FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD40 → The Harsh Life of Terry the Homeless Dude

The Harsh Life of Terry the Homeless Dude

By lautregars

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall3423.3763
Fun2643.4462
Innovation4992.8163
Theme5542.8862
Graphics2793.4563
Audio1553.4563
Humor513.7961
Mood1433.4860

Comments

pkenney 2017-12-04 17:35

High score 13,738.

Nice job soldiering through on your first LD and getting a playable submission in! It sounds like it wasn't easy, but you made it and got something I can play.

There's some cool stuff here, nice pixel art, music, voice work, various screen transitions including a story and credits, a high score, several kinds of enemies and powerups, etc etc! It's kind of a wild ride the way it all comes together, probably meaning a smaller tighter game was the right target, but you definitely should feel good about hitting a lot of content.

I ran into two small problems: first it took me a while to figure out that Z was jump (I think the instructions said it was A?) and I kept getting stuck on rain gutters. I'm talking about the thing that looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/Ix6GN

I would get stuck on those and be unable to pass, and my life would keep ticking down.. eventually I'd either die or randomly become unstuck.

Other than that I was able to zoom around the city high on drugs and eating garbage, crash some rooftop parties with my sick jumping skills, and try not to embarrass myself by puking.

You can be proud of finishing your first LD!

lautregars 2017-12-04 17:36

Shit ! I forgot to indicate that the rain gutters were the sole y-axis obstacle, to force players to jump on lamps treets, then rooftops, use double jump, edge dash and all that stuff to jump higher. Thank you for reminding me this !

iluvatar 2017-12-04 17:37

I like the minimalistic graphics and funny mood :)

tulipekoni 2017-12-04 17:39

Dank game! As you said collisions are bit laggy but it doesn't ruin the game, actually it makes the game kinda feel alive :D. full points on humor!

pataya 2017-12-04 17:47

Insta wow

misterstripey 2017-12-04 17:59

Nice game! Definitely made me smile. Great job on your first LD. Don't sweat the game being 'sloppy', to me it seemed purposeful and fit with the out-there aesthetic of the game.

brouilles 2017-12-04 19:44

Cool game!

orcifried 2017-12-04 20:19

Super cool game! There might be a bit of bugs, but you said that yourself :D

PS: I made a [pixel art game, too](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/level-onslaught)

siarhei-rakuts 2017-12-04 21:01

nice work and so fun. 5 for humor (and the remaining estimates are also 5)

camcam-s5 2017-12-04 21:07

The idea is pretty cool ! (and the reggae dude is very funny)

erebus 2017-12-05 01:42

Lots of great ideas. A few nitpicks. Making the menu buttons change color on mouse over so it is more obvious that they are buttons. Also, it isn't obvious what the pickups do while playing. I know there was an instructions page but it was easy to forget. Overall great first game for LD!

pandanym 2017-12-05 01:51

Completely absurd and fun little game, really entertaining to watch someone else play !

urnext7634 2017-12-05 16:48

This is your first? And a compo entry too? Dude,this is super fun game! Great job!

lhouyez 2017-12-05 18:39

That music , when you achieve 10 000 points . Cool game .

zeriver 2017-12-05 20:15

Fun game with nice humour and great sound effects. It is pretty fun to run through city and do whatever you want while jumping on the roofs. I like that from time to time map requires you to platform on roofs to progress further. When you are close to death game could indicate it somehow and maybe saving highest score would be cool, but other than that i don't have any complaints. I like art style and animations are pretty neat too. In overall pretty good game especially for first Ludum Dare.

lautregars 2017-12-06 00:02

@zeriver Thank fou for the feedback, there is already a highscore feature but effectively it's on local, maybe I could tell what's the biggest score ever done in the page presentation ? (It's 554 000, by myself, while I was showing how to edge dash and easily bypass the obstacles to a friend of mine :P)

professor 2017-12-06 00:57

I scored 126,000 on the game -- lots of fun. I especially enjoyed the art style and voiceovers. The title screen was also well done. Thanks for creating this game!

illabom 2017-12-06 01:47

Nice little game you have here. VERY VERY impressive for you first ludum dare. Wonderful job and goodluck in the coming game jams.

Check out my game if you would like! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/virus-detected

wheffle 2017-12-06 05:23

Haha this is hilarious. Awesome audio and honestly the pixel art is spot-on. Funny gameplay, had me laughing. Very nice job, especially for a first try! Definitely keep at it.

themarioga 2017-12-06 12:08

Great game, and very funny. The sound is amazing. VERY good job doing this amazing game in your first ludum.

