bradcode 2020-04-21 04:36
Nice job! Having to reload meant you have to make trade-offs between accuracy and speed. I liked the animation of the brown blobs when they chew on the creature.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Creature Coraller
By Jake Paustian and brzyrt
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1575 | 3.34 | 24 | |
| Fun | 1451 | 3.21 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 2265 | 2.65 | 25 | |
| Theme | 752 | 3.87 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 1825 | 3.12 | 26 | |
| Audio | 1451 | 2.65 | 25 | |
| Humor | 2.83 | 8 | ||
| Mood | 2071 | 2.81 | 24 |
Nice job! Having to reload meant you have to make trade-offs between accuracy and speed. I liked the animation of the brown blobs when they chew on the creature.
Very fun game, the little creature is very cute! One thing I didn't like was the slight delay of the shooting; I like for the bullets to shoot immediately when I hit the button, but maybe that's my personal preference. I really enjoyed the sprites, great job!
The art in the icon looked really cool, unfortunately I can't play the game because I am only on mac :( let me know if you upload a mac / web build!
Really stylish animations and art. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the amount of fun I had while playing. I do think it would benefit greatly by more variety (and quantity, for that matter) of enemies, as I was waiting for quite some time for it to get difficult. Oh, and loved the reload one bullet at a time mechanic, felt immersive. Congrats :)
What a fun game! Great job. I love the 8 bit art style and you did some good work with game balance. I feel like I'm actually making choices instead of just always going for the next upgrade.
@niborious ill do a mac build real quick
@niborious did the mac build, but youll have to tell me if it works as i am a windows user
@tritun yeah, that was probably the most iffy descision i made. What i like about it is it rewards players for pinpoint accuracy, as consecutive shots dont have the cooldown. It also allows the reload to not have a cooldown which is way more fun. The player could just shoot and then reload otherwise. Unfortnuately its a tad awkward, so it could go either way for me.
Good game! Spacebar to reload one bullet at a time isn't very intuitive, my first instinct was to press R to reload my gun all at once. But I got used to it.
I also was unaware what the black spider was. My first thought was to try to kill it, but I could not. Then I had no idea why I was losing lives even though they weren't touching me. Of course I figured it out later when I came back to read your page, so it was confusing at the start. Not everyone will read your ludum dare page before they play so it's better to flash the controls in the game momentarily at the start, and the game objectives.
I'm mixed about the reload mechanics - I understand that you need some kind of pause when reloading/shooting to balance the game, but at the same time my reload speed has no cooldown and is also based on how fast I can mash the button, so the pause ends up interrupting my combat experience. I'm not sure personally what would work best, so this is just my personal thoughts.
I stopped the game before I was able to lose because it got too repetitive to play and it was not challenging once you understood the reload mechanics. I'm not sure if the enemies spawn faster. Do they?
Some challenge and change of pacing would help the game be more enjoyable. The game at the start is the same game after 2 minutes. Most people won't play very long after that once they figure that the game is not changing significantly, unless they are aiming for a high score. I personally don't really see a point to high scores and prefer something more tangible. Maybe some goals, like maybe hitting a score of 1000, you get more bullets at once, or having different enemy types or stronger enemies that require more hits to kill. Or maybe your score is a currency that can be spent to boost my player's speed or number of bullets I shoot at once. Some kind of progression would go a long way to make me feel more powerful, like I'm owning the enemies, otherwise it's just click kill click kill and not very innovative.
