FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD52 → Total Extinction

Total Extinction

By samuli and borb

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1673.8523
Fun2833.5723
Innovation3113.4223
Theme6943.0923
Graphics1244.2323
Audio743.9723
Humor3303.1022
Mood1233.9523

Comments

alaah 2023-01-09 21:22

It's impressive you got it running on real hardware. It looks so good! The dinos even have unique sprites. It took a fair bit of time to catch them all. Shame it's a Jam game because I'd love to see how NES games are made nowadays.

The black rectangle things [can be janky](https://static.jam.host/raw/f90/1/z/5598e.gif)

samuli 2023-01-09 21:34

@alaah Thanks! The game was made with NesMaker, which is a modern commercial nes game development environment. We can't share the source project easily as I have made modification to the environment directly. Plenty of 6502 assembler was needed with that. There are also free C libraries if that is more your thing and NEXXT is awesome graphics tool to pair with those.

AseSprite was used for graphics and FamiStudio for music & sfx.

For testing we used Mesen emulator on PC and Everdrive on Famicom. US NES should also work, the game is not PAL optimized so Europe is out of luck. Ironic as I am Finnish. :D

Plenty of Nes jank to be found in the game. I tried to eliminate any hard locks, but seems I missed that one. I might make a post jam update with more bug fixes once I have slept. Meanwhile **do not press left/right when falling down to an another screen.**

Edit: Game seems to be fine with PAL NES too. Music is just slooooower.

grunkgrunk 2023-01-10 13:36

I had an empty rom for the NES so I ended up flashing this game on it. Its impressive you got it running on NES. It looks so good! Great art style and music. The NES however starts exploiting the bugs tho. But great job

dis0rder 2023-01-11 03:21

Nice entry!

Always fun to see NES-homebrew in Ludum Dare. There are other folks here too who also develop for the NES, so I recommend you [check them out](https://ldjam.com/tags/platform/nintendo-famicom) if you haven't already!

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I like the graphics especially in the upper level. The strikingly red sky sets and imposing mood and gives a sense of vastness to the landscape.

Underground segments could use a little more consistency. In certain parts it's a bit hard to tell difference between platforms and backgrounds.

The end-screen art was really cool!

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The chiptune is quite catchy (still plays in my head!) and invokes a certain feeling of urgency.

I think it fits the gameplay's rhythym, but thematically was expecting slightly more "depressing" tune.

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I like the concept of finishing up the failed extinction event.

It was fun to "collect" all the unique dinos. I demand a bestiary!

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Oh, and here's a little glitch-greeting card!

glitch_hello2.png

hexx.png

Keep on jamming!

vidarn 2023-01-15 09:55

I loved this game! The art and the music are fantastic. The level design was good as well, with interesting connections between parts of the map, and different challenges in the segments surrounding each dinosars.

Very cool stuff, great job!

Screenshot 2023-01-15 at 10.52.25.png

wendel-scardua 2023-01-15 19:01

I found the grim dino-reaper very cute :)

I don't know if it's a NESMaker thing, but when I go back to screens were I already reaped a dinosaur it reappears for a frame or two.

BTW which emulator did you use for the WebGL version?

samuli 2023-01-16 21:44

@wendel-scardua The dead dinos appearing for a few frames is my "bug". The dinos are constantly checking if they should be death instead of checking on the spawn if they should even be spawned. Just a jam thing to make the game fast. You can think them as ghosts of the ones you have killed.

We used this for the browser emulation: https://github.com/ninjadynamics/ninjapad It doesn't support mapper30, but as our game is quite basic we could convert it mapper2, which is supported.

@dis0rder Thanks for the greeting card! I will definitely check other submitted homebrew games.

jakejet 2023-01-17 18:20

Loved the graphics and audio!

nullval 2023-01-17 21:49

Impressive work, a bit jank, but honestly I've played NES games that have had waaaay longer dev times and way more bugs.

fluburbio 2023-01-18 04:22

Amazing work for such a short time! I enjoyed playing a lot. It took me some time to figure out I had to kill all the enemies but once I did, I had fun hunting them all down :D

ddrkirbyisq 2023-01-18 06:37

Nice! The html5 emulation is a bit suspect so I played on Mesen instead.

Music - It's a bit one-note in terms of tone, but works well. I'm digging the noise percussion and the triangle bass arrangement is really strong here too. I would personally have liked to see a little more variation in the pulse wave channels rather than always having one arp and one 12.5% pulse lead (maybe a "B section" with a 25% pulse melody and the second channel echoing) but that's just me and hey, this is an LD entry after all...

Graphics - The dino sprites are a little unremarkable -- I think the lack of outlines compared with the thin-ness / hole-scattered nature makes them feel a little unsubstantial. I get that the main sprite is supposed to be a skeleton/grim reaper type image but it felt a bit haphazard in terms of its vibe. Really dig the red sky layering though, and the white bone textures/shading work well too.

Gameplay - Kind of simple but there's enough there to make for an entertaining game. I was pretty surprised to see one-way platforms here, feels like an overly-complicated feature, but I appreciated the little bit of exploration that we had to do.

better-half 2023-01-19 23:14

Plays, sounds and looks like a true NES game, down to the somewhat clunky controls (which I assume was... intended?). Impressive amount of visual and level variety for a game made in such a short time. Didn't feel too related to the theme but other then that this was a really solid entry. Great job!

dry-squid 2023-01-20 02:21

I got super stuck in the game, but loved the aesthetic and loved being Dino grim reaper. Kinda been a dream of mine hehe

ofoof 2023-01-20 03:16

Super cool! loved the graphics and feel

oillen 2023-01-21 22:31

Played it on Browser and had quite fun.

In my the first completed run, I thought the green and red room was the most difficult part in the game, but in the next attempt after it I made through it with one try ... but the triceratops elsewhere got memoryholed :laughing: LD_52_Total_Extinction_01.png