GG!!

gwinnell 2017-12-06 20:55

Love the look of this but I'm on Mac. Any chance of a web build?

lautregars 2017-12-06 21:52

@gwinnell Doing a web build now will necessit alot of rework on the code itself, so I don't know if it's very fair since it's a jam... But I think I could do a Mac version to download ! I'll check this out and tell you ! ;)

lautregars 2017-12-06 22:13

@gwinnell Ok, made a Mac version, uploaded the .zip on itch.io . Could you tell me if this works please ? :)

gwinnell 2017-12-06 22:45

@lautregars it works :)

lautregars 2017-12-06 22:53

@gwinnell Noice ! Remember to lay me a feedback if you have the time to write, even if it's just "Noice" or "cringggggge" :P

gwinnell 2017-12-06 22:56

Love how fast everything is - no idea what's going on though. What an insane game! So weird and random! Hilarious! Enjoyed the slight parallax on the clouds and the sound bytes when you touch stuff. Definitely left it on for about 5 minutes afterwards to experience the second music that kicked in. Did you make that yourself too? For a first jam, really great work!

lautregars 2017-12-06 23:02

@gwinnell Well if you like it that's the principal, absurd is in the intentions, can't play a homeless with superpowers when he smokes weed every day :P The music that kicks in at ~10 000 score and the one at ~100 000 were made by converting the original song to a midi file, reworking it a little, get it through filters on GXSCC and then remork i again on Audacity for a more dynamic sound. The original music is a famous eurobeat song named Night On Fire, so as I didn't really composed the original music (just chiptuned it) I putted in only for players who achieve a certain score. Same goes for the one at 100 000 !

chong-lee 2017-12-06 23:23

Awesome game ! :D Loved the humor elements! It was a bit confusing what I was supposed to do at first but overall a solid entry!

lautregars 2017-12-06 23:28

@chong-lee Maybe should I indicate somewhere it's runner game, that the goal is to score, or stuff like that ? Would have it helped you if it was written on the ld jam page? (asking that so I can get people to less be confused) Thanks for the feedback anyway :D

chong-lee 2017-12-06 23:37

Yeah that would be helpful like a little text window or something at the beginning, something to make the goal clearer! just a suggestion! Awesome art style also by the way ! :D

ghostlygurustudios 2017-12-07 01:20

had fun with this.. went and went and went for a long long time and then fell out of the map.. =P..

michael-feldman 2017-12-07 01:21

Nice name for the game. I made a game called homeless hero earlier this year. You can check it out here http://www.homelesshero.byethost18.com/?i=1

You go on about the pixel art and the audio, but really I think the pixel art is very good. It's got this lo-fi style about it, with a trashy street slant. I gotta be honest and say I didn't get too deep into the gameplay, but from what I did experience, there's a lot of life to it. Good job.

aaforcebox 2017-12-07 01:25

Hi! Nice funny game! I enjoyed the humor you presented everything, the game, the controls, etc. A fast paced platformer is always satisfying to play. What I didn't understand at first was what I should do, other than survive.. Steal the barbecue are good, right? Eat the trash is good but no that much.. other things are all bad for you, right? Maybe you should include all these elements in the controls menu explaining what is bad and what isn't. Anyway, good job overall.

And thanks for the feedback on my game (Goonisher). :D

lautregars 2017-12-07 01:32

@ghostlygurustudios Ah ah, gg, few people attempted to do this :P Send me a screen next time, you'll get credited !

@aaforcebox Yeah, absically to respect the theme I made that all bonus brings you something good at the moment, but get you in a worse situation later on. I think i'll added that to controls, and i'm a little reticent about too much modifying the ui now (the jam's finished, that's why i don't correct major bugs like the fellout of map thing and the road-traversing jump if you jump high enough then staypressed on S to fall super fast) , but maybe i could do a full description of the different drawbacks and stuff in the jam's game page ?

And no need to thanks, I like giving feedbacks ;)

sorlok 2017-12-07 01:36

Interesting idea; I definitely had trouble keeping my health up. Loved the audio clips and some of the powerups. I didn't quite get the theme, and double-jumping was hard (for me). But enjoyed it anyway. Great job within the time constraint!

lautregars 2017-12-07 01:45

@sorlok Yeah, that's why is hould include it : every item has a drawback effect, making your situation, and the physical situation of terry worse when you take them... But you have to take them to keep going (that's a bit of a denounciation of the dependant hell, isn't it ? Taking drugs to forget you're taking drugs... :P )

The Hunger give you more life when it's over 75, but drains life if it's under 75, the more it's low the more it drains life.

eating rubbish will give you hunger points, permitting you to survive a little longer, but make your character sick, and drain your hunger faster, and irremediably affects the speed at which your life is going down.

the dark blub causes you 50 life points damage, but gives you a lotta score and will slow down the cops a little.

The weed will make you jump higher, gives you 50 life, but you'll be a little slower, more easily hungry, and the cops gains a little bid speed.

The green shot make you go faster, jump higher, but make the cops go a little faster and can favorize your sickness, and life drawing.

The barbecue gives you great effects : It heals yourself immediatly some HP, fills your hunger to 100, and cures a little the sickness, making the life go down a little bit slower. But because you're ruining the only good citizens's afternoon, the cops gains much speed.

