FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD44 → HWEY Heist

HWEY Heist

By hunter-towe

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall10852.7238
Fun9652.7538
Innovation11422.0938
Theme10812.3438
Graphics9982.4838
Audio6911.9438
Humor5712.7938
Mood9452.7237

Comments

miroreflect 2019-05-01 07:56

There are some collision detection problems which at first helped me a lot and later screwed me up a bit. The map design was nice and the conclusion was kinda funny though!

hunter-towe 2019-05-01 08:24

@miroreflect I was hoping nobody would find this page until I added some screenshots and improved the description, lol. Thank you for your ratings and feedback, though!

pix 2019-05-03 05:06

It may just be a bug with the web version, but it makes a buzzing sound every second. The map design was surprisingly well-done and some of the art was enjoyable. I would focus more on the jumping in the future, giving it acceleration to make it feel more natural.

hunter-towe 2019-05-03 05:33

@Pix That's actually just a looping sound I made (didn't have much time left, so it didn't come out like I would've preferred). The jumping does feel a little quirky, doesn't it? It's certainly something I would touch up on for a more serious project. Thank you for your feedback and for trying my game!

evan-minto 2019-05-03 05:36

The platformer level design is pretty fun — I liked getting a powered up jump and backtracking to find new areas I could navigate to.

But the jumping and shooting mechanics could use a lot of polish. As someone already mentioned, the jump needs some acceleration. Right now it appears to move at a constant speed without any gravity which feels unnatural and hard to control. The shooting also feels a bit clunky, partially because it seems to interfere with the jumping sometimes (I can't figure out exactly what's wrong, but jumping up and down and shooting the whole time seemed more difficult than it should have been).

Also, I imagine the walking through the walls bit was intentional, but it feels a little like a bug. If there are going to be extensive "secret tunnel" sections like that, I think there should be some kind of indicator for when you can actually walk through a wall/floor.

muzigpuzig 2019-05-03 08:15

Your level design actually impressed me, even though I didn't manage to win the stage, guess that's on me. I really like the Lego-style of the main blocks and background. Movement was quite difficult for me, as some non-english keyboards don't have 'z' on the bottom left of the keyboard. E.g. the german keyboard has y and z switched, so I had to stretch my fingers quite a bit, since it was a main mechanic on Z.

davidus 2019-05-03 08:28

Good game, but the gravity is weird!

dev-for-pizza 2019-05-03 08:40

Love those graphics, really cool work. A little problem with the difficulty for us, because of azerty keyboard at first.

carpin 2019-05-03 13:11

That stair upside made me sick dude. I had taked fun with those angry faces. Good game by yourself!

gward2489 2019-05-04 02:48

Hilarious concept and funny art, made for a good mood. Unfortunately I experianced some audio bugs on the web gl deployment. Still enjoyed.

maggardjosh 2019-05-04 02:52

Like others have said, the movement needs some polish. But there is an unexpected amount of depth here! I kept expecting to run out of game to play, but it kept going :smile: I liked the jump power up, made it feel like a mini-metroidvania. Also the story/ending is weird/fun. Good job, had fun playing!

hunter-towe 2019-05-04 03:16

@evan-minto Thank you for your feedback! The game could definitely use a bit of polish. Also, for the walking through the walls part, those red slips were my attempt at giving the player a hint; but I think I know what you mean-- it probably wouldn't hurt to have it turn transparent once they're inside of it, as most games do.

hunter-towe 2019-05-04 03:18

@muzigpuzig Thank you! My apologies for the inconvenient controls-- I'll try to keep that in mind next time!

hunter-towe 2019-05-04 03:24

@davidus Thanks! The gravity does feel rather unusual, doesn't it? It might not be the wisest choice, but sometimes I sacrifice a little polish for extra depth to the gameplay.

hunter-towe 2019-05-04 03:28

@dev-for-pizza I appreciate that! The azerty keyboard inconvenience was brought to my attention by another player, and I'll definitely be mindful of that next time!

hunter-towe 2019-05-04 03:32

@carpin Thanks-- I appreciate you giving my game a try!

hunter-towe 2019-05-04 03:35

@gward2489 Thank you! Also, what seemed to be wrong with the audio?

gward2489 2019-05-04 03:42

@hunter-towe a low pitched synth hit at the same pitch every other second or so

hunter-towe 2019-05-04 03:42

@maggardjosh Yeah, the controls could use some improvements for sure. I didn't want the game to end immediately, so I did go out of my way to add a number of different (but hopefully fun) areas. Thank you very much!

hunter-towe 2019-05-04 03:48

@gward2489 That's actually a sound I made. Needless to say, I'm not much of a music composer, so I didn't even bother trying to make real music for the whole game (especially since I only had around an hour left at the time of making it). Would it have been better to just leave it out? In hindsight, probably.

gward2489 2019-05-04 04:00

@hunter-towe it was a good synth sound, I would have liked to hear it at different pitches, it got a bit repetitive at the single pitch. That being said, the other sound effects were good.

aim 2019-05-04 20:33

I only have one question. Is that a mustache or a scary mouth? Mario, is that you? :P I like your background. Did you set that up far away to get the parallax effect or did you do it programmatically?

hunter-towe 2019-05-04 21:03

@Aim Yeah, it's a mustache, lol. The background was done programmatically. Thanks for trying my game!

al-bueche 2019-05-04 22:48

This is an interesting platformer and kept me engaged enough to complete it. Graphics and sound effects were simplistic, but served their purpose well.

The jumping mechanic took some getting used to, but once I did it worked well enough. Its consistent and allows me to adjust the height.

The first 'cutscene' caught me by surprise, but they worked well enough to keep me from feeling lost. The 'life' was also useful in that regard.

