Space Ninja

mateu 2022-04-05 01:15

This game is pretty cool! First off, your graphics and sound design is superb. Your graphics are what my game wishes it could be. Your sound really compliments the game well, and makes it very satisfying to perform actions. Really well done in that regard. The leaderboard is also a nice touch, really lends to the replayability.

That being said, MY WRIST..... unfortunately, due to the state of the game, there isn't much gameplay other than "swing your mouse back and forth". It becomes an endurance test, which, I suppose lends to the theme, but not the fun. If somehow you made the gamplay more in depth/strategic then it could be a really awesome take on the fruit ninja genre.

Anyways, I really enjoyed it and am amazed by your visuals, but there just isn't a whole lot of replay value.

minibobbo 2022-04-05 03:05

The game looks and feels great. Graphics were wonderful and the music and sound made for a nice experience.

The problem is that there isn't much of a game. If Earth was in the middle of the screen and asteroids came from all directions, or if my laser sword thing took energy and I had to be careful how I used it, or something it would have given it some depth that it is currently lacking. I just held the mouse down and moved the cursor off the top of the screen and shook it and killed all the meteors before they even appeared on the screen. I think when you do that the comets just float out there also because I heard the pink sound of a comet but it never zoomed in and the comet never showed up. So I guess I won?

I would like to add that the cursor moving around the buttons is super cool. :thumbsup:

mhorth 2022-04-05 12:52

Thanks for the feedback guys! I definitely agree that there's currently no depth/strategy. I actually had tried both of your ideas @minibobbo lol.

Earth was originally in the center, but I found that the meteors above and below were too close to when you'd first see them, it felt a bit unfair to the player. I also had a little bit of math in place so that the slice would lag further and further behind your mouse cursor the longer you held it down. I didn't think it felt great at the time so I removed it, but maybe I should try it again.

Appreciate the advice and thanks for playing!

cedric86 2022-04-05 21:41

Looks and feels wonderful. Graphics were top shelf. Music and sound is also fitting. Great entry. Well done!

trashbag 2022-04-05 21:49

This looks like a really cool game but it runs at about 5 fps on my computer, a bit hard to play.

borabee 2022-04-05 21:53

First of all, amazing graphics!! I'm impressed how you could make such a polished game in such little time, and with fancy features too, like a leaderboard and the glowing slicer! I think the gameplay could use a little tweaking though. As it is, the meteors come at pretty regular intervals and are too many, so slicing them is pretty easy and just becomes a constant thing. I think these kinds of games are more fun when you have to be at the edge of your seat, looking for surprise attacks, and change your strategy on the go. So less meteors, coming at different speeds to surprise you, and with traps among them might make it more fun. I would also suggest a smaller earth that gives you more room to slice! Overall a really nice game. Congrats!

coggoid 2022-04-05 21:53

I don't know what kind of aliens decide to attack earth by dumping an endless supply of asteroids on it from above it... but that's diabolical for sure.

Excellent job! Particularly well done on the "game feel" of the combo effects 🏆

mhorth 2022-04-06 00:09

Thanks everyone!

@trashbag sorry to hear that! I tried to do every trick I could to optimize it, but in the end it is a fairly GPU intensive game. If you haven't already, I would try downloading it and making sure it runs on a dedicated GPU, rather than an integrated graphics on a CPU. If that doesn't solve the issue for you, then I'm really sorry, that's me failing to make it accessible for everyone :heart:

emaigualmc2-art 2022-04-06 03:03

I think the name of the game describes it perfectly, you have to be a ninja with your hand on the mouse to play it jaja! For some reason the game doesn't run very well for me and it starts to lag (HTML5/web version), which makes it difficult to enjoy the gamplay, It's probably a problem with my pc or my connection. In the artistic and musical is very good! Overall great job!

ffffchai 2022-04-06 06:42

Game have done so many and really amazing things on graphics. It is super cool. And also i really like the real-time ranking. Looking forward to better optimization.

arqitech 2022-04-06 10:18

Simple but super COOL! :smile:

The addition of COMBOS is awesome and the effects are really good :thumbsup: I think it would be cool if there was something that you shouldn't slice through though, it would add a bit more difficulty to the game.

jefvel 2022-04-06 11:04

This is polished and fun to play! Global high scores add a lot of fun to it. It does tire out your arm after a while though!

