ryusohyeong 2025-04-08 15:39
I wish the main character stood out better from the rest! This game is so cool, funny sounds and combat:D
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → Upstream
By skvader-418
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 318 | 3.70 | 32 | |
| Fun | 175 | 3.78 | 32 | |
| Innovation | 358 | 3.36 | 32 | |
| Theme | 701 | 3.08 | 32 | |
| Graphics | 419 | 3.68 | 32 | |
| Audio | 286 | 3.55 | 31 | |
| Mood | 436 | 3.56 | 32 |
I wish the main character stood out better from the rest! This game is so cool, funny sounds and combat:D
Really fun game, I love the concept! It would be really good to see this expanded out with more ships elements that need fixing, and possibly some sort of shop system to buy upgrades. Really good job!
wow this is really fun. I love having the crew fighting with me
Cool Heart of Darkness like idea. The sound is really good. Title screen is very good. The game is fun, reactive and tense. The story stuff definitely adds to it. I do feel like the game has a very psychopathic view of history or at least wants to convey the colonial conflicts the story is based on as a very psychopathic, heartless and gameified process.
Damn, gets really tough on level 2. I'm glad I had my fellas to take the brunt of it.
Very fun gameplay loop but it could do with some upgrades or items to buy. On level 4 difficulty sky rocketed but it's a fun game overall.
@ryusohyeong Indeed, It was one of the things that I forgot to add unfortunately, thank you for playing though!
@chrisbeck You're right, the shop system didn't even cross my mind honestly. The ship fixing mechanic was more of an after thought, and the wheel still leads to an explosion and instant game over, I think it would have been better if it stopped you in your tracks instead of just exploding. Thanks for playing!
@slow-chaz Thank you! The enemies and allies actually share identical AI, it's very modular.
@arkansaslover Yes! I loved reading about the Congo Free State and I read Heart of Darkness, the administrators are inspired by real accounts of the natives and missionaries, and are inspired by Kurtz aswell.
@randomhuman I myself was impressed by how helpful the allied crew was honestly. I thought they were going to be useless but I was pleasantly surprised. Also, sorry, I'm not good at balancing. Thanks for playing!
@vladimperator Indeed, like I used before, It didn't even cross my mind to add a shop or upgrades. But, thank you for playing!
What can I say. I love main menu look and graphics in general. Gameplay is good also. Good job!
@online-play ey thank you! I appreciate it!
Looks really cool! The graphics are simple but stylish, and the gameplay is fun too. I think with some polish, this could work well on mobile.
Another SKVader-speciale here! I'll play some more later, as I had lots of fun. Some initial feedback I've got:
- The NPC's react before I could see the danger, I suppose that is realistic but it takes away from the fun I think - The graphics are awesome as always, I really like how you developed such a unique style - When it gets dangerous, some mood-setting music would have been awesome. I know that it is already much to create a game with multiple levels in a weekend, so I get why you gave that less priority - I was expecting to do some actions while fixing the wheel / furnace, maybe holding some button or something - I love how you can switch platforms on the boat by just using W and S, no nonsense
Great jam project! The sound and visuals are solid — really well done. I especially enjoyed the impact from the environment, the gunshots, and so on — it all feels satisfying. Would’ve loved to see a bit of progression in the gameplay, though. till, great work overall!
Whew, this game gets TOUGH! After getting used to the controls, I really enjoyed this (not your fault, I'm not used to using mouse and keyboard lol). You REALLY made me feel like I was there, between the screams and intense fights and how the enemies could appear from basically anywhere AND you have to keep your crew alive to have any chance AND fix your ship...
This was a chaotic, wild ride, and I loved it!
@indiealesha Thanks! I had no plans of putting it on mobile, but now I might.
@wouter52 thanks! The only person that tells me that I have a distinct style lol. The NPC's react before you because, frankly, I didn't notice it lol and just didn't bother fixing it. The music is a really cool idea, and filmstro has alot of music like that, but I chose ambience because, I have no music making skills and I thought the ambience would fit it's dark and ambigious feeling.
@flinge Thank you! It didn't even cross my mind to add shops or upgrades.
@cataclysmicknight Thank you! I would have loved if I had the patience for making bigger levels (and more of them). Thank you for playing, I really appreciate it!
Well well. An entry that reminds me of a more solid project on which you are working. I know this main gameplay because I played your first releases. You made something good using these main mechanics which are efficient and clever. Everything works well as expected. Ironically, it seems to me that you are developing a DLC for your game Sector Sweep. Neat! Thank you for this entry - and for your comment about my own entry. I wish you the best ++
A fun game, good and pleasant animations, especially shots from a carbine, and sounds. Interestingly drawn, there is a style in the game. Sometimes it was difficult for me to find myself among the others. Thank you for this game!
@geckoo1337 Thank you! But you'd be quite wrong! The AI in this game is made from scratch and is 50x better (smarter, efficient and cleaner) than Sector Sweep's, and is modular, which allows me to quickly add new NPCs or mechanics. Thanks for playing! And likewise!