Collision detection around combat was a bit buggy. I frequently ended up to close to the enemy for them to hit me. They also had a lot more HP then I initially expected. It works well enough for the boss fights, but I have an urge to kill enemies as I move past them, so I spent 2 seconds or so killing each one in some of the areas.

Overall, combat was a bit too easy. I was never afraid of running out of HP, so the jumping puzzles and time required to take out enemies were the main obstacles.

The invisible walls were interesting for a while and I like how the 'life' pickup was used to introduce it, but they became a bit of a nuisance at some point. There was also one particular jumping puzzle I had a lot of trouble with (just before the first enemy portal).

By the way, I initially tried the web build, but couldn't get it to load, so ended up playing the exe.

potatolain 2019-05-05 01:24

This was definitely an amusing entry! It was quirky for sure, and I got stuck in the walls a few times, (good idea adding that reset button) but I was able to beat it. There's not a whole lot to say that hasn't already been said - the movement was a little bit weird (and maybe slow?) but it was workable. I liked the nod to metroid at the end, as well.

Overall a pretty interesting entry.

flashviper 2019-05-05 01:25

This is really good! It seems to me like you've been watching a lot of Mark Brown's level design videos. Your levels are very well designed. The one problem I had was figuring out where to go after each cutscene, but you had a clever trick to combat this: you made the area memorable. It didn't work as well for the second area, because of the head's color scheme, and because I assumed it was just the same head as before. The only thing I would change would be to show the statue fading away or something. But overall, this game was great!

Also, if this game is ever a speedrun, I already have the first skip. I call it skippy skip, and it uses the game's quirky damage physics to bypass the final boss fight entirely:

Screen Shot 2019-05-04 at 7.20.20 PM.png

hunter-towe 2019-05-05 02:52

@al-bueche I thought people would simply avoid the enemies (the ones that move on a strict path, as opposed to chasing you), but for future projects, I'll definitely remember that people may like to kill them all. In regards to the web build loading issue, sometimes when that happens, refreshing works for me; it could be something else, though. Thanks for the feedback!

@cppchriscpp Thanks! Needless to say, I'm a fan of Metroid.

@flashviper Thank you! Level design is a big deal to me, so I really appreciate the feedback you've given. I actually haven't watched any of Mark Brown's videos (I didn't even know about them), but now that you've brought them to my attention, I think I'll check them out.

Nice job on skipping the boss. I'm sure there are a lot of other ways to skip things, knowing how weird the physics tend to get.

Seriously, though, thank you so much!

webox 2019-05-05 03:10

Great work!! The game could really use some music and a bit of speed. I like the metroidvania touches. I also liked that you went full literal with the theme. Nice job!

hunter-towe 2019-05-05 06:52

@webox Thanks! I agree that some music would be great, as well as a faster pace. Going full literal is usually the easiest way to implement a theme, but it also tends to be less creative than other alternatives.

ursagames 2019-05-05 21:51

Thank you for submitting your game to be played on my stream!

Once the stream is finished you can find the video here: https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos If you want to know when it was played you can find your game in the queue here: https://tinyurl.com/y5rdokvp

attala 2019-05-07 08:01

Nice game. The controls didn't quite hit the mark for my taste, but the level design makes up for it :) The soundtrack got a little annoying after a while. Anyway, well done!

enderswype 2019-05-07 09:42

ok, i guess

reheated 2019-05-07 12:30

Overall: A silly platformer with multiple enemies and scripted events - impressive.

Fun: I played on normal difficulty. I think the fun in this game stems from the silliness of it all. There is an impressive amount of gameplay and I am impressed by the scripted events (complete with camera movement). Something felt a little "off" about the controls (maybe the triangular jumping arc?) but not so bad as to prevent enjoyment of the game. I enjoyed the chaos when fighting the final boss. I was frustrated by the difficult jump puzzle. In my opinion, there were also too many invisible pathways. I somehow got through the final boss like @flashviper did, but I ended up falling back in front of the boss and defeating him properly.

Innovation: I think the gameplay is more or less standard, except maybe for the unusual gun.

Theme: Well, it's there, but sort of feels tacked on.

Graphics: Functional and funny. I think the enemies look hilarious.

Audio: I'm not a huge fan of the simplistic music.

Humor: Of course, it's funny and ridiculous.

Mood: See humour.

mika-la-grand 2019-05-07 16:10

**Press x twice to confirm difficulty** The walking animation was funny and the game as a whole is quite silly. I didn't like the slow movement and the controles were a bit unconventional (normal is wasd and arrow keys, jump with w, up arrow or space). The jumping feels of because he continuously moves at the same speed, he should slow down as he goes up and speed up as he falls down. I started of by going down right but there was this unpassable enemy. Then I went left and up, but after a while I could progress further. I also wasn't a fan of the one tone music. Here's the enemy I couldn't go past:

weirdgame.JPG

hunter-towe 2019-05-07 20:17

@reheated This is some good feedback. Thank you!

@mika-la-grand Thanks for trying my game! That's actually a statue, not an enemy. If you want to know what to do (spoiler ahead), you're supposed to get past it by obtaining the strong jump and then killing a blue head. It requires a little bit of exploration.

purpoappo 2019-05-08 01:31

This game was very.......strange.

tamail 2019-05-11 18:38

Oh my god, the "Bvuuuum" sound was so annoying after a while :D :D The slow movement was kinda frustrating but I liked the silly graphics and I was actually eager to explore! Nice!

hunter-towe 2019-05-13 11:40

@tamail Yeah, if there's one thing this Ludum Dare taught me, it's that sometimes it's better to simply have no music or ambient noise at all. Thank you, though!