Herding Humans

erasmus-crowley 2018-08-13 00:49

I'm not sure if I just suck at tank controls, or if this was incredibly difficult to control...

Several times I was carrying a human, and I tried to go through a doorway only for Mr Roboto to suddenly steer to the side and stop himself on the wall inside the doorway. After that, I tried to reverse out, but instead of backing up out of the doorway he just turned to face the wall, so that there was a wall both directly in front of me, and directly behind me. Leaving me with no option but to try and execute a 3 point turn to try and straighten myself out so that I can escape the sticky clutches of the doorways of doom.

I see that there is probably a very fun (and funny!) game here, but I was too distracted by wrestling the controls and trying not to get stuck that I couldn't find the fun in it.

blueblu 2018-08-13 09:36

Love! But controls are hard

ytaha 2018-08-13 21:06

Apart from controls and stresfull music, the game and mechanics are amazing!

neuralcoder 2018-08-13 21:08

Amazing athmosphere, but the rotation is a bit hard to manage.

fireslash 2018-08-14 00:34

Controls were fine, but I found the collision to be the cause of most of my frustrations. The robot would snag just about every little box or corner, and turning doesn't have enough impulse to overcome it, which makes it infuriating to actually move around.

Grabbing the humans could also be a bit of a chore if they ran toward boxes.

Art and lighting are good, music loop is short but gets the job done.

I wish there was a way to end the level early, it seems like I had to wait for the last room to close despite it being empty.

Overall nice work for a compo entry!

enver-arco 2018-08-14 01:13

Well done for finishing this in a game jam

freso 2018-08-14 07:15

Quite nice, but there is no way in hell to get in time to the furthest room before door closes. Maybe have more time to get the puny humans.

Controls were ok, but yes when colliding into stuff my tank wasn't very tanky, more ballony :D Maybe increase angular drag.

derek-volker 2018-08-14 10:53

As others commented, i found the controls very hard to use, especially in the doorways, in which i was stuck most of the time. If the doorways were a big larger maybe there wouldnt be such a nuisance. However the idea was nice and the graphics are very neat.

uvwar 2018-08-14 18:14

Cool lighting! Wish it were brighter, though. I think if the doorways were bigger as well, you wouldn't be constantly crashing into things and having the robot twist out of the way you were trying to control as often.

technodragon253 2018-08-15 01:50

This is a very fun but frustrating game. Good job

michael-oliveira 2018-08-15 02:13

I liked the game. But the controls are so difficult.

diego-escalante 2018-08-15 04:24

As others have said, controls are difficult. However, your executed on the theme well, and the game looks great! Good work.

carlos-giraldo 2018-08-15 04:33

Good job on the modeling and characters. That human animation had me chuckling. I will echo what people have said about the difficult controls and tight doorways.

awix 2018-08-15 07:27

A good game idea, the music should be improved. The graphics are good. Try our game too, maybe you'll like it)

p1nkmaria 2018-08-15 16:51

Love the audio and graphics! :)

mgoadric 2018-08-15 16:58

I managed to throw a human on top of two boxes! The graphics looked nice and smooth, cool animations for the humans. I found it very frustrating to move the robot, the back speed was slow and I couldn't turn well either. It was hard to move "forward" since the orientation of the robot did not match my view point.

alexey-akulovich 2018-08-15 17:07

The atmosphere of game is interesting, but the controls is too uncomfortable.

frozenfire92 2018-08-15 18:14

The game was really well done in terms of mood, audio, theme, graphics, etc! I agree about the controls being difficult, but its a game jam so understandable :)

weine 2018-08-15 18:23

Very cool and moody for a compo game. The controls ruined it for me, though. Love the polished graphics, especially the panicking hoomans. =)

jegus9 2018-08-15 20:35

Kinda the same as it's been said already here, the character rotation needs to be a bit faster. That would mostly fix the issue with the gameplay.

inateno 2018-08-15 23:34

We should use the mouse to orient the character, I've been stuck in walls to much time. Also there are "humans" unreachable from the beginning (random generation?)

Excepted those small points, nice idea and realisation, the use of the theme is simple but works fine and nice arts also ^^

antoined73 2018-08-16 12:20

I liked the ambiance and how the humans are so afraid x) Here is a list of improvement : - I think the main issue of your game is the collisions of the tank. Every time i was hitting a wall and i couldn't pass doors correctly. I think you should increase the size of the doors because it's very difficult to pass throught them.

- You should decrease a bit the alarm sound because it's to loud in my opinion - Wait like 15/30 seconds before the first alarm because overwise it's impossible to save the first human - Make a first room to let the player handle the controls, make him move in a room and put block in front of the exit to make the player grab and release objects for the example - Add some feedback when we put a human in the safe zone could have been great too because i didn't even knew if it worked or not and if the human was saved - Light a bit more the scene since it is difficult to see why i was colliding and all :)

Update me if you have a new version of your game ! ;)

mwb 2018-08-16 17:26

I really appreciate all the comments and ratings, thank you all so much for taking the time to play my game.

I absolutely agree that the game is a "smidge" too frustrating to play. Had there been more time for polish/reflection I would have made changes that would have made the controls less frustrating. Specifically I would have altered the robots collider and reduced wall friction so you don't get "caught" and rotated as often as well as other minor changes.

>Rules: >Certain Bug Fixes are allowed. You can’t add new features, but if something broke or didn’t work correctly as you were finishing up, you can fix this after the deadline

Unfortunately I feel that it would be unfair to fix these things as part of a bug-fix because everything is working as intended when I originally posted the game. At least while the ratings are on-going. It's not the end of the world :]

If you're interested in more details I wrote a short post-mortem/bts of the game here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/herding-humans/herding-humans-compo-entry-post-mortembehind-the-scenes

valter 2018-08-17 12:20

Pro: - Simple to understand - A little touch of humor on humans - Hard challenge

Cons: - Frustrating moving mechanic (Maybe physics is messing everything) - Repetitive music loop

:Anyway, for a compo game that is a nice work.

hitchh1k3r 2018-08-18 04:07

:thumbsup: Excellent double use of the theme. It's nice to see the theme influencing the game throughout.

:point_right: It's been said before, but it's quite upsetting that this game could have been so much more fun to play if the character didn't get stuck in LITERALLY EVERY DOORWAY, AHHHH!!! ^_^ Sorry about that... throw out realism (let the arms clip into the walls), and use a capsule collider, we will all thank you.

:bulb: The robot gave me a bit of a Rumu vibe, of course the narrative is completely different. ^_^

:star: Overall great job. Thank you for making this!

capitals 2018-08-22 18:39

@hitchh1k3r Excuse me for copying this, it's genius!

:thumbsup: The theme use is amazing, and the graphics are superb! The ideas in this are great.

:confused: However, again - I didn't like the controls, I constantly got stuck on the doors. If it didn't get caught it would make for a more entertaining game.

:fist: Well done with what you during the competition! Nice one...