FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD42 → Rigid Flame

Rigid Flame

By teo-miklethun

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1243.7862
Fun753.8362
Innovation763.8059
Theme584.2062
Graphics2883.4061
Audio1533.4160

Comments

jackou 2018-08-13 00:03

managed to hit the theme pretty well!

laytanl 2018-08-13 00:06

Hey, very nice game! Loved how you implemented the theme, and also the audio was very very well done. I got to 20 and my whole screen was orange haha. Great job keep it up!

andrew-friedman 2018-08-13 00:43

Interesting game mechanic! I feel like the best strat is to circle around the origin and force the spaceships to spawn right in front of you.

doey 2018-08-13 01:40

I'm just loving the simplicity of it all! It fits the theme, the gameplay is fun and it's all surprisingly difficult.

tontonpizza 2018-08-13 03:04

Nicely done, it is simple, you understand the game instantly and yet it is challenging. good music, good art, good controls.

looks like the first game jam game i would keep to play later on

Oh, and there are combo to unlock !

gaoyuan-chen 2018-08-13 03:13

Really nice idea, and well implemented!

jasperarmstrong 2018-08-13 03:35

I really like this. I managed to score 27. It's simple, but it's still very engaging. The way the fire comes out and the way that the ship moves is very satisfying. The music is nice, and I think you nailed the theme. I like that the fire goes away after some time, since that encourages you to put more thought into where you're moving. I also like how the enemies are kind of smart and won't kill themselves on the fire.

winnie33 2018-08-13 03:50

Very fun little game! Like others already said, the music and movement is very fun. However, I find your decision to make the rocket trail disappear after a while a bit strange. It's not that hard to only go a short bit forward when you are about to be hit, making the space you have never too full. But that's just my opinion of course. So, great game!

teo-miklethun 2018-08-13 04:10

@winnie33 Thanks for the feedback! I first had the trail never disappear, but play testers said they didn't like it. The reason I think it's more fun this way, is because without it disappearing, you're encouraged to star as still as possible, which isn't very fun. With it disappearing, you can use the movement, which is the most fun part of the game in my opinion. To make it more likely you'll run out of space, I added a combo system (destroy a bunch of ships in one blast, and you get a score multiplier).

tombus 2018-08-13 04:21

That star is gorgeous, the music engaging, super quick and simple learning curve. Nailed it! What did you compose the soundtrack with?

teo-miklethun 2018-08-13 04:33

@tombus I used jukedeck. It's awesome for quick game music, and the rules explicitly state "Content generators are allowed."

nehvis 2018-08-13 05:11

This was surprisingly fun and a good take on the theme too!

aret24 2018-08-13 06:09

This game is very nice!!!

mitsu-artemius 2018-08-13 06:37

Very satisfying and well executed.

falk-bruskeland 2018-08-13 09:52

Wow, this is a very well done game! The theme matches the game perfectly and its original! The music is also awesome!

dangogamedev 2018-08-13 11:46

Great use of the theme with fun gameplay.

mathiouza 2018-08-13 13:38

38 ! Quite surprising ^^ I like the idea ^^ The music is really nice too ! Congrats !

Keep coding :)

teo989 2018-08-13 13:40

The gameplay is good but I could use a bit more variety. More types of enemies etc. But the core concept feels quite good. And nice artstyle :)

teo-miklethun 2018-08-13 13:48

@teo989 Very fair criticism, I was in the middle of adding more enemies when I ran out of time.

sthor726 2018-08-13 16:31

Core Concept was pretty good but i would recommend movement where at first you are slow but as you move you gain more speed, also other types of enemies would be nice

2lol555 2018-08-13 16:42

The BEST game I have reviewed on this jam! I have nothing against. It has smooth controls and a simple concept. Love it!

stefan-jovanovic 2018-08-13 16:52

Really nice and polished game! There are few bugs here and there but overall it is really nice game.

teo-miklethun 2018-08-13 16:59

@sthor726 Thanks for the feedback! That's an interesting idea, and something I would certainly test, but unfortunately as a consequence of the collision detection system that'd actually be pretty hard to do at this point. More enemies will hopefully be coming, but I just ran out of time.

teo-miklethun 2018-08-13 17:04

@stefan-jovanovic What bugs are you talking about?

stefan-jovanovic 2018-08-13 17:10

@teo-miklethun Nothing special, sometimes ship could go beyond the boundings, and sometimes there were some physics issues when you are stuck. But that doesn't really affect overall gameplay which I think is really good. Keep up the good work! :smiley:

garygreen 2018-08-13 18:10

This is such a cute paint game. Straightforward but lots of fun. :)

garygreen 2018-08-13 18:10

This is such a cute paint game. Straightforward but lots of fun. :)

scrambledlegs 2018-08-13 23:32

Very nice! It was simple, but very well executed. The handling on the rocket ship is super enjoyable and the music compliments the game. I think the only thing it could use is maybe more enemies or potentially ships that work differently, but that's just personal preference!

jamison 2018-08-14 05:07

Scored 39! I thought the graphics for the trails were really eye-catching and the core idea was solid and very fitting for the theme! If I had one objective complaint, it would be that you're kind of encouraged to wait and move as little as possible to avoid running out of space, only using fuel when a projectile is about to hit you, and waiting for enemies to group up to get a multi-kill. Does the multiplier go higher than 2x?

