dienasty 2023-05-01 03:47
Love the unique flight mechanic. Could be polished a bit, but awesome regardless.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Stork Express
By pizzasgood
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 280 | 3.25 | 24 | |
| Fun | 259 | 3.15 | 24 | |
| Innovation | 132 | 3.56 | 24 | |
| Theme | 206 | 3.86 | 24 | |
| Graphics | 294 | 3.15 | 24 | |
| Audio | 256 | 2.93 | 24 | |
| Humor | 56 | 3.71 | 23 | |
| Mood | 293 | 2.95 | 24 |
Love the unique flight mechanic. Could be polished a bit, but awesome regardless.
Nice game with special flight!But the control of dropping deliveries while flying in sky need to be adjusted.
I think my baby accuracy was like less than 1% lol
Windows version worked for me, a lot of fun carpet bombing a city with babies, though i thought I would die if I hit the ground and the fact that you don't made it a bit easy.
@soloadventurergames Thanks for the confirmation!
As for difficulty, you can make things more challenging by trying to win with as little flapping as possible. Since there are a thermals above large dark areas, you can theoretically do it without flapping at all if you're careful enough.
But yeah, this game is a bit more chill than what I'd originally intended. If I'd had more time I'd have added animals and hunters to create hazards, a stamina bar to disincentivize constant flapping, and a baby-basket that you'd have to refill at an orphanage from time to time instead of carrying infinite babies.
I'm giving all Stork games 5 stars!
Those poor babies that didn't land in their spot. It was quite satisfying to see them bouncing around, though, so there's that. ;) The flying mechanic was interesting, I definitely like that it's usable with just one hand, but I think there was one axis missing that I'd like to be able to rotate around. But still, solid entry!
The music is a real jam. I had a lot of fun just flinging babies around the map.
I did find the controls quite disorienting but the massive beams indicating targets were helpful with that. It also seemed a bit difficult to figure out the direction I was going? These could just be me problems though.
The level was good and I was really excited to try the controls. You've designed a cool game with a funny twist on the theme.
Good and interesting idea. Nice))
Controls were tricky to learn, but actually pretty fun once I got used to them. I feel like deliveries could be a bit more lenient, since it's hard to land them in the small circle where they're supposed to go.
Controls were very hard, especially when trying to be precise (dropping babies). But the game was fun nevertheless, especially the baby bombing mecanic.
Cant download for Microsoft Windows
@legromp: Odd. The file is still there and I can access it fine from my end. Probably a random network hiccup. Anyway, I've gone ahead and mirrored both builds here, so hopefully the ldjam hosted copy will work better for you.
Haha bombing babies was hilarious. I agree with others that the controls were unintuitive. Did you purposely make it different than the standand control for airplanes in video games?
@christian-zommerfelds: It was a casualty of the clock. I got off to a late start because I didn't think of a game worth making until I was lying in bed on Friday night, and then I ran into issues with the gliding physics that took a long time to sort out (part of the problem was the game engine sneakily implementing its own drag and sending me on a wild goose chase when I thought that behavior was coming from my own code). The compo period was almost halfway over by the time I had basic flight working. I'd intended to set up a more normal bank-to-steer system to replace the simplistic pitch-and-roll controls I was using during testing, but I was worried I'd run into even more unexpected time sinks. I decided to focus on building the rest of the game first and to revise the steering later if there was enough time. There wasn't.
It took me a while (and a lot of babies!), but I did it:
stork_express.png
It is difficult as hell to control, but after a while you can get used to it. And the gliding mechanic works really well, so kudos for that! I especially liked the thermal currents, letting you stay in the air for a long time without flapping.
I think the game has a slight problem with explaining how it is supposed to be played. At first I assumed the goal was to fly quickly and deliver the babies as fast as you can, but dropping a baby into the target spot seems nearly impossible when you travel fast. Carpet bombing only helped a bit with that. Another issue there is that when you drop a baby while flapping the wings, it can get stuck for a second before finally falling as usual. I thought that maybe making it so the player only has to drop the baby at the right time (while passing through the beacon / target marker) to consider the delivery done would be a better idea here.
After 2-3 minutes of playing I accidentally flew away from the city and got so turned around that I couldn't find it anymore. The city disappeared into the fog like it was a Stephen King novel. I flew around the empty map for a minute or two before finding the edge of the grass. I followed it to the corner of the map, then flew diagonally to find the city again (as I assumed it might be located near the center of the grass square), and thankfully I did. I think having an arrow pointing you to a nearest target would be a good thing to add. It would also help me near the end of the game, when I had only 3-4 targets left and I couldn't find them for a while, as they were not visible from far away due to the fog.
When I found the city back, I decided to see what happens when I crash into the ground, as I assumed I'd lose the game and have to start over, but that didn't happen. That made me realize that I could deliver the babies by crashing near my target point and spawning a pile of babies until one of them rolled into the target zone. That made the game much easier to finish - most of my play time was spent on delivering first 4-5 babies, the rest went rather quickly. Also, spending that much time taught me how to better control the stork and approach all targets slowly without crashing into the ground, so in my second playthrough I've managed to get several babies delivered in the first minute. I guess that's an improvement? :P
So, to sum up: like you said yourself, the controls could probably use a bit more work (I thought that maybe removing roll controls from the mouse and onto separate keyboard keys would work better?), the dropping mechanic might be made easier to control (I know! It's the 21st century and the storks improved their delivery technique with laser-guided babies! :P). Other than that - the graphics are simple, but it works in the game's favor, as everything looks pretty clear and uncluttered. There's enough variation in building colors and sizes to not feel repetitive. The simple sound effects match the graphics well. The music is nice, fun but not too intrusive. And I always appreciate when people add volume controls to games with audio - I usually have my speakers set at rather high volume, so being able to easily drop the overall volume in game to about 70% was really helpful :).