marrs 2021-10-05 09:08
Great work on the 3D characters and animation. I had to get used to the controls a bit and having the game open in a window had me clicking next to it a few times. Certainly not an easy game to finish!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → LabEscape!
By copito
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1177 | 3.18 | 35 | |
| Fun | 1173 | 3.00 | 34 | |
| Innovation | 791 | 3.26 | 34 | |
| Theme | 1023 | 3.23 | 34 | |
| Graphics | 877 | 3.46 | 34 | |
| Humor | 691 | 3.00 | 29 | |
| Mood | 919 | 3.25 | 32 |
Great work on the 3D characters and animation. I had to get used to the controls a bit and having the game open in a window had me clicking next to it a few times. Certainly not an easy game to finish!
a little bit strange..
Pretty impressive for a homegrown game engine! Really liked the materials on the monster. Played for a few minutes and glitched outside the level and couldn't continue.
The models look nice. But its annoying that I have to hold right click to look around. Also the game is to hard.
@joshua-allen hey thanks for giving it a go; any chance you could explain how to reproduce the issue you saw? I've played through quite a few times and not had any issues like that.
@sploky i agree about the right mouse it's that way because originally I wanted more of an MMO like UI then forgot to change it. I might do a post jam which makes the camera move regardless of if you have the mouse pressed. Did you manage to work out how to use your transformation ok? The game is hard if you try to just make it through in human form but it shouldn't be too bad if you juggle back and forth between human and monster forms.
That was tough! For others that want to play this, the controls are WASD to move, right click and drag to control the camera, and left click and _hold_ to attack. After attacking a person or two you'll transform and can knock out soldiers in a single hit. You could help people try your game by putting these in the description!
I feel you on the animation. It's still a little rough, but hey, animation is tough. Your pink blob is gorgeous though. I wish there was a little more direction given towards your objective; I was just wandering around and trying to stay alive until I stumbled across the exit. The main thing that would make this easier to play is if the game captured the mouse cursor and just moving the mouse aimed the camera.
It's very impressive for a weekend of work, especially by a single person!
(I also found a free-cam mode by pressing K.)
@cromo amazing! Thanks for giving it such a thorough test, I feel really stupid for not writing the controls anywhere I'll do that now. I definitely came away from this feeling like practicing animations is the no1. thing I should do before the next LDJam. It was the best I could do in the time but I agree they're below par
Cool little game! was quite challenging but fun. took me some time to figure out attacking though. some audio would help making the game a little more immersive.
I've always wanted to make a little hobby engine, seems like a neat project - I'm jealous! The game ran fine on my little AMD GPU! I do agree with some other people, the game was pretty punishing. Someway to regenerate health would have been nice.
Another thing that makes it feel unfair is that there's not much feedback, I was confused multiple times when I died because I couldn't remember getting hit and thought I still had full health. Some sort of screen flash could help rectify this issue, or a noise but I know you ran out of time for sound, so did I!
Personally I didn't really mind the holding right click part! Either way I quite liked it! It fit the theme well and was very innovated. ++ 1 for the custom engine ;)
@sharks hey thanks for giving it a go; did you figure out how to transform? As soon as you transform you regain all your hit points and become invulnerable for 8 seconds. I'm pretty sure the reason people are finding the game hard is that they're not working this mechanic out. I definitely agree it could give more feedback when you're hit though and I had wanted to add this but I both ran out of time and didn't have support for alpha blending or post fx :D so i didn't have an easy way to make the screen flash
Extremely impressive for a game build on a homemade engine! I've been trying to do the same for a while :D Great job! The game is a tad too difficult though, and the lack of audio makes it hard to tell if your hits landed or not.
Oh @copito defenitely! I don't realize it restored hit points however, and I think did the bar at the bottom showed me my progress to transformation? Either way that wasn't clear to me and not knowing when I'd transform next led to problems.
Sorry for the grammar - I'm on a tiny phone screen. :joy:
@sharks hey no problem thanks for the extra info i wonder if maybe the horizontal bar made people think it was a stamina bar or something i had intended for the transformation to feel a bit er unstable but it seems like maybe i overdid it and made it too obscure.