Nice work overall!

teo-miklethun 2018-08-14 07:40

@jamison Thank you so much for the feedback. The multiplier does indeed go up beyond 2, but only after a long time. Given more time, I would have balanced that better, but right before submission hour I realized the way I calculated the multiplier lead to some easy ways to exploit and get large scores. I over corrected, but have since gone back to make it more balanced (uploaded 3X mult starts at 10 kills). And yeah, that problem of encouraging waiting time is the reason I added the combo system, but that certainly didn't fully fix it (especially in it's uploaded state). What else would you recommend to fix that? Should I make the trail disappear faster, or do you have any other ideas?

jamison 2018-08-14 08:10

@teo-miklethun Hmm. You could make it much harder to physically stay motionless--have you played around with decreasing the friction? Maybe if you kept a lot more momentum, you'd be forced to make more correction adjustments since you'd be drifting through space. Alternately, maybe you change the default thrusters to be weaker with a smaller trail, and add a dash/boost that moves you quicker and has a bigger trail for defeating enemies... but then again, I do like the simplicity of your game, so I'm worried adding another button/mechanic would get in the way. Plus, there's already a good sense of breakneck speed that I wouldn't wanna change. I dunno! But you're onto something good already!

petitpadawan 2018-08-14 09:08

Really nice concept, best game i have seen on this jam

jimbly 2018-08-15 04:42

Very nice! My high score was 24. Really enjoyed it, though I never managed to get any combo bonuses, always died going straight into an incoming bullet -_-.

candlesan 2018-08-15 05:25

Great game! Agree with all the other feedback that this is a simple concept executed very well. Great work!

mrjorts 2018-08-15 07:23

There's a nice tradeoff between offensive use of the flame and keeping your maneuverability open. It's a well executed mechanic. I also really liked the work put into the animation of the flame expanding.

toster 2018-08-15 07:23

scored 22, very good compo entry, very good game.

awix 2018-08-15 07:32

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

maksim-chugunov 2018-08-15 08:08

Wow, really solid work! Game looks super polished and core mechanics are really fun and innovative! I wonder how did you make the trail, is it just a bunch of circles created next to each other? :)

teo-miklethun 2018-08-15 14:48

@awix Thanks for the feedback! What should be improved about the music?

teo-miklethun 2018-08-15 14:50

@maksim-chugunov Yup, you got it! Originally you could only blast by pressing space, and you'd make 1 circle, but then I realized that holding space to make as many as you want was more fun.

ayushman 2018-08-15 17:11

This was an awesome game to play! I loved the idea, loved the music used in-game... A game well made in 48 hours! Felt like moving with a tomato ketchup bottle in a confined space!

mieeh 2018-08-15 19:25

Amazing looking graphics, loved the space background, the music was fitting. The gameplay was fun at first but got a bit boring after a couple of retries.

shp 2018-08-15 19:43

Nice game, at first I was trying to avoid my own trails like plague, but after noticing that they're not instant kill I had more fun just going around quickly

batmanasb 2018-08-16 02:05

Best Score of 52! The aliens never saw the spiral strat coming! This game was pretty clear and fun.

carlos-giraldo 2018-08-16 02:38

Fun game! love the feel of the rocket. I would like to see more consistency with knowing when I'm going to squeeze through or get crushed to death

gimbalock 2018-08-18 15:14

Beautiful graphics! And the gameplay is really great. I like that you can pass UFO's without dying. Overall, great job!

titos2k 2018-08-20 09:03

Great entry that nailed the theme. I like the music too.

Minor thing - best tactics i found is to wait a bit for enemies and lift off to burn them and stop again. This creates kinda non-fluid gameplay. Not sure how to avoid that, maybe flames should diminish faster or be semi-surpassable but with damage penalty.

predominant 2018-08-20 09:52

Easy to learn, hard to master. Perfect combo!

teo-miklethun 2018-08-20 14:24

@titos2k Thank you for the feedback! There's a combo multiplier whenever you get multiple aliens with one boost. Do you think making this combo multiplier easier to get and more substantial would fix this problem?

titos2k 2018-08-20 15:53

@teo-miklethun it might but you need to test it, hard to say based on abstract. I think its an issue that will solve itself slowly with every feature you will add to the game. Cheesing tactics always adjust to every change.

void-productions 2018-08-20 17:50

Very well done. I'm digging the graphics. Do check out our game and leave us some feedback.

diego-escalante 2018-08-21 05:38

Very solid game! I like how this isn't just like Tron where touching your own exhaust is deadly, but instead it is a solid wall you bounce off of. The controls are elegantly simple, and the game in general is very well put together. The music, graphics, and gameplay just fit so well together. Nice job!

diego-escalante 2018-08-21 05:38

Also my highest score was 43!

zirrrus 2018-08-26 10:22

Really, really fun! The music is almost too catchy, I love it.