Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD54 → Nuclear Arms 9: Tower of Time
By logicon211, volt450, BaronB, yoshiwara, FTL_Sloth and Amanda Gallant
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 218 | 3.92 | 37 | |
| Fun | 154 | 3.95 | 37 | |
| Innovation | 523 | 3.41 | 37 | |
| Theme | 456 | 3.80 | 37 | |
| Graphics | 576 | 3.61 | 37 | |
| Audio | 149 | 3.90 | 35 | |
| Humor | 58 | 4.16 | 35 | |
| Mood | 215 | 3.95 | 35 |
Oh yes- I've been waiting for the next Nuclear Arms game! As always, the voice acting and character designs are top notch, and it brings a smile to my face every time. I recorded my gameplay session for maximum feedback:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySYamjUD76E
Great work!
Hey thanks @100th-coin !
Always glad to see a fan. The gameplay video is great too. It really helps to see how people learn our games. I'm surprised you made it through on your first try. Good job :D
It reminds me of Netflix TV series DARK
Wasn't familiar with the previous games, but this one was a lot of fun! Everything works well together and it's a nice, really fun game to play through. Only downside is I may now have tendonitis in my index finger after beating it, don't regret it though lol
Great game! I have worn through my k and left mouse buttons. One thing I'm not sure about.. it seemed like I couldn't move at times, even when I wasn't attacking, not sure if it is a bug or feature, I might have missed an instruction.
Holy shit I almost beat that asshole, he just blocked me in with 2 fisties. And now my poor craig is dead!
Either way amazing game, had fun from the beginning to the end. Great job!
My mouse won't forgive me for what I did. Finger too ;D
It was quite fun, but I also was getting stuck sometimes
That was a lot of fun! Managed to beat Timey Tim after a tough and fun battle :D excellent game, nicely done!
I really had fun wit it! I loved the music and the voices :)
Absolutely hilarious! Looks like the team had a lot of fun making this.
Great sound and mood. Loved the over the top vibe
Hey, this was a lot of fun. I loved the unseriousness of it - the voice acting in particular (and the bit of music at the start) was hilarious.
- Difficulty ramps a bit fast (though encourages replayability - beating Timey Tim felt vindicating) - Wasn't clear what happens if you pick up the same upgrade again until after you'd done it - looked like it would just be a wasted opportunity initially - Obviously very button-spammy with the main attack, which is okay - but I think you could make it a little less finger destroying by offering maybe two attack buttons the player can 'gallop' with or something? - The K/L control scheme seemed less punishing, but then I couldn't choose upgrades or anything with my keyboard, which sent me back to using the mouse anyway
Overall this was awesome - mechanics were well thought out, theme closely implemented, vibe was fun, progression was interesting. I haven't finished many jam games and this was one of them - so that says a lot!
Well done team.
Nice!
This game was a lot of fun, and I loved the humor of it. It's clear you've had a lot of fun with these Nuclear Arms games and it shows. The mechanics were satisfying and the mutations were a lot of fun to use (shotgun kinda op). There were a couple times where a shadow would show up and I couldn't move through it, and some of the bombs would appear in the back row and I couldn't damage them. But overall very cool stuff!
I love how you're making a consistent series, amazing intro :D Nice gameplay too, my suggestion would be to make the regular attack "always on" so players don't have to mash for no reason - there's no cost to attacking as far as I know after all. The player then only has to choose when to use their queued mutation.
Wow, this one was ambitious! Love that it's a series. Overall, this feels like a real game with a lot of potential. There are a ton of ideas in here - they need polish of course. Movement gets glitchy, UI could be scaled better, and the balance needs some help - none of the powerups really compete with the rapid-fire gun (which maybe you turn into a hold and fire thing so it's not about clicking as fast as possible?). Once I figured out you could kill the bombs I was able to beat the game. That said, all my feedback is just balance/debugging stuff. The art is fun, music is vibey, and overall really solid. I hope you polish this up!
The gameplay is enjoyable but gets challenging soon. Fast button-mashing ability or an auto-clicker is a plus :grin:.
A few ideas to make it more approachable to a larger audience: - pre-level delay/countdown to have time to see the enemy positions before the shooting starts - easy/story mode where the game would restart just the last-failed level, and possibly add some extra health
MELTDOWN!
Didn't take me six hours this time, either. I'll admit I was initially worried. Of course I was hoping you'd enter for 54, but, see, my toddler drooled milk into my mouse (don't ask) and it's only been registering left-clicks about 80% of the time ever since. So I figured it would be challenge-mode-plus this time.
Except that you made it a keyboard-friendly control scheme! What could go wrong??
Barrels is what. I got mopped up hard by the barrels. They even taunted me, where one barrel appeared in the center, and then just as I was about to manu- manouv- maneuver (man my French is bad, is that your part of Canada? Did I ever tell you about the time I went to a house party in Montreal and they had converted their living room into a halfpipe? You guys are nuts, I love it) into position to kill it, another barrel popped exactly into the spot left-of-center. I had all the time in the world, but this is a total barrel-lock: every space will take damage, and no space can clear them. Damn those bears!
After some surfing I realized it wasn't the bears, it was those pesky robots. I started clearing them first, and that cleared the way to victory.
Boss had me worried and was a narrow battle, but I did take him down the first time. His trash-fist homage move that limited my space was a lot to handle, nice touch. It totally boxed me in a few times, and if I didn't have some of the defensive mutation (which I ignored my first few runs) then I don't think I could have soaked up the hits to win.
Overall this was very cool, especially after I settled into the pattern of how I wanted to play. In the past I have sort of enjoyed the megaman battle-network formula, but it never fully clicked for me. An example is "One Step from Eden" an indie game that seems like I should love it: roguelike deckbuilder meets battle network. But it's totally overwhelming! I just can't think my moves through, or even multi-task dodging with reading the "next card" and processing what it means in time to act. As a result every opportunity slips by in a blur and I am not left with that so-important roguelike feeling that losing was all my fault.
But I had a different experience with your game. It took a couple of surfs, but I figured out that I can use the 'E' queue menu/pause moment to plan the next few seconds of battle carefully. I even learned that the UI has some limited support for keyboard input, and if you realllly look carefully you can see that there is a selection which you can move around via WASD and activate with return. So I would pause, line up my next few moves, and think "okay go 1 left then drop the barrel, then move up and double-spam." And this would actually work most of the time!
That's really the first time one of these battle-network variants has let me STOP AND THINK and plan, while still also retaining some of that sweet "oh shit oh shit" realtime dodging fun.
Really nice work!
Haha hell yeah, thanks @pkenney. I kind of had a similar experience with one step from Eden. But we decided to take more from Mega man battle network and pause the game to queue up your moves.
Glad the UI worked with the keyboard. That was a surprise to me haha, I expected it was gonna be mouse only but I guess there's some hidden keyboard functionality baked in
That was such a fun game! Gameplay was fun and must say, voice acting was on point!