FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD39 → ABANDON SHIP

ABANDON SHIP

By attrition

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1943.5426
Fun1263.5826
Innovation2043.3726
Theme6132.6226
Graphics2583.4526
Audio1693.3025
Humor3862.0924
Mood1133.5026

Comments

n4tticus 2017-07-31 05:14

Really fun game! Would have liked to see more levels and some more difficulty, but I loved the art style and the music! Last level was a bit challenging but I ended up finishing :)

william-derksen 2017-07-31 05:14

Nice Game! PLit! Fun Levels! Cool Idea! I really liked it. Would love to play more of it.

boltkey 2017-07-31 21:31

It got super laggy when a lot of fire appeared. Kinda ruined the fun.

jeremy-ryan 2017-08-01 02:04

Neat game! Level design was really nice, it sometimes took a few times as you found out which crew to prioritize. Appreciate the dying animation.

arkthalohs 2017-08-02 05:32

Nicely done! The art and the audio was well done, and I liked how each level was more about finding ways around the fire and which crew to prioritize rather than just rush to crew and rush to the exit.

drachmor 2017-08-02 05:41

This game is extremely well done, especially considering it was a compo entry, not a jam! I really enjoyed the sound design as well as the art, and the gameplay had a good balance of skill and strategy while still requiring a level of spontaneity. Good job!

xel 2017-08-02 05:42

Fun game with nice art and solid music- really enjoyed the puzzle elements behind figuring out who to grab first

minimumentropy 2017-08-02 05:44

Nice game! It was fun to play and the graphics fit really well. Trying to decide who to save while the fires are building up was stressful (in a good way). I think you may have gotten the theme wrong though. "Running out of power" not "Running out of time", doh!

gnerkus 2017-08-02 05:45

The 'R' key is my friend.

+++ The sound and visual effects for the fire were well done and fit with the overall retro theme of the game. I killed my character once just to see the death animation. +++ Deciding which crew members to prioritize (including myself) was exciting. I learned the hard way the the crew members closest to me at the start were the safest. ++ The depiction of a spaceship in peril was brilliantly done. ++ The music had a sense of foreboding to it. I heard a murmur that sounded like 'rrrr'. Or something like that.

-- The hit box for the player slowed my movement sometimes because I collided with the wall when I thought I wasn't supposed to. -- I would have loved to be able to drop crew mates anywhere so I could organize my rescue efforts better.

Thanks for the great game.

sublustris 2017-08-02 05:49

Well done! Mood is perfect. Reminds me an old NES game "Alien3". The only thing i'd like to add -is a some kind of smoke in areas that will burn next in a few seconds before flame appear.

attrition 2017-08-02 06:13

@minimumentropy you are correct, actually! Amazing I made it this far without realizing it, too ;) I hope you enjoyed it anyway :)

attrition 2017-08-02 06:17

@gnerkus I thought about allowing dropping the crew but it trivialized the rescue a bit, because you could move them to safety much much faster than to the escape route. Of course if I had that mechanic I could have designed the levels to account for that, I guess. Glad you enjoyed it!

steve-johnson 2017-08-03 04:22

Great job choosing a scope and executing. I didn't personally find the mechanic fun, but it's more of a taste thing than a good/bad thing.

If you were to spend another 2 hours on this, I'd suggest adding crew bios to get the player more invested in each individual crew member and add to the atmosphere. Everyone who dies, you'd know if they had a family or not. :-)

junjunlowpoly 2017-08-03 04:30

This game is fun and I like the retro style. The mechanism where you need to strategically decide the order by which crew gets saved and which path to take when you save each person (you even need to come up with a plan fast otherwise the fire will block the way - this brings so much tension) has quite a lot potential (I can imagine a lot of other mechanisms used in classical videogames can be combined). I also think letting the player to drop crew would bring more strategy depth, but I understand this will make level design a lot harder. It is a great job to come up with 4 levels with only 48 hours.

sarah 2017-08-03 05:24

Pretty fun game, and great music! But I find it so stressful haha, I can't play these kinds of games for long, the music really got into my soul :P

