The Harvester

hfsevans 2023-01-09 22:50

Okay, so, at first I thought this was a bit of a spam fest. Just click to swing, but after playing it a few times there's actually way more to combat than I thought. I found myself moving to avoid enemy attacks and it started to feel good, though still really difficult.

I think maybe it needs a clear risk and reward systems. It's higher risk to kill the young farmers, so maybe incentives us to do it more? Or you could make the people randomly spawn so sometime we only have them to kill?

Well done!!!

undev-games 2023-01-09 22:56

For a first game, it was pretty cool!

I liked the sound effects

hawkin 2023-01-09 22:59

That was fun! Great job for your first solo title, especially with a new code base!

I liked that you included an invincibility ability that consumed lives that you harvest -- that's a good balance! I never was quite able to win (harvest all the people), so maybe the game needs a little more balancing. Things like player speed versus enemy speed, damage, and health.

fc85057 2023-01-09 23:09

First time participating and using custom C++ code base- this is really impressive! And the pixel art is great, especially for someone who hasn't done graphics before. I also thought using the souls as a resource for the temporary invincibility was a nice mechanic. I agree with the other comment's points. It is quite difficult, but may very well been intentional :) A risk/reward, incentive, timer, etc. system could really take it to the next level.

bas-van-den-berg 2023-01-09 23:28

Thanks for the comments! It wasn't easy to find a good balance. At first it was way too easy, maybe it's a bit too hard now. :D

twchapman 2023-01-09 23:29

Great showing, especially for a first time game! I think the others touched on what I wanted to say, but I do think it was pretty tough when the angels just stuck to you - there wasn't much room to do anything but hope you have enough invulnerability. And some sort of indicator that things were taking damage would help, I wasn't sure if my attacks were doing anything until things disappeared. I like the concept though, and it played really smoothly!

globul 2023-01-15 11:35

Good basis to make a great beat'em all ! Good work and well done for a first game.

bigjam 2023-01-16 13:44

The game wouldnt open :(

mattwoelk 2023-01-17 03:01

Impressive that you made level editing tools with it!

veelivar 2023-01-17 04:34

Congrats on your first entry! Almost got through it all in my first run.

I also had a problem with the angels sticking to me like glue, and in my second run, the RNG decreed that no one should be allowed to die without an angel appearing. Maybe some system to put the gained souls into stats, like speed. The invun is nice, but the cooldown isn't always enough when they're glued to you.

Visuals communicated really clearly what everything was.

bas-van-den-berg 2023-01-25 13:57

@veelivar thanks for the feedback. I agree it would be nice to adjusts/invest in stats with souls, but I didn't have time for anything like that unfortunately. I'm sorry that the angels stuck to you. I had some issues with that during development. I thought it was better now.

I learned a lot, and hope to do better next time :)

bas-van-den-berg 2023-01-25 14:00

@bigjam sorry to hear it didn't work for you. I'm guessing it's an issue with my vulkan code. It has not been extensively tested.

raggedyjam 2023-01-26 06:38

Had some trouble trying to hit entities at times and found the celestials a bit annoying but was able to build a strategy of piling them up behind people and use my invincibility to take out several at once so that was nice. Great job on your first Ludum Dare game.

jonqs 2023-01-26 08:00

Cool game ! I feel like i can't escape the celestials since they are running at the same speed or faster than my character. The feeling on harvesting could have been better if the hitbox was on the whole scythe. Anyway so impressed by people making a game on custom engine like that. Congrats !