Nonetheless the game does a good job of keeping a consistent retro art style and the UI is very clear and readable. Good job on the game and all the best! :)
@yyz the game does ramp up in difficulty after a little while. Balancing right was not easy for me, and I kind of hit a spot where the player has time to learn the controls for a minute or two before the difficulty starts picking up. One thing i shouldve done was put the enemy spawner on the player instead of the map because the difficulty is kind of delayed because it takes a while for the enemies to reach the player. I did intend on including controls in the game but i had work 3 hours before submission hour so i just didnt have time to add finishing touches like that. I do wish i couldve added some extra objects around the map so the map wasnt just barren like it is as of now. About the click killing. The mechanics are based around the fact that you both have to protect something that wonders around but you also have to use your slide ability to keep up with it while firing. This isnt really necessary until the difficulty picks up. Anyways, i might do a post jam build where i add controls before the game, tweak the difficulty and add misc stuff around the map
Very fun features, a bit confusing at first but got the hang of it after a while. The music fits with the cowboy theme and i like that you reload for every bullet. Great job! Next time add the name of the game in the main menu :)
@dianacalistru yeah i kinda forgot about that when uploading haha. am I allowed to change that? lol
Hey there cool game, i really like the blops, they look like my girlfriend just when she woke up =D kappa. All in all the gameplay was pretty cool, i liked the fact that you could to a lot at the same time, you didnt had to wait until the gun has been reloaded. The sound wasnt overloaded which i liked a lot. Thank you for sharing the game.
Simple but fun. I think that the bullets could be faster and I think that this delay between when you press the fire button and the shoot actually happens in game is a bit strange. I think that it would be nicer if the shoot happens instantly when you press the fire button.
@3ago the reasoning behind that decision is that if you have a 1/4th delay between when you start a volley of bullets it encourages the player to expend bullets in chains rather than shoot then reload then shoot then reload. Shooting just one shot is much less effective than shooting all 6 rounds which adds more skill ceiling to the game. Anyways, thanks for the feedback
I forgot that reloading was a thing. So there I was, just a cowboy pushing enemies away with my full body to protect my creature :stuck_out_tongue: After finding out space was the reload key it went a lot smoother, still got to 8000 something points. I got hooked for a moment. Really like the sliding mechanic, although I have the feeling he should slide on his knees. Keep it up!
@lamasaurus I wanted to do a sliding animation but this was the first time ive ever used the unity animation editor so its a miracle that I even got the shooting animations working lol. Thanks for the feedback!
@brzyrt ah I see, glad to hear that you had already thought about it! I understand there was lack of time, this is still a great entry nontheless! Balancing is a very tricky thing indeed that I faced in my game too :)
Very Fun!! not perfect, but overall it is good. my only major dislike is the looping short snipit of song that was used, as it got old rather quickly. Good Job!
This game made me feel pretty badass. The character art was very neat and the controls are very satisfying. I had some issues with the sound. Game fits the theme very well, excellent job on this game.
The enemies were so funny. I love their expressions. Having to stop moving to shoot felt like a bit of a drag, but I guess it adds some challenge. I actually really liked how you had to reload one bullet at a time. It just felt good with the sound. The enemies should probably come in a bit sooner, I spent the first few seconds trying to shoot the guy I was supposed to protect.
@scott-steffes You can slide allowing you to both move and shoot at the same time by pressing shift. Thanks for the feedback!
Really fun, although when I first played it none of my bullets were hitting anything and I didn't know what was going on (thanks HTML 5). Anyways, once I actually got to play the game, I had a lot of fun with it. Weirdly enough, I think my favorite part was the graphics. You did a good job with making the most of the few pixels you had.
I wish I could reproduce the bug that made me unable to shoot anything, but I've been unsuccessful after a few attempts, so idk what that was about. :shrug:
reload mechanic was good, projectile timing was good, the npc moves away from danger which is also good. just need to add some growth opportunities for the character
Cowboy protects a strange creature. Nice game idea. Was fun to play, thanks for this. One minor issue (At least with the web version): When game is over it can't be easily restarted, I have to reload the page to play again. And the game is still running when game is over (Shooting and reloading still makes sounds).
Really fun to play. Thought the enemies were really cool and well balanced. I like the sound effects and sliding is really cool. Minor bugs here and there.
@interpixel i didnt specifically code anything to make the npc run away from danger but i should do something like that like average the position of all nearby enemies and then run away from the point. another thing i wish I did was have the npc bounce off walls properly because right now it just travels towards the center of the map which is kinda hacky.
@kayahr yeah that was an issue that I just didnt have time to get to, despite how much i really wanted it in. It will be one of the first things I fix in the post LD builds