All these things cumulates, making terry puking on himself while full drugged, and even only gameplay-styled it will bring your death closer, but you need them to go forward : it plays on a balance between the do and the don't, but at the end Terry dies or get cuffed. His life's harsh after all ! :D Thanks for the feedback anyway mate !

aaforcebox 2017-12-07 01:51

@lautregars I got a 46k score, but didn't get how anything made it worse later on (I mean, how getting the food or interacting with people affect you later on?). This time I realized I shouldn't avoid anyone, just the black thing. I think you could add you thoughts on the game page, or even make a postmortem post saying them, that will grant you more visibility and is very cool to other developers. Good luck! :)

megalink 2017-12-07 01:58

Nice game! Good humor. I liked the artwork, the colors look very pleasing. However the environmental art looks out of place with the character art. Gameplay is awesome though. Great work! :)

scowling-pastry 2017-12-08 02:55

Great game! Loved it all around. Beautiful art and great music. Also a hilarious theme. Good job guys.

gassasin 2017-12-08 03:39

There are small bygs with collisions but overall grat game:D Real fun to play:D

eli-delventhal 2017-12-08 03:43

Pretty funny game! I think you did a great job keeping it simple so that you could complete a game. I wanted more explanation as to what was good to pick up and what was bad to pick up, if anything, and it felt mostly like random chance what I would pick up since I was blindly running right. But I like what you've done here!

clachipso 2017-12-08 04:40

The controls were really good, and the movement was fun. There was a lot of humor in the game, but not the kind I really find funny. Very good first entry.

belowparallel-ian 2017-12-08 04:49

This game is hilarious. I like the art style a lot. The game concept is okay, but very well executed. Great job.

zinkler 2017-12-08 12:22

A great entrance for your first LD. So much good stuff about it.

niklas988 2017-12-08 23:44

Cool stuff. Game was nice, but confusing graphics at times. Loved the taking on the theme and the humor. Looking forward to your next LDJAM stuff!

flaterectomy 2017-12-09 14:32

I had a highscore of 23k points, mostly by avoiding things. In the end my life ran out as I accidentally hit a black blob. There are various mechanics you have here with life, hunger, speed, jump-height and the police following you, but I found it hard to keep track of these things in-game. Rather than balancing all those plates, I just tried to jump on the rooftops as much as possible (and sometimes shooting up in the sky really far somehow).

I quite like the character art, it has a lot of character. I would have liked to have seen some more contrast on screen though, visually it feels kinda flat. (And the text explaining things in the background was harder to read because of it.) Drainpipes being obstacles was weird, those would've made more sense as a climb to the roof rather than blocking you off.

The music was solid and suits the game well. Excellent for a first-time LD! :smile:

moski 2017-12-09 15:06

For a first entry and a compo one at that, this isn't half bad. A great, fast paced romp with a very funny concept (with even some lore on the side). I'm particularly attached to games with long names, and this one fits the bill just fine.

While it goes with the theme correctly, the game was way too fast for me to matter. I couldn't run, keep track of my life and hunger _and_ take decisions of what to take or not, or even if I could take anything at all out of will. I was running too fast that in my last run I just decided to keep running and crashing into anything and everything. That made it even more hilarious though.

Excellent work. Couldn't be more proud of poor old Terry. [In behalf of my team](twitter.com/whalesandgames), we're looking forward to seeing you participate again in the future. Cheers! :whale:

lautregars 2017-12-09 15:33

@all thos elast comments : Thanks you so much for the feedback ! It makes me very happy that my game pleased you : I was worried that I done a much too little thing at the end of the jam but now, i'm a little relieved. I hope I'll don't score too bad : And i'm honored by those last two comments, especially because I liked your games alot guys ! Keep up the good work too !

lucas-ferrantelli 2017-12-09 16:05

What a dank game

honest-dan 2017-12-09 22:07

Had a lot of potential, great art and mood - but then found the gameplay lacked a little. Was fun to play on stream, thanks a lot for submitting!

piscythe 2017-12-14 05:45

The Harsh life of Terry the Homeless Dude 12_13_2017 9_37_59 PM.png

Yep. That's 904,383,500 points. This was my second attempt. Eventually I walked off the world and the game told me I'd been caught by the cops. Anyway, this is pretty impressive for a first LD. Your pixel art style is promising and I laughed at some of the voiced dialogue. Gameplay-wise it seems to come down to just grabbing everything except black blobs, but I love the theory behind it. Good work!

lautregars 2017-12-14 14:53

@piscythe Considerate you won the game. If it wasn't a compo maybe I coulda have more balanced the game and done more secrets and elements for people liek you doing good score, but I was short on time.

But really, congrats ! You're like the master of the hobos, and World Champion of The Harsh Life of Terry. You can add that to your CV :D (if it weren't forbidden, i would add your name with a terry and a golden cup to the main menu screen. Is that conseidered as a bug-fixing ?)

piscythe 2017-12-15 02:16

@lautregars You could make a polished up version and release it as a post-compo edition.

2018-02-06 15:24

Neat little game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 40 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtXXwu1asxI