Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → EXO
By firesplash-entertainment, Siml and MrsTari
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 550 | 3.44 | 76 | |
| Fun | 663 | 3.16 | 76 | |
| Innovation | 492 | 3.18 | 76 | |
| Theme | 443 | 3.49 | 76 | |
| Graphics | 620 | 3.43 | 77 | |
| Humor | 791 | 2.36 | 68 | |
| Mood | 519 | 3.34 | 75 |
Since I'm a Mac user, I have to run the game in a VM. It's not playable there. The Mouse is way to sensible. Tried it on a Windows Machine, but the sensitivity is killing me there as well (even when setting every slider to most left side). However, the sensitive setting does not seem to get applied correctly. The Y-Slider jumps back when switching to another menu.
Idea is interesting, I like TD games and doing it in a FPS way is nice.
Hi @manuel-rauber I checked this. Funny typo... used X two times... that fucks up everything... Check it out. I also removed the invert feature.
@firesplash-entertainment working better now. However the sensitivity is still incredible high. But the game itself worked and with very less movement of the mouse, the navigation through the level worked as well.
My high score was around 43 or something. Then I got circled by the enemies, not being able to flee. :(
Cool game, graphics and sound are nice and make the game feel scary. There are some bugs, like the guns firing at dead bodies. Is it possible to regenerate health? that would be a good feature. Once you have your guns set up, you just have to wait until you die, as the player can't really fight on his own, that's kinda boring.
@wie well thats tower defense :) But you are in fact part of the game as you can use the map as a strategy element. guide the aliens a way through the towers. Also have you upgraded all towers to level 3? Towers can be upgraded. You regain a specific amount of health (raising with later waves) at the beginning of each wave.
@manuel-rauber okay thanks for your valued feedback. I just put the mose fix together with two other bugfixes (and refined the slider even more) and uploaded it as Bugfix 1 (with changelog of course)
I really liked the game, I felt like there was a lack of feedback for placing towers, I would like to have used maybe enter or space or something to confirm a build, now it felt like I exited the build menu instead of building something. Overal good game, sound was fitting and graphics looked good! I especially liked the preview for the different guns.
Thanks! We had planned nice2have features like those: - the force field rings below the weapons show the level (1, 2 or 3) - different textures for the tower levels - even more illumination (think of AVATAR) - After placing them by pressing "F" (or A for controller) a second time there should have been a particle effect. Further the cam was supposed to make more kinematic transitions. It was just a lack of time.
Hey guys, we had a similar idea! I like your approach to tower defense, especially the atmosphere is good. A humanoid alien looks cool and creepy. I suppose you have also encountered a problem that in a short time of jam is creating tower defense quite challenging, especially because lots of work must be done before you can playtest your game.
I had a problem understanding how large the range of weapons is so I can place towers efficiently. I also sometimes felt a little disoriented from the map. At a later stage of the game, I had nothing to do because I couldn't leave the turret safe zone to build another tower, and the towers in my vicinity had been upgraded to the maximum. So I just dodged the enemies. It would be good to have some time between the waves of enemies, and perhaps a greater life energy income for the possibility of building another new towers.
I also killed myself when I accidentally upgraded the catapult tower. I think it's better if a player can't kill himself by building or upgrading.
But overall it is a good contribution :sunglasses:
Last bugfix version playable, but there are still few bugs(or no IDK). Cannon never deals damage to enemy, laser(my favourite tower) sometimes do it with orange dudes too. Catapult rarely shoot already dead units. In overrall game cool. I am a fun of TD, especially Sanctum, so I can quess you inspiration source) Idea with global rantings also good. But I cant get how to fix broken platforms and change targeting. Also map should have more icons, at least for your towers, empty platforms and roads.
P.S. Ez world record
@team-on congratz to the record :D Nice one!
Well in fact we had rare time to playtest our game thats why we relied on our community feedback. Unfoortunately I made a huge mistake. The Wave time (top left) should not start before you kill the last enemy. I did not notice that before elysia's stream. Guess I will be doing a bugfix 2 for that.
I agree on the minimap icons. We di not think about that.
The Tower range was meant to be drawn by gizmo but also here time was missing. You can however see the range on the minimap.
Impressive ! The graphics and in game UI (when building tower) was on point ! And the atmosphere was tense ^^ I really liked this entry
The download link says "All Releases" but the zip file contains Windows-only executables. I tried both RELEASE-Official.zip and RELEASE-Bugfix2.zip. Its apparently possible to make port Unity games to other platforms (for example: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/bankroll and https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/l-y-l-a-your-personal-living-your-life-assistant). Unfortunately, I don't know how.
