FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD45 → Spooky Japes

Spooky Japes

By cdunham, Sh4d0wDw3113r, Sigil, Jessmend815 and jkoftekian

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall10252.8149
Fun8832.8649
Innovation8922.7349
Theme10512.3948
Graphics9202.7949
Audio5482.9347
Humor3903.0749
Mood7763.0649

Comments

itsbamboo 2019-10-09 03:33

This was a really fun game to play. I especially enjoyed being a skelly running around yelling "Rattle me bones!". Nice work!

cdunham 2019-10-09 04:01

@itsbamboo Thanks for playing! Glad you liked it :smile:

itsbamboo 2019-10-09 04:05

@cdunham be sure to play/rate other games so that people see yours. I found your game on "Zero" filter, meaning it's at the very end of the list.

cdunham 2019-10-09 04:11

@itsbamboo Oh yeah, we know. Just worked on this game all weekend so now most of us have to catch up on school stuff now. We'll play plenty of games soon enough!

bryvox 2019-10-09 20:34

Cute game! I love the concept and the whole aesthetic works well. Perfect for this time of year, great work! :ghost:

honey-pony 2019-10-09 21:19

A pretty silly game. I liked the variety of costumes that the NPCs would have.

I think this game could be enhanced if it had a little more strategy -- such as building a costume out of various components and figuring out which combination was the best. I don't know if there could also be some kind of win condition but that could help.

ratly 2019-10-09 21:19

It was surprisingly fun to run around scaring people! I also found the smooth scrolling and score-counting mechanics oddly satisfying. Good job!

lone-wolf 2019-10-09 22:21

Nice fun game. Great work!

smileyface 2019-10-09 23:00

I like the concept of the game however I felt there was very little challenge to the game. Also there was never any clear indication of who I can scare and who I couldnt. For example I would be able to scare one vampire while another would say I'm not scary. Still I like your interpretation of the theme and the background music as well.

2019-10-10 10:50

Nice little game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 45 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/VLDt7yHE5-M

tricky-fat-cat 2019-10-10 20:36

A concept of this game is great, the realisation is fairly good, but it suffers from interesting goal absence and some difficulties on the level.

cdunham 2019-10-11 00:52

@smileyface That's fair, scaring someones pretty much completely random. The other costumes increase your chances of scaring people though. There's really no challenge to the game though lol

cdunham 2019-10-11 00:53

@artyom-volkov Yeah, I was mostly focused on getting the AI working and setting up the basic mechanics. We didn't have enough time to add any goals or actual obstacles in there sadly

cybersoftuk 2019-10-11 09:39

pretty cool, the music fits really well, nice simple graphics. Well done!

someone 2019-10-11 23:14

Fitting music and fun costumes. I like the concept but there is not quite enough to it. Decent entry though.

omickron 2019-10-11 23:41

Interesting idea for Halloween. The game is easy to control. With the help changes species individual, emerges misconception, that we have time play for several characters, even if and not change their characteristics, except chance of fright. In General, the game was good. Keep up the good work.

nisovin 2019-10-13 05:36

I always love a Halloween themed game. The graphics were fun, and it has some nice spooky music. I do wish there were some more goals or something, because it felt repetitive.

n3bul0sa 2019-10-13 15:41

LOL It's really funny to scare people around. Nice idea as well as controls and the graphic

velvetlobster 2019-10-13 18:41

love the way the characters walk, its like they are all in a party ... it feels like those old MMOs like Tibia ... the ghost`s smile is pretty creepy which is also funny ... the houses are cute, quite a nice halloween themed Tibia inspired game, great work!

cdunham 2019-10-13 18:57

@velvetlobster Glad you liked it! None of us have ever heard of Tibia though 😅

ljfmx 2019-10-13 20:37

Pretty cool game! The player movement was a bit jittery though, this may happen if you have your controls are in an Update loop rather than a FixedUpdate loop. It didn't really affect gameplay much though. I liked the ability to scare people but my scaring success didn't seem to go up the more things I bought. At least, it wasn't very noticeable. Good concept and I like that you went Halloween themed as we're getting close to Halloween :)

nickykendy 2019-10-14 04:24

In China we don't have Halloween, and your game gives me what it feels like~ like the music and reaction of npc

cdunham 2019-10-14 05:31

@nickykendy Glad you could experience Halloween in some way!

d3garcia 2019-10-15 05:05

Very fun game and mechanics, I really like that you can spend the currency made by scaring, also I love collecting so for me it is a good idea to have several characters or costumes.

xotsu 2019-10-15 09:20

Fun to play could do with a bit more variation but enjoyable nonetheless

antti-haavikko 2019-10-15 16:14

I would have wanted some more actual "gamey" elements. Right now it was just pretty much run around mashing click until you get x amount of money. No tactic, no skill, no nothing. Okay, lets spitball some mechanics that could make it more interesting...