Thanks very much for the extra info i'll have a think about how i could have made that more clear (other than i guess a tutorial or something)
Nice one! Just a tip from a fellow animator: When running / walking arms move to the opposite side of legs (meaning if right leg is in the front, right arm will be in the back and so on)
@thiago-nascimento oh good grief you're right, I certainly wouldn't call myself an animator but I'll fix that in the post jam version thanks!
I've updated that in the post jam version and it feels *much* better, thanks!
This is a cool idea and very impressive. I know how hard it is to make your own models, rigs, animations, textures, materials from scratch for a jam. 3D game development is a lot of work for one person.
The animations are pretty bad but also kind of hilarious. They give the game a real B-movie vibe which I think fits the game well
I do think the gameplay needs work because its way too hard and unfair. The post jam version is better, but still too difficult. I think you need to add that visual indicator that shows who's about to shoot you. Also, it might be better if you just had less enemies overall since it's really hard to keep track of all of them moving around. Maybe if the visual indicator included like a red laser pointing at you character, it would be easier to dodge bullets.
I also think that you should focus the game around the monster. You should be able to stay in monster form longer the more people you kill/eat. You could spawn more enemies the longer you are in monster form which significantly increases the risk of dying if you fall back to human form. This would force the player to find a balance between sneaking around as a human, or drawing attention to themselves as a monster. If you add sections that require the human from to proceed, like walking through a small door or crawling through a vent, then you can create a whole other gameplay system where the player has to find a safe place to turn back into a human.
@skleembof hey thanks for your feedback! Sorry you found it too hard. I've posted a walk through video hoping it might clarify some of the mechanics around how to use monster form and how to manage your monster bar between rooms (although I don't always do a great job in that video haha)
Nice game! I liked the concept but it was too hard for me. Enemies attacking instantly kinda makes it unfair. Like I open a door and bam, I lost a life. They can still attack one frame but some telegraphing could help. For example, enemy raising their gun or an icon filling above their head when they see you.
@wolderado hey thanks for giving it a try, There is a roughly 1 second tell before they shoot (you can see me dodge one at the 1 minute mark in the video) but it sounds like it's too subtle. I had intended to make them kneel too shoot but I thought it was a bit weird having them bob up and down all the time. I like the danger icon idea I think that would have really fitted the game and made it easier for people to read the tells if they hadn't played the game before.
Did you make the engine this weekend? That's really impressive, i know its hard to make an engine so respect
@duckonaut hey no I made the engine last weekend I think implementing skinning etc would have been a bit much during the jam. In the jam I implemented collision and (simple) pvs culling along with matcap shaders etc but no low level rendering
I think I just echo what is already said, but might as well list them out: - Enemies have no telegraphing on the attacks. - The attack is very weird, I honestly thought it was a melee attack for a while, and then I just had a hard time judging the distance of the attack. - Transforming feels a bit weird, I'm still not sure if its when the bar is full or if it needs to get past the 80% thing and you/the enemies do something. - Audio would also help, but seeing as this is your own engine I can understand if you haven't implemented that yet.
Beyond all of that, the game was actually pretty solid. It might just be me, but I genuinely had a lot of fun running around and murdering everything. Visuals were also very good. Good job!
hey thanks for your feedback @weaselswithyourmoney I think you're the first person to mention the range being awkward on the attack and TBH this is my no1. thing I would have liked to have improved. I really wanted to give some kind of indication of when you were in range of an enemy but I couldn't think of a good, easy way to do it that I had the tech for.
Transforming was intentionally random to try to meet the "unstable" theme (various things trigger it, being shot at, taking damage, killing enemies). I'm not sure that was a good thing but that was the motivation.
Thanks for playing it I'm glad you had fun!
Good game but no sounds makes it hard to know what's happening . Good work .
Ahh the animation of the main character is just top. Good job!
I'm really impressed by what you managed to pull in 3 day, especialy alone ! I'm on the artistic side of game making and tbh I would not even dare to try to model, rig and animate multiple Humanoïds models in the span of a game jam, but you somehow managed it :o Good job (little too much movement on the mc upper body when she walk but it's still impressive). Also I liked your shader for the slime effect~