Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Blood Money
By imphenzia
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 118 | 3.63 | 28 | |
| Fun | 59 | 3.73 | 28 | |
| Innovation | 434 | 2.55 | 28 | |
| Theme | 239 | 3.32 | 28 | |
| Graphics | 203 | 3.50 | 28 | |
| Audio | 89 | 3.54 | 27 | |
| Humor | 368 | 2.07 | 21 | |
| Mood | 341 | 2.86 | 28 |
I enjoyed it. The ship controls feel a bit "too clean" at the beginning, but the more cluttered your screen is, the more thankful you are for it's precision. :D Highscore is 171 so far. Will definitely keep it to beat it some day.
@gruni thanks! Yes, for 8 ludum dares I have had feedback gor swampy controls so this time I put direct feedback of controls in - it looks a bit erratic but I agree - as it gets more busy it is useful. I probably need to add some bullets from enemy types as I managed to play until my ship got super powerful - ir maybe balance it in some other way :)
Very nice game, feels like you could've gotten more out of your good 3d models if the game wasn't ortho, but regardless it played nice.I played for nearly 10 minutes and the shot effects started glitching out and everything was chaotic, can't say I didn't have fun with that!
Agree with appreciating the tight controls, as it helps when the game devolves from shooter to bullet hell :)
One thing I really liked was how you'd still take damage crashing into the leftovers of a destroyed ship. Only further added to the core risk-reward gameplay that was already being driven by the item system, the health going down over time, etc.
A lot of people seemed worried that this theme was rather confined and that would lead to a lot of samey games. Maybe that's true at a most basic level, but overall I really like that style of gameplay, and I like the way you worked it into your game.
Also the music is fun.
@shp - yes, it's a shame to lose the definition of the models in ortho but I tend to not like the perspective distortion on top down shooters. Maybe ortho on a slight angle would be better, but that could still look wrong. Yes, the glitching is an issue - the bullet pool is overfilled, I was going to grow it but I noticed it 1 minute past the deadline =)
@jjjjason Thanks - I was trying to get the most out of the simple system but I still think it's too easy to dodge everything so I may have to introduce some pattern shooting enemies.
I have somewhat of a beast of a machine as I have just upgraded so I have now idea how this game really performs. Has anyone tested it on low to medium range spec?? I am using primitive colliders for collision detection, probably not optimal for this type of game but I had to find an efficient workflow =)
@imphenzia I was playing it on a lower tier Mac Mini (i5, no graphics, 8gb of ram). Game runs smooth in small window mode, playable even with several enemies. Definitely not playable on full screen (I have a 21:9 1440p monitor though, maybe it would run better at standard 1080p).
Kind of complete for a game done in 12h :) well done
Wow! I loved the music, and the gameplay was great too! The only thing I wanted was for the screen to get more chaotic earlier, because that's where the fun of the game really shines!
Thank you for the game. It have some bugs, but it add more fun! BloodMoney.png
Thank you for the not simple AI for enemies. You made nice balance for LD. It's easy but not too much.
I didn't understand difference between cubes. For me it's just random improvements which costs life.
Some nice bugs: After ~20 level bullets appears far away from ship. After ~30 level sound becomes glitched.
It's really good job for 12h.
@hadesfury, @flashviper, @uchiro - thanks for the feedback! I am making an updated version based on the feedback I've received and it's funny how tweaking of parameters can improve the game. Looking forward to sharing a newer version after the compo ends. The difference of the cubes are not too apparent, I agree. They gradually improve rate of fire, number of weapons, and the velocity/damage - but I should make it more obvious when collected what is improved.
I have been away on holiday followed by an intense period at work - but now I'm back and with 4 days to go I am able to allocate some time to play and rate games.
Really great entry, I had a ton of fun playing it. The theme was well implemented, the graphics were nice, and the game-play was really enjoyable. :)
Impressive entry considering how much time you had ! The way you dealt with the theme make your game quite unique and fun to play :)
Cool asteroids-like game, the movement feels a little odd, I wouldd improve it by: - Allowing Inertia to do it's job. (You are on space, things that are moving tends to keep moving) - W should add a force point foward (Where the ship is pointing)
It would be great if you had a Way of telling how close you are to killing the enemies.
