scene not placing things pixel by pixel, maybe we should have included an option to turn the filter off.
@simonhutchinson you could probably do a better than that rotation on a NES, I think if you limited the degrees it's drawn at and only used the special rotation for the character you could probably get something much nicer on the NES hardware (maybe, I've never actually programmed for the NES). I agree though, too many zombie games, we did consider using bugs, zombies and other robots but didn't have time and zombies generally have the dumbest AI :grin:
Also to everyone whos game I haven't played, I'm gonna try to get to them tonight.
Hey! A cool retro game. Many people had problems with controls but I feel they help with the atmosphere and nostalgia. The graphics make me remember the old atari games Good work!
Never played the reference, but interesting! Zorp!
Having made a NES emulator myself (quite a while ago now) I feel compelled to say that (arbitrary) rotation of sprites was of course not supported and you probably have way too many sprites on screen at once at times (max 64 8x8 or 8x16 blocks, no more than 8 of those on the same scanline) and I won't even get into the limits imposed by 1/4 scale attribute tables, which contained the upper 2 bits of the palette indexes to use for 4x4 blocks of tiles, oh, and did you use 8x8 tiles? etc etc etc,… but let's not get too picky.
Anyway, old games sometimes had clunky controls but I think adhering more closely to 8-bit standards and having only 4 directions to point in, maybe 8 with pre-rendered rotated sprites, and increasing the move speed by at least a factor of 2 or 3, would have made the game better and be more authentic to boot.
That said, you went for a consistent style and delivered a good retro+ game with good accompanying music and sounds.
@ignius Thanks, glad you enjoyed.
@foodzilla You haven't played Zone Enforcer? you're missing out!
@zenmumbler we were sort of taking the Shovel Knight approach, but to be fair there is a bunch of limitations I just didn't have the time to look into. I'm wrong about the rotation, (apparently if I googled for 5 minutes I would have learned that as I did just now). I knew about the sprite limitations but just felt it wasn't worth trying to make sprite flickering appear as it would have on a NES. I agree with the control scheme thoughts, for some reason I had it in my head I wanted to game to behave like vindicators (honestly I don't know why) which for a tank that actually makes sense but not for a robot (although he was originally going to be a tank).
Decent first attempt at making a game. You should be happy since there's a lot to be improved on. The controls feel clunky because there's so much of a delay between input and action as well as the slow speed of the game. The Alt key was not a good choice for the melee weapon since Firefox uses the Alt key in order to bring up the task bar, making the melee unusable in Firefox. Graphics are ugly while simultaneously being impossible for the NES to render (which I bring up since I assume the aesthetic is supposed to be in the style of an old school NES game). There is also no contrast between the player's sprite and the sidewalk which makes the visuals hard on the eyes. The gameplay itself is similarly a mess. Why even bother having a health bar if the main enemy is the sluggish controls? I'd be surprised if anyone died for any reason other than not being able to waddle to a battery in time. But like I said, decent first attempt. Maybe one day you'll make something better than this.
@ganbaregameskyle
First attempt at making a NES styled game, but far from our first game. When you say delay do you mean because you can only turn or move forward in the Jam version? that was an intentional choice, albeit a poor one which has be improved in the post jam version. The alt key was a poor choice, I know in chrome if you make it full screen it works fine. There is also mouse controls and controller to attack and in the post jam I think I added space to attack with melee.
Visuals are subjective. Aside from the rotation stuff described earlier, the amount of sprites and detail and the lack of sprite flickering most of this should be displayable (if I wanted to convert everything and figure out all the NES tricks and ...) on the NES, although we didn't write the game to be displayed on the NES. The contrast with the player and the sidewalk was something we tried to tackle early, but due to the limited palette of the NES we eventually added a few colors for the robot that aren't part of the classic NES palette.
The game play had it's own issues, granted, but I did verify that the entire game is playable and beatable (getting past zone 4) before uploading. The game is difficult not impossible and if fact was actually much harder early on. I probably should have made it more obvious that powerups are hidden in destroyable objects (cars, trash cans, boxes...) and that all zombies need to be killed to continue. I probably should have tested with people while developing to make sure the play style was more fun. I did add an alternate movement option in the post jam version (due to feedback from others here) and sped things up.
The health bar was because I wanted them to be separate, using your gun drains your power so the choice there is when to shoot and when to melee.
All in all good feedback and its nice to hear someones thoughts even if they didn't like it. [Thanks and also not our first game](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/bureaucratic-deity-simulator-2018)