FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD42 → WHELM

WHELM

By ethan-nachreiner

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall2323.5734
Fun1943.5435
Innovation4213.0935
Theme4443.3635
Graphics2783.4335
Audio3053.0135
Mood2683.1233

Comments

ngupsilon 2018-08-13 00:11

OH MY GOD GLITCHES EVERYWHEEEEERE!!! I LOVE THAT <3

More seriously I really like the concept of dodging your own bullets^^ But sometimes too much feedbacks is too much tho xD

alexandre2bi 2018-08-13 00:18

Remember me hotline miami. So nervous ! I love it !

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-13 00:23

@doublebiceps That was certainly an inspiration! 😉 I'm glad you liked it!

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-13 00:24

@ngupsilon Thanks for the comment! 😄 Was the screenshake too much (I'm a bit too used to it...)? I could turn it down in the next update? (I'll keep the original though so people can fairly review what I made in the 48 hours.)

ngupsilon 2018-08-13 00:27

@ethan-nachreiner Yay the screen shake was a little too much, it makes sometimes the game quite hard to read in my opinion^^

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-13 00:31

@ngupsilon I made the screen shake higher than normal so players wouldn't kill themselves too easily (by shooting too much), but I'm bad at judging screen shake... I'll tone it down in the next update! 😄

thepelranthean 2018-08-13 01:00

This game is a bit overwhelming at first, but eventually I learned to enjoy managing a whole bunch of bullets up in the air. You can add more by firing and take away some by dodging.

You just have to watch out for enemies beneath your haze of bullet fire and manage you location properly and this game should be a breeze... at least it would be if I didn't suck at twin stick shooters. Oh well.

As I went from floor to floor, it would have been nice to see more variety of environment - but who am I kidding. My levels didn't have any decoration at all, so well done on at least making yours look nice and in theme. The music was also simple, but on point with your theme. Well done on that.

One thing that confused me a little bit was the camera movement. Sometimes it would zoom waaayyyyyyy in and I wouldn't see what was going on. Other times it would zoom all the way out and I could see everything (I'll just stand in this corner while my bullets kill the enemies next door). Not seeing the back-end I don't know what caused this, but it was a bit interesting.

Overall, well done on this game. It's not too complicated, benefited from what polish you could bring to bear, and ended up being enjoyable to play (which is generally the purpose of games).

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-13 01:39

@thepelranthean Thank you so much for your feedback! 😄 It means a lot! The camera size is based on the room you're in, so a big room will cause the camera to zoom out. Since small rooms were too easy I made the camera zoom in (causing your bullets to come back faster). But maybe I made it zoom in a bit too much... 😅. I'll adjust the camera for the next update!

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-13 03:11

@ngupsilon @thepelranthean I've turned down the screenshake and adjusted the camera sizes! Also, if you had any audio issues they should (?) now be fixed! 😄

erendelous 2018-08-13 07:17

Wow, that game is totally amazing! Maybe there should be some hardcore soundtrack and camera shake should be turned down a little bit (in my opinion) but everything else is very nice! One of my favourite games for now at this Ludum Dare)

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-13 07:25

@erendelous Thank you so much for the feedback! The soundtrack was one of the things I kinda made last minute, so I agree that there definitely should've been parts where the song gets more "hardcore". And I might turn down the screenshake again... but I'm not sure. Again, thanks so much! 😃

stillnotsure 2018-08-13 08:07

This is great man! The gun feels really powerful and the "clear" technique is satisfying to pull off just in time. It's a cool take on the theme too. The glitchy visuals won't be for everyone but I personally love them, super unique and you applied it to everything, not just the menu.

One criticism is about the timer combined with the locked doors. I think these two things COULD work together with a bit of tweaking but as the AI likes to hide or get stuck in corners sometimes I lost quite often just trying to find the 1 remaining thing to kill. Apart from that I really enjoyed it, probably the best I've played from the comp so far

naemis 2018-08-13 08:11

As the title says... it is overWHELMING... fun game, a bit confusing to get the hang of but it kept my attention going so I'll give you that :D Nice little game you got here, good job!

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-13 08:13

@stillnotsure I literally just updated the game to fix the way that the doors determined how many enemies you have left to kill 😂. Are you playing version 1.3? If not, then feel free to try it out! I'm super glad you liked it! Here's some behind the scenes... Originally I was going to make it so that you made money by killing enemies, and your combo would multiply the money you got from the enemies. You would then use that money to buy weapons and upgrades. Obviously the game had to be scaled back, so I implemented the timer system (which is why it can occasionally feel a bit off).

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-13 08:17

@naemis Thanks for the feedback! 😄 I'm glad it was able to captivate you! The trick to getting far into the game is clearly the screen at appropriate times, and shooting more often than you think! 🙂

kaboosh 2018-08-13 08:18

I really like your take on the theme and i think it's really cool that you can dodge and pickup the bullets, the gun felt great aswell so great job!

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-13 08:21

@kaboosh Thanks for the kind words! 😄

ravenflame 2018-08-13 08:29

Total madness and panic. Great game, tricky to strike a balance between shooting and dodging.

predominant 2018-08-13 08:37

The audio was super loud, had to play with sound off. Its very fun to try and avoid all the bad dudes and the bullets! Great work, and great game!

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-13 08:38

@ravenflame Thanks for the feedback and nice words! 😄 I'm glad you found it tricky in a good way!

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-13 08:40

@predominant Thanks for the feedback! If you don't mind me asking, which sound effect(s) specifically was too loud? (And thanks for the compliments! 😄)

missalpha 2018-08-13 14:50

interesting gameplay, fun and creative

mike-inprinciple 2018-08-13 16:47

Enjoyed playing it for a while, however, I did have a lot of trouble understanding my own health. I couldn't track when I was going to die at all, so all deaths were surprisingly sudden for me, sometimes inexplicable, even.