@jtap Thanks for playing! Yes, I became aware of that after watching streamers try my game. Should have added an arrow pointing at you.
Really like the graphics and the sound design (especially the background/environment noise) for this game. It became a little hard to find my player character amongst others, so maybe a different outfit or something could help with that? Also could have been fun to have more interactions with the boat (maybe stearing/controlling speed/using a cannon or something).
Really fun!
This would be absolutely great with a multiplayer version, I can just imagine how fun it'd be playing this with friends.
Overall this game is a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the combat, but those level 4 dudes are so strong..... I agree with the comments about the game needing improvements, and I also had the aiming working quite weird (not sure if it's like that for everyone, because I was running the game through Wine on Linux).
@skyeward Thanks for playing! I too think that more boat interactions would be cool.
@ex3d0 I had that thought aswell. Maybe a rogue-lite where you try to get as far as you can would be a more "complete" version of this game.
@zatrit thank you! Idk about that. Is aiming slow or something? The gun always looks at your crosshair. Might just be linux.
I broke my jump after jumping once, so then I tried playing with no jump :laughing: Fixing things didn't felt like a real malus as you can still defend your ship and shoot at enemies, felt like something might be lacking here Else, cool art style and gameplay loop, good job :smile:
@transkuja thank you! I felt that if you were unable to fight back while fixing your ship, you would be just screwed, especially if all of your crew are gone.
https://youtu.be/9YkF3lvas8w
Extremely well done game with the best AI I've seen here so far! Very easy at first, but gets quite challenging later in the game.
I would love more in the style of this. Story-driven games are PEAK
Emanates great Apocalypse Now vibes.
I'm big on the classic literature, the last I read was "Candide" by Voltaire a few months back. And soon will be reading "Heart of Darkness".
Thank you for that!
~Xp
This was cool, the gunfights felt very chaotic and unstructured, like a real battle with guerilla tactics would, and it was fun to get the hang of. Nice art, nice sound, nice AI, awesome stuff!
`https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FrSnqDGyks&t=2072s`
@empyreans Thank you! And especially thank you for finding the story interesting. For that reason, you really should read the book!
@cure Thank you for playing! The screaming was added just so that it would feel like a real fight rather than just NPCs swinging their weapons.
What a nice idea and very interesting setting! I really enjoyed this one :grin: Good job!
@leorean Thank you very much!
So, I love the art style, and the screams were an amazing touch. I *THOUGHT* I was doing really well, then a boat with like 4 dudes on it showed up, and at the same time another like 4-5 jumped out of the trees onto my ship and basically everyone died. :skull_crossbones:
Really fun little game, may play it some more and try to get farther once I finish rating some others! Great work!
@rubixnoob13 ey, thanks for playing! The level you were on was the 4th one I think. Which is the final level. I went a bit overboard on the difficulty there.
The atmosphere and mechanics are well executed—it feels very dynamic!
What put me off personally was having to kill people. It carries uncomfortable colonizer vibes that made me squirm. If they’d been monsters instead of natives, it would have felt fine to me.
Thanks for the game!
Hey, liked the game. Thanks for dropping the link in my stream! Finally got around to play it on stream. It took a toll on my older hardware though, so couldn't play that long without the stream being a slideshow. Enjoyed what I saw though.
@missfire I'm sorry that you feel that way. It's a cruel world.
@alvaron Thank you! I'm sorry about that. It could also be my poor coding as well. I have found that godot games don't run well on older hardware as well.
Amazing work, and the idea to interpret the theme in a sort of Heart of Darkness way. I loved that NPCs were getting increasingly insane.
But the curse of making an interesting, playable game for LD is that flaws will be criticized more, as people get more annoyed, so here is my critique :) The choice of cursor color was awful. Of all the things that I can forgive if they become confusing in the messy fight situation, not knowing where the cursor is isn't one of them. Paired with sometimes not knowing where my character is, this made the game much harder than what it should be. I simply had to give up level 4, not because of level's difficulty but because of the feeling that the game should be blamed for me constantly failing to not die. Sad, because simply changing the cursor image would make the experience so much better.
There is also the unavoidable political issue, I understand you just wanted to create cruel world vibes but with polarity going on today the game will most likely attract the fascist type of crowd.
Still, pretty exceptional work for a LD game, it will stick around in my memory for a while.
@kr4ft3r thank you for you Exceptional critique! I agree that the cursor is hard to follow, blue is my "placeholder" color which I used so it didn't even cross my mind to change it. There is a pointer that shows the player more clearly, but for some reason, I just forgot to implement it properly, which I'm going to change for the post jam version. Also, Level 4 is the final level. I went a bit overboard on the difficulty there.
Yes, I knew that making a game set in the Congo Free State would make a lot of people uncomfortable. I have read the book, and watched "Apocalypse Now". I am a big believer in historical accuracy and I felt that this setting would work well with the message of the novel. I planned on adding hostile settlers that have gone mad to balance out the enemy roster. Unfortunately, everything is political these days and I was aware that I would get some flak for the setting, but I think that there are no games that tackle this time period.
Thank you for you review!