@bar "all Releases" is meant like all versions we have released. We currently do only have windows builds. I prepared a WebGL. if it works I'll add it here tomorrow.
Good graphics and audio. Seems that my canon does not deal damage to the "tall" enemy.
The tall enemy has way more HP. But I agree that something seems to be wrong with the cannon in general. We were also not able to make the cannon sound appear. (had not ime for debugging it in the end)
Technically there is no difference in how laser and cannon are handled at script side.
Cool game! Awsome art!
I like it :laughing:!
Great game, you should of probably used an itchio url though, this wont get as many clicks because people will be wary of virus's
Nice Game, very well made. Cool graphics atmosphere overall
Very nice as expected. Good thing, that we can lower the mouse sensitivity now :D
Is there any way to regain hp?
Nice game!
@nerzal Yes. Survive the wave.
The main menu and controller explanations where clear so great props for that. Audio was great for the enemies and guns. Very well made. Only improvement I'd like to see is the minimap showing the paths.
I like the atmosphere. It really looks like an alien planet. I could not find how to upgrade towers. It's a good tower defense game. You should create a simple tutorial level.
@aspigame just walk near them. It says "press F to switch to upgrade mode" Same logic as for building.
@spiffy Thanks! Yes that was a point I've been considering. In the end the lack of time stopped me from reconsidering.
Great job !
A good start! I liked the eerie atmosphere of the graphics and ambient audio (the alien models were surprisingly creepy), though some limited music wouldn't go wrong. Decent use of applying the theme to the tower defense, though it could possibly use a little balance tweaking in terms of damage done to enemies and the amount of health restored each round. Lots of potential for future expansion here, nice work!
I liked the design of the enemys and the world. It was a little dark but I think with some lighting in the world it could be really scifi and alien like. I got a feel similar to the alien world from Half Life.
One thing I wish for would be a way to determine the range of each tower visually. So i can better plan the layout of my towers.
This game's graphics I like the style of, i like the style of gameplay, and it is also pretty fast to run as well. If anything could be improved upon, I guess the music could have been more fitting to the experience. The default sensitivity is a little high, as well. Other than that, this game was pretty good.
Graphics and audio were great! Love the tower building aspect. Needs tweaking but I like this entry a lot!
Thanks for all your good as well as critical words! <3
rly interesting idea
What you can improve: * show a topology map in the mini map * for the lore, add in background a kind of broken spatial habitate * augment speed of the game, I was able to go to bathroom while turrets killed enemies * maybe a music more intense will be more suitable
3d tower defense. Perhaps this kind of game did't very got my attention. Your can use 3d to do some more insteresting game. No like the defence. The 3d make it a kind of dull. It just my self View。It take you a lo of time but did't play very well.
Yeah especially balancing was a point we had no tiem for. I wanted to perfection too much and thus some important things fell off the timely horizon. Unfortunately.
A tower defence game is an interesting take on the life is currency theme. Though the 3D FPS element makes it quite difficult to play, since you don't have an overview of the battlefield.
Thats the point @mika-la-grand :D
Very impressive game here, I love it! Very good job!
Things I didn't like: - A little confusing. At the start I walked near the building point and it said to press F, but I kept running and hitting F and nothing happened haha. Maybe if the platforms had more contrast with the environment it would indicate it better. - Sometimes I had to press F two times to enter building mode. - I got confused when I built something and then got hit. I thought that some monster was near me while I was building, but then saw nothing. I took some time to remeber that the theme is "Life is currency" and realize what was happening xD. It could have something to indicate why you are losing health while building things. - The green barrier dealt damage to me. Nothing indicates it, I think if it were red it would be better. But even then, I would think that it would be impassable and would try to pass through it just to confirm haha. - The default configuration for mouse sensitivity was way high for me, had to fine tune it before playing. - Monters died with a little bit of health on their life bar. When they were dying, I thought that they were hiding themselves or something. - The music didn't combine very well. I think it fits more into a Horror game, like if you are entering into some unknown place. For this game I think a bit more calm ambient or even a bit of action would fit more. - The Tesla coil simply didn't work, it did nothing. I even upgraded it and it still did nothing. I couldn't sell it too =(. - The cannon hit the tall monster like 50% of the time. If it was intended, it needed to be more clear. - Wave timer is too long, since I already had spent all my life building and upgrading towers and the life I gained per wave was a small amount, there wasn't anything that I could do while waiting for the next wave.
