Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → Depths shooter
By jamesgames1000 and GreenLazers
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 848 | 2.65 | 57 | |
| Fun | 797 | 2.64 | 57 | |
| Innovation | 870 | 2.07 | 56 | |
| Theme | 849 | 2.23 | 57 | |
| Graphics | 764 | 2.59 | 57 | |
| Mood | 849 | 2.42 | 56 |
The game is pretty good for a pygame game. I also used pygame for my game Atlantis Again. The game quitting configuration didn't work but overall it was okay. You could have added more features like different guns and levels and all that
It didn't follow the theme either
The game its pretty nice! We are more invencible then the enemys, but very fun to play... I didnt knhow how to curer myself, but its ok! The theme was there, but not so much lol.... If you can, rate my game too! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/the-abyssal-trenches
Not very polished, but a good effort for your first Ludum Dare! Getting overwhelmed by so many enemies and panicking to get away gave me a good laugh :)
Thanks for sharing your game with the community! I had a few good moments of panic-firing-everything-I-had, but I got to a win with a second attempt at the boss.
Good for your first game!
Too sharp controls and high Jumps. The sounds also didn't hurt.
Was fun, and I was surprised to run into a boss!
Fun and short game with nice animations.
Decent effort! Wasn't a fan of the player being forced to run through the enemies when they're out of ammo, could've had a simple melee attack or make the player have a weaker gun like a pistol with infinite ammo for them to not have to brute force through the enemies until they load into the next level. Speaking of which i didnt really understand these "weapon upgrades", i picked up what looked like a different weapon but i still had the same one with no notable differences, tried checking my keyboard but couldnt find a way to switch weapon so i assume it just maybe made my shotgun do more damage, it should be clear what they actually do because i really dont know at all. Visuals are fairly decent, due to the time restrictions i can look past the nonexistant backgrounds because the sprites & animations on everything else we're fairly well made. Aside from the things i wasnt a fan of, it was fairly alright, had a decent time going through it!
Nice game, it's rare to see games made it pygame A bit frustrating how hard it is to jump above bullets to dodge, but I suck at platformers so this may be a me problem Would have loved some sound effects, but I guess you didn't have time Boss fight took me two tries, I could only jump on the platform from below the boss, not sure if that was intended
I had an error popup at some point but I closed it and it kept running Here's the trace if you want:
Traceback (most recent call last): File "Main.py", line 437, in
@sphone-official Thank you for playing my game and thank you for taking the time to suggest some things!! :) . Also I wanted to add melee but found that I didn't have enough time. :(
@justine-d I'm sorry that an error happened I'm glad to hear it didn't close the game though, I will look into the problem. Also thanks for playing my game. I'm hoping next LD I'll have time to add sound because I do agree that music would be better.
Interesting game! It's cool that it's made entirely in Python. The shots are barely visible on the screen and it was a bit unclear what to do with the gray wall until the game made me break it. Good job!
@greenradiation Thanks for playing my game and I'll try and make it more clear on what to do with the breakable walls. :)
I won!! Congratulations on your first LD entry! It's a complete little package with multiple weapons, pickups, terrain interactions, enemies with sensible behaviors, and even a climactic boss fight. Great work.
I played just the right number of times - boss kicked my tail just enough that I was eager to retry but the game did not overstay its welcome. The checkpoints were absolutely VITAL to support this feeling. It would be so easy to make that classic LD beginner mistake of not having checkpoints and sending the player all the way back to the start, but you were smart designers and avoided that.
There were definitely a bunch of minor splinters, which is totally to be expected the first few games. I'll give you some notes on them, but I hope this feels constructive, believe me I don't leave detailed notes unless I see potential. That said, if you don't want critique, please just skip this!!
Colliders have a HUGE impact on the feel of any game like this. I can feel that something is off with yours. This should not be a collision, but it is:
Collision.png
This janky over-collision really dominated the boss fight, unfortunately. I learned my way around it, but it was a splinter.
We could talk for hours about colliders, but I'll just say this: simple colliders will get the basic job done, but if you want to shoot for a smooth pleasant game feel you need to be super-critical of them. For example, typically there would be multiple different colliders: colliders for interacting with the pickups, colliders for interacting with the terrain, colliders for physically interacting with the enemy, colliders for getting shot. And so on.
