FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD56 → Monster Maze

Monster Maze

By matt-swieboda and whysguy52

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall9752.9628
Fun9582.7828
Innovation8432.9028
Theme7483.4028
Graphics9122.8228
Audio6392.6928
Humor8312.4228
Mood8153.1928

Comments

eric-shaun 2024-10-08 00:33

Was exciting and fun, the "pressure" you feel, when running out of oil was definitely real. Had fun trapping the Critters when going around the corner :rat: :sunglasses:

matt-swieboda 2024-10-08 00:36

one thing we would have loved to do was pathing for the monsters, so yes, without that you can trap them fairly easily. We were trying to balance the speed of the enemies and player for that sake. Pathing would indeed be something I would like to try next time!

bearcage 2024-10-08 04:59

Congrats on completing the jam, and thanks for sharing your game!

You got the spacing between torch refills juuuuuuust right, really started to feel the creepy crawly walls closing in, especially by the last couple turns of the maze. It might've been cool if the baddies had a little bit more complexity to their behavior — some sort of midway between what they're doing and full-on pathfinding, like maybe a random jitter in their movement or a back-off-and-charge loop.

Also, fun to see a jam game in Crystal — you don't see that every day — I'm on a mac so I needed to compile it, but that was pretty straightforward since you included an easy makefile.

davidsheadgames 2024-10-08 14:45

The two mazes are interesting explorations on the difference between wide corridors and tiny ones.

Not sure I'm a fan of maze games on the whole, but the lighting mechanic (the 'fog of war' aspect) was really neat! If the lamp oil refills weren't so sparsely spread apart, I think it might be a little more fair.

The enemies closing in definitely gives a creepy vibe once I realized what was going on. It's a nice touch

matt-swieboda 2024-10-08 18:35

@bearcage thanks, yeah that's good feedback, would have liked to do something like that with either pathfinding, or jittering/back off etc.

The Mac zipped `.app` didn't work for you? I hadn't tested on a Mac without crystal installed, but it should instal the SFML libs. I will do some testing on this before next jam to make sure the Mac app works without any installation/compiling. Thanks for the info!

matt-swieboda 2024-10-08 18:37

@davidsheadgames thanks, yeah it was fun doing the fog of war/visiblity aspect. It's not really fog of war like in RTS's since you could see the enemies in the fog, so it was purely for visual effect, but that's what i based it off of.

hawkin 2024-10-08 18:50

You have an effective game design! Losing light while exploring, and wanting to search for oil but not run into critters, were all different axes of competing challenges. It was very satisfying to play!

I really liked the retro style of the title menu. I would love to see a version of the game art that follows the same retro pixel style!

master-yeet 2024-10-08 19:57

I thought these little guys were my friends until they weren't :d

joshua-reumann 2024-10-08 19:57

Nice and straight forward gamedesign :) Funny moment when your tiny companions start to demolish you once the light goes out xD

asfdfdfd 2024-10-08 21:00

Why this games hould be so scary, ha-ha-ha. Those goddamn creatures...

arthur-tang 2024-10-09 01:36

Fun game! I managed to escape maze 1 within 2 tries haha.

tharinda-kodikara 2024-10-09 02:04

Well done!

mikeya 2024-10-09 16:30

the betrayal from those pesky little critters

nikolas-van-rus 2024-10-10 23:59

Interesting idea, it was fun to play!

swaglazio 2024-10-11 07:11

Well done, keep going ! dont hesitate to rate my game tho x)

dimoseek 2024-10-13 19:09

OMG!