Things I liked: - The ambient is very well done! - Nice graphics for monsters. - Weapons are well modelated. - Particles are beautiful, the catapult explosion was satisfying. - The rate of fire from the weapons are very satisfying too. - The preview for the weapons are very well made.
Sorry for the wall of text and the complaints, I really like tower defense games and I feel that if this game got more polished on those things it would be a really good game!
It's neat to see a first-person tower defense. I think there is some room for improvement in the visuals. Overall, the game is pretty dark. The user interface doesn't contrast well against the background, so it was hard to read against certain backdrops. If you used bright text with a dark panel behind it (or vise versa), it would read well.
I tried using a controller at first, but the look movement was significantly slower than the mouse. I do appreciate the control options though, so nice work with that. Same with the control explanation in the menu.
If I had a better understanding of what was happening on the field, this could be pretty fun.
Nice work!
Thanks for your detailed review @eduardo-yukio also thanks to yours, @ransom.
I/we know about most of the cons. A few are result of lack of time (balancing of time and damage values, sensitivity issue), some are not. Especially the sensitivity issue is one I was wondering about. I am using the camera controller from our game MAze Crusher (the steam version) and noticed that the cam is acting weird. I must ahve missed something but didn't have the trime to find and fix. This is why we used a middle way of speed and made it adjustable.
You are the first one who reports that pressing F sometimes didn't work though. This is a bit weird as technically the text appears when you ARE able to press F. (Same condition) I know though that the effect of "realistic smooth walking", that makes you stop a few centimeters after you release the button causes some trouble as the build gets cancelled when you move. (We made it that way so you can flee if an enemy happens to come too near - but that seems to youse trouble) Could you please re-try this and watch if you actually stop moving before pressing F?
And for the music: Well you are on an alien planet. Our thought was it should be a bit weird and even creepy. That was somehow intended but I noticed many people don't enjoy that way. Did you notice that the music is completely random? The mushrooms are making this noise :)
Tha cannon-bug is known. It was even known the whole third day but I did not find out why this happens. IT's not that the cannon ball passes next to the enemy (this could happen as weapons are (intended) physics based). It's like the ball flying through it. And this should never happen. Btw: All three weapons are technicallynworking the same way (same behaviour script) but only cannon is affected...
Did the tesla not work at all? It should send out a particle wave when enemies are near. This causes enemies to slow down to 50% for 10 seconds. This is the same for all levels, just the range increases.
The HP issue is an issue of rushing in the end. Unity progress bars are not empty on 0 by default. Simply got no time to fix this in the end.
The damage thing is written down in description and about menu. It's your exo robot's radiation. On the other hand I know the build UI is not that clear. It actually says what it costs. It's just not visible enough.
Not bad tower defence, it is clear that a lot of work has been done. Strange design choice.. Too vulgar, perhaps, in my opinion. Anyway, it's fun to play! Good job!
@firesplash-entertainment Lol, that part about the mushrooms making the sound is nice, didn't notice it haha. I got that this was the intention, to make it creepy, but I think that it just sounded displaced. But it's subjective, for sure.
Now that I'm testing pressing F while walking to the platform, I noticed one more bug: if I enter the building mode and press Esc, I expected that the building preview would disappear, but instead the paused menu appears and when I press F again, it doesn't go to the menu, it builds things, with the pause menu on my screen. Then I have to press Esc three times to open the functionak pause menu again.
And yeah, the bug happens because of what you mentioned: it's the inertia of the movement that causes me to exit the building mode.
One more bug I like to report is that my mouse continues on the screen while I'm playing :p. It remains fixed on the center.
Ohhh, the Tesla slows the enemies... When I saw the tesla I immediately thought that it would electrocute them, didn't even read the text saying "Slowness". That's my bad, sorry. But I think players that don't read things, like me, are very common haha. People like to learn while playing, through experience. Maybe if there was an animation or a sound feedback to accentuate the slowness, you would have a greater guarantee that the players would understand that mechanic.
Now that I'm playing more, I have more feedbacks hehe: - I think it would make more sense that you gained life after a wave ends, instead of when it starts, because you could spend your life in the time between waves. - Maybe if it had a button to immediately start the new wave it would make the game more dynamic. I started with a tesla and a catapult and it made me survive for many waves doing nothing, jut waiting to have enough life to update the catapult. I started to listen to a podcast while waiting for the waves to start haha. - I'm very competitive and when I saw the ranking at the end, this game became much more fun to me hahaha, I had to take the first place. - This made me see the late game, the level design is very good, lots of places to put the weapons, I died on a dead way, very good.
I totally understand not having time to polish the game, it's a jam afterall. Given the limited time, your work is very good!
