Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Carnage Courier
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 229 | 3.92 | 23 | |
| Fun | 102 | 4.04 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 244 | 3.76 | 23 | |
| Theme | 903 | 3.52 | 23 | |
| Graphics | 723 | 3.47 | 23 | |
| Audio | 249 | 3.78 | 23 | |
| Mood | 574 | 3.55 | 20 |
Really fun game! Reminds me a lot of Nimbatus, except I like that you can rebuild in the middle of a battle!
Controls are a little difficult, I think I'd prefer if you _always_ face the mouse, and clicking is what fires, then maybe you can hold down the space bar to enter build mode and it pauses for you :blush:
Music is really catchy too! Love those 4 ride cymbals leading into each section :grin:
Great entry! Just about scraped through the bossfight with a lot of frantic rebuilding mid-fight! I think I agree with Tim's comment on controls, but I don't think that really gets in the way of enjoyment. Very complete and fun
I was initially going to have a key to enter build mode instead of doing it automatically whenever you picked up a part, but that would mean that you can have the game paused for ages to rebuild in the middle of a fight which would make it less frantic. Maybe I can get the best of both worlds by having the game continue while in the build mode but in slow motion. Thanks for the feedback!
I loved it but honestly the problem was....you win too easily! I made it to the last level first run and almost killed the boss only then to learn at that point there's upgrades when you die! Then when i purposefully did a run collecting crates (since now i knew they were currency, not points) I upgraded size and energy then...won the next run never getting to upgrade again :/ I selected "keep playing" thinking to become huge but it took all my crates away, the only way to keep going getting lots of crates would be to purposefully die before the boss.
The controls could have used a little work too, like others have said always facing the mouse would have been a LOT better, there's also no great indicator of how much energy you have.
Great game! Unlike the other comments, I thought it was pretty hard! But I'm not great at twitchy games. Once I figured out that I just hold down the space bar and left mouse it got much easier to play. Maybe a mode with simpler controls?
Fun game! I loved adding pieces to the ship. The music and the sound effects were also well suited for the game, and the pixel graphics are charming. I feel like there isn't much more tactics that strap everything to yourself and dodge bullets. Its great for the time that you had, I would love to see it developed further. I can imagine all sorts of additional parts or synergies.
Great game! I didn't really want to do a second life because I don't usually like roguelite games, but I'm glad I did because the expanded bot grid really opened things up and made the game crazier.
Congrats on the game, and make sure you rate a lot of games so you get a score.
Definitely left me wanting more spaces for my ship and a little more challenge. Really cool concept and awesome music, though!
Really really fun game, there is something so intrinsically rewarding to picking up dropped parts from enemies and using them for combat. Technically the game stuttered a bit on loads and enemy spawns on web but otherwise a great experience and I'd play it as a full game
It's interesting to see that some people find it easy and others find it hard. I think that means I got the difficulty right for these first levels :). I'd have liked to have added more levels that ramp up the difficulty a lot at the end and require some upgrades, but there wasn't the time. There's definitely a tactic to make defeating the first large enemy easier (hit the batteries on the sides first then it struggles to charge up for each shot) but other than that it is mostly pick up all of the pieces and dodge the bullets at the moment. I'm pretty sure the stutters are due to the shaders on the parts that provide power (those two batteries on the side of the moving enemies are especially noticeable because they come in during the middle of the level). If I continue developing the game in the future I'll remove the desaturation effect that uses a shader from the individual parts and have a power bar at the bottom of the screen instead which should make the amount of energy you have left more apparent as well.
Not sure if there was an issue with my browser or what but loading new stages would freeze up my browser (Opera GX) until it loaded. I got 15 boxes delivered before the game froze entirely. Fun game though! Reminds me a bit of Warring Forever. Makes you want to keep getting bigger and bigger.
WASD doesn't work in my browser. The music is not bad, setting the atmosphere. An interesting casual idea. A cool feature with the appearance of additional active enemies. Clear learning section and intuitive logic of the game. Good job.
Difficult to play in a browser due to lags, and also difficult to aim the gun on a trackpad. A promising concept, would love to play a full game.
Really great ! Everything is there, and with a bit of content and polish it could really be a complete game. I had a lot of fun playing :)
Woah, what a cool game! I love the idea behind it! The controls are very unorthodox and they take some time to get used to, but once you do, the game is great! Improvising the build of my ship in the middle of the battle is super fun, well done!
I wish there was a browser fullscreen option. This was a fun one! Clever building mechanic, upgrades allow progression. Good base to expand on. Played like Captain Forever. I did encounter a bug where I died, but I didn't leave the screen so I was stuck getting shot at and still able to attach modules, but not use other controls.
I would say the controls are the weakest part of the game. The holding left click to aim was counterintuitive to me. I also wish some of the battlefields were larger and that you went to a station or something instead of just the edge of the screen to continue. A background would also have been nice, but the jam only allows so much to be squeezed in!
Fantastic game! It felt great being able to build and rebuild during the fight.
> I was initially going to have a key to enter build mode instead of doing it automatically whenever you picked up a part, but that would mean that you can have the game paused for ages to rebuild in the middle of a fight which would make it less frantic.
I don't know, I think it would give the player a bit more control to make the fights more managable, but I don't think it would take away anything from the frantic nature of it. Dragging new components mid-fight isn't a huge issue, so I don't think manual build mode would change it that much.
> It’s interesting to see that some people find it easy and others find it hard. I think that means I got the difficulty right for these first levels :).
I'd agree with that, as early levels feel pretty easy, but the difficulty ramps up pretty quickly. ;) Perhaps it would be a good idea to increase it a bit earlier, though, because of the upgrade system. I'd agree with raptor851 here, as I was in the same position - I went through a lot of levels before finally dying, so I discovered the whole rogue-lite aspect of the game pretty late. ;)
One more thing I thought could be changed, if you're going to keep developing this - pretty quickly I found myself playing levels where I got 5+ enemies on the screen at the same time, and at that point it was basically impossible to evade taking damage. Adding armor to the ship didn't really help with that. Perhaps as the game progresses, the playing area should become bigger to give you more space to move around?
I love the upgrade system. When I first played through several levels, it felt interesting having to choose carefully between carrying more cargo crates and more weapons, but I thought it would work better if you were able to increase the size of your ship. And then I died for the first time and discovered you can do just that. Perfect!
As for the controls, I think Tim Leach is right, and it would feel better if the targeting just followed the mouse, though it wasn't a huge issue for me. One thing I found awkward was trying to control my ship after installing the auto-targetting/auto-shooting core on my ship - for a while there I was wondering what was going on and if there was some bug with the controls. :P Though this is more a problem with the ship part, not controls themselves.
The sound part of the game is great as well. Sound effects are simple, but fit well with the design. The music is arcadey and adds to the frantic feel of gameplay.
@Nillard I think it's the problem with the WebGL version - I had the same freezes every time a new enemy spawned. The desktop version didn't have that issue.