Some feedback: maybe there shouldn't be that many meteors, and instead they come in waves and your sword swing has a cooldown, so you gotta time your swings to get as many meteors each time (hitting multiple meteors in one swing could reset the cooldown quicker). Then there could be meteor showers after killing stars, that grant you unlimited swings for a limited time.

A solid game, which fits the theme too! Nice job :)

mhorth 2022-04-06 13:10

Thanks everyone for your feedback!

To those having framerate issues, I'd be curious if downloading it helps. If so, I'll probably just remove the web version since it's becoming a pattern.

Thank you @arqitech and @jefvel for the suggestions! While I was developing, I had multiple points where I had to make the decision "should I restrict what the player can do, or let them play how they want?". I always leaned to the latter. But with all the feedback so far, it seems I went too far. I'll consider doing a post jam version with more interesting strategic choices.

bottled-up-dark-peace 2022-04-06 16:14

I also had lag problems on my brand new computer so maybe you should look into that. My game was laggy on loading so I know it's hard to fix.

mhorth 2022-04-06 16:22

@bottled-up-dark-peace thanks for letting me know! Was that in the web version? If you’re feeling up to it and have the time to play a downloaded version, please let me know if that plays smoother. If so, I’ll go ahead and delete the web version.

jcg 2022-04-06 21:34

That is such a fascinatingly neat effect; the mouse trail into button interaction on the main menu. Spent a few minutes just playing around there, and then the transition into the game was just icing on the cake. Really love that detail!

I really liked the "line slider" high score at the bottom, it kept introducing yet another score to beat :)

It felt a little too easy to cheese with just rampant horizontal swiping. I wonder if an added quirk that introduces a limit to how much you can actually hold left click would help?

PS. I know Jam doesn't require source submissions, but wow, am I really itching to know how you did that button effect.

polymathld 2022-04-06 21:42

This looks and feels great and the level of polish is tremendous! I agree with those saying it's simple, but I don't think you could achieve this level of polish with anything more ambitious given the time constraints. And simple can still be fun :smile: Awesome work!

haastregt 2022-04-06 21:46

First and foremost: How did you get 64 hits on one comet?! That is impressive hahaha

Okay now for real, you said that you mostly focussed on polished? Well, you very much succeeded at that! I LOVED the button animations, the combo counters were super fluent, the comets were a pleasure to handle, and there was a leaderboard that synchronised with everyone that has played this? Get out of here! It all looked gorgeous and it is very impressive to me, so I think you should be proud of yourself!

beefsock 2022-04-06 22:07

My cat really liked this one! She was very intrigued watching me play. Great game, great visuals.

halflemonstudios 2022-04-06 22:16

This global high score indicator is awesome. Also is the buttom animation. And a bunch of things, like how the meteors are slahed, and the combo counters, and how the earth demaged. (I don't think anyone is alive after one hit. If this big meteor hits, I don't know what are we protecting anymore :) ). As the others pointed it out it's an endurance game at this state. Trap meteors, all directions, smaller/faster meteors, there is a lot of thing how it could be made challenging and more fun. I'm the "madman" how got the 226k score, because finally I could be on the top of something. It wasn't that boring, I learned how important is to combo, if you wait them to come close and then slash all of them you could easyly get a 40-50 combo, and with that around 1000 points. If you just slash on the top and get ten 5 combos that's just 100 points.

mhorth 2022-04-06 23:04

@jcg thank you so much for the kind words! I'm glad it left such an impression! Here's a sneak peak under the hood at the button/trail interaction. It relied on getting the rectangle of the UI object and then moving in a straight line to each corner in succession.

``` IEnumerator MoveToCorner(int corner) { Rect rect = _currentParent.rect;

// Calculate the position of the corner to go to Vector2 target = corner switch { 0 => new Vector2(0, rect.height), 1 => new Vector2(rect.width, rect.height), 2 => new Vector2(rect.width, 0), 3 => new Vector2(0, 0), _ => Vector2.zero, };

// Keep moving closer until we get there while (Vector2.Distance(_rectTransform.anchoredPosition, target) > 1) { _rectTransform.anchoredPosition = Vector2.SmoothDamp(_rectTransform.anchoredPosition, target, ref _currentVelocity, .04f); yield return null; }

// It should be there now, target the next corner int nextCorner = (corner + 1) % 4; StartCoroutine(MoveToCorner(nextCorner));

} ```

When you mouse over a button, I'd run this code. When your mouse leaves the button, I'd stop it and do a similar smooth damp towards the mouse position.

mhorth 2022-04-06 23:09

@halflemonstudios Aha! So there is some strategy after all! :wink:

Just kidding, I'm definitely looking forward to trying out some more strategic gameplay once I'm done playing and rating. I think you're safe up there with that score, but how is your arm feeling?! I hope you took breaks lol, thanks for playing!

skleembof 2022-04-07 00:03

Great job on the slashing trail mechanic, but like others have already stated the game needs more features to feel more like a game and less like a wrist workout.

I think one way to overcome players holding down left click and flinging their wrist around is to make meteors break into pieces if hit in the wrong spot. If you have meteors of different shapes each with its own 'hotspot' the player will have to be more precise with their slices.

eli-haun 2022-04-07 00:04

So, I am now number 2. Only reason I didn't go for #1 was because I didn't want to keep going (I was getting board). you can cheese this game by just running your mouse at the top of the screen rapidly. You need some kind of limiter, or maybe comets coming from another direction?

But the art was great! This was probably one of the best looking LDgames I have seen so far! the effects are good, and the zoomin on the glowing ones was cool

darriasart 2022-04-07 03:11

the only thing cooler than the concept is the execution. great job

alec 2022-04-07 03:48

Super addictive, and super cool menu design! Would be cool to see more types of unique asteroids. Well done!

yukimiitsuka 2022-04-07 07:49

Beautiful art design and super addictive! The lightpoint that flies around UIs is amazing. Congratulations! The difficulty could be higher because I kept slashing the meteorites without the earth getting any hurt until my arm burned out and I had to stop with total score the 3rd place.

chriiis88 2022-04-07 17:42

The level of polish on this is crazy good, well done!

angiemon 2022-04-08 11:09

This was good!

A very neat little game, feels very finished :)

Also.. the UI! So pretty! (I know that you spend a huge amount of time on how the line follows the menu buttons haha, I saw your blog post)

It was fun, love me some fruit, ergh, meteor ninja :) The game was well executed, slicing felt very satisfying and waiting for the right alignment to get the max meteor combo was a good feeling!

Music and mood were very good, earth was pretty, also, shiny glowing meteors :0

Good job guys! :)

antoined73 2022-04-08 22:43

Capture.PNG

Like last LD, you made a game really polished and top quality in terms of UI, SFX and juicy feedbacks. I loved the colors, the asteroid combo and the laser following the ui buttons. As always the integration of your leaderboard is very cool and competitive.

However like others said, the gameplay haven't any depth or ramp progression. Maybe some asteroids you should not cut like the bombs in fruit ninja ?

Anyway, awesome entry, congrats ! :smile:

jitspoe 2022-04-09 01:07

space ninja 394166.png Well, that was quite the arm workout! No pauses!

Love the effects around the menu and stuff. Nicely polished entry. I would just suggest having something that makes it near impossible after a couple minutes so you can't keep going indefinitely. Also, make sure to constrain the mouse cursor to the window so you can't go off onto a second monitor.

mhorth 2022-04-09 01:16

Thanks so much for the kind words and advice everyone! These scores are getting ridiculous lol. Hopefully that's a sign that even without any strategy and depth, the game still feels fun enough to play for a short while.

kinart 2022-04-09 01:18

I could only play once since this is so hard on my wrist, but it was so fun! Simple, fun and really slick looking. Also loved the Halo-inspired combo names. I thought I was doing so well until I looked a the leaderboard. @antoined73 You are a beast!!!

theheheo 2022-04-09 13:33

Really good job! The UI was super cool. The game felt good and looked amazing graphics wise. Think the game could have benefited from some variety in gameplay, like something to prevents me from just slicing wildly until my hand gets tired and I give up. For example in fruit ninja they have bombs that you are not allowed to slice which. But overall a very impressive entry:D hope you had a fun jam!

nikl 2022-04-09 14:56

I love this kind of game. It's fun to time strikes for a nice line. Well done! Very cool effect to have the colorful trail of the cursor line out UI elements that you are hovering over.

gamescodedogs 2022-04-09 15:06

Nice game! A like a sound and graphic FX when the flying comet is destroyed a lot! Also leader list below motivate me to continue, but probably not enough game mechanics or challenges. Keep up the good work!

kudneus 2022-04-09 15:07

I like this game so much! The graphics and the idea are incredible! The art style is really cool and UI buttons are AMAZING! GJ!

mharring 2022-04-09 15:11

Impressive graphics! The gameplay was lacking a little depth (I suggest adding a reason not to randomly swing back and forth forever, perhaps some space shuttles leaving Earth and returning that you need to avoid?) but I had a lot of fun regardless :) Nice job! The leaderboard was a nice touch!

ulisses 2022-04-10 02:37

The fruit ninja style mechanic was very well implemented, and matched the theme well. I really liked the effects. I just missed a web build for easy access. Congratulations, it was a very original implementation of the theme!

taximan981 2022-04-10 09:19

10th place lads! Would be great if there was a meteor I should avoid to make it more then a slash across the top of the screen, but still cool, love the polish on this. Now if you excuse me, I need to put ice on my hand from swinging so much

muriel 2022-04-10 09:30

First of all very nice menu, I never have seen the line effect around the buttons and I think that it is a nice touch. It really gives you the initial "wow effect :)"

Also I loved the screen transitions.

The game itself has a simple mechanic but very well executed and polished. Also there are some serious post processing effects that are extremely cool (you really paid attention to details).

Also I loved the fact that you took the time to add a ranking and the "minimap" of points of the ranking in the bottom of the screen feels very professional.

IDK I think that this game could ship today as a mobile game and I would play it :)

Good job to all of you :)

Thanks for this entry.

tcoder12 2022-04-10 10:56

THIS IS SO FUN! SO SATISFYING! LOVE IT! Thank you for bring joy to my heart!

alks 2022-04-10 11:10

this so much fun! Used to so play so much fruit ninja back in the day :) and the graphics are so good! SO great! Thank you for making this!

bqq 2022-04-10 12:40

Great presentation, love everything about the UI like the hover animations and the real-time leaderboard position is just straight up genius! Like others in the comments I independently discovered the "wiggle your mouse on the top" cheese and was able to secure the 9th spot in the leaderboards before my RSI caught up to me :D Also the zoom animation into the comet was great, wish the shockwave would have destroyed all the asteroids on contact for a bit of extra punch maybe.

The audio design was nice, maybe a bit of variation for the basic "asteroid hit" sound might have been nice, but good call with mixing it low as that sound is playing _all the time_ due to the gameplay. The comet hit sounds are perfect, love the pitching up and the satisfying final WWRROOOMP.

> Disclaimer: we are not responsible for wrist injuries sustained by prolonged rapid slashing. Slice responsibly.

Narrator: He did not.

(oh also is "output enable" an EE reference, hobbyist FPGA enjoyer here :D)

EDIT: Also shame about the WebGL build, but I understand the pain, we had a ton of issues with it too due to making a rhythm game using FMOD so there was a ton of audio stuttering/crackling/latency issues on the web. Almost ended up not shipping it myself either.

mhorth 2022-04-10 15:02

Thanks for the comments and feedback everyone! It makes me smile seeing so many people having fun with the game :smile:

@muriel I'm happy you noticed and enjoyed some of the details. There were quite a few parts during development where I caught myself "wasting" time down a rabbit hole where I could have been working on more gameplay. "Everyone will be looking up at the meteors, you don't need to spend an hour making sure the clouds look believable!"

@bqq good catch! I'm a PLC programmer at my day job, so yeah "output enable" is rooted in EE circuits/programming.

tigerj 2022-04-10 16:58

It's been a long time since a game left me sore. Kinda felt good tbh. Mario party 64, contra on the nes, those games would leave you stronger, changed, a different person. :laughing: great work!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1449896005?t=03h41m54s

reygis 2022-04-10 19:47

Dude that was awsome, thanks, the particle system with the trails on the UI, well done, 35 on the ranking thing on my first try, pretty good. GG

timur-bahadir 2022-04-10 20:30

Incredibly polished and very _juicy_!! Great job :)

peachtreeoath 2022-04-10 21:33

The thing that easily stands out the most is the readily apparent leaderboard at the bottom. It's a fantastic idea and I think a lot more games should to play around with that concept. That was sorta something I wanted to do with my last game but didn't have the experience to whip it up quickly. Out of curiosity what tech did you use to make that?

Even regardless of the retention benefits of wanting to climb the leaderboards, its mere existence made me pay more attention to the game *immediately*. I knew my score would "matter" now, and I knew that even the easy, early stages would be likely contribute to my final score importantly so I would try to focus and get optimal combos early. Each time I hit one of those gold meteors and shot past 8 people, it felt super satisfying.

I tried the post-jam version and I think the limited meter was a great solution. I haven't played Fruit Ninja in a very long time but I assume that mechanic doesn't exist in that game.

I underestimated this game at first! I thought it would be a pretty looking Fruit Ninja with a different theme, but you quickly showed new features that ended up being a much more engaging version. Awesome work!

mhorth 2022-04-10 22:11

Thanks @peachtreeoath!

For my leaderboard stuff I have a custom web app for my api calls, which communicates with a MongoDB database to read and write data. Those 2 parts replace the typical services like dreamlo, lootlocker, etc.

This tutorial is a good starting point if you want to go that route. But that's really only necessary if you want to store more data than those pre-established services can handle. If you're just looking for names and scores, [dreamlo](https://dreamlo.com/) will do just fine. I like it because I can now store extra stats like the highest combo reached.

https://youtu.be/MNepwvCcKXA

Either way, the Unity side is the same, it would just point to a different url to get the data. Typically I was only getting the data on the game over screen to show the leaderboard there, but I realized there's no reason not to to get all of it during the game too (I just grab it once when you start a round, it won't update during the round).

Once you get the array of all the scores, you can do whatever you want with it. For the score markers across the bottom, I just set up some logic to spawn markers until one of them was too far ahead. Then I'd wait until the player's score got close enough to that marker to make it move off the end, and then I'd spawn the next leader. Repeat again and again.

furtive-pygmy 2022-04-10 23:03

This was addictive, but not incredibly challenging and just required spam swiping the top of the screen. Other than that, everything was polished and awesome! Music and visuals were great, the line renderer was nice and added a lot to the feel of the menu/gameplay. Well polished, and with some more difficult gameplay could be amazing. Great effort and good luck! N.B. I played Jam version, not post jam.

likirus 2022-04-11 09:01

Very well polished and so much fun to play. A well-executed copy beats a poorly-made original idea in most cases. I should have increased my mouse dpi before playing though :D I had to move my mouse across half the mousepad every swipe^^

bastilo 2022-04-11 09:16

Wow, very polished. It feels great, even if it's basically Fruit Ninja. The online leaderboard is very nice.

geckoo1337 2022-04-11 16:35

Amazing game with a beautiful aesthetic. The main gameplay fits perfectly with the theme. You included a leaderboard and it is always a good idea so as to gather a community around a project. I would like to say that your project is better than the original FruitNinja. On my PC everything worked fine as expected. You made a solid entry - neat, addictive. One of my favorites fore the 50th LudumDare. Thank you. I wish you the best ++

coleslaughter 2022-04-17 06:42

[Thanks for submitting your game to stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1457959497?t=01h28m32s)

There is an absurd level of polish going on here, I love it! You really know how to juice even the simplest mechanics to their maximum potential. :thumbsup:

chris1919 2022-04-17 23:44

You said you were focused on polish and sound design, and I felt like you nailed those areas. The menus were really nice and an options menu is always appreciated. I didn't find the actual gameplay very fun though. When using a mouse, I felt encouraged to just swipe horizontally across the entire screen. Keep Earth undamaged seemed more important than getting a high combo/score.

mhorth 2022-04-19 00:02

Good feedback @chris1919, thanks! Sorry to hear you weren't able to have much fun with it, but you're definitely right about the ability to just swipe back and forth without a care. I'll keep that note in mind for next jam.

rhoka 2022-04-20 06:42

Great entry! Very simple mechanics means you could polish it quite a bit and that shows! The menus and sound design are all fantastic and the game is fun to play! I di try both the Jam and Post-Jam versions and adding the stamina bar was a great idea, though competing on the same leaderboards as the Jam version with infinte stamina was tough if not impossible. I did go back to the jam version and manage to rack up a solid second place score after much time and pausing to rest my wrist. Great job all around!

arihan10 2022-04-20 14:58

I LOVE the effects. It's clear the game is *heavily* polished! End game screen was also quite nice.

The main issue I have with it lies in the gameplay itself- as I'm sure you have already discovered, the best strategy is to simply swipe back and forth across the screen right above the planet. I think this could have been circumvented by making the asteroids spawn in from various areas around the Earth, as opposed to just the top (this would also make more sense narratively).

The other issue I have is slightly less serious, as it doesn't concern the player experience itself- the interpretation of the theme. Although I found the Fruit Ninja like mechanics to be quite enjoyable, IMO simply making a score chasing game isn't the best fit for "delaying the inevitable", especially since it isn't tecnically "inevitable".

Nitpicks aside though, it's a really fun experience, and you guys should be really proud of what you have accomplished in the short timeframe given. Good job! :D