But now for the good things: - It's a very fun game - Impressively balanced for a LD Game - Cool grahics - Easy to play
This is a pretty solid entry, congratulations ^^
A very solid little game with very catchy 8 bit tunes. I liked the simplicity of it and the mayhem that ensues when you just let it rip after gathering some power ups. Maybe the gameplay could have changed a bit in the later rounds, but that's just nitpicking. Solid effort!
It plays super fine in a touchscreen. It was difficult to tell how damaged an enemy was. At the begining I was shooting to an enemy and I thought it was inmortal or I should shoot from different angle.
Wow this is well done for such a sort time. Controls were difficult to get use to but once I played a few times I started to get the hang of moving. Graphically it great. I rarely saw any life spawn thus died a lot. Concept is really nice and I look forward to the post compo version!
This was really fun! You nailed the feeling of shooting with all the visual and audio feedback; super juicy! The difficulty curved seemed pretty well tuned, at least for me. I made it to 213 seconds on my second run and I felt like I was just getting the hang of things as the bigger and faster ships picked up. It was never particularly easy or overly hard. Finally, I really like the textures! I never would have figured out they were the dash of your car!
Good music for such a short time! I almost didn't rate you for audio because I assumed it was released under creative commons. Interesting take on the theme, too--I like the contrast between rushing to get the hearts, and remembering to wait patiently to get the power ups.
Really good graphics! Gave the game a special feel. Felt like its own universe, not just another space shooter. The destruction animation was really good too.
I'm bad with shooters though, so I didn't get to see what the upgrades actually do. I died pretty quickly :D
Really slick music and the gameplay works really well.
I'm very fond of the mechanic you introduced for decreasing the amount of health you get if you don't pickup the health quickly. That's super clever! It incentivizes some risky gameplay.
What a pretty game! The modular space ships are so cool! The upgrades could have been bigger, so they could look better. If there was a splash screen at the start that would explain it all, it would be easier to just jump in to the game. Too bad the enemies didn't do anything but fly towards you, I felt like I could keep going forever. I had to stop because the weapon system broke down too much :D I had lots of fun though! So broken :D
@elemental-zeal-game-studios - thanks - glad you liked the game and the art. I'm trying to add some more balancing, difficulty levels and playability in a newer version now.
@amour-du-pain - thanks, yes, time was a huge limitation this time so I had to cut back on stuff like I normally implement like a bit more polished menu system and state handling.
@shunaky - thanks for your feedback! The game is more of a twin stick shooter compared to an asteroid clone which is why I opted to make it direct movement in any direction so you could aim anywhere - it would probably be more natural with a hand controller instead of mouse + keyboard. The inertia was deliberately left out due to the hectic debris field as I've had a lot of feedback in previous entries about movement being sluggish with more accurate physics. But I still truly appreciate your feedback!
@jaywoody - thanks, yes, I'm adding some more to the gameplay itself in a post-compo version.
@sergi-montaner thanks - that's cool that it played well on touch screen - but on my mobile phone I could not get movement with HTML5? What device did you play on? I'll see if I can add some texture damage to modules to illustrate that parts are taking damage - that's a good point.
@simplepotential thanks for your feedback. The spawning may have too much of a random factor to it, maybe I should try to balance the spawns for a bit more predictability. With the controls, I understand that they feel a bit direct initially but when it gets hectic it's probably for the better =)
@nick-rafalski thanks - I tried to find a balance that would cater for people trying the game without too much previous experience, something I've learned in LD is that people have so many games that they want to try that if it's too difficult you risk them dropping the game before long. Glad you liked it! I've got a tutorial coming out on YouTube any day now about modular spaceships and the texturing method.
@tinymushroom cheers, I normally allocate 2-3 hours for music but I literally had 15 minutes to make it this time so I was prepared to release without any music at all. I have to mention that I use a few arpeggio presets that assist a bit with the not sequence of the lead instrument for example.
@msiddeek and @ian-kettlewell thanks guys, glad you both like it and I'm happy that you feel it introduced something new thanks to the theme.
@m2tias thank you, good point about the powerups, they do look a bit boring - I'll try to improve that. I noticed that the ever increasing power of player weapons got a bit out of hand to say the least too =) I'll add both some tactility when you pick up powerups so you see improvements of your ship and I'll introduce some tutorials as well as difficulty settings in the next version.
good retro game! it reminds me the 80s and 90s video games which was so cool!
I played on a windows surface