FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD56 → Micro Wars

Micro Wars

By oddballdave

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall264.1423
Fun533.9023
Innovation224.1623
Theme1803.5522
Graphics64.5423
Audio963.5423
Humor2332.5020
Mood653.8323

Comments

nickhellquist 2024-10-07 01:34

Damn this looks good! Plays good too, really good idea and well executed, I'm impressed!

jk5000 2024-10-07 07:06

The visuals is really good, and the gameplay idea is really fun. The music and sound effects is okay, and they do fit the game idea. I will say the difficulty was a bit too high, and it was difficult to survive for very long. But overall a fun and well made compo game. Well done.

sviborg 2024-10-07 09:49

looks very smooth. Complexity is present.I would have chosen calmer music, but overall the game is enjoyable. :muscle:

j3m 2024-10-07 12:04

Wow this is really good! My only complaint is sometimes for some reason, it feels like an enemy should die, but they don't

quan-ran 2024-10-07 13:37

Simple visuals but fits very well, congrats!

tuism 2024-10-07 15:37

I really like the idea! There are some details that I think would elevate the game to a whole new level but as it is it's a well polished little jam game! - The core idea of surrounding an enemy to kill them is really cool! I like the idea of pushing for many kills at once - risk and reward. But there doesn't seem to be any incentive to do a combo kill right now, which is a shame, and I feel like should be a core design consideration. - I'm not sure how the spikey ones work, it's not really clear what their "thing" is. - Some variation in player powers and such would go a long long way. - This feels like it has the bones of a roguelite something or other with powerups and stats etc. - The controls are not fine enough, at least on keyboard. Being able to move slower, accelerating up to a speed over a longer time might help. Or just controller support I guess. - The circle around the whole arena is a nice touch, gliding along the edge feels great. - On THAT note, I would like to see some kind of warning before an enemy appears right on edge, as right now you can die without warning if you use the edge, and I just like the edge too much to feel like I shouldn't be able to use it. without adding more UI, you could have an invisible round wall which you can glide along, and beyond that you can see enemies appearing. - The music is a bit annoying :p

gdman 2024-10-07 18:05

Simple but innovative gameplay, liked variations of microbes. Moody art. Lot of potential of develop. For example some enemies could slowly rotate themselves, clearing surrounding you created. Also would like some dash ability, because moving when on opposite side of enemy gives too little angle.

@tuism I think spiked can be surrounded only one way (counter clockwise?)

designernap 2024-10-07 20:27

Hot damn I love the style of this one. Top marks on mood, graphics and theme from me! Wonderful.

shakirovich 2024-10-08 00:43

I really enjoyed the aesthetics and clever gameplay, at first I didnt know what was going (didnt read the instructions clearly), but figured very fast after first few kills noticed the progress bar around enemies, very interesting.

braulio-jg 2024-10-08 01:21

Definitely a solid entry, with simple mechanics but in the best way possible. Maybe I would tweak the music volume and the responsiveness of killing the enemy when the circle is completed, but I enjoyed the experience and loved the retro art-style :D!

wubbaduck 2024-10-10 01:47

Very well done! I like the aesthetic is great and the mechanic is innovative. I didn't have a controller handy, but I can totally see how that would make it easier.

Also... Linux build :clap:

vector3cat 2024-10-11 15:00

what a brilliant concept and game!

the graphics of it makes you feel like you are playing it on an old device which makes it feel so cool!

the mechanic of the player having to go around the objects is innovative but can get pretty hard pretty fast especially when more enemies spawn and that was a little bit unpleasant for me...

but overall i liked it a lot and it was polished pretty well in 3 days! great job!

googoobachoo 2024-10-11 18:34

Awesome presentation and innovative game mechanic. very cool!

bassilij 2024-10-12 08:26

Great idea and implementation! I really liked it)

lost-rabbit-digital 2024-10-12 23:59

Never seen that concept of circling enemies to kill them, very neat. Also love the little Star Wars nod, great game.

tanis 2024-10-13 14:26

I tried the Windows version and the controls are weird.. I mean, when you press the keys to move it only moves a little bit per press and it varies each time you press a key... I believe that is not the wanted behavior.

Nonetheless, the art is really nice, it fits the idea. The music gets a bit boring after some time. The concept is cool and I hope you are going to fix the controls as I would like to give it some more time.

oddballdave 2024-10-13 14:54

@tanis Which version of windows are you using? It works fine on my windows 11 machine. Is it happening with both w,a,s,d and arrow keys? Thanks :8ball:

kumber 2024-10-17 13:59

Really cool encircling mechanic!

levi 2024-10-17 21:49

Dam. I just kept playing and playing and when I played the first time, I thought the enemy progression would be the same, but then those big ones came in and it was real exciting then. Top game. No need to comment on the aesthetics and juice, you know you did well there :)

tomssuli 2024-10-21 11:32

Hi, I'm having the same problem that @tanis has. I tried it with different controls and even a controller and it would sometimes just stop moving and move only a little when a direction is pushed.

Apart from that bug, I think the idea is clever. I liked to circle around enemies in certain directions.

The game has neat looks and after reading instructions it was clear what I had to do. Only gripe in the mechanics is the same that @tuism already mentioned, that there could be some way to tell if an enemy is about to appear to some edge so there wouldn't be cheap deaths.

microwarsClipboard_10-21-2024_01.png

tanis 2024-10-22 21:41

@oddballdave I am using Windows 11, too. On an AMD x64 processor, but I do not think that matters, I would expect no difference in controls compared to an Intel CPU. I really have no idea how to help there.

ava-skoog 2024-10-25 18:34

Been looking forward to my session on a Windows machine so that I could play this one! C:

It looks amazing. The texturing surrounding the scope viewport is really nice and the shader magic going on inside the scope itself is very pleasing.

The gameplay itself is mostly really nice and I like how you were able to get a lot of variation out a single movement mechanic and the visual indications you went for with the circles and arrows around the viruses. Very elegant!

I did struggle a lot tho, to a large extent because I ran into the same issue as others in the comments. :( With arrows/WASD it was relentless and I kept stopping dead in one direction or another (seemed to happen mostly left-right, not so much up-down if at all). I tried with a controller too and it was better but still seemed to be there to some extent. Overall I felt the inertia was hard to get a hang of and I don't know whether that was due to the bug or inherent to the game. Would've liked more damping I think.

I also got confused as to the mechanics of defeating the viruses. Sometimes I'd have to circle the first type of enemy up to 3-4 times even if the circle was gone. I was thinking it had to do with the little arrows that seemed to point inward sometimes and outward sometimes but often I was unable to defeat the same type of virus with the same type of arrows twice in succession the same way so I just don't know and I feel like I might just be thick! :')

Disregarding that—which I'm sure you could clear up—overall it's just really good. The virus graphics look great and they have that nice microscope feel to them with the rim light and fuzziness. I don't know if there were more than three types as I never managed to survive for more than a minute after a long time of trying, so please do tell if I missed anything!

MicroWars.PNG

jiri-hysek 2024-10-27 12:26

Hi! I wanted to play this but I have Mac OS only. So I downloaded the source to open in Godot but it seems the source is not complete :( There is only scenes directory. Could you please upload complete source?

oddballdave 2024-10-27 14:52

@jiri-hysek what's missing from the source download? I'll check it tomorrow, but it should all be in the download.

jiri-hysek 2024-10-27 15:01

@oddballdave I cannot tell if that's all but at least project.godot is missing.