Air Rider

hawkie 2018-12-01 23:07

Hi all,

Good luck to all for Ludum Dare 43. This is my first ever experience of this. But I've spent a while getting my own typescript game engine ready.

I woke up this morning at 2am to look at the LD theme to find it was one I hadn't really thought about. Went back to bed for four hours and re awoke with an idea about sacrificing passengers on a competitive balloon ride - where the aim is to travel as far as possible for prestige. I got to work on the balloon mechanics using my own typescript framework and after a 16 hours managed to create something like a balloon flight simulator. Its damn tricky to land. You have to have less than 10 descent speed and land on a flat bit of ground. Score is based on flying as far as you can. You can ditch passengers using space key to go further. :)

Ludum Dare 43 - Sacrifices must be made - Air Rider by Hawkie.png

Git Hub User: Hawkie.

hawkie 2018-12-02 17:15

After working another day making tweaks to the balloon flight dynamics, auto zooming, help and the effect of the passengers hitting the ground, I have published my game on https://hawkie123.itch.io/air-rider.

AirRider-sacrifice.png

hawkie 2018-12-02 17:27

Source code is at my github:

https://github.com/Hawkie/LudumDare43

suchista 2018-12-03 14:38

It's a funny little game, I don't feel the controls, but I guess it's the part of the challenge. GJ!

artbohr 2018-12-03 14:55

Wow, the sound of sacrifice is tremendous :D good job. I had quiet some fun playing this game.

hawkie 2018-12-03 15:28

It's tricky to land at first. For anyone struggling, try using the burner (Q) immediately and maintain temperature of about 90. (or sacrifice two passengers straight away :)

If you have mastered it, for an extra challenge try landing without using the burner - ejecting passengers only.

You can play repeatedly (N) and build score from previous successes.

Keys:

Q = Burner (increase temp)

A = Dump Air (decrease temp!)

Left = Jet air to go left (loses some temp)

Right = Jet air to go right (loses some temp)

Space = Eject passenger to lighten the load.

Esc = return to main menu

cristiano-t 2018-12-03 17:18

Nice game... I very like the songs and the screams are very funny! Congratulations for your work! With you can, Play my game !

jk5000 2018-12-03 20:56

A very well made little game. I especially love the choice of music for this game. For me there was to much unnecessary info on the screen. Overall a fine LD game. Well done.

oxrock 2018-12-03 23:15

The way people screamed as they were falling and eventually made a splat crunch sound was strangely satisfying. The music also did a lot to help set the mood.

bj-pucci 2018-12-04 05:09

Fun game, the music is very good too!

dob 2018-12-04 21:38

Fun game. Good graphics, smooth play, great sound and music. I was a little confused by the controls for a while - e.g. I couldn't move upward and sideways at the same time, which didn't match what I expected. It would be cool to have an indicator to know if your landing speed and site were safe, too. I wasn't sure why I wouldn't just kill all the passengers at the start. I mean, other than Kantian ethics. Very nice work - what did you do the music in?

hilvon 2018-12-05 10:17

Nice relaxing game.

I didn't feel the urge to sacrifice the passengers though. Like if the point of the flight was to go as war as I can - why take passengers in the first place? And if there are passengers on board then their safety is more important than going far without any specified goal...

Music is Awesome though.

zetorama 2018-12-09 22:04

That's fun! Firstly, I didn't realize there's more than just sacrificing passengers. (Probably, you could add a controls cheat-sheet somewhere on the playing screen to minimize that.) But after checking Controls and Hints I realized, there's a lot more in the game.

So, great game, nice mechanics and awesome music! And separately, nice job on making it with typescript. (I hope, it didn't slow you down much.)

linus 2018-12-24 12:17

Cool game with interesting and unique gameplay. It was fun experimenting with different speeds to see which ones worked well to gain distance.

The theme was used in an interesting way here since there was seemingly no bad effects of sacrificing your passengers, it was only helpful because you would get further. Perhaps some penalty for sacrificing the passengers could be introduced but I guess gameplay wise there could have been a bit more depth to compensate for this as well.

Great job overall! :smile: