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Pac-Mouse Survival
Pac-Mouse Survival
By thoastbot
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 269 | 3.36 | 24 | |
| Fun | 192 | 3.43 | 24 | |
| Innovation | 316 | 3.11 | 24 | |
| Theme | 269 | 3.52 | 24 | |
| Graphics | 402 | 2.81 | 24 | |
| Audio | 268 | 3.02 | 23 | |
| Humor | 116 | 3.26 | 19 | |
| Mood | 285 | 3.07 | 21 | |
Comments
Very impressive that you made this with no engine! Furthermore, the concept is ambitious and the proc gen is solid. I think the best thing you could do for this game is to just make the mazes a bit smaller. The result would be a much more intense and fast-paced game where you could cover a lot more of the map in 10 seconds. As it is, a lot of the map doesn't even matter, since you couldn't possibly get to it before it changes. Also, I found myself wishing that I could slide along the walls while moving diagonally instead of getting stuck to them. Great work, though. Solid job.
Good game, nice spin on the pacman formula, I really like the ability of being able to travel through walls with the ghost cheese.
I think a good improvement to make would be to make moving around the maze a bit easier, I find it very easy to get caught on the walls when trying to go down another path.
Other than that the game is fun to play and I like the sound effects :)
I spent a time playing it and I was really amazed you did it using just js. Changing the maze every 10s makes the game really fun. I can't even imagine the fast work you had to do. Really nice Better enemy IA will make it more fun ;)
rob6566
2022-10-04 07:59
Very nice work making this in just JS. Great sounds and graphics, and interesting twist on Pacman.
The gameplay is simple and solid, which is very impressive for a game without engine. (I have been creating game with only ActionScript in Flash for my previous LD entries and I know it cost a lot of time and efforts. Therefore I switched to Unity this time)
Besides, I really love the effect that the color of the maze slowly changing from rows to rows. It might have been even better if the walls can progressively change as well. Nice entry after all!
Great job making this in just javascript! The game is cool, a few things I encountered where that occasionally the enemies spawned on top of me which felt a little unfiar lol. Also the collision of enemies seemed a little larger than themselves. Overall really impressive!
goody
2022-10-04 16:50
Got a high score of 350, the ghost cheese + rage cheese combo is lethal! It's similar to pacman in the way that you feel scared for awhile then suddenly you're really powerful except that in this game that is turned up a notch. I like this game a lot
I ended up dying by getting trapped in a corner on one heart behind an enemy. I'll get rage cheese revenge on that guy.
Great innovation around such classic gameplay. I especially like how the other creatures turn into cheese when you become an enraged mouse. Never thought I'd say that.
Solid gameplay and mechanics! Love the "woosh" sound when you eat a cheese haha.
The woosh sound is so funny haha, cheese power is a very cool mechanic!~
Very well done, especially with no engine! I read your post about hitboxes and I have to say, circles are nice but the square hitboxes worked well! The issue I had was sometimes when the layout changes, it would leave me trapped in a 1x1 or a 3 tile L shaped space with nowhere to go.
Other than that, a fun time! I really like how your ghost powerup actually lets the player fly through walls and when it ends or if a layout changes, you don't get stuck in the wall. Feels very smooth. Btw one thing I really like is how you visually implemented the timer over the level with a shadow moving up the screen. It really made keeping track of the timer effortless!
I agree with some of the other comments, the movement is a little annoying. I think that allowing you to slide on walls, or just changing the movement to be grid based would be the best solution. Otherwise really good game!
As others have mentioned, letting you slide on walls when moving diagonally would have gone a long way. Simple, but fun. My favorite moment was when I was surrounded by enemies and grabbed a red and a blue cheese that were right next to each other. Payback!!
Wow! Great job! Especially only in Javascript - that must've been such a challenge. Simple and fun! Cheese are funny. Good sound effects. Twas pretty weird though - interesting new concepts!
Hey there, fellow *Pac-Man*-themed game creator. ;))
##### Semi-on-the-fly remarks:
1. Small misspelling: ‘the labyrinth you life in’ -> ‘live’ 2. The big explanation picture reminds me of what I did in several previous games. :) The optimal target is that a player can understand the game while playing it through a progressive introduction of mechanics, but this can get hard to set up in such a short time. I think yours does a clear job! Also, I already like the simple effective hand-drawn style, including the implicit ‘colour code’. 3. Some misspellings in said picture: ‘THROU’ -> ‘THROUGH’, ‘Enemys’ -> ‘Enemies’ (four times modulo letter case), ‘labyrith’ -> ‘labyrinth’. And I would have written ‘you’ and possibly ‘damage’ instead of colloquial ‘u’ (two times) and ‘dmg’, but then again, I am such a fussy guy. X) 4. ‘The project is made in Javascript, no librarys. I always see Ludum Dare as a coding challenge, so i try to stay as basic as possible’ -> I like the spirit! :) I also see things this way; I used a low-level framework, but do you mean you did not even use any framework at all? (For the record, I saw [someone announce](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/$301360/ludum-dare-hard-mode) that he would try building his own C engine during the event. Kudos to people that take it this far, although this seems insanely hard to me. XD) 5. ‘tried to use some own recorded sounds and tweak them to sound fitting!’ -> Did you use Audacity, or other software? I am interested in expanding my (almost non-existing) audio skills. :) 6. ‘(Download is untouched - online version is updated)’ -> Is it for archiving purposes? You can still upload several versions and clearly indicate which is which. (I numbered my own versions, and specified when they were ‘out of the competition’.) 7. The stated concept on the picture reminds me of the randomness interpretation of the ‘dice roll’ theme, by the way. So, I feel it does give an equal part to *randomness* in addition to regularity (ironically!). 8. Still on the explanation picture: I realize that while the colours for ghost and rage match between cheese and mouse, it is not the same for normal mode; which is logical as these are the normal colours. It may not be a problem for gameplay, just noticing. :) And I also love that the edible enemies are made out of cheese! XD 9. In game: the visual indication of the ten seconds using transparent stripes is clever and practical. 10. Controls are layout-independent, great (I have an AZERTY keyboard). :) A nice enhancement would be to display the right keys on the explanation screen to match the layout (and I guess there is some JavaScript way of dealing with this I/O issue) — although I suspect the image is ‘hard-drawn’, which is fine by me. ;) 11. I like the dynamic red exclamation mark above the mouse as an indicator for danger. (Later: ah, this is not when an enemy is near, but when you get to one heart! Which makes more sense as for usefulness.) 12. Wow, things are going fast! :o I noticed in the expa 13. Noticing now on the explanation picture that rage mouse has an angry look and ghostly mouse has no pupils. Nice attention to details! 14. The game over screen asks you to reload to relaunch the game; which is fine, but I think putting a keyboard key would have been just a little more practical. My guess is that you may have had a time problem to properly deal with cleaning memory or this kind of things, so, no problem, better safe than sorry! ;) 15. My second run goes way better! I had trouble the first time around because I was having trouble figuring out how things went and parsing the screen, but now, this is clear. 16. I like the three music pieces; I think I love even more the two special ones (ghost and rage). How did you make the music, by the way? :) 17. The whole game is cute, actually, both visually and ear-wise. Maybe just adding a small animation for moving (even using symmetry for the mouse would do the trick!) and getting hit would have been ni
(continued: 2/2)
18\. The sounds are funny; I would only say that maybe the cheese-eating sound is less evocative: it may be me, but I think it is less clearly interpretable than the one when eating the ghost cheese, for example. Ironically, this may be the most often heard sound in the game. I suppose this is some variation on ‘nom nom nom’, but something is just *a bit* amiss. Listening later to the WAV file to get it: I think I know! It is just a tad too *fast*, and makes it sound like a wobbling spring to my ears. (Once again: this may be me. XD) This is really nothing serious, just nitpicking for precision’s sake.
19\. Although this is the online version (from ld51.kimrubendavid.com), the mouse still gets stuck when moving diagonally towards walls, despite what the game page says! :o Trying the downloadable version (the ZIP file) to compare if the two are inverted: stuck too. Maybe you need to update the file for the online version, then?
20\. Changing the whole labyrinth so regularly is disorienting — which is the goal, I guess! I wonder if only changing a part of it could be interesting too, for example, only the mouse’s neighbourhood. While still changing bonuses (and enemies?) elsewhere, so that you still get enough? I do not know, this may be a silly idea. X)
21\. A more general note: I like the allusions to *Pac-Man*, but the game and context could get even more reminiscent of it, actually! Which is not a criticism. :) Nevertheless, *in case you want it to be*, I think a key element is how the basic collectibles (here, some other kind of merely scoring cheese) are arranged along *all* paths of the labyrinth (as opposed to only specific places) (and you may *have* to get them all to pass a level, although this could me more complicated given how the labyrinth morphs). On the other hand, the rage transformation does remind me of the Power Pellets (with the enemies turning into (blue? XD) cheese, like the ghosts turn blue). And the (blue) ghost transformation is quite a turnaround. X)
22\. Further rambling: giving the enemies more advanced AI as in *Pac-Man* could be interesting, but it may get more difficult to manage here given the regular random transformation of the labyrinth. I wonder if something would be workable!
23\. Final note: I tend to think that *in general*, games work better when they give a sense of purpose to the player; survival can be an interesting mode or general constraint (after all, there are so-called ‘survival games’!), but having to perform some main task would help give more interest, in my opinion. Actually, my previous suggestion on mimicking *Pac-Man*’s ‘Pac-Dots’ could be a solution (yes, I discovered [this name](https://pacman.fandom.com/wiki/Pac-Dot) writing this review), although you may (and should!) want to come up with another original target of yours. :)
24\. Real final note: taking a look at folder showroom: hey, in show2.png, another setting is shown for a labyrinth, with different colours, and I feel like I can better appreciate the texture (than in the grass)! Which is a nice one. :)
**Takeaway:** a sweet mousy context semi-take on *Pac-Man* (the (literally!) cheesy enemies made me laugh), with its own little twists. I enjoyed the cuteness, and the random generation. My criticism would be that I would have wished for a stronger objective. The randomness interpretation of the theme may be somewhat common (I have to confirm this, but it is my impression), but it was used more originally with the labyrinth generation idea. Also, technically impressive to have gone only through JavaScript (beware navigator-related problems, though!! X) It happens for more games than you would think).
Thanks for the sweet moment. :)
PS: I forgot to talk about the mouse’s appearance when you have both ghost and rage powers simultaneously; I would be good to have some visual indication: for example, a blinker between ghost and rage. I was also not sure whether both music tracks were then played at the same time or not; no easy solution for music.
@mossieur-patate
Wow thanks for this amazing feedback, i really enjoyed to read it! :3
1 & 2 & 3 - i guess i don't have to say that anymore but i'm no native english speaker and struggle with some words :x I'm happy as i am, i feel like people normally get what i want to say - still many thanks to point things out, always helps to improve!
4 - I do literally import not one library :3 I write one html file, fill it with the basic html and css needed, start my JS