Also, I think the camera shaking and lerping back all the time was excessive. It made me slightly nauseous.

Switching to full screen made my system go kaput. I lost one of the screens and had no idea how to convince Windows to give me it back. I had to reboot.

Lastly, I was not able to try out the controller? Not sure why, it simply wasn't recognised.

With all this said, I think it's a very good use of the theme. One of the best I've seen so far. Nice work.

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-13 17:32

@missalpha Thanks for playing! I appreciate it! 😄

@mike-inprinciple Thank you so much for your feedback! The instructions say that you can die when you have no combo (enemies and bullets kill you), but it doesn't point out that explosions can instantly kill you (but you have to be really close). I have a multi-monitor setup as well and fullscreen seems to work for me... so I'm not quite sure. The controller also works for me, but I think I have an idea of what the problem could've been. The controller only works if it's plugged in as "player 1", and to select things in the menu you have to use the right trigger. Again, thank you so much for the comment!

mike-inprinciple 2018-08-13 17:42

@ethan-nachreiner I do have 4 plugged in, and I made sure I sued slot 1. I tried all 4, to no avail. I tried enabling the "Controller" option as well, and it locked my mouse, but not sure what happened then. Controllers still unresponsive. As for the graphics issue, I have an interesting setup, where one of my screens is an old 32 inch HD ready TV. It does cause problems even with AAA games, sometimes, but the issue I experienced with your game was pretty... drastic. :)

allan-kong 2018-08-13 17:55

This game reminds me so much of hotline Miami, The shooting is so juicy and winning each level feels so satisfying.

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-13 18:04

@mike-inprinciple Thanks for getting back to me! My setup's a bit weird too... they're both at drastically different resolutions. But I haven't tried playing it on a TV, so I'm not sure. But thank you so much for describing the situation with the controllers! I've found an issue with the way I programmed it (it worked when I was testing it, I swear 😅). I'll be sure to fix it as soon as I can!

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-13 18:05

@allan-kong Thanks for the comment! I appreciate it! 😄

bigbosserndog 2018-08-13 18:17

At first I was like wow, is this hotline miami? XD But nice game. The controls were clean, the theme is well implemented. The more you shoot the more projectiles there are on screen, hence running out of space. I feel like the visual effects, whilst pretty, were quite overdone and this lowered my enjoyment of the game. I really like the swlodown feature as a projectile approaches.

bigbosserndog 2018-08-13 18:17

Edit: This was a double post, sorry XD

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-13 18:36

@bigbosserndog Thank you so much for the feedback! 😃 I'm just about to release v1.4, which will let you reduce the screen shake (and some other effects)! Hopefully that will improve your experience! 🙂

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-13 18:44

@mike-inprinciple @bigbosserndog @predominant I've added the option for players to reduce the screen shake, and tried rebalancing the audio! Hopefully this will make the game more bearable if you had nausea inducing issues before (sorry 😅).

guardhei 2018-08-14 07:16

@ethan-nachreiner v1.2 mac version cannot work. (my os is 10.12)

mister-kweh 2018-08-14 08:03

Loved the game! I kept thinking I was dying for no reason until I noticed the timer. Good Job!

linky439 2018-08-14 12:28

Is that what chaos look like? x)

Great game! A bit hard to understand what's going on at some points, but overall, it's fun! And god damn it, what a slaughter! xD

I don't know if you fix that since the original LD version, but there were a lot of instances when no sound effects were played during the mayhem. Is it due to the bullet-time effect?

Anyway, great job on this game, it looks great (but definitively not suited for epileptics), controls well enough (even if as a QWERTY keyboard user, WASD ain't really easy to use :p) and is overall fun. Congrats!

2018-08-14 16:39

Interesting game! I included it in my compilation video series of the Ludum Dare 42 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/Bq9IqSUYX8Y

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-14 19:38

@jupiter-hadley Thank you so much for including my game in your video! Sorry if the instructions were a bit confusing! 😄

@linky439 Thanks for playing! The audio issues are due to me messing up the audio priorities, which I fixed in version 1.2 (I think). There's a COMPO version available to download, which has all the bug fixes and none of the "new content". 🙂

@mister-kweh Thanks for playing! Yeah, I should probably make the time mechanics a bit more obvious. 🙂

@guardhei I just tested it, and you're right (my bad)! I'll be sure you make an updated version of the Mac version soon! 😄

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-14 20:29

I've made an updated version of the game (2.4) that includes a special message that appears on the first floor (reminds players to press space to add more time)! I added this because of the video @jupiter-hadley made, and I hope this improves the overall user experience! 😄

awix 2018-08-15 07:57

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

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-15 08:03

@awix Thanks so much for the feedback! 😄 Yeah... the music was a bit of a last minute kinda thing (you can check out the timelapse and see 😅). I'll be sure to check out your game!

velvetlobster 2018-08-16 06:04

Some adjustments in the camera and intensity could make this a nice intense game experience

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-16 20:19

@velvetlobster Thank you so much for the feedback! 😄 The game has an option in the menu to lower the amount of "shake" (screen shake and camera shake), if you haven't tried setting the shake to low then that might improve the experience! 🙂 Thanks for playing my game!

flashviper 2018-08-17 16:11

I felt like I could just spam bullets to solve most of the game's problems. Granted, I only made it to the second level... Maybe you could make enemies more visible?

ethan-nachreiner 2018-08-18 22:04

@flashviper Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, spamming bullets is definitely an extremely powerful strategy. I focused on making your bullets the thing that stands out the most (because they're the primary obstacle, despite their small hitbox). Although I could make the blood darker for the next version. Again, thanks for the feedback! 🙂