But a good starting point is this: rectangles have sharp corners, and the corner-to-corner is where it feels bad. Especially on the top of the character, getting their jump stuffed because they clipped the corner of their hair. Experiment a rectangle at the feet with a circle at the head.
The key to colliders is to be as generous to the player as possible in every regard. Make the colliders downright unfair in their favor, and then tune the game difficulty around that generosity so that it's the GAME challenging the player, and not the controls/collisions.
Obviously there's a scope limitation in a jam. But check this great video out, which starts with a really really simple shooter and then just adds more and more of the right kinds of juice to it. You can just steal as many of these ideas as possible next time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
The main piece of juice I missed from your game was some indication that I took a hit.
And that's it! I think you made a nice entry here and I played it all the way through to the end. And if you improved it a bit in those two areas I think it really could go up to even another level.
Look forward to seeing what you do next.
@pkenney Thank you so much for playing my game it means a lot!! :) As for the criticism I appreciate it as well, you took time to evaluate my game and told me what I should change/add and I am always looking to do better in everything that I do. The collision is a bit wonky but I kind of ran out of time other wise I would have loved to make the collision better, I was also really stressing out over my first LD and made the boss fight in the last two hours. Once again thank you for taking your time and writing an in depth comment it was much appreciated.
Nice, boss fight in the last two hours? That's how it's done!
Hella solid for a new dev, rly love the assets! nice scope and length for a game keep at it, you seem to have a good start!
@cammyrnn I'm glad to hear you liked it, if you have any suggestions I'm planning on working on this game post LD so any suggestions would help :)
Nice first entry, pat yourself on the back because you made a game!! There's a few easy things that could be done to make it more polished, here are my suggestions: - there should be a way for the player to avoid enemy fire, so the outcome of the game depends more on player skill. Maybe a duck or a dodge button? Just make sure the player can't avoid ALL enemy fire, the player has to have nice timing to dodge it - the bullets are hard to see, making them bigger and a more constrasting color like white would make them more nitid - the ammo count is also hard to see, make the text white because it will constrast nicely with the brown background - if you add hit effects like blood, or make the enemy blink when it gets hit, or make a death animation for the enemies, it will make the gameplay more satisfying. The player character should also react when getting hit
Btw, the sprites are really charming
Nice game! Reminded one of those old flash games. I liked the assets. I just thought the gravity was too heavy haha. Nice job man!
I had a fun time playing this. Everyone else already covered any feedback I'd have for you. Good job! It's cool that you did this all in python/pygame.
@goiaba-games Thanks for playing my game and thank you for all your suggestions some of these I didn't even think about, but it makes a lot of sense to add, I will definitely add all of these post LD :)
@anderson-job-loeffler @rack47 Thanks for taking the time to play, comment and rate my game I hope you enjoyed playing it because I sure enjoyed making it!
Nice game ! I tworks very well for a game jam with a small team like yours. Definetly needs some polishing to make the jump feel more natural and to make the colliders easier to understand.
Nice start! this game could use extra works to make it better. At least, default gun shouldn't require any ammo or unlimited while extra alternate gun could use ammo. That being said, at least the boss fight gave some nice closure to this game.
This is great for a first entry. I really like the graphics and the animations feel smooth. The collisions felt a bit off but it wasn't anything major. I felt the shooting could have been a bit more impactful - it didn't really feel like it was worth it taking fights most of the time as you lost more hp than you would get healed back. I ended up just walking past most enemies. A cool little boss fight at the end though and the game runs well. Good job!
I enjoyed playing the game — it's engaging and has solid gameplay. The visual style and sound design are also really well done. I had a great time and would definitely recommend it to others. A very cool experience!
At first, I thought this game was a bit too simplistic. But after trying a few times, I found that it indeed has some levels with design intentions, so I played to the end and defeated the boss. Well done, guys!
Thank you guys for playing my game and taking the time to leave a comment.
@antoine-bodin I'm planning on making the jumping more smooth and the collision better this weekend so look out for any post LD updates!!!