I felt so bad killing the crew at first, then I just remembered to reset before they died :D

zenmumbler 2017-08-03 16:08

Nicely done, you have to make some strategic decisions and think fast. Little bug in the counting of bodies, I escaped the last level with 1 crew still there and that wasn't counted as a death. Great entry!

luis-giron 2017-08-04 04:23

It's a different way to view the theme, and it's ok. I like the concept, the art is very pretty, and the levels have a cool design. Good job!

phlip45 2017-08-04 04:49

I tackled this as a puzzle game. First go scout out and see where everyone is, then reset and get them in the correct order. The main frustration I had with the game was the controls and collision detection. I kept getting stuck on walls or was like 3 pixels from picking up a guy. I think since this is already tile based and is really close to a puzzle game that making it grid movement instead of free movement would have made it a smoother experience, though this could also be fixed through fiddling with the collision system. It also could just be that I was on the Web build and Unity frequently has troubles with that.

---

Nitpicking out of the way this is quite impressive for a compo. Music and sound effects were adequate, art was consistent, and the difficulty curve of the puzzles felt perfect. If I were to pick one feature to add it would be to start each level paused and zoomed out so the player can assess the situation before beginning. This way the player wouldn't have to look around and then restart once they have the layout of the fires and people.

russell-ng 2017-08-04 04:53

Great job. The fire spreading mechanic was pretty cool.

varelsegames 2017-08-04 05:03

This was fun. Only downside was that I felt I had to play the same level over again to get a perfect score. I would mind this as much if there was a level select, but since they are sequential it feels little weird. The control felt nice and the art was great for doing its job, I knew what everything was immediately.

huvaakoodia 2017-08-04 07:07

Solid entry. I would have preferred dropping people too, simply because it makes more sense and allows for more choices to be made on the fly. Some additional mechanics for controlling the fire might work too, such as fire extinguishers or cutting the air to different sections of the ship.

Now that I think about it a different take on the same idea might work. A top-down view where you control the doors and multiple squads of emergency personel. You can vent the rooms to fight fires, but the air recyclers don't work no more so it is a risky move. The electric systems controlling the doors and other systems of the ship can break down at which point you can command some of your personel to hack fix the borked parts, but that means that they aren't taking part in resquing people.

Good work, dismiss my ramblings.

hunttis 2017-08-04 09:50

For some reason a really successful dark mood in this game. I really liked the beginning of the song, the foreboding sounds. I think the beep-boop-melody-part wasn't as good, but overall the song was adding a lot to the atmosphere.

I really hoped to be able to drop a crewmember without taking them into the escape pod, but I understand this would require tuning the puzzles to a completely different form :D I just often found myself "Ahhhh, that's the one I should've picked up instead of this" :D

Cheers for the game!

spetsdod 2017-08-05 23:32

This is a well done game. The music had a very thematic feeling to it, and the sounds were all acceptable for the game. Finding your way around to pick up the crew was interesting and added some tension. On more than one occasion I made the wrong choice and paid for it. Subsequent attempts at the level proved more successful. I agree with a lot of what has been said about the collisions. There were several times where I was getting stuck on walls when my brain said I should be. I think this is related to the player hit box being a square due to the top down projection, but all of the models imply an iso projection. I bonked my head on walls more often than I felt like I should have. This is something you'd eventually learn after playing for a longer period of time, and isn't a deal breaker. One thing I didn't like was the "space" to pick up a crew member. I feel like it would be a better mechanic to automatically pick up any crew member you walk over, but give the player the ability to hit space to drop them. As has been said above, that would give a more strategic feeling to the game, by staging crew members as you see fit before rescuing them. You could compound that mechanic by having each crew member also have some level of injury to make prioritizing them important. I enjoyed the game though, and you did a great job on the "complete" game experience. Thanks for the submission!

attrition 2017-08-06 03:43

@spetsdod actually I did originally plan on having different levels of injury so you'd have to triage them, but I decided to work more on the overall game which I hope paid off. Thanks for your review!

schuster 2017-08-07 21:55

Nice game, I did a puzzle type game as well, so I appreciate how hard they are to create. Good job!