- **Time limit:** Halloween night is over sooner or later and people go home. Would add an actual end and enable top scoring. People are only gonna play endless game once. But an end, fail state and a way to do better encourage repeated (and with that, prolonged) plays. - **Comboing:** The more people you scare at once, the more money you get. Should scale up exponentially so that scaring five people at once would be way way more than scaring five people individually. - **Voice meter:** You only have limited amount of scares. When you run out of voice, you can buy hot chocolate or something at your house to refill it. - **"Enemies":** The costumes that are scarier than yours could scare you and you'd lose money. Couldn't just be brain dead and zone out mashing click if not paying attention was punished.

Sprinting was pointless. There was no penalty for it, no need for it and it didn't really even increase speed that much. The run speed should have been the default movement speed. Right now you're only forcing people to hold down one button 100% of the time or wasting their time.

The look was fine. Nice amount of variety in the people, costumes and houses. Other than those, the environment looked quite bland. Concrete on concrete. Could be spiced up with some more environmental variety. Maybe some green patches, flowers and trees. Maybe some sandy smaller paths leading to houses or where ever. Some kind of water feature could work too.

The look was quite static though. Even adding a a wee bit of animation in the form of scaling makes it feel way more alive...

japes.gif

Some weird choppiness in the character movement. And the camera had a difficult time keeping up too. I can wholeheartedly recommend checking out Cinemachine. It's (free and official nowadays) super easy to setup and you can do stuff like variable damping based on dead zones and camera leading by the target movement direction.

Music was pretty nice. Fit the mood and theme of the game well. Definitely would have needed some sound effect though. Some screaming people and maybe some nonsensical jibber jabber kinda like Animal Crossing could work for the different sayings.

The hitboxes were off. If you're going for an isometric view, the hitbox should not be the size of the whole sprite and only should be the "base" of the object. It makes no real world sense that when approaching a house vertically, there is some kind of magical barrier gap of few meters before the walls. They should be something like this for a more natural feeling experience.

spookyjapeshitboxes.png

Anyways, good job!

cdunham 2019-10-15 18:58

@antti-haavikko You have some good points in there, but a lot of what you say we should do we just honestly didn't have time for. I was fiddling with getting the AI to work right until pretty late into the jam. The scare button was like the last thing I added and without a real goal it may not feel quite right but implementing anything meaningful and engaging that late in the jam wasn't really possible. I do appreciate all your feedback though and hope you at least enjoyed the experience!

gigahood 2019-10-16 09:53

a funn spooptober game, it's simple but functional. the graphics are nice and it is both on theme and seasonal, extra points for making it playable in the browser. it's just good wholesome spoopy fun. 4.8/5 I wish it had more it's super fun (but you know 3 days is not a long time)

we also made a kinda spoopy game too if you want to check out my team's stuff (just find it through my profile)

antti-haavikko 2019-10-16 13:27

@cdunham Yeah of course I get it that timing and scoping can be an issue in jam games. My suggestions were really if you decide to do a post jam version and of course for future projects too. You had quite a big team though, what was the team structure? Were you the only programmer? Did you run into any big hurdles (besides the AI which can of course be a big time sink) or why was even the core scaring mechanic of the game added in so late?

cdunham 2019-10-16 14:38

@gigahood Ill definitely check it out when I have a chance! Thanks for playing ours!

cdunham 2019-10-16 15:25

@antti-haavikko 2 programmers, 2 artists, and an audio guy. Most of us had to work all weekend though so we didn’t really have time to do a lot. We didn’t even pick our game idea until like 8 hours in so we didn’t start until really late that first night.

dob 2019-10-19 20:53

This was cute and fun. As others have noted, there's not a challenge, really, and not much of a game with goals (more of a toy). I really liked the art style and the background music. If it had been possible to lose, that would have been more complex, but actually, for a fun little thing, that might have detracted. The comments the characters say are funny. Nice work!

roka-josh 2019-10-21 18:33

Nice little game, would like to see more in it, and it would be great if you worked on this more. Great job!

bungalow 2019-10-22 06:52

Cute little game with simple graphics and cute little sounds. Awesome jab, ya'll!

asimov 2019-10-29 11:28

That ws actually fan to play! love the positive Feedback loop of scaring more and more people once you unlock the better costumes. One critizism though - I was barely able to read the font you chose.

monsterjail 2019-10-29 12:43

Pretty cool concept, I like that it plays like a clicker with more interaction, would be nice if there was a bit more strategy and an endgoal beyond getting all the costumes (maybe if there were people scarier than you you had to initially avoid until you got a better costume)

#Rattle me bones!'

dodori 2019-10-29 16:18

Simple and fun, I loved running into a group of people and spamming left click to see them all run in different directions.

Solid entry!