@bloodbane Yeah now that the game is submitted a lot of people are saying that I should add a gun with infinite ammo which I think I will add, so thanks for the suggestion :)
@pegasys I'll have to think of a motive for killing all the enemy's maybe, to complete the level you have to kill all the enemy's and maybe healing gives more HP back. What do you think?
@crozzy @justuspan I'm glad to hear you guys liked it :)
A solid platformer. Fairly challenging, but I managed to win first try. I didn't realise you click on the doors to open them at first. Some feedback from being hit would have been useful. The sound didn't work for me.
@someone Thanks for playing my game!!! There is no sound because I dont do music and neither does GreenLazers sorry :( The doors are meant to be shot at till broken not clicked, but I will look into that.
The game plays well. Could use some ammo pickups. Other than that I enjoyed the play
Do you follow DaFluffyPotato, he is a PyGame Wizard. You should give him a look
There was a sound folder in the game files so I assumed it was just not working. I recommend having a look at [sfxr](https://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html), it is a great little utility for making simple sound effects for games like this.
Great entry, missing a bit of juice but, the pixel art is lovely, collision detection works well and the mechanics are there. This is impressive for a a game jam taking in account that you used a library instead of a fully fledged game engine.
Hehe at work I use Python so whenever I can I run to something else, how was the experience of developing this game in Python? (Doesn't look like a bad Idea :))
Keep it up!!!
@beebster-games Ya I sure do I love his videos but thanks for suggesting his videos anyways :)
@someone Oh ya I completely forgot about that, the sounds in there are like 15 seconds long and are meant to be background music and I felt that it would be too repetitive looping a 15 seconds song.
@muriel Making a game in python was probably harder than using a game engine because you dont have all the fancy things but I still enjoyed it a lot and for my next game jam I'm planning on using a game engine. Thanks for playing my game :)
@jamesgames1000 yeah, it is a bit harder, it is clear that you need this extra work to get some particles, lighting physx.. but you did well, you must be proud of yourself!!!
I tend to go from engine to something more raw (depending on the theme being honest), if I want to do something 3D I go with Unity. If I want to do something else I've used things like Raylib, Haxe, even Java!
But yeah again, very nice and kudos un pulling all of this from scratch!
@muriel Thanks for the suggestions of possible game engines. I'll have to look into some of them! :)
@jamesgames1000 well Raylib, Haxe is a very interesting language, the lib that I lke to use with it is called Haxe Flixel https://haxeflixel.com/ and Java being honest I think that it is a bit outdated, I did it back when Notch was more present and using Java wasn't that outdated xD.
Something else that I might use very likely is pixijs (Usually I am not a huge fan of Js/Ts but here it is very nice as you can just embeed it and people can play directly).
Anyway, I've seen that you tried my game, thanks for playing it <3
Congrats on your first LD! You packed in a lot of gameplay elements - great job!
@muriel Ya of course it was a great game!
Good job on your first LD! I find it a bit difficult, in a good way. it was fun trying to time correctly the jumping to avoid damage, then shooting in any little time frame I got. I also enjoyed taking advantage of the opponentall being packed and killing each other :D
I like the walking animation of the player character, it looks very smooth!
It's a bit sad that there's no music. I'll give you the same tip as I give to anybody else: never underestimate spending 30 minutes to create a simple music loop, it really adds something to the experience.
Nice entry!
@rolly Yeah I will definitely have to add music for my next game jam I was a little sad my self that there was no music XD Thanks for playing my game and taking the time to leave a comment :)
I won't repeat others about felling, collisions, etc. I'll just say that final boss fight suffers from the side of stylistic identity - it doesn't feel right, when you shoots in people of contemporary's setting and in the end there is sci-fi robot's eye. Gud luck.
I won. :)
1.png
The gravity felt a bit too high. I'd also recommend rebinding "shoot" to a keyboard key, if the mouse doesn't control the direction.
@holyblackcat You did it!!!!! The gravity was a bit too high I do agree and I guess the shoot could have been space and w be jump. Thanks for playing my game I hope you enjoyed it :)
Nice shooter! If I could change one thing, I'd make the bullets bigger.
@geometer Ya I've been working on it post LD and I've already added this I'll tell everyone that commented here when I'm done with the next version(Next couple days)
Nice job with this game. Could use some polish with the jumping. There was no way to dodge bullets.