Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD41 → Dungeon Drifter -- A roguelike racing game
By piegames, Saibotk, sommerlilie, Himusoka, triceraptodactyl, ALoTron, Jidbo and reispfannenfresser
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 887 | 3.13 | 21 | |
| Fun | 986 | 2.81 | 21 | |
| Innovation | 708 | 3.21 | 21 | |
| Theme | 521 | 3.68 | 21 | |
| Graphics | 636 | 3.39 | 21 | |
| Audio | 490 | 3.13 | 21 | |
| Humor | 965 | 2.00 | 20 | |
| Mood | 844 | 2.97 | 19 |
I just couldn't get into it, I'm sorry =( Maybe some greater allowance in the begining, or hitting the walls not being instakill, just rises damage bar? Just any sort of "getting used to" level. As it is, it was too floaty and incomprehensible for me, so I put it down pretty soon :( But that's pretty subjective I guess, hope someone's gonna have great time with it :) But I very much like the steampunk-ish setting!
This felt *and* sounded much more like a boat than a steam punk car.
Instant death on touching walls was a bit too harsh for me, especially with things like this: hn9YbG9.png
You'd think the quick restart would remedy that, but you still have to drive quite a long distance after every restart before you get to a new room (and cannot actually speed up on long straights).
The projectile/target aspect was pretty tough too. Either larger targets or larger projectiles would have helped conserving brake resources.
Brake and health indicators on the UI elements were a bit too subtle for my liking as well. While beautiful, the art around them distracted from communicating what they are meant to display.
I eventually got by via holding down the fire button continuously and making generous use of the brake. But once that runs out I don't get much further. Slowly replenishing brake power would help a lot.
@honey @YinYin Thank you both for your feedback. We tried to not instakill on walls, but due to technical problems it didn't feel good and we didn't have the time to fix it. But I at least made the rocks in the rooms do some damage and it is a lot better (they still hit hard though). The coins on the corner are a thing I had already fixed, but apparently I was off by one in the bounds :smiley:. Going faster in long rooms are a great idea and only four lines of code, so I added it. I also made most of the enemies bigger and less harmful and now even I can easily finish the game.
We tried out having the brake recharge, but I commented it out since it lead to a different play style than intended. The brake is meant to rescue you when you are getting too close to the walls. But when the brake was recharging, you could easily stop the car in the room and then kill all the mobs and it would recharge enough until the next room. I increased the time from 15 to 20 seconds, which is double the amount I usually need to finish the game. The only place where you really need the brake is to access badly placed coins.
The changes mentioned above are not published yet. We'll decide which of them are bug fixes/updates to the game and which belong to a Post-LD version soon and then upload it.
I really like the theme! The instadeath when wrecking is quite intense for me since the controls are a little floaty what with you drifting all the time. I really love the idea though!
Interesting concept but I have some issues with it. The camera is really zoomed in so it's hard to see. The car movement is pretty wonky so it's hard to precisely aim.
I like the idea of a racing rogue like and the game looks great. However instant death on touching wall, not being able to accelerate, and making braking a limited skill just really made the game frustrating instead of fun. The fun of a racing game is going fast and in this you are just trying to snail around carefully to avoid death. Now if you added contact damage that wasn't instant death that could also deal damage to enemies, there might be something to that, but then I'd still want full control over my car.
I really like this game. I think many of the other reviewers are missing the point of this game. The instant death adds so much frustration but a challenging kind of frustration where you just want to keep playing. My only suggestion would be to maybe add some kind of checkpoint after you get so far and maybe 2 or 3 continues where you can start from a previous check point. Also a score would be nice to that way I could continue to try to get a better score. Really great game.
I theoretically like it, but the instant death does mean I got frustrated and never really saw much of the game. The aesthetics are great though!
I agree the instant death was too aggressive. This was painful to play. Its a drifting game, it seems like mild scraping especially should be part of it. Recommendation, Change it to health. On Impact with a static item, take damage in accordance with the force of the impact. perhaps a full speed head on collision would do it, but not something where you glance off. I.e. every frame, check the angle, if the angle suddenly changes beyond a certain amount, then apply damage, let the angle difference determine the amount of damage.
I did like the feel of how the ship moves, but instant death is too much.
I like the idea and the drifting together with the random dungeons each time. Some better handling/sliding of the car would add a lot. I believe there are already comments about the insta death and I agree to a point. But it shouldn't be too easy...I think it adds some challenge to the game. :) I think a bigger problem is it lacks a "game" element, score, progressions or something like this.
Cool game, looks absolutely beautiful, and the music fits very well with the art. I agree with most of the people in the chat who say the insta-death when hitting a wall is too harsh. Generally the game is a bit too difficult for a game jam. Remember that you've had a whole weekend to practice, and we only get 5-10 minutes of practice. What I would do is to make the levels ordered instead of spawning in a random level. That way you can have one fairly easy level at the beginning to let people grasp the basics of the controls and the mechanics. Then you gradually make it more difficult. One of these difficulty modifiers could be insta-death walls. Just give some walls a different color and/or spikes or something, and the player will understand that he needs to avoid those. Lastly, I think a minimap would be really helpful here, especially when you die instantly upon contact with the walls.