I am a fan of Sanctum so I am also a fan of this entry! Pretty fun, running around and setting turrets is neat, especially since there are many paths and you have to constantly be mindful of having some escape route. Game seems fairly balanced, turrets needed to be upgraded to keep me safe which ofc lead to me being on lower health. Generally pretty entertaining game, just give me guns and I will call it Sanctum 3!
One thing that was annoying; when upgrading / building turrets, it's hard to read the text on that UI background.
first person tower defense is a very interesting concept to explore. Yes, there is a lot to be done, mainly on the presentation, but I think the foundation is present and the gameplay is consistent. Nice entry!
Thanks again for alle the feedback. Especiallay to @eduardo-yukio for onece more highly detailed feedback! Yeah you are perfectly right about the lazy readers :D First thing I do whenever I receive something new is tossing the manual. For that mouse thing: I noticed that in a few unity games we playtested yet. I am locking it down, it should disappear. I fear that might be a bug - or a change - in latest unity engine. For my tests on EXO it even disappeared sometimes.
@zeriver Yes. I tried that UI several times and it looked great. My fault was, I only tested it on two platforms. The Camera mechanic makes it howeser look bad in some situations.
for some reason I keep pressing F but the build menu was not opening. It opened one time after a while, I built the turret, and then it did not opened again. (I played the bugfix2)
I forgot how much I enjoy first person tower defense games. Liked the level design and the interface for building. Had trouble with finding my health, but it was nice starting with a generous amount. The monsters looked great and fit with the environment. Had a good early 2000's vibe. Good work!
Really nice!
Really enjoyed this one after understanding the mechanic. Got to 453 points, wave 15. Pretty much all catapults.
Liked: - Leading enemies through traps by exploiting their path finding, bwahaha - First person makes the mood claustrophobic and scary - Trying to reach mount points near the enemy spawn has a great risk and reward sense of challenge.
Didn't like: - Catapult upgrade costs are prohibitive in price, so it's unrealistic to perform more than one, ever, should be 200-250pts maybe - Laser upgrades don't seem to do anything - Not enough mount points located in pairs, for creating choke points, thus the slowdown tower seems useless - Personally I'd rather have it third-person, still with an avatar that enemies chase, I think that would feel more strategic and tower-defensy - No ability to gain money in the middle of a round - No ability to gain life except waiting for end-of-round (did I miss something?) - Camera movement with controller is painfully slow, with mouse is painfully fast. Even cranking sensitivity all the way down in options, mouse is still fast - Please put the map layout on the minimap! Eventually I memorized the map, but it too awhile
Overall it creates a good tense mood, and reaching higher wave levels feels like an achievement.
@michaelsonbritt thanks for the detailed feedback. Yes a few of the points have already been mentioned before In fact laser upgrades raise the fire rate and range. The cam movement was our greatest flaw I think. Something went wrong here. Trie to fix that a bit in bugfix 1 and 2 but didn't want to rewrite huge parts of the controller as that wound be too much for a LD bugfix in my opinion.
Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/421751583?t=01h44m18s
Good luck on your ratings! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
A bit confusing in the beggining but i managed to understand it's a FPS towerdefense like ...
The graphics are good, i would sujjest to increase the visibility of the enemies, their color looks like a camouflage with the scenario, loosing it's silhuette and shape, the lack of lights and shadows also makes them lose ther volume.
The lack of sound is sad, but its fair, if you compar with the graphics and systems developed, i would invest more in ambience, and even try something like Google's Ressonance to enhance the experience...
This is a quite interesting take on the tower defense genre. I don't think that I've seen a tower defense game in first person view where you have to defend YOURSELF before. The concept worked remarkably well too and I spent quite some time playing before finally being too outnumbered. Gotta watch out for that positive feedback loop which makes you less able to improve towers after being hit previously. Some catch up mechanic would be cool but I'm not exactly sure how I'd do it... In the audiovisual department it's a bit lacking in my opinion. Some things just have no sounds, the monster noises are overly loud and not rooted in the world and the ambient background sounds didn't really suit the theme and setting that well I think. The graphics could have been improved a lot by just choorsing a more appealing colour scheme in my opinion. I find it very impressive how you managed to get multiple animated 3D characters into a Ludum Dare game though, hats off!
The idea is good, I can see a lot of work done. A bit of a strange selection of music, the camera seems too close. I would like a wider view. The mechanic itself works well, cool glow effects :)
Nice tower defense game ... really like the twist with the first person building methode. However I would like to have a way to sprint because the movement was a bit slow
:cry:
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