castitatis 2022-10-03 01:29
ld.PNG
I couldn't beat this one. I like the dialogs :up
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD51 → Cadet Set Go
By mrwarranty
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 464 | 2.72 | 27 | |
| Fun | 407 | 2.81 | 26 | |
| Innovation | 319 | 3.10 | 26 | |
| Theme | 385 | 3.18 | 26 | |
| Graphics | 463 | 2.29 | 26 | |
| Audio | 407 | 1.27 | 22 | |
| Humor | 121 | 3.22 | 26 | |
| Mood | 409 | 2.56 | 25 |
ld.PNG
I couldn't beat this one. I like the dialogs :up
I like the concept of using a minigame to influence the bullet-hell components. That's something I hadn't seen before. Good humor. I got stuck on the fourth or fifth screen :sweat_smile:
I actually really liked the game, at first the text felt kind of intrusive but once I gave it a voice in my head. Similar to Sarge from Red V. Blue, it became very funny. The lack of audio was a bit of a meh, but I understand that. I did not complete the game but I made it all the way too the green turrets before I simply couldn't move my mouse fast enough to disable them at 1 to make the path possible for my poor skills. I would say make sure that there are places to pause safely would be nice. However, with the oxygen tank not really possible. I think the timing on disabling the turrets is more then enough for the theme, but I see where your coming from. As for the oxygen tank, I don't know if I missed it but an indicator for how much time left would have been nice if you feel the need to keep it. Looks like your using unity so you might want to consider using point filter instead of bilinear on the sprite settings, to avoid the blurred edges. Regardless, really cool game, cant say I have seen many reverse tower defense games!
Thank you @castitatis @mcnuttys and @googlypoo for the feedback! I know the lack of audio is lame, but I did zero prep for this jam and have no experience making audio, so something had to give. :sweat_smile: I like describing this as "reverse tower defense"; glad this theme helped me stumble upon a new/obscure genre! I'm also glad you all enjoyed the dialogue - I hoped to use that to make up for my lack of aesthetic skills. If you decide to try getting through the tough levels, I think it's reasonably rewarding from a narrative perspective. :wink: Thanks all for playing and rating!
I would agree with reverse tower defense as well, really enjoyed how it's sort of setting up your own difficulty. Main feedback given from me would be a couple placements are rough and required some super smart inputs right as the 'run through' portion started, maybe lowering turrets down to get a buffer in would ease the player in at the start. Really great go for a fellow first timer!
I really liked the setup part of the game. It gave it a nice twist.
I think having the dialog repeat each attempt got a bit grating after a few failures (sometimes it's very tempting to get greedy and shut down all the turrets) but it's quite funny the first time.
Such a good use of the theme to have the 10 seconds be a risk reward system, I think that concept is the core of a great game and you clearly got a lot out of it with a lot of levels without it getting any less engaging.
Congratulations on your first LD! A very fun reverse tower defence :)
Fun concept for you to design your own bullet hell. A bit too much dialog for me though.
@zimonitrome Thanks for the feedback! I could definitely see dividing this game into "Story Mode" and "Arcade Mode" with no dialogue. @jibberwocky I understand where you're coming from. If I'd done the full 72 hours I would have made it so the dialogue only played the first time (or better yet, had more adaptive dialogue for multiple failures), but I was pretty burned out by the end of this, lol. I just tried to keep it short enough that it was still fun but wouldn't get *too* grating. Thanks again, all!
VERY tricky but I loved all the little quips in the dialog. Figuring out which turrets to dismantle was fun.
win.png
I like that you restart at the same level when you die, a good QOL feature. Some music can definitely improve the experience though
Interesting twist of tower defense game! Dialogue can be a bit heavy, but the game was definitely enjoyable!
@papaya Totally would include music but as it's the compo I would've had to make my own somehow. I play a little guitar but I figured silence was better. 😅
@decadedecaf I'm glad you finished it and enjoyed the little narrative. 😁
I liked the game, but like everyone else is saying, lack of audio was a big downer for me (even though it was a compo). Even though a touchscreen made the game easier, I still wasn't able to get past the 5th or so level. It was a very creative use of the theme, and the game was challenging!
Got stuck on level 5, took me a bit to really understand how it worked. And I'll echo the other comments on lack of sound, makes timing things a bit harder.
Still, from a design point of view it's an interesting take and the dialogue was funny!
I like the concept, for me it was quite challenging to figure out how to play effectively. I really like the way you implemented this twist on bullet hells, as others have said as well.
I personally would have probably scaled the UI with the screen size, which is quite easy to do in Unity. Playing on fullscreen would then benefit you more. Also, skipping the text on click might be nice since you now have to sit trough the dialog again (the dialog itself was quite funny, but difficult to read for me this this font and the size).
@ayxs I'm curious about scaling the UI. Do you have any advice/resources for this? Working with the resolution has always been kind of a pain, especially with "Free Aspect" as the cursed default. I'm always trying to learn, since I teach it to beginners. (-: I learned a bunch in going through this project and it's actually the first time I've published anything online, even though I've made a bunch of standalone applications.
@mikushi Next time I do a jam I hope to have a little more experience with Audacity or GarageBand (or something else) under my belt for making basic music and sound effects. I have some royalty-free ones I can use but I don't know if that's in bounds with the compo; I'm guessing not. I definitely would have wanted sound somewhere in this to improve what I was doing.
@mrwarranty If you are using the Unity UI system (with the canvas), there should be a default [Canvas Scaler](https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.ugui@1.0/manual/script-CanvasScaler.html) component attached. This can be set to "scale with screen size" and then you can define all kinds of things to modify how it should scale, if it should match the width or height and what the reference resolution is. You can then use the [Anchors](https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.ugui@1.0/manual/UIBasicLayout.html) for each UI element to define its position relative to a certain point on the canvas which is used when the screen size increases or decreases. You can test this in engine with the resolution settings in the Game view, but also by just dragging the Game View out and the Canvas should react instantly.
Unity has been building a new UI system (since 2020 already), called [UI Toolkit](https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UIElements.html), currently still in pre-release which uses some kind of XML and CSS to define and create the UI. Though it is not really well documented at the moment, but it features an UI builder. I personally just started toying around with this system but it feels very sturdy and stable as compared to the current system.
Though this system is only really useful for UI heavy games. UI that, for example, follows gameobjects or interacts with the game world the Unity UI system is better (see [comparison of UI systems](https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UI-system-compare.html).
Sorry for the info dump :sweat_smile: if you have more questions let me know :smile:
@ayxs No, this is great, thank you! It's really nice hearing from more knowledgeable devs. 🙂
Loved the artwork - gives my programmer art in my game a run for its money!
Nice game :). I liked the narrative.
I found the clicking turrets at the start a bit annoying every time I died. Maybe you should have the option of using the same turret settings and without going through the clicking again.
It'd also be good to be able to speed up the narrator. More bullet hell!
Nice job getting this together in 48 hours.
@ayxs - thanks, that was helpful for me too. I've found Unity's UI system pretty non-intuitive. I'll check out UI Toolkit.
Honestly I loved the art. It fit so well with the funny monologues. Fun game, cool concept. Good job! :3
Well done for your first LD, hope you enjoyed it! I think the core idea of the game is pretty interesting, and I also liked the dialogue system (it helps setting the right mood and making you understand what you're supposed to do). The bullet hell mechanics are a bit rough, i feel it's mostly trying to run down as fast as possible since avoiding projectiles it's not really feasible, you might try to improve it by making projectiles spawn less regularly (this would create more "space" for the player, while keeping the same amount of projectiles on screen). Also, a little bit of VFX and SFX (also very simple, such as mouth noises for sound and basic particles for visual feedbacks) could help the core mechanics pop out a lot